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

[KaiTheHomoSapien]

Do you ever avoid using IPA when you're talking to "normies" (non-linguistic folks)? Like I was posting about the unusual pronunciation of someone's username on another site so I just wrote it out in "stupid phonetics", something like writing the pronunciation of "education" as "ed-jew-KAY-shun". I wanted to do it more accurately with IPA but figured no one would know how to read it.

[lsd]

Do you ever avoid using IPA when you're talking to "normies" (non-linguistic folks)? Like I was posting about the unusual pronunciation of someone's username on another site so I just wrote it out in "stupid phonetics", something like writing the pronunciation of "education" as "ed-jew-KAY-shun". I wanted to do it more accurately with IPA but figured no one would know how to read it.

the difficulty is to adapt the folk-IPA to speakers of different L1 ...

I encountered this difficulty when I decided to write in latin characters my non-alphabetical conlang using the phonetic uses of alpahabet .... each language having its own ... except to use the IPA .. .

[Pabappa]

If there's only one sound in question, I'll just say "the vowel of LOVE" or something. I hate the schoolbook transcriptions and would otherwise prefer IPA even if most people wouldn't get it .... It's not that much different than Spanish, for example, unless the word has exotic phonemes, but then the other person wouldn't get it anyway most likely.

[elemtilas]

If there's only one sound in question, I'll just say "the vowel of LOVE" or something. I hate the schoolbook transcriptions and would otherwise prefer IPA even if most people wouldn't get it .... It's not that much different than Spanish, for example, unless the word has exotic phonemes, but then the other person wouldn't get it anyway most likely.

It's quite sad. The IPA has been around for a long time and is so useful. I don't about how phonics are taught in the UK or Australia, but in the US we had this horrible phonetic transcription that didn't even make sense when I was five or six years old! I think dictionary publishers and primary school textbook publishers are most at fault in the US. Just teach the kids basic IPA and have done. It will serve them well when they come to learn Spanish or French or Whatever later on.

[KaiTheHomoSapien]

It's at the point where if I consult a dictionary that uses some kind of non-standard phonetic spelling for pronunciation, I have no clue how to read it. I start reading it as IPA until I realize it makes no sense that way.

[Reyzadren]

I always use IPA when describing pronunciation (online) because it does help those who do recognise it, and the typical "pronounce it like this" wouldn't be accurate most of the time anyway.

Whenever I show IPA to so-called "normies" irl, they concur that it is much more helpful than "stupid phonetics", though ofc irl, I would just say the word slowly and won't actually use IPA unless I can write it down.

[Porphyrogenitos]

Does anyone know of any vowel length alternation systems that have developed recently? Or that otherwise have a well-understood origin? And would anyone happen to have links or info about such a system?

[Zekoslav]

Does anyone know of any vowel length alternation systems that have developed recently? Or that otherwise have a well-understood origin? And would anyone happen to have links or info about such a system?

Assuming I understood you correctly, any Slavic language with phonemic vowel length has a plenty of vowel length alternations. It's also relatively recent and relatively well understood - however, I've lost track of the papers dealing with this topic. I'll try to find them later.

[Shemtov]

I'm learning Bukharian, which is in the Iranian branch. The word for "brother" is /baratar/, which surprised me as I thought in Iranian PIE *Bh>/f/. Anybody know what's going on?

[zyma]

I'm learning Bukharian, which is in the Iranian branch. The word for "brother" is /baratar/, which surprised me as I thought in Iranian PIE *Bh>/f/. Anybody know what's going on?

I thought the "voiced aspirates" became plain voiced in Iranian? Do you have an example of PIE *bʰ > /f/?

[Shemtov]

I'm learning Bukharian, which is in the Iranian branch. The word for "brother" is /baratar/, which surprised me as I thought in Iranian PIE *Bh>/f/. Anybody know what's going on?

I thought the "voiced aspirates" became plain voiced in Iranian? Do you have an example of PIE *bʰ > /f/?

Didn't *dh>/θ/ and *gh>/x/ or am I mixing things up?

[zyma]

I'm learning Bukharian, which is in the Iranian branch. The word for "brother" is /baratar/, which surprised me as I thought in Iranian PIE *Bh>/f/. Anybody know what's going on?

I thought the "voiced aspirates" became plain voiced in Iranian? Do you have an example of PIE *bʰ > /f/?

Didn't *dh>/θ/ and *gh>/x/ or am I mixing things up?

I think /θ/ is the Old Persian reflex of *ḱ. I don't know about /x/ off the top of my head.

[Zekoslav]

Voiced aspirate > unvoiced fricative happened word-initially in Italic. A good list of PIE. to Iranian sound changes is here (it's in German, which I can barely understand, but it's formulation of sound changes is independant of language).

As for where Iranian voiceless fricatives come from: basically, /p/, /t/ and /k/ become fricatives whenever followed by a consonant, including a later lost /h/ (alternatively, clusters of stop + /h/ first become voiceless aspirates which then become voiceless fricatives).

[sangi39]

From what I can tell looking through Wikipedia, the aspirated voiced stops from Proto-Indo-Iranian merged into the unaspirated voiced stops in Proto-Iranian, while the aspirated voiceless plosives became voiceless fricatives, as did the unaspirated voiceless plosives when followed by another consonant.

As Shimobaatar points out, Old Persian also derived /θ/ through fronting of the palatal *ć, ultimately from PIE *ḱ (except in when followed by *w, when *ćw yields /s/).

I think Italic has *bʰ to *f word-initially, and Latino-Faliscan additionally has *dʰ to *f in the same environment.

[zyma]

As for where Iranian voiceless fricatives come from: basically, /p/, /t/ and /k/ become fricatives whenever followed by a consonant, including a later lost /h/ (alternatively, clusters of stop + /h/ first become voiceless aspirates which then become voiceless fricatives).

while the aspirated voiceless plosives became voiceless fricatives

Oh, interesting, I thought that the voiceless aspirated stops were a development specific to Indo-Aryan.

Voiced aspirate > unvoiced fricative happened word-initially in Italic.

I think Italic has *bʰ to *f word-initially, and Latino-Faliscan additionally has *dʰ to *f in the same environment.

Yeah, from what I understand, Latin has PIE *bʰ *dʰ *gʰ *gʷʰ > /f f h f/ word-initially, possibly with an intermediate stage of *ɸ *θ *x *xʷ in Proto-Italic. I believe the same thing happens both word-initially and word-medially in the Sabellic group? In Latin, though, medial *bʰ *dʰ *gʰ *gʷʰ mostly become /b d h w/, again with a possible intermediate stage of *β *ð *ɣ *ɣʷ in Proto-Italic. However, I think that *dʰ shows up as /b/ instead in some environments, *gʷʰ becomes /gʷ/ after /n/, and *gʰ *gʷʰ both result in /g/ next to other consonants. I'm not sure about Faliscan, but I'd assume it's similar to Latin.

[Zekoslav]

Oh, interesting, I thought that the voiceless aspirated stops were a development specific to Indo-Aryan.

Well, there's two possible scenarios for the Iranian development, as I alluded to in my post. Indo-Aryan voiceless aspirates correspond to Iranian voiceless fricatives, and both develop from clusters of a voiceless unaspirated stop and a laryngeal.

One possibility is that the reanalysis of stop + laryngeal clusters as voiceless aspirates happened already in Proto-Indo-Iranian, with Indo-Aryan preserving the aspirates and Iranian fricativizing them.

Another possibility is that they remained clusters in PII. Then, the Iranian development can be explained together with the general change of stop to fricative before a consonant, e.g. *kh > *xh > *x like *kr > *xr, and voiceless aspirates would indeed be a specific Indo-Aryan development.

[yangfiretiger121]

My only exposure to the, presumably Swedish, linguist Lindblad is from Wikipedia's article about Swedish's Sj-sound [ɧ], in which the sound's labiodental allophone is transcribed [fˠʷ]. I'm led to believe that it's his transcription because he's, specifically, mentioned as "not using [ɧ] for this allophone. Given that the sound is unique to Swedish, it's understandable that [fˠʷ]'s the only transcription I've seen for the sound in question. Is there a reason other than personal preference he'd include [ˠ] in the transcription, if he's the only one to distinguish it from the velar allophone, when [ʷ] labiovelarizes non-velars and [f] is a fricative?

[Nachtuil]

*

[GrandPiano]

Is there a reason other than personal preference he'd include [ˠ] in the transcription, if he's the only one to distinguish it from the velar allophone, when [ʷ] labiovelarizes non-velars and [f] is a fricative?

While [w] is labio-velar, I think [ʷ] technically only indicates that a consonant is labialized, not necessarily that it's also velarized.

[yangfiretiger121]

Is there a reason other than personal preference he'd include [ˠ] in the transcription, if he's the only one to distinguish it from the velar allophone, when [ʷ] labiovelarizes non-velars and [f] is a fricative?

While [w] is labio-velar, I think [ʷ] technically only indicates that a consonant is labialized, not necessarily that it's also velarized.

The most common labialized consonants are labialized velars. Most other labialized sounds also have simultaneous velarization, and the process may then be more precisely called labio-velarization

Ah. Given that the above quote specifies "most" and Hadza has [fʷ], I'm starting to understand why he includes [ˠ] in the transcription. However, my untrained ear can't tell if Hadza's sound is labio-velarized or, simply, labialized.