Unanswered Questions
205 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
17
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2
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Do dialects without the meet-meat merger neutralize the distinction in some contexts?
For many dialects of English (including my own) multiple historical lexical sets are merged into one "FLEECE" set (this diaphoneme can be represented with IPA /iː/).
I've read about the basics of the ...
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8
votes
0
answers
220
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Historical pronunciation of Hindi यह and वह
The Hindi 3rd person singular proximal and distal pronouns यह and वह are commonly pronounced [jeː] and [ʋoː], in contrast to the [hyper-correct?] pronunciations [jəɦ(ə)] and [ʋəɦ(ə)] one might expect ...
- 3,132
8
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1
answer
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Agglutination in Proto-Indo-European
Based on numerous sources, it seems clear that Proto-Indo-European was
Productively agglutinative with non-root morphemes (and perhaps some specific roots that are also able to act like bound ...
CommunityBot
- 1
7
votes
0
answers
519
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How is Donald Duck's voice produced, if not by buccal speech?
The Disney character Donald Duck is well known for his nigh unintelligible voice, which was originated by actor Clarence Nash in the 1930s. I have always heard this manner of speaking described as ...
- 468
7
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0
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204
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Northumbrian pronunciation of ge-/gi- prefix and -g suffix
I'm working on a musical setting of Cædmon's Hymn, and I'd like to have the primary setting be in the Northumbrian dialect of its earliest written example (the 737 "Moore" Bede manuscript). I'm ...
- 87
5
votes
1
answer
177
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Are voiced sounds considered "weaker" than voiceless ones? If so, why?
The motivation for asking this question was checking up on the Wikipedia page for Lentition, which says that it can involve "voicing a voiceless consonant", even though it's described as a ...
CommunityBot
- 1
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
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0
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448
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Cellar door and Indo-European languages
Where I grew up (UK) there was a pub called The Drysalters. I always liked this name without having any idea what a drysalter was, or having any association or emotional connection to the pub itself.
...
- 31.1k
5
votes
0
answers
217
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Is there a prohibition on stems starting with /g/ in PIE?
Is there a law that prohibits PIE stems starting with what traditionally reconstructed as non-palatal /g/?
So far I encountered with only one stem that the sources consistently reconstruct with this ...
- 6,711
5
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0
answers
249
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Patterns of accent changes by non-native English speakers
I am looking for a list of 'accent changes', or pronunciation inaccuracies, non-native English speakers commonly make when speaking English words. The list would obviously be native language specific ...
- 59
5
votes
1
answer
535
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Gulf Arabic vowels allophones
No matter how much I browse, I cannot find any true researcher's really precise and accurate data on the issue. Actually, I cannot find any Gulf Arabic Phonology compendium, so any help will be ...
CommunityBot
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4
votes
0
answers
129
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The dark l sound followed by a vowel sound during linking
the dark L in English is at the end of a word such as "girl", "pencil" or when it is followed by a consonant sound such as "child".
I'm curious what is happening with the ...
- 395
4
votes
0
answers
93
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What's the name for using a letter to represent its name's sound?
It's often whimsical to substitute a single letter for a group of letters phonetically identical to the letter's name.
Such as rewriting "barbecue" as "bar-b-q", or the entirety of William Steig's ...
- 31.1k
4
votes
0
answers
633
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PIE Aspect: (Im)perfective or (Non-)progressive?
According to Wikipedia Proto-Indo-European had four tense-aspects, the first being stative and the latter three being eventive: stative aspect, perfective aspect, and past and present tense of ...
- 14.8k
4
votes
0
answers
121
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Determining how similar audio is to human speech
I was suggested to cross post this question of mine from Stack Overflow. Hopefully my question is within the bounds of this question board!
I am searching for a method of determining the similarity ...
CommunityBot
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