Linguistic Miscellany Thread

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Linguoboy
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread

Post by Linguoboy »

Travis B. wrote: Thu Jun 01, 2023 12:28 pmDon't forget English agh /ɑːx/ and ugh /ʌx/, which are words with very similar meanings and are practically sole survivors of /x/ outside of Scottish English, Hiberno-English, and recent loanwords, and are almost certainly onomatopoeic in nature.
For me ugh is an interjection with the spelling pronunciation /ʌg/ distinct from the onomatopoeic expression of disgust I mentioned earlier.
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread

Post by Travis B. »

Linguoboy wrote: Thu Jun 01, 2023 2:26 pm
Travis B. wrote: Thu Jun 01, 2023 12:28 pmDon't forget English agh /ɑːx/ and ugh /ʌx/, which are words with very similar meanings and are practically sole survivors of /x/ outside of Scottish English, Hiberno-English, and recent loanwords, and are almost certainly onomatopoeic in nature.
For me ugh is an interjection with the spelling pronunciation /ʌg/ distinct from the onomatopoeic expression of disgust I mentioned earlier.
I have both /ʌx/ and /ʌg/ myself, and the two are not synonymous. The former is more an instinctive interjection I would make upon tasting something disgusting, while the latter is what I would generally respond to someone else with in sympathetically expressing displeasure with something they recounted.
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Ennadinut'a gaare d'ate eetatadi siiman.
T'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa.
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread

Post by MacAnDàil »

Oops sorry I did not check the up-to-dateness of the source among other details. Thank you for correcting me.
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread

Post by Linguoboy »

Travis B. wrote: Thu Jun 01, 2023 5:51 pmI have both /ʌx/ and /ʌg/ myself, and the two are not synonymous. The former is more an instinctive interjection I would make upon tasting something disgusting, while the latter is what I would generally respond to someone else with in sympathetically expressing displeasure with something they recounted.
Same here. Additionally, the pronunciation of the vowel in /ʌx/ shows considerable range, with [ɪ], [ɛ], [ɐ], etc. all being acceptable variants. (Yes, I have been sitting here for a minute or so making different sounds of disgust and judging their acceptability to my ear.)
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread

Post by Travis B. »

Linguoboy wrote: Fri Jun 02, 2023 10:47 am
Travis B. wrote: Thu Jun 01, 2023 5:51 pmI have both /ʌx/ and /ʌg/ myself, and the two are not synonymous. The former is more an instinctive interjection I would make upon tasting something disgusting, while the latter is what I would generally respond to someone else with in sympathetically expressing displeasure with something they recounted.
Same here. Additionally, the pronunciation of the vowel in /ʌx/ shows considerable range, with [ɪ], [ɛ], [ɐ], etc. all being acceptable variants. (Yes, I have been sitting here for a minute or so making different sounds of disgust and judging their acceptability to my ear.)
I'm actually the same way - for instance, I also will readily pronounce it with [ɘ], and all those other sounds you mention sound cromulent to me as well.
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread

Post by dɮ the phoneme »

There is a distinctive (in the ordinary sense, not phonologically distinctive) phonetic quality to the vowels of a lot of South Asian languages, both Indo-Aryan and Dravidian, but I can't seem to figure out what it actually is. To stoop to the level of pure subjective description, the vowels feel particularly "springy" or "rubbery" to me. This is especially pronounced with the vowel usually romanized as <a> and transcribed as [ɐ], which has a similar quality across many languages of the region but sounds distinct to me from any [ɐ] I've heard in other context. This video demonstrates the pronunciations I'm talking about pretty well.
Ye knowe eek that, in forme of speche is chaunge
With-inne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho
That hadden pris, now wonder nyce and straunge
Us thinketh hem; and yet they spake hem so,
And spedde as wel in love as men now do.

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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread

Post by bradrn »

dɮ the phoneme wrote: Sat Jun 03, 2023 11:57 pm There is a distinctive (in the ordinary sense, not phonologically distinctive) phonetic quality to the vowels of a lot of South Asian languages, both Indo-Aryan and Dravidian, but I can't seem to figure out what it actually is. To stoop to the level of pure subjective description, the vowels feel particularly "springy" or "rubbery" to me. This is especially pronounced with the vowel usually romanized as <a> and transcribed as [ɐ], which has a similar quality across many languages of the region but sounds distinct to me from any [ɐ] I've heard in other context. This video demonstrates the pronunciations I'm talking about pretty well.
Listening to this, the short ⟨a⟩ sounds like [ə] or perhaps [ɜ] to me, whereas the long ⟨ā⟩ sounds like [ɐː].
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread

Post by zompist »

Curiously her /a/ sounds almost back to me, like [ʊ]. It doesn't sound as lax as English [ə], but that may be because she's emphasizing it.
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread

Post by bradrn »

zompist wrote: Sun Jun 04, 2023 1:06 am Curiously her /a/ sounds almost back to me, like [ʊ]. It doesn't sound as lax as English [ə], but that may be because she's emphasizing it.
I’m not sure about ‘back’, but listening again it could well be a bit higher than I thought, something like [ɘ].
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread

Post by Creyeditor »

Shakuntala Mahanta reports in her Dissertation that none other than Peter Ladefoged mistook Assamese high back rounded RTR [ʊ] for low back rounded [ɒ]. She provides phonetic and phonological evidence that this is indeed a high vowel. So maybe height in non-front vowels is very difficult to hear in Indic languages?
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread

Post by Kuchigakatai »

Talking about things difficult to hear, I find it amusing how I (as a Spanish speaker) find it very hard to hear the distinction between /p b/ /t d/ /k g/ in Indonesian intervocalically. I just hear [ b d g], e.g. Jakarta sounds like [dʒagarta] to me. Shouldn't I at least be biased towards hearing [p t k], due to speaking a language with voiceless /p t k/ with a very low Voice Onset Time? But nope, it's not what I expected. I don't know how Indonesians distinguish them (at least those from Jakarta, I heard this from videos of a YouTuber interviewing random people + careful recordings on a website for learners) but there seems to be something weird going on. Probably [±ARGH], as Nortaneus used to say.
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread

Post by Creyeditor »

Are they speaking Jakarta Indonesian (lu, gue/gua) or Java Indonesian (aka medok, (a)ku, (ka)mu)? Because Java Indonesian sometimes inherits weird voicing stuff (stiff vs. slack) from Javanese plus a tendency for some pairs if stops to differ in minor place of articulation. I think medok /d/ is further back than medok /t/ for example, IIRC.
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread

Post by Travis B. »

Kuchigakatai wrote: Sun Jun 04, 2023 12:37 pm Talking about things difficult to hear, I find it amusing how I (as a Spanish speaker) find it very hard to hear the distinction between /p b/ /t d/ /k g/ in Indonesian intervocalically. I just hear [ b d g], e.g. Jakarta sounds like [dʒagarta] to me. Shouldn't I at least be biased towards hearing [p t k], due to speaking a language with voiceless /p t k/ with a very low Voice Onset Time? But nope, it's not what I expected. I don't know how Indonesians distinguish them (at least those from Jakarta, I heard this from videos of a YouTuber interviewing random people + careful recordings on a website for learners) but there seems to be something weird going on. Probably [±ARGH], as Nortaneus used to say.
In Spanish, though, don't you natively have [β ð ɣ] intervocalically for /b d g/, meaning you don't actually have a native intervocalic contrast between [p t k] and [b d g]? (And knowing NAE doesn't help either as in NAE the perceived voicing of intervocalic stops is heavily informed by preceding vowel length.)

(About Spanish, though, at second thought, wouldn't that lead you to perceive it as /p t k/ rather than the other way around?)
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread

Post by WeepingElf »

Travis B. wrote: Sun Jun 04, 2023 3:56 pm In Spanish, though, don't you natively have [β ð ɣ] intervocalically for /b d g/, meaning you don't actually have a native intervocalic contrast between [p t k] and [b d g]? (And knowing NAE doesn't help either as in NAE the perceived voicing of intervocalic stops is heavily informed by preceding vowel length.)
It is also a well-known fact that many speakers of Romance languages do not perceive Germanic /b d g/ as fully voiced. Apparently, voicing is much more prominent in Romance than in Germanic; also, Germanic voiceless stops are aspirated in some positions while Romance ones are not.
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread

Post by Nortaneous »

WeepingElf wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 6:18 am
Travis B. wrote: Sun Jun 04, 2023 3:56 pm In Spanish, though, don't you natively have [β ð ɣ] intervocalically for /b d g/, meaning you don't actually have a native intervocalic contrast between [p t k] and [b d g]? (And knowing NAE doesn't help either as in NAE the perceived voicing of intervocalic stops is heavily informed by preceding vowel length.)
It is also a well-known fact that many speakers of Romance languages do not perceive Germanic /b d g/ as fully voiced. Apparently, voicing is much more prominent in Romance than in Germanic; also, Germanic voiceless stops are aspirated in some positions while Romance ones are not.
Germanic except Afrikaans, right? For example, here, "kind" sounds to me like "gunt".
Duaj teibohnggoe kyoe' quaqtoeq lucj lhaj k'yoejdej noeyn tucj.
K'yoejdaq fohm q'ujdoe duaj teibohnggoen dlehq lucj.
Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq.
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread

Post by Travis B. »

Nortaneous wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 8:48 am
WeepingElf wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 6:18 am
Travis B. wrote: Sun Jun 04, 2023 3:56 pm In Spanish, though, don't you natively have [β ð ɣ] intervocalically for /b d g/, meaning you don't actually have a native intervocalic contrast between [p t k] and [b d g]? (And knowing NAE doesn't help either as in NAE the perceived voicing of intervocalic stops is heavily informed by preceding vowel length.)
It is also a well-known fact that many speakers of Romance languages do not perceive Germanic /b d g/ as fully voiced. Apparently, voicing is much more prominent in Romance than in Germanic; also, Germanic voiceless stops are aspirated in some positions while Romance ones are not.
Germanic except Afrikaans, right? For example, here, "kind" sounds to me like "gunt".
To my knowledge, Dutch, Afrikaans, some Upper German varieties, and Finland-Swedish lack aspiration of fortis stops in general.
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread

Post by bradrn »

Nortaneous wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 8:48 am
WeepingElf wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 6:18 am
Travis B. wrote: Sun Jun 04, 2023 3:56 pm In Spanish, though, don't you natively have [β ð ɣ] intervocalically for /b d g/, meaning you don't actually have a native intervocalic contrast between [p t k] and [b d g]? (And knowing NAE doesn't help either as in NAE the perceived voicing of intervocalic stops is heavily informed by preceding vowel length.)
It is also a well-known fact that many speakers of Romance languages do not perceive Germanic /b d g/ as fully voiced. Apparently, voicing is much more prominent in Romance than in Germanic; also, Germanic voiceless stops are aspirated in some positions while Romance ones are not.
Germanic except Afrikaans, right? For example, here, "kind" sounds to me like "gunt".
Are you referring to the word at 1:08? It sounds like [kɨnt] to me, so unaspirated and with final devoicing — but hard to tell since they’re all singing together. (And singing in and of itself might change things.) Also, there’s another occurrence at 1:25 which sounds like it might be aspirated [kʰɨnt].
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread

Post by WeepingElf »

Nortaneous wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 8:48 am
WeepingElf wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 6:18 am
Travis B. wrote: Sun Jun 04, 2023 3:56 pm In Spanish, though, don't you natively have [β ð ɣ] intervocalically for /b d g/, meaning you don't actually have a native intervocalic contrast between [p t k] and [b d g]? (And knowing NAE doesn't help either as in NAE the perceived voicing of intervocalic stops is heavily informed by preceding vowel length.)
It is also a well-known fact that many speakers of Romance languages do not perceive Germanic /b d g/ as fully voiced. Apparently, voicing is much more prominent in Romance than in Germanic; also, Germanic voiceless stops are aspirated in some positions while Romance ones are not.
Germanic except Afrikaans, right? For example, here, "kind" sounds to me like "gunt".
Well, I should have written "cliché" instead of "well-known fact" ;)
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread

Post by Travis B. »

Nortaneous wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 8:48 am
bradrn wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 9:02 am Germanic except Afrikaans, right? For example, here, "kind" sounds to me like "gunt".
Are you referring to the word at 1:08? It sounds like [kɨnt] to me, so unaspirated and with final devoicing — but hard to tell since they’re all singing together. (And singing in and of itself might change things.) Also, there’s another occurrence at 1:25 which sounds like it might be aspirated [kʰɨnt].
I hear it as both [k] and [kʰ] in different places, but I don't perceive it as /g/, even though I normally perceive unaspirated initial stops as lenis (for instance, in a recording of "pasta" in Italian I heard somewhere, I don't remember where exactly, I heard it as starting with a clear /b/). As for the vowel, I perceive as akin to my native English /ɪ/, which is [ɘ]. As for the final stop, I don't perceive it as specifically /t/ or /d/, which is probably due to final unglottalized voiceless stops when not preceded by a clearly short or long vowel (which may be separated from it by a sonorant) being unspecified for lenisness versus fortisness for me.
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Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread

Post by Nortaneous »

Travis B. wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 5:18 pm
Nortaneous wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 8:48 am
bradrn wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2023 9:02 am Germanic except Afrikaans, right? For example, here, "kind" sounds to me like "gunt".
Are you referring to the word at 1:08? It sounds like [kɨnt] to me, so unaspirated and with final devoicing — but hard to tell since they’re all singing together. (And singing in and of itself might change things.) Also, there’s another occurrence at 1:25 which sounds like it might be aspirated [kʰɨnt].
I hear it as both [k] and [kʰ] in different places, but I don't perceive it as /g/, even though I normally perceive unaspirated initial stops as lenis (for instance, in a recording of "pasta" in Italian I heard somewhere, I don't remember where exactly, I heard it as starting with a clear /b/). As for the vowel, I perceive as akin to my native English /ɪ/, which is [ɘ]. As for the final stop, I don't perceive it as specifically /t/ or /d/, which is probably due to final unglottalized voiceless stops when not preceded by a clearly short or long vowel (which may be separated from it by a sonorant) being unspecified for lenisness versus fortisness for me.
Listening again, I hear it as intermediate between my /g/ and /k/ (voiceless unaspirated?), but I feel like landing a joke about homophony with "cunt" would be a stretch. Not a prohibitive stretch, but it feels closer to /g/. The vowel maps to my /ʌ/, though - it hadn't occurred to me at all to map it to /ɪ/. I can see it now that you've mentioned it, but it didn't occur to me until then.

I queued it in a music groupchat and karch was like "oh i see you've once again queued land my cunt" but he probably saw this thread?
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K'yoejdaq fohm q'ujdoe duaj teibohnggoen dlehq lucj.
Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq. Teijp'vq.
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