Questions tagged [phonology]
The study of the abstract aspect of the sounds or *phonemes* in a given language.
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Can dialects of English have phonetic aspirated consonants?
Although the traditional phonemic assignment of English <j> and <ch> are /dʒ/ and /tʃ/, respectively, I believe there's an argument to be made that these are realized in some American ...
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Does 'z' act as a coda or onset in the syllable structure for the word crazy?
I am working on drawing the syllable structure for the word crazy. So far within kreizi, ei and i are nucliet, kr is an onset, but I am stuck on the 'z'. There are many words that start with z in the ...
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Establishing criteria for sounds likely to facilitate phonological mergers around them
I know extremely little about the history of sound changes in languages other than English, so that will be the source of my examples. However, I’m asking this question for a more general, cross-...
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What does it mean when a phoneme represented by one IPA is "phonetically" a different IPA?
I have been studying Hungarian and its pronunciation for a long time, using references such as the Hungarian Phonology Wikipedia page and comparing that to the General American Phonology page.
The ...
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Phonetic reconstruction of "Haremhab"
This is a follow-up question to Hippopotamus - Egyptian ḫꜣb - a phonosemantic calque?.
In a lecture by Jacobus van Dijk the pronounciation of the Egyptian Haremhab is clarified to be something ...
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Bilabial speech sounds with lower lip inserted between teeth
I have noticed the existence of several phones that can be produced with a place of articulation that I haven't seen discussed before. Basically, the two lips contact each other (as in bilabial sounds)...
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Where can I find all of the consonant/vowel word formation formulas for a given language? And what is the name of this?
I'm new to linguistics. I've seen that there are CVC or VVC or similar structures presented in online resources (for example Wikipedia) to denote the possible combinations of sounds.
I want to find a ...
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Phonemes that rarely have voiceless/voiced distinctions cross-linguistically
There are some voiceless/voiced pairs of phonemes that seem to be far rarer than other pairs. For example, /p/ and /b/ are separate phonemes in a majority* of the world's languages (and especially ...
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Is there such a thing as aspiration harmony?
How would one describe the propensity of an aspirate to spread right to an identical consonant in the same word?
/tʰeto/ → [tʰetʰo] ~ [tʰeto] (identical consonant); but
/tʰepo/ → [tʰepo] *[tʰepʰo] (...
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Does Lakhota contrast voicing in stops?
WALS Online lists Lakhota as only having a voicing contrast in fricatives (referencing a study by Richard Carter in 1974). However, its Wikipedia article says that it has phonemic voiced bilabial and ...
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Origin of vowel-h digraphs that English speakers use to represent phonemes
The majority of English speakers are not proficient in the International Phonetic alphabet or any other phonetic transcription system outside their own orthography. However, we often feel the need to ...
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How to describe stress rules
Primary stress is on the first syllable in a word, secondary stress is on every other following syllable except if that syllable is final in the word. How to write the stress rules using features.
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Frequency of homophones in different languages
Does English have unusually many or few homophones?
Which languages tend to have the most homophones and which have the fewest?
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Which English phoneme varies the most among its dialects?
The phonology of English shows extensive variance among its multitude of dialects. Which phoneme(s) shows the most variance throughout the language?
I think the most immediately apparent choice would ...
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Is "str" a legit sound in Polish?
"str" is legit in generic Slavic ("*strel-", arrow), so I wonder if Polish has it, maybe in leanwords. A small dictionary computer search gave nothing. (Frankly, I just want to ...
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L-epenthesis/allophony in unexplained circumstances in American English
I've been having trouble articulating this question, so I'm sorry if it's poorly worded.
I'm a teenage English speaker from Chicago. I've recently noticed a seemingly odd allophonic possibility in ...
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How Did the Palatovelar /*ḱ/ Consonant in PIE Become a Sibilant in Satem Languages?
In Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic languages (which are conveniently all Satem languages), there is a sibilant or affricate sound in places where Centum languages usually have a velar consonant. It ...
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A better rule for Canadian Raising
I'm a teenager from Chicago with a pretty standard contemporary Midwestern/General American accent (not distinctly Chicago). I'm interested in the phonetic phenomenon of Canadian Raising, in which ...
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In languages that allow vowel hiatus, what rules prevent the formation of words consisting only of four or more consecutive syllabic vowels?
For those who came in late, vowel hiatus is a common term for the occurrence of consecutive vowel sounds each of which serves as the nucleus of a syllable. For example, in the word “chaotic” we see ...
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How do consonant clusters originate?
I tried finding some information on this topic but there isn't a lot of information out there. The only things I could find is that it could originate from deletion of vowels between consonants. Are ...
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Are there languages where all syllables start with a consonant and end in a vowel?
This is a relaxed version of this question Are there any languages that only allow CV syllables? asking for strictly CV-languages. Here I want to know if there are languages with the phonology CC*VV*, ...
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What are near-minimal pairs
What are near-minimal pairs? How are they different from minimal pairs?
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How to write a rule for total assimilation of sounds?
I am looking at this list of words; the first column is from Sanskrit, and the second is from a daughter language Prakrit.
sapta > satta
dugdha > duddha
udgāra > uggāla
tikta > titta
...
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Word that means "a class of words that represent the output of the same phonology"?
What word do you use to describe groups of words that represent the output of the same phonology?
For example, here are some words I found from looking at maps & name lists for different countries:...
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Why are intervocalic coronal plosives apparently so unstable in English?
There are a plethora of words in the English language in which the phonemes /t/ and /d/ appear between two vowels, whether they be in adjacent syllables in the same word or in different words as a ...
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Why are some consonant clusters acceptable in some languages and not others and how does this change over time?
As per the question statement: is there a resource available for quickly determining which codal (or onset) consonant clusters are attested in human language? Mark Vandam’s Word Final Coda Typology ...
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Do other languages have correspondences like English's No-Nope and Yeah-Yep?
In the English language, as in others, there are a variety of interjection words. Among these are some comprising an open syllable, like yeah and no. Others end in stop consonants, like yep (or yup) ...
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The relationship between Mora-timed languages, long vowels and quantitative verse, also the status of Iranian and Balto-Slavo-Germanic?
In an anthropological forum, there was once a view that because Latin, Greek, Sanskrit (also Celtic IIRC) are Mora-timed, they are divided into one subgroup. However, "syllable-timed" ...
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Is the rarity of dental sounds explained by babies not immediately having teeth?
Dental consonants, which involve the corona of the tongue contacting the teeth (typically the upper teeth) are known to be rare throughout the world’s languages. More specifically, phonemic ...
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Is there a difference between /tʲ/ (palatalized t) and /kʲ/ (palatalized k)? [closed]
I've noticed that what some languages refer to as "soft k" and others as "soft t" seems to be the same sound. Is it so?
I was able to find a wiki page discussing the "soft g&...
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Relationship of spoken and written language and truth of sentences
I am not entirely sure if this is the appropriate site and whether these are the appropriate tags for this topic, so if that is not the case, please feel free to let me know.
I never thought twice ...
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What's the difference between primary and secondary stresses?
I've heard that secondary stress is more weaker than primary stress but aside from that is there any noticeable difference the two kinds of stresses?
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Energy to convey an amount of information in different languages
I am fluent in Assamese, Hindi and English, having learned all three of these since I was about 1 year old. I can speak Bengali with a little bit of effort.
I have developed this feeling that it takes ...
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In Classical/Biblical Hebrew, why is CHAF not considered a guttural?
According to "A Practical Grammar for Classical Hebrew" by Jacob Weingreen, page 19, the four gutturals are ALEF (א), HEI (ה), CHET (ח), and AYIN (ע). And gutturals make a difference as to ...
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What's the geographic distribution of the father/bra split in American English?
In most American English dialects with the father/bother merger, the bother vowel (originally /ɔ/) unrounds, lowers, and merges into the father vowel (originally /ɑ/), with the end result being /ɑ/, ...
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How can the final /r/ in 'razor' and 'hammer' be syllabic?
I just learned liquid /l,r/ become syllabic when at the end of a word and immediately after a consonant. When I look at examples such as paddle and whistle, I can understand /l/ in those words becomes ...
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is there an example where the consonant affects the vowel in English?
This generalization: In assimilation involving consonant–vowel pairs, the
consonant may affect the vowel or the vowel may affect
the consonant.
what is an example of this in our English lexicon?
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Do syllabic liquids imply a syllable nasal in English?
The generalization states that: The occurrence of syllabic liquids in a language almost
always implies that of syllabic nasals. Is this true for English? let me know your thoughts. examples would be ...
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How do you write the phonological rule for if something occurs before a stressed syllable?
I have the notion that /t/ and /th/ (aspirated [t]) are complementary allophones. How would I write the rule that an aspirated t occurs at the beginning of a word and the beginning of a stressed ...
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What's the rule dictating when to use aspirated and unaspirated [t] in English? [closed]
I have a degree assignment and I need to explain the rule that says when to use an aspirated [t] and when to use an unaspirated [t] since they are in complementary distribution in British English. ...
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What's the phonological explanation of Turkish speakers pronouncing "r" as "sh" at the end of the word?
I'm a native Turkish speaker and I recently started noticing people around me pronounce "r" as "sh", sometimes [ʒ], when it's at the end of a word. So it's like,
Hayır -> Hayış
...
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Do People and/or Robots Speak on Pitch and in Harmony with themselves?
I'm not sure if I should post this to Linguistics or Music Theory, but here goes:
My ear is not good enough to tell via observation whether people speak in musical scales, which would seem likely for ...
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Phonology for Loanwords
What is the reason for loanwords to preserve the original pronunciation, but not to be assimilate into the new language?
For example, the German loanword from English Handy (mobile phone), it is ...
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Why do “reiß” and “reis” not have the same phonemes although they are pronounced the same?
Reiß and reis are two words that have the same pronunciation in standard German. So why is it that the final phoneme in each word is different? In reiß it is /s/, and in reis it is /z/.
Is there some ...
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Can you provide a cheat-sheet for turning Proto-Indo-European dictionaries from the older style into laryngeal notation?
Much of the resources I have for Proto-Indo-European itself (not etymological dictionaries for other languages) either use Laryngeal notation but are limited in scope (like Wiktionary) or are written ...
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Is the Turkish /n/ dental apical or dental laminal?
According to Wikipedia the Turkish /n/ is dental, but it doesn't specify whether it's produced by the tip or the blade of the tongue.
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Geminate consonants by total assimilation in English
Please can someone provide an example of a geminate consonant formed by total assimilation in English?
The closest I can find is from this article written by presumably Professor Ian MacKenzie:
In [...
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Is "illegal" an example of nasal place assimilation in English?
I've read that English has a nasal place assimilation phonological rule,
n → m / _p,b,m
etc.
I was shown an example "illegal", apparently nasal place assimilation of the prefix "in-&...
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is schwa a phoneme in English?
or is it simply an unstressed allophone of unstressed lax vowels? I'm curious because I've heard some people claim that [ə] is not a phoneme and it is just a reduced allophone of all the unstressed ...
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How Does Gibberish Differ between Languages?
Gibberish spoken by English-speakers, despite being intended to sound unruly, clearly has rules. I'm not a linguist, and can't find a great deal of research into this, but here's a paper linking the &...
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