14
Yes, in such a case you would be talking about Ingressive sounds (the air flows in), whereas most languages are typically egressive (the air flows out).
It occurs in Scandinavian languages, sometimes in English (the gasp you talked about), and Brazilian Portuguese. As stated in the article:
Speech technologist Robert Eklund has found reports of ...
10
Phoible is a useful database for phonological questions containing more than 3000 inventories for more than 2000 languages
They have just 19 inventories with a /ʀ/ (i.e. with a phonemic uvular trill). Additionally, 2 inventories with a /ʁ/ (i.e. a phonemic voiced uvular fricative) have a [ʀ] as an allophone. In some of these, [r] is given as an allophone, so ...
7
The explanation is based on phonetics. A back (velar or uvular) constriction causes the second formant to be low, as does rounding. Together, labiovelars have a very low F2, and that results in a very distinctive sound. A coronal consonant on the other hand has a high F2, but adding rounding lowers F2, so the resulting sound is perceptually less distinctive. ...
7
Having acoustically inspected these tokens as well as online tokens from Esling and Ladefoged, I notice that all performers have a longer voice onset time (around 20 msc, varying according to performer and context, greater in the [aCa] context) in production of [c], and it is filled with identifiable fricative-like noise. The best source is the Esling chart (...
6
Well, yes and no.
Vocal F0 range is mainly determined by the length and thickness of the vocal folds. Inasmuch as neck circumference correlates with the size of the vocal folds inside the neck, you could find a loose, indirect correlation between neck circumference and F0 range. For example, adults generally have thicker necks than children, and they ...
5
An introductory textbook in phonetics will give an elementary description of the phonetic properties denoted by diacritics. This should include some information about how a "palatalized" consonant is produced. A more advanced treatment would come from Ladefoged & Maddieson's The sounds of the world's languages, where you would look up an articulatory ...
5
The technical terms in articulatory phonetics for "tipper" and "dipper" are apical and laminal.
They are both voiceless alveolar fricatives (IPA: [s]), but since "alveolar" only describes the passive place of articulation, voiceless alveolar fricatives can take many forms, as the Wikipedia article you linked to discusses in detail. Whenever the distinction ...
5
All segments were given an acoustic definition in the feature theories of Jakobson, Fant & Halle (1951) and Jakobson & Halle (1956). Many of the features were passed down to Chomsky & Halle (1968) where the definitions were supplemented with an articulatory definition. This table compares the articulatory and acoustic definitions of the J&H ...
4
In Icelandic, people often say the word "yes" (já) while inhaling. But like in the examples of Swedish and Norwegian, this is a special case.
4
There's another sound "in English" which is usually written as "tsk" which is the sound you make when you when indicating disapproval (tsk-tsk-tsk). So "gasp" is not the only ingressive sound used by English speakers :)
4
I don't think there is much hope for reconstructing what the instructor was talking about based on your recollection, and asking him is your best bet. However, there is a somewhat well-known fact that the same thing can have multiple causes. This is especially true of the so-called ATR vowel distinction, between involving pairs like i/ɪ, e/ɛ, o/ɔ. This ...
4
Such contrasts are not attested in any known language. In the case of the two kinds of labiodentals, the distinction would be auditorily unlearnable since the acoustic consequences are negligible. However, dental versus interdental non-sibilant fricatives have been observed, but never found to contrast. Ladefoged & Maddieson The sounds of the world's ...
4
No, for a couple of reasons. First, this is not an diagram of a language sound (it's an open mouth), but there are such drawings, in the old days known as cutaway Sammy, purporting to be particular sounds. Here is a page with various places of articulation being sketched. Such drawings, when not made from whole cloth, are based on xray, MRI or ultrasound ...
4
Because females typically have a shorter vocal tract compared to males, one might expect that you can normalize formant frequencies to factor out differences owing to physical differences. This paper suggests, contrarily, that gender-based formant differences are grammaticalized and language specific. If formant differences in vowels were the result of ...
4
The sounds [u] and [w] really do resemble each other, just as [u] and [o] resemble each other: resemblance is weaker than identity. I don't know what the actual problem is that Russian language teachers are addressing, but given that Russian does not have [w], I assume it's sometimes challenging for speakers to produce appropriate English outputs; perhaps [...
4
"Co-articulation" and/or "double articulation" is something the IPA has a hard time representing. And to a first approximation, [s͜ħ] isn't wrong. ص does indeed involve two constrictions, one up in the front of the mouth where [s] happens, and one back in the pharynx where [ħ] happens.
The reason it's not usually transcribed this way is that not all ...
4
I have not seen all papers in phonology, but I don't think that a bidental plosive or a bidental stop (that would be technical terms for that sound) was ever described in literature. A bidental fricative /h̪͆/ is described as a marginal phoneme occurring as an allophone of another voiceless fricative in Northeast Caucasian languages, see Are there conlangs ...
answered Feb 11 '20 at 9:51
jk - Reinstate Monica
21.4k3 gold badges50 silver badges91 bronze badges
4
The apex of the tongue against the lower teeth does not block the airflow enough to make a plosive. The tongue against the front of the palate right behind where the teeth would be (the alveolar ridge) is probably the most similar area to the teeth in terms of what acoustically the plosive would sound like.
4
Another example is (certain Eritrean dialects of) Tigrinya. There is a trill which can be transcribed in IPA as [r], a clear alveolar trill, which is phonologically /R:/ (using "R" to unify tap and trill). Singleton /R/ is phonetically [ɾ]. Examples: [har:i] "silk", [baħaɾi] "sea". The dorsals /k, k', g/ lenite under obscure ...
3
You can't represent a manner graphically because... it's a manner, not a thing. By the way, you better think of manner in terms of "type of obstacle". Indeed, all sounds need a stream of air to be articulated. The articulation consists in interrupting such stream in various ways. Sometimes you get a complete occlusion which prevents the air from moving at ...
3
I would be surprised if your native language has these phonemes, which suggests that they are the result of you attempting to produce sounds based on instructions in a phonetics class. If not, you need to identify your native language. Indeed, they do not sound like human language sounds, rather they resemble synthesized fricatives. The relevance of this is ...
3
I suggest recording and measuring your measurements (but be careful to not totally believe the numbers). I found that in all cases including [n] vs. [nʷ], there was some difference in formants, though hearing it in [n] vs. [nʷ] was very hard. The acoustic differences are subtle and hard to characterize except with [ɴ] vs. [ɴʷ] which is quite clear. ...
3
@jlawler pretty much answered this already in his comment, but I thought I'd post an official answer.
In theory, yes--it's sensible to apply the concept of homorganic-ness (homorganism??) to things other than consonants. As you mention, one could consider the offglide in the diphthong [ɑɪ] to be homorganic with the vowel [ɪ], or the glide [w] to be ...
3
The process that results in the oscillation of the vocal folds is actually somewhat complicated and may be tricky to grasp if you are "not good at physics", but let's give it a shot!
A somewhat vague explanation is that, due to the way the shape of the vocal tract causes air to flow through the glottis and past the vocal folds, the fluid pressure (where a ...
3
There is a stage art called ventriloquism where this indeed happens. A ventriloquist needs to articulate some replacement sound for sounds involving visible labial movement (e.g., /b, p, w, v, m/) that is resolved to the original sound by the listener of the show.
Those replacement sounds need to be close enough in the phonological qualities to pass ...
answered Mar 3 '18 at 19:18
jk - Reinstate Monica
21.4k3 gold badges50 silver badges91 bronze badges
3
When we say "the alveolar this" or "the velar that", we're seldom talking about a sound with absolutely only one possible articulation but a whole class of similar sounds whose differences are not considered relevant in whatever context it is. So what falls under "the alveolar tap" is dependent on context, e.g. the phonological system of the language under ...
3
Unfortunately, the answer is no.
The space of vowels is continuous: given any two vowels, you can find a midpoint between them, and that's also a perfectly valid vowel that people can pronounce.
But for consonants, that doesn't work. What would be the average of a bilabial plosive and a labiodental nasal, for example? There's no real point of articulation ...
3
The phonological answer is pretty brief, since "approximant" is a phonetic terms, not a phonological one. The phoneticians category of "approximant" doesn't correspond to any phonological category, for example [h,ɦ] are classified as fricatives but they are phonological non-consonantal sonorants (as are [j w ɹ]). However, [l] is consonantal. But clearly, ...
3
The answer depends on knowing facts about a person's hearing loss, since there isn't just one type of hearing loss. Certain kinds of acoustic signals are more challenging than others. While [n] and [l] are not typically thought of as "hard" consonants to hear, distinguishing the two can be challenging with hearing loss, idem [m] versus [n]. ...
2
It's basically a type of debuccalization. Although the standard examples of debuccalization are things like s > h and t > ʔ, this is the same kind of process, since the loss of alveolar closure turns syllabic [ɫ] into a kind of laterally colored high back vowel.
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
