Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2022 9:18 pm
Affricates are stops.Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Fri Sep 23, 2022 5:08 pm Should those be "fricative, affricate, affricate", then?
Affricates are stops.Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Fri Sep 23, 2022 5:08 pm Should those be "fricative, affricate, affricate", then?
Affricates are plosives, as are stops, but affricates and stops are not one and the same.Richard W wrote: ↑Fri Sep 23, 2022 9:18 pmAffricates are stops.Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Fri Sep 23, 2022 5:08 pm Should those be "fricative, affricate, affricate", then?
I’d say it’s the other way around: affricates and plosives are both stops, with affricates and plosives being different things.Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Sep 23, 2022 9:21 pmAffricates are plosives, as are stops, but affricates and stops are not one and the same.Richard W wrote: ↑Fri Sep 23, 2022 9:18 pmAffricates are stops.Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Fri Sep 23, 2022 5:08 pm Should those be "fricative, affricate, affricate", then?
I checked the Wiki and it's very confusing. It seems to indicate that affricates are not plosives, and may or may not be stops depending on whom you ask, but if one really wants a term to cover plosives and affricates, there is the term occlusive, which is unfortunate because that term also includes nasals...
The Wiki is generally confusing. I’d say that affricates and plosives are both stops (as are ejectives and implosives), and stops and nasals are both occlusives — but it really does depend on who you ask. Ladefoged and Maddieson (in The Sounds of the World’s Languages, 1996) seem to agree with me, but it’s not so uncommon to see ‘stops’ and ‘affricates’ distinguished in reference grammars.Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Sep 23, 2022 9:49 pmI checked the Wiki and it's very confusing. It seems to indicate that affricates are not plosives, and may or may not be stops depending on whom you ask, but if one really wants a term to cover plosives and affricates, there is the term occlusive, which is unfortunate because that term also includes nasals...
I always understood coarticulations as phones with multiple simultaneous articulations at different POA, such as the [kp] and [gb] found in many Niger-Congo languages.Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Fri Sep 23, 2022 10:23 pm I had always thought affricates were coarticulations (is that the right word?) involving a stop followed by a fricative.
This is my understanding too. An affricate is not coarticulated; neither is it a plosive followed by a fricative. An affricate is a plosive with a fricated release.Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Sep 23, 2022 10:32 pmI always understood coarticulations as phones with multiple simultaneous articulations at different POA, such as the [kp] and [gb] found in many Niger-Congo languages.Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Fri Sep 23, 2022 10:23 pm I had always thought affricates were coarticulations (is that the right word?) involving a stop followed by a fricative.
I think "stop with fricative release" is closest to my understanding. But there are some grey areas, like the Standard German [pf], where the closure is apparently normally bilabial but the fricative is labiodental. (Ladefoged and Maddieson describe what happens in some detail.)bradrn wrote: ↑Fri Sep 23, 2022 10:50 pmThis is my understanding too. An affricate is not coarticulated; neither is it a plosive followed by a fricative. An affricate is a plosive with a fricated release.Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Sep 23, 2022 10:32 pmI always understood coarticulations as phones with multiple simultaneous articulations at different POA, such as the [kp] and [gb] found in many Niger-Congo languages.Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Fri Sep 23, 2022 10:23 pm I had always thought affricates were coarticulations (is that the right word?) involving a stop followed by a fricative.
I think the term coarticulation is used in multiple, but related, ways. It can refer to the doubly articulated consonants you mentioned, or to secondary articulation (labialization, palatalization etc.), or as a cover term for both.
Maybe the term you were thinking of was countour segments (or just contours). This includes things like diphthongs and prenasalized plosives, i.e. single phonemic segments that include some type of transition.Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Fri Sep 23, 2022 10:23 pm I had always thought affricates were coarticulations (is that the right word?) involving a stop followed by a fricative.
Voicing of initial /k/ to /g/ is fairly common in Iberian Romance (or in some cases Western Romance more generally): compare golpe and graso. I don’t know why /k/ in particular and not /p/ and /t/ was affected by this sporadic process.
Sporadic /k/ > /g/ in initial position just seems to be an area feature. See also (all examples from Catalan):
The reason is that velar contact is further back in the mouth. The pressure difference due to voicing is less, and I think It's also easier for timing errors to change the perceived voicing. It's apparently also quite common in Oceanic. Unstable voicing also noticeably shows up in English surnames, such as Tyson and Dyson.
It's hard to tell from a recording, but attempting to mimic the second one does feel like I'm doing something in the pharyngeal area.Travis B. wrote: ↑Mon Oct 03, 2022 9:05 pm Here is a recording of two pronunciations of final /r/, both in the word four, in my idiolect. The first one to me is an ordinary clear uvular approximant with a bit of pharyngealization. A "bunched /r/" as they call it. However, I'm not sure what the second is. Unlike the first, it is almost entirely realized back in the throat, without uvular realization or any involvement of the tongue (even in the form of pharyngealization). It seems to be a trill of some sort, but what kind of trill would be pronounced without the tongue? A voiced epiglottal trill? This is not me being a snowflake, either, because I've heard my mother pronounce final /r/ the very same way on multiple occasions, and it is very hard to mistake this particular realization of /r/.
Not quite sure, but it sounds like it could well just be plain [ʕ̞]. It doesn’t sound like any kind of trill to me (especially since a trill involves very considerable movement of the active articulator, which is hard to mistake even when epiglottal).Travis B. wrote: ↑Mon Oct 03, 2022 9:05 pm Here is a recording of two pronunciations of final /r/, both in the word four, in my idiolect. The first one to me is an ordinary clear uvular approximant with a bit of pharyngealization. A "bunched /r/" as they call it. However, I'm not sure what the second is. Unlike the first, it is almost entirely realized back in the throat, without uvular realization or any involvement of the tongue (even in the form of pharyngealization). It seems to be a trill of some sort, but what kind of trill would be pronounced without the tongue? A voiced epiglottal trill? This is not me being a snowflake, either, because I've heard my mother pronounce final /r/ the very same way on multiple occasions, and it is very hard to mistake this particular realization of /r/.