(L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here [2010-2019]

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elemtilas
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by elemtilas »

OTʜᴇB wrote:I'm not sure how quick of a question this will be, but could someone briefly explain how tenses and aspects work in a general fashion, and then give a few examples? I think I probably struggle so much with this as I only know minimal linguistics jargon.
Tenses are a matter of time. Generally speaking, some time in the past, some time around now (present) or some time in the future.

Aspects are matters of perspective. Things like is the action ongoing; is it just beginning (or ending); is it complete or is it not yet done.

English (and I think other IE languages are about as bad) is a horrible language to use for examples, because we tend to conflate or mingle the two concepts into one form. For example, the present tense -- I am running -- is actually a conflation of present tense and progressive or ongoing aspect. What historically was the present tense -- I run -- is really more of a habitual aspect. Your crazy example sentence about someone on the verge of being nearly about to write some music would, aspectually speaking, be some kind of inceptive aspect (about to begin).

:wikip: has some nice articles on these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_tense
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_aspect
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Ear of the Sphinx »

Aleks wrote:Why is it that English has the /eɪ/ diphtong yet we have the /ɛ/ vowel and not /e/?
Matter of the analysis. You can analyze /ɛ eɪ/ as /ɛ ɛj/ if it makes more sense to you.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by KaiTheHomoSapien »

Okay, here's a question I've been wondering about. What exactly is the feature that joins the "rhotics" together aside from the fact that they're written with the letter <r> in most languages? Are the "rhotics" really just "non-lateral liquids"? If so, the fact that sounds like the uvular trill and the alveolar tap are both in the same category seems a bit arbitrary.

To that effect I don't even know how I'd describe what exactly a "liquid" sound is, other than "it's R or L".
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by shimobaatar »

KaiTheHomoSapien wrote:Okay, here's a question I've been wondering about. What exactly is the feature that joins the "rhotics" together aside from the fact that they're written with the letter <r> in most languages? Are the "rhotics" really just "non-lateral liquids"? If so, the fact that sounds like the uvular trill and the alveolar tap are both in the same category seems a bit arbitrary.

To that effect I don't even know how I'd describe what exactly a "liquid" sound is, other than "it's R or L".
This page has a lot of relevant information, I feel.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by KaiTheHomoSapien »

^Interesting. This I think is the most interesting part:

"The fact that the sounds conventionally classified as "rhotics" vary greatly in both place and manner in terms of articulation, and also in their acoustic characteristics, has led several linguists to investigate what, if anything, they have in common that justifies grouping them together. One suggestion that has been made is that each member of the class of rhotics shares certain properties with other members of the class, but not necessarily the same properties with all; in this case, rhotics have a "family resemblance" with each other rather than a strict set of shared properties. Another suggestion is that rhotics are defined by their behaviour on the sonority hierarchy, namely, that a rhotic is any sound that patterns as being more sonorous than a lateral consonant but less sonorous than a vowel. The potential for variation within the class of rhotics makes them a popular area for research in sociolinguistics."
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Aleks
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Aleks »

So back to that /eɪ/ question I had earlier is /e:/ practically the same as /eɪ/?
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Dormouse559 »

No, not at all. One is a diphthong and the other is a long monophthong. They may sound similar to English speakers because they are realizations of the same phoneme in different dialects.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Xonen »

HoskhMatriarch wrote:
Xonen wrote:Then again, it tends to be more pleasant to listen to nails on chalkboard than to two lovers bill and coo in any language, so that's not saying much. [¬.¬] Of course, not understanding what they're saying might help.
Have you even heard romantic (not to be confused with Romantic although there is frequently overlap) poetry?
Both kinds; the one with the capital letter tends to be much better (and yes, that strikethrough is... warranted there). But anyway, back to linguistics here.

Aleks wrote:So back to that /eɪ/ question I had earlier is /e:/ practically the same as /eɪ/?
Well, they can be, sort of - but [e:] is not the same thing as [eɪ]! It's important to note the difference between phonemic and phonetic transcription here: /slashes/ and [brackets], respectively. The former is language-specific and somewhat arbitrary, while the latter aims for objective description of the actual sound.

In a language like English (or at least most dialects of it), where the difference between [e:] and [eɪ] doesn't distinguish words, it doesn't really matter which symbol you choose for the phoneme - but since [eɪ] is the most common realization in most (prestige) dialects, it makes sense to use the same symbol for the phoneme, hence /eɪ/. However, in a language where that difference does distinguish words, /e:/ and /eɪ/ would refer to clearly different phonemes, and not be at all interchangeable.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by mira »

IPA symbol for a kind of alveolar-postalveolar lateral plosive? I got to that sound by making the shape for /l/ but then extending my tongue out sideways to restrict airflow completely, then lowering the sides to make an airy pop. Like a plosive version of /ɬ/?
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Creyeditor »

Maybe it's a click? Or an affricate?
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Post by mira »

Creyeditor wrote:Maybe it's a click? Or an affricate?
Possibly. Is there a diacritic that plosive-ises a sound?
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Post by Creyeditor »

OTʜᴇB wrote:
Creyeditor wrote:Maybe it's a click? Or an affricate?
Possibly. Is there a diacritic that plosive-ises a sound?
Well, affricates are kind of plosive-ized fricatives ...
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by mira »

Creyeditor wrote:
OTʜᴇB wrote:
Creyeditor wrote:Maybe it's a click? Or an affricate?
Possibly. Is there a diacritic that plosive-ises a sound?
Well, affricates are kind of plosive-ized fricatives ...
So I guess it would be /tɬ/ then. Cheers.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Aleks »

Is there some place where I can find the IPA of English words accurately? See because I'm getting conflicting results from different sources and some don't make sense. Dictionary.com has IPA for words but I am wondering why forest is [fɔrɪst]. Yet it doesn't sound like that when I hear clips of it. It sounds more like [foʊrɪst], is there a reason behind why there is an [ɔ]?
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by shimobaatar »

Aleks wrote:Is there some place where I can find the IPA of English words accurately? See because I'm getting conflicting results from different sources and some don't make sense. Dictionary.com has IPA for words but I am wondering why forest is [fɔrɪst]. Yet it doesn't sound like that when I hear clips of it. It sounds more like [foʊrɪst], is there a reason behind why there is an [ɔ]?
I know that Wiktionary often has IPA transcriptions for English words usually in multiple dialects.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by GrandPiano »

Aleks wrote:Is there some place where I can find the IPA of English words accurately? See because I'm getting conflicting results from different sources and some don't make sense. Dictionary.com has IPA for words but I am wondering why forest is [fɔrɪst]. Yet it doesn't sound like that when I hear clips of it. It sounds more like [foʊrɪst], is there a reason behind why there is an [ɔ]?
Many people (myself included) do pronounce it [ˈfɔɹɪst], and I'm pretty sure that's actually the most common pronunciation. However, I'm sure there are also plenty of people that pronounce it [ˈfoʊɹɪst]. Can you link to the clips you've listened to?
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Sumelic »

Aleks wrote:Is there some place where I can find the IPA of English words accurately? See because I'm getting conflicting results from different sources and some don't make sense. Dictionary.com has IPA for words but I am wondering why forest is [fɔrɪst]. Yet it doesn't sound like that when I hear clips of it. It sounds more like [foʊrɪst], is there a reason behind why there is an [ɔ]?
[ɔ] is not a very precise transcription. For most Americans, there is no phonemic contrast between tautosyllabic /ɔr/ and /oʊr/. So the vowel can be transcribed with [ɔ], even though for many people it's higher than the vowel of "thought" (which, even for people without the cot-caught merger, is generally not the same as the vowel used in British "thought," even though both are usually transcribed [ɔ]).

Relevant post from John Wells's phonetics blog: http://phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/2010/ ... hucks.html

Dictionaries give generalized, phonemic transcriptions because they're meant to serve a wide audience of people who will have a variety of accents. If you want narrow transcriptions, you'll need to look at sources that focus on specific accents/dialects.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by mira »

Is "rhoticity" the kind of "r"-ness on vowels? So would /o˞/ be like "or"?
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Post by loglorn »

OTʜᴇB wrote:Is "rhoticity" the kind of "r"-ness on vowels? So would /o˞/ be like "or"?
Rhoticity is to /r/ as palatalization is to /j/. Not the same thing, but most clearly related.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by GrandPiano »

loglorn wrote:
OTʜᴇB wrote:Is "rhoticity" the kind of "r"-ness on vowels? So would /o˞/ be like "or"?
Rhoticity is to /r/ as palatalization is to /j/. Not the same thing, but most clearly related.
Or more accurately [ɹ], not [r].
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