10
votes
Gemination in languages not supposed to have gemination? (especially Greek)
The statement that Greek "doesn't have" gemination is really just a shorter way of saying that gemination is not phonemic in Greek.
Phonemic status of a feature in a language is an indication of ...
- 1,857
8
votes
Accepted
What does the superscript x in Finnish IPA mean?
Phonemes are theoretical units, which don't always map directly to sounds.
In this case, to my understanding, the phonologist behind this analysis has proposed that there's a special phoneme /ˣ/ which ...
- 69.6k
4
votes
Accepted
Lengthened voiced stops and the airstream through the nose
It is possible that you do lower the velum when you do this, and velum lowering is one of the methods that is used to alleviate the pressure buildup of voiced stops, but it is also possible that your ...
- 83.4k
3
votes
What does the superscript x in Finnish IPA mean?
This is a well-known problem of Finnish phonology, made widely known to the general linguistic audience in this article by Keyser & Kiparsky. There is no standard notation for indicating this ...
- 83.4k
3
votes
Lengthened voiced stops and the airstream through the nose
If you're producing nasals then you must be allowing your velum to drop. No fair. You have to find some way to enlarge the closed air cavity above your larynx. There are several ways to do this. ...
- 12.5k
3
votes
Did Classical Hebrew and/or Aramaic have allophonic continuant length?
I don't know anything significant about Ancient Hebrew. Since there were different varieties of Hebrew and Aramaic in ancient times, I can't be sure whether information that I find in documents online ...
- 18.7k
2
votes
Did Classical Hebrew and/or Aramaic have allophonic continuant length?
Having confirmed with a Hebraist, this is indeed a phonological rule of Hebrew (and Aramaic). In his words:
in certain positions, consonants geminate after historically short vowels
Some of these ...
- 69.6k
1
vote
Does conservative orthography promote "phonetic denial"?
One should perhaps distinguish between:
a false perception of a phonetic distinction in someone's own speech or in the language in general
the feeling that a distinction does exist in the "...
- 457
1
vote
Geminate consonants by total assimilation in English
First off, there is a distinction between geminates and fake geminates. Conventionally, we tend to write [tt, ss, nn] for all longish consonants, but the term "geminate" is usually reserved ...
- 83.4k
1
vote
Accepted
Expressing gemination in SPE
Kenstowicz 1994 (Phonology in Generative Grammar, e.g. p. 63) uses ±long, just as for vowels, at least for the purposes of exposition. This is in line with the fact that the IPA length indicator ː is ...
- 727
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