Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Travis B.]

Mind you, many of the languages that have prenasalized stops only allow open syllables.

I thought that was the case, but I'm interested to see if coda + prenasalised stop does occur anywhere

Tok Pisin should offer examples, with words like olgeta 'all' and asbin 'winged bean', but finding pronunciation in a variant with the voiced stops mostly consistently prenasalised proved difficult.

I was going to say that from what little I've read it seems like Tok Pisin voiced stops are not consistently prenasalized.

[Travis B.]

Who here has unusual associations of foreign phonemes with one's native ones? Case in point, I associate StG /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ with my /i/ and /u/ because my native /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ are lower and more central than the StG realizations of StG /ɪ/ and /ʊ/, being [ɘ] and [ɵ~ʉ̞] respectively.

[Linguoboy]

Who here has unusual associations of foreign phonemes with one's native ones?

I don't know if it's unusual (since the phonetic realisations of German phonemes actual vary quite a bit), but I've mentioned before that I often perceive German /eː/ as /iː/ because my own English /eː/ is on average quite a bit lower.

[Travis B.]

Who here has unusual associations of foreign phonemes with one's native ones?

I don't know if it's unusual (since the phonetic realisations of German phonemes actual vary quite a bit), but I've mentioned before that I often perceive German /eː/ as /iː/ because my own English /eː/ is on average quite a bit lower.

To me I sometimes do that; it depends on the particular German-speaker. For instance, I hear Till Lindemann's /eː/ as my /eɪ/ but I hear many German-speakers' /eː/ as my /i/.

[quinterbeck]

Who here has unusual associations of foreign phonemes with one's native ones? Case in point, I associate StG /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ with my /i/ and /u/ because my native /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ are lower and more central than the StG realizations of StG /ɪ/ and /ʊ/, being [ɘ] and [ɵ~ʉ̞] respectively.

When briefly learning Thai, which has length distinction, I realised that I was hearing short /e/ as [ɪ] in closed syllables. For example เผ็ด /pʰet̚/ spicy to my ear sounded very like English pit.

[Richard W]

When briefly learning Thai, which has length distinction, I realised that I was hearing short /e/ as [ɪ] in closed syllables. For example เผ็ด /pʰet̚/ spicy to my ear sounded very like English pit.

That's a bit odd, as I tend to recognise the long /eː/ by its being higher than the short /e/, matching them to the start of /eɪ/ (as in English mate) and English /e/ (as in met) respectively. On the other hand, I sometimes hear Thai short /o/ as /ʊ/ - unless my wife is sometimes slipping in a bit of Lü/Yong/Lamphun.

[Travis B.]

When briefly learning Thai, which has length distinction, I realised that I was hearing short /e/ as [ɪ] in closed syllables. For example เผ็ด /pʰet̚/ spicy to my ear sounded very like English pit.

That's a bit odd, as I tend to recognise the long /eː/ by its being higher than the short /e/, matching them to the start of /eɪ/ (as in English mate) and English /e/ (as in met) respectively. On the other hand, I sometimes hear Thai short /o/ as /ʊ/ - unless my wife is sometimes slipping in a bit of Lü/Yong/Lamphun.

Whereas I tend to hear plain short /e/ as my /æ/ rather than my /ɛ/ as plain short /e/ is closer to my /æ/, which is actual [ɛ], rather than my my /ɛ/, which is [ɜ~ɛ̠].

[Richard W]

Whereas I tend to hear plain short /e/ as my /æ/ rather than my /ɛ/ as plain short /e/ is closer to my /æ/, which is actual [ɛ], rather than my my /ɛ/, which is [ɜ~ɛ̠].

That makes some sort of sense, but how do you hear short /ɛ/ as in น้ำแข็ง /námkʰɛ̌ŋ/ 'ice'? It often sounds to me like my /æ/ (TRAP), which I think is pretty close to [a].

[Travis B.]

Whereas I tend to hear plain short /e/ as my /æ/ rather than my /ɛ/ as plain short /e/ is closer to my /æ/, which is actual [ɛ], rather than my my /ɛ/, which is [ɜ~ɛ̠].

That makes some sort of sense, but how do you hear short /ɛ/ as in น้ำแข็ง /námkʰɛ̌ŋ/ 'ice'? It often sounds to me like my /æ/ (TRAP), which I think is pretty close to [a].

I definitely tend to hear short /ɛ/ as /æ/, as [ɛ] is essentially the same as my /æ/.

[vlad]

Can anyone point me to examples of how prenasalised stops behave in consonant clusters? For example, I'm thinking of how I might realise cross-syllable clusters such as:

/am.ⁿde/
/ek.ᵐbo/
/is.ⁿda/

I don't know how plausible such sequences are, but if they occur, I'm interested to see what kind of surface forms they produce. I had a look at index diachronica, but the examples were all in V_V or #_ environments

In Amuzgo, "prenasalized stops" are derived from nasals before oral segments, and so are better thought of as post-stopped nasals. Assuming that still counts, they occur in a bunch of clusters:

hnᵈa 'river'
hnᵈʲwa 'good hunter'
hnᵗʔa 'small'
hnᵗʔwe 'need'
ʔnᵈʲo 'mouth'
nᵈja 'cloth'
nᵗhaʔ 'flower'
nᵗkʷa 'guaje (a kind of bean)'
nᵗʔɔ 'vines'
nᵗʔwa 'markets'
snᵈa 'hoe'

These examples are from the San Pedro Amuzgos dialect. The Huixtepec dialect has [n] instead of [nᵗ], and the Xochistlahuaca dialect has [l] (e.g. [nᵗhaʔ] 'flower' is [nhaʔ] in Huixtepec and [lhaʔ] in Xochistlahuaca). [nᵈ] is the same in all dialects. There's one word, "canoe", that's recorded as [snᵗhɔ] in one dictionary and [sthɔ] in another, suggesting the nasal component can be lost in clusters (or maybe it's just an error).

[quinterbeck]

When briefly learning Thai, which has length distinction, I realised that I was hearing short /e/ as [ɪ] in closed syllables. For example เผ็ด /pʰet̚/ spicy to my ear sounded very like English pit.

That's a bit odd, as I tend to recognise the long /eː/ by its being higher than the short /e/, matching them to the start of /eɪ/ (as in English mate) and English /e/ (as in met) respectively. On the other hand, I sometimes hear Thai short /o/ as /ʊ/ - unless my wife is sometimes slipping in a bit of Lü/Yong/Lamphun.

For what it's worth, I have [ɪ ɛ ɛj] for KIT DRESS FACE (BrE), so [e] doesn't map directly to a phoneme. Geoff Lindsey even suggests transcribing SSBE's KIT vowel as e (and continues to use ɪ for 'practical reasons'). I was also in Northern Thailand, so there may be an effect from dialectal differences.

[Nortaneous]

Who here has unusual associations of foreign phonemes with one's native ones?

I don't know if it's unusual (since the phonetic realisations of German phonemes actual vary quite a bit), but I've mentioned before that I often perceive German /eː/ as /iː/ because my own English /eː/ is on average quite a bit lower.

same

Who here has unusual associations of foreign phonemes with one's native ones? Case in point, I associate StG /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ with my /i/ and /u/ because my native /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ are lower and more central than the StG realizations of StG /ɪ/ and /ʊ/, being [ɘ] and [ɵ~ʉ̞] respectively.

didn't Dutch at one point borrow German /ɪ ʊ/ as /i u/ rather than /ɪ ʊ/?

[Richard W]

For what it's worth, I have [ɪ ɛ ɛj] for KIT DRESS FACE (BrE), so [e] doesn't map directly to a phoneme. Geoff Lindsey even suggests transcribing SSBE's KIT vowel as e (and continues to use ɪ for 'practical reasons'). I was also in Northern Thailand, so there may be an effect from dialectal differences.

Messy! I've heard another clip of Daniel Jones's [e] as [ɪ], though it's definitely close to my understanding of [e] in the excerpt in the blog! I think my hearing has very sharp vowel boundaries where they matter for English.

[KathTheDragon]

Geoff Lindsey even suggests transcribing SSBE's KIT vowel as e

This actually describes my speech very well.

[Hallow XIII]

(American?) English speakers hearing German long mid vowels as high is something I encounter basically all the time, so I figure it's just because the spectral values overlap significantly enough. I'm unsure if British English speakers are less likely to have this; your normal Estuary-ish speakers also don't have mid vowels, but anecdotally get this right more often than Americans.

[Ares Land]

(American?) English speakers hearing German long mid vowels as high is something I encounter basically all the time, so I figure it's just because the spectral values overlap significantly enough. I'm unsure if British English speakers are less likely to have this; your normal Estuary-ish speakers also don't have mid vowels, but anecdotally get this right more often than Americans.

FWIW I'm a French speaker and sometimes I hear them as high. Not consistently so, though. Maybe it depends on dialect.
Or maybe I'm not used to hearing close-mid vowels in closed syllables?

[vlad]

I usually perceive German /eː/ as my /eː/ (as in fair), but occasionally as /ɪː/ (as in fear). I never hear it as /iː/.

[Kuchigakatai]

I'm a Spanish speaker and of course thanks to my native /i e/ front-vowel system I consistently hear German /e:/ as "[i:]", so the same as /i:/. It's very annoying.

[Linguoboy]

So this was cute: https://xkcd.com/2381/. A couple friends shared it with me and I made a joke about Munroe having deliberately munged the expected English reflex of *h₂ŕ̥tḱos in order to keep us all from being mauled. I personally would have expected an Old English *urh yielding Modern English *urrow, but I don't have any good models for a *r̥tḱ cluster so I'm basically just guessing.

[Zju]

Would be fitting if *urrows lived in burrows. Isn't arth just the Welsh word, though? On a tangent, what do folks here about the hypothesis that Arthur comes from arth-ursus? Heard it on a documentary a good time ago.