Questions tagged [suprasegmentals]

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2 votes
1 answer
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Is there any natural language having minimal pairs over tongue root position?

I am building a conlang, which is very likely going to be an isolating language. As such, I decided to make it a tonal language. But there is a problem. This language is to be sung very often, so ...
0 votes
1 answer
55 views

Evidence for segmental phonology in the acoustic speech signal

What evidence for segmental phonology could be found in the acoustic speech signal? I think the parameters of acoustic speech signals include f0, amplitude, duration, wave form, etc., which are ...
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0 votes
1 answer
50 views

The affixation differentiating between nominal arithmetic and adjectival arithmetic

Since a suprafix can be the change of stress somewhere in the word (or other suprasegmental elements), and since accentuation plays a role in differentiating the noun arithmetic from the adjective ...
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0 votes
2 answers
70 views

Understanding Linguistic Categories

One of the key tenets of contemporary linguistic theory, at least so far as I understand it, is that linguistic units can be categorized into categories at different levels of description. So a ...
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2 votes
3 answers
597 views

Do all languages use emphasis to communicate importance?

So, I was just writing a sentence along the lines of "...the sales person will not enter the information....". I went back and wrote it as "...the sales person will not enter the information...." to ...
3 votes
1 answer
216 views

Tone associated to segments other than vowels

Are there languages in which lexical tone can associate to semivowels or glottal stops, or does tone ALWAYS associate only to vowels when it is realized in a spoken word?
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2 votes
1 answer
228 views

What is the origins for the ban on crossing association lines in feature geometry?

In reading about Clements' structural representation of features, the phonetic contents of a segment are organised into feature tiers and 5 class tiers (root, lar, supralar, place, manner). In this ...
  • 2,701
3 votes
1 answer
95 views

What kind of experimental procedures can be used to determine tone values (1-5)?

Unlike vowel formant frequencies, tones are trickier to determine, since the F0 of a TBU may depend on a lot of factors, such as the speaker's age, gender, mood, etc. Thus, it's quite often the case ...
2 votes
1 answer
360 views

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 ...
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2 votes
2 answers
343 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, ...
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2 votes
1 answer
5k views

How are Tone and Intonation languages different acoustically?

On what aspects Tonal languages differ from Intonation languages when analyzing them acoustically? On intonation and tone: Jones (1960) - "the variations which take place in the pitch of the ...
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