All Questions
26 questions
1
vote
1
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258
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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 &...
- 131
0
votes
0
answers
84
views
German contraction "wara" - morphology or phonology?
The regular form
War er ... 'was he ...'
would, in certain positions of sentence in my idiomatic sociolect, sound approximately as
* wara /vaːʁɐ/.
I can not imagine at the moment how this came ...
- 1,391
4
votes
0
answers
1k
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Does pre-fortis clipping only operate within a syllable? If not, what is its actual scope?
English is known to have a phenomenon of "pre-fortis clipping": in certain contexts, vowel and sonorant phonemes before a fortis/voiceless consonant are realized with shorter duration than the same ...
- 18.7k
3
votes
0
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106
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How are LH words assigned stress in Latin if we assume maximally bimoraic feet?
I recently came across a paper, "The Quantitative Trochee in Latin" (by R. Armin Mester, 1994) that seems to argue that feet in Latin were "strictly" bimoraic.
The arguments that Mester gives for ...
- 18.7k
3
votes
1
answer
185
views
What’s a good example a language phenomena in which f0 is NOT correlated to pitch?
It’s standard doctrine that “pitch is perceived f0”, and that f0 is phonetic and corresponds to pitch which is phonological ... no problem there. (Even if this is a simplification)
But I wonder if ...
- 2,711
2
votes
0
answers
82
views
Do we have an Intonation "etymology"?
Recently I was thinking about a language I'm currently learning and its similarities with my own native language. While I assume grammar to change considerably depending on language it came to mind ...
- 121
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2
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131
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How are prosodic phenomena represented in the phonological hierarchy?
Thanks to earlier questions (and some reading), I understand the basics of the phonological hierarchy
Features < Root < Skeletal Slot < (mora / onset-rhyme-nucleus-coda) <
Syllable &...
- 2,711
2
votes
1
answer
423
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Is it accurate to claim that autosegmental phonology is a theory of suprasegmental prosodic phenomena?
I'm a little unclear on what autosegmental phonology is vis-a-vis suprasegmentals. Although I understand the nuts-and-bolts of autosegmental phonology, it is not clear to me if it negates a division ...
- 2,711
2
votes
1
answer
266
views
In what tonal language is tone uncontroversially suprasegmental and not segmental?
So, it recently came to my attention that Chinese tone is not necessary a suprasegmental feature like I assumed. It seems that some claim it can be analyzed as being subsegmental.
If I am interested ...
- 2,711
3
votes
1
answer
402
views
Prosodic vs Metrical vs Autosegmental accounts of suprasegmental phenomena
In the literature I see three different theoretical constructs used to account for prosodic phenomena:
Prosodic phonology
Metrical phonology
Autosegmental phonology
Likely there are a few others, ...
- 2,711
2
votes
2
answers
402
views
Is vowel harmony prosodic, suprasegmental, or both?
I read that the division between suprasegments and segments is not black and white. I take this claim to have two logical entailments:
There are prosodic features that are segmental. For example, ...
- 2,711
1
vote
1
answer
233
views
Why is the utterance and intonational phrase "post-lexical"?
In the right side of the image below, it is implied that constituents up to the level of the word are considered "postlexical" and those below it are "lexical".
I can easily imagine that the prosodic ...
- 2,711
1
vote
1
answer
57
views
What is a "vertical scale" in a discussion of intonation contours?
In Ladd, D. R., & Morton, R. (1997), the authors write:
It is customary to think of an intonation contour as having a
linguistically distinctive shape or pattern and an independently
...
- 2,711
1
vote
2
answers
253
views
What's the explanatory value of Metrical Trees?
What's the explanatory value of metrical trees used to account for prominence relations or syllable stress? At first reflection, it seems to me like rules should be sufficient (indeed, rules and trees ...
- 2,711
1
vote
2
answers
100
views
What is the philosophy of prosodic transcription?
Why are we transcribing prosody? and what is the philosophy behind it? In general what is the purpose of it?
2
votes
1
answer
189
views
How do we define foot in Mandarin Chinese?
As we known, foot is a stress-related unit. But in Mandarin, the existence of stress remains controversial, so I would like to know the formation of foot in Mandarin Chinese. Thanks.
- 21
3
votes
2
answers
238
views
How is IPrA going to change the way we transcribe prosody?
There are some proposals for IPrA (International Prosodic Alphabet, similar to IPA but for prosody).
The meeting for IPrA (link to UCLA webpage on the topic) is planning to be held in BU in mid 2016. ...
- 1,265
1
vote
1
answer
99
views
Is there a common method of transcribing prosody?
I've seen diacritics corresponding to tones (in tonal languages), but asides from that I haven't come across a system for transcribing prosody in my studies. Is there a popular convention people use?
- 1,534
3
votes
1
answer
57
views
Why don't we use frequency change in ToBI?
As we know the ToBI system is designed to transcribe prosody and within it you can transcribe only High and Low prosody changes. The question is here Why don't we implement frequency change and/or ...
- 1,265
3
votes
1
answer
116
views
Is there a solution for the ToBI's weakness in showing speech variance?
I'm currently doing a research on the ToBI system (a system for transcribing prosody). The ToBI system is a phonological based system and does not show the variance in speech. for instance an L+H% ...
- 1,265
7
votes
4
answers
3k
views
Why do we use an upward inflection when asking questions?
I have tried Googling where the upward inflection comes from but all I get are "Valley Girl" results.
My curiosity in this started with my new German Language course I'm taking and noticed that the ...
- 171
1
vote
2
answers
111
views
What's an interactive, hands-on creative way to show the role of prosody?
I am have been nominated to teach an accelerated course on phonology to grad students. The course emphasizes lab work and hands-on methods.
What's a creative and innovative idea to demonstrate some ...
- 2,711
1
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1
answer
245
views
Why are f0 candidates stacked vertically in all .pitch files in Praat, like this one?
Why is it that, if I zoom into a .pitch file in Praat, the little numbers (pitch candidates) that are displayed are stacked into vertical lines?
- 2,711
5
votes
1
answer
1k
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What is the difference between phrase prosody and sentence prosody?
What is the difference between phrase prosody and sentence prosody?
I know that prosody is a phonological suprasegmental--its components, such as intonation, are more than one phoneme long. I know ...
- 8,780
3
votes
1
answer
276
views
Is there a way to create synthetic speech with no intonation contours / prosody?
Is there a way to create an utterance in synthetic speech which is devoid of prosody? Or if no such synthetic speech system exists, would there be a way to filter an existing utterance to remove the ...
- 377
26
votes
2
answers
1k
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Is it common to use the minor third for calling someone?
In German, calling someone's two-syllable name is tied very strongly to the minor third.
In languages that like to have a stressed last syllable, I would expect the last syllable to be higher than ...
- 1,435