All Questions
Tagged with sound-change phonetics
22 questions
10
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1
answer
1k
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Grimm's Law and PIE in general
What's the evidence for stating that the transition from stops to fricatives took place in Proto-Germanic and not that fricatives became stops in the other PIE brances?
The question of this kind ...
- 451
2
votes
3
answers
263
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Is there any sound change that can result in /ɞ/?
I am making a conlang where one of the distinctive sounds is /ɞ/. It is a rare vowel sound, and I searched Index Diachronica but couldn't find a sound change that results in it. The sound also does ...
- 123
1
vote
1
answer
97
views
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-...
- 724
-1
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2
answers
305
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Can someone explain the ambiguity of the vowel [ø] and null segment [∅]?
Typically the IPA avoids using the same glyph in different scales to represent similar ideas however it seems to me that the representation of the Close-mid Front Rounded Vowel [ø] and the null marker ...
5
votes
3
answers
1k
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Could some European languages get phonemic vowel length in future?
Could some European languages get phonemic vowel length in future? I don't like that so few languages in Europe have that. Which would cause phonemic long vowels?
- 301
5
votes
0
answers
90
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How diachronically stable is release type?
Are there examples of languages completely shifting from (vocalic) release of all coda stops to, say, nasal release?
I imagine substrate effects could account for some of these cases (cf. unreleased ...
- 51
5
votes
1
answer
527
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Evolution of [v] to [b] and vice versa
There are many examples that show that two phones [v] and [b] are related:
b
v
Meaning
Old English to New English
* habban
have
have
Middle Persian to New Persian
varan
baran
rain
Middle Persian ...
user22226
6
votes
4
answers
1k
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What is the name of this sound change, and do we have it in English?
I'm a Persian, I'm from Iran, and I speak Farsi.
Here, we have a very strange rule that we turn آ into و in informal conversations.
For example:
خانه = house (formal) /kh a ne/
خونه = house (informal) ...
- 1,387
0
votes
1
answer
106
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What might explain this change in place of articulation? [closed]
I'd like to know if there's anything about /patitʰin/ that suggests itself as a reason why it might sometimes be pronounced [patikʰin]. I don't know what other words to look at to see if there's a ...
- 465
1
vote
1
answer
153
views
Why do English words comprising of one syllable and ending with a y sound with a vowel preceding it correspond to German words ending in a g sound?
Few examples:
Lay-legen
Day-tag (I know that the d here shifted to a t due to a sound change described in Grimm's Law)
Slay-(Er)schlagen
I am aware of the fact that German and English share a common ...
- 303
4
votes
3
answers
327
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About [s] being replaced by the voiceless postalveolar fricative in the US
I'm recently listening this replacement a lot on youtube, it's as if the practice is on the rising. Is it? what conditions such occurrence? Where in the US is it happening? And how did it all begin?
4
votes
1
answer
140
views
*through* vs. *tough*: ME*-ough* /uːx/ > –? How are the sound shifts from ME -ough explained?
How is it explained that the sound sequence /uːx/ -ough has developed so differently in different words?
Not-dipthongized in through, shortened and unrounded and retained fricative in tough, lowered ...
3
votes
2
answers
434
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How these close sounds are distinguished in native language
This is not a comprehensive list but just a few snippets from languages that have a few consonants that sound pretty much the same to me. I wanted to ask how I can learn to hear the difference between ...
- 4,438
7
votes
1
answer
844
views
Why did German <d> and <t> flip over?
I speak English and Norwegian and a little German and a little Dutch and I discovered a pattern while thinking about words which are obviously cognate. The pattern is wherever English, Norwegian and ...
- 4,688
2
votes
0
answers
136
views
Arabic sin and shin sounds in Classical times
What sounds did س and ش make in (early) Classical Arabic?
I have heard that maybe they were not [s] and [ʃ]. Is that a widely accepted truth? If that's true, what is the evidence for that?
4
votes
1
answer
444
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Languages showing affricate-to-plosive fortition (especially diachronically)
It is well known that consonant lenition or weakening tends to be far more common cross-linguistically than the opposite process called fortition or strengthening. Now, some languages have been ...
- 992
0
votes
0
answers
154
views
Is diphthongising [ʌ] as [ʌɪ] novel or an accent feature?
I have noticed some speakers diphthongising [ʌ] as [ʌɪ]. For example, in Bea Miller’s Young Blood, she pronounces “young blood” as [jʌɪŋ blʌɪd] and “us” as [ʌɪs]. Has this been documented elsewhere? ...
- 251
0
votes
3
answers
7k
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Determining underlying representation
I'm really confused about how to determine underlying representation. Every thing I read seems to contradict the last.
Trying desperately to solve this problem and I just seem to be going in circles ...
2
votes
0
answers
140
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Armenian pH < PIE *p(H)?
PIE * p has widely become h in Armenian (e.g. հարց (harts) "question" < * prsk-, հուր (hur) "fire" < * pur-, etc.). However, some have claimed that the verb փլիլ (pHlil) "to fall in, collapse", ...
- 1,387
2
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2
answers
1k
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Examples of discrete place-of-articulation changes
Most sound changes that involve consonantal place of articulation are gradual changes between two POAs that are contiguous: for example, a velar gets gradually fronted until it becomes a palatal. What ...
- 11k
1
vote
0
answers
188
views
R before TH sound?
Most of time when I say a word with r before θ or ð, my tongue slides on my palate and it goes to down mouth, behind my lower teeth. This movement produce a sound similar with tap or click, sometimes ...
- 175
10
votes
1
answer
2k
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Why has Paris French mostly lost the distinction between /e/ and /ɛ/?
Why has Paris French mostly lost the distinction between /e/ and /ɛ/? As in, the difference between 'Je le ferai' and 'Je le ferais', 'poignée' and 'poignet', or more simply between the é sound and ...
- 101