Allophones Puns

How would you transcribe the word back in a scouse dialect, /baɣ/ or /baxk/ or something?

Usually pairs of sounds are said to be in contrastive distribution when swapping them can (or does) create a new word.

But what I want to talk about is something I've never read about, only noticed for myself, but I'm sure the phenomena has a formal name, so if anyone knows that name, please inform! For now, I'm calling them phrasal phonemes.

The aspirated and tenuis plosives are said to be in complimentary distribution in English. I'll use /k/ to briefly summarize the distribution.

/k/ is aspirated [kʰ] when:

1. It's the onset of a stressed syllable, whether that's before a vowel (ie: "kick"; [kʰɪk]) or a liquid (ie: "clan"; [kʰlæn]) [exception: rule #3).

2. It's the first sound of a word before an unstressed vowel (ie: "constrain"; [kʰən 'streɪn])

/k/ is tenuis [k] when:

3. It's in an /sk/ onset cluster (ie: "skill"; [skɪl])

4. It's the onset in an unstressed syllable (ie: "token"; ['tʰoʊ.kən]) [exception: rule #2]

5. It is the final sound of a word and the next word starts with a vowel (ie: "pick any"; ['pɪk 'ɛ.ni])

As a side note, this is at least the distribution for my speech. Perhaps the distribution isn't the same for you.

Why do allophones exist? It seems like some allophones just exist for articulatory convenience. Palatalization happens because it's more convenient to use a palatal or post-alveolar consonant before a front vowel because the tongue is in the same area.

Some allophones seem to exist to expand the articulatory cues between similar sounds, such as vowel lengthening in English when there is a voiced coda. This can help distinguish "wheat" and "weed", especially when the final plosives are unreleased, and "bus" and "buzz", especially when the final /z/ is partially or fully devoiced in pausa.

But what I'm here to inquire, discuss about is that some seeming allophones seem to have the function of distinguishing minimal pairs on the phrasal level (hence "phrasal phonemes"). Here are some examples that distinguish between three levels of voice onset time in English if our analysis takes pace on the phrasal level instead of the word level.

Example #1: "pecan" [ˈpʰiˌkʰɑn], "peak on" [ˈpʰiˌkɑn], "pee gone" [ˈpʰiˌgɑn]

"Don't peak on the man making his pee gone as he eats a pecan"... a pretty silly sentence, but hey it works!

This isn't not a suitable example for many speakers, such as those that cannot copula drop ("pee gone") and in g

Which allophones of a phoneme are the most different from one another in any language?

For example, if vowel length hadn't become phonemic in English, /ʌ/ and /aʊ/ would be allophones of the same phoneme since they came from /u/ and /uː/.

How different can they get before becoming separate phonemes?

Edit: within a single accent, not between varieties of an accent, not throughout different accents of the language

Bonjour à tous,

En tant que parent allophone, j'aimerais savoir comment vous, ou quelqu'un qui vous connaissez, élevez vos enfants pour qu'ils soient capable de bien parler anglais, français et votre langue maternelle.

Notre enfant va à l'école en français et nous sommes content avec cela, mais nous sommes un peu craintif par rapport son possible niveau d'anglais. Ma femme et moi sommes polyglottes, par contre nous avons appris l'anglais, français et espagnol après l'âge adulte.

Pensez-vous que c'est difficilement d'élever un enfant en trois langues? Quelle est votre expérience? Avez-vous de recommandation? Nous habitons à Aylmer.

Merci d'avance.

So I'm in an Intro to Linguistics class, and we're wrapping up our discussion of Phonology. Everything is online over Zoom, so it makes communication a bit difficult.

My professor is insisting that two phones in complementary distribution are necessarily allophones of the same phoneme. But we know from English this is not the case, as shown in the example (which I found on wikipedia) of [ŋ] vs [h]. These two sounds cannot occur in the same environment in English, but they are not at all similar (at least in my understanding of English as a native speaker). When I brought this up to the professor, they sorted of skirted around it and said something about near-minimal pairs (?), that maybe they could in fact be considered allophones, and that not all of these terms are understood the same way by all linguists.

But to me it just seems absurd that two sounds must be thought of as allophones of the same phoneme just because they never occur in the same environment. I don't want to push the question further, because I don't want to be an asshole, and I want to defer to my professor's experience.

So I'm asking you guys what you think because I don't know any real-life linguists for second opinions. Maybe some of you hold my position or can provide some examples or patterns from other languages that can help justify my professor's position?

Harining is a language created relatively recently, but vocabulary and grammar began to develop without considering phonology well, as a result was a phonetic inventory of approximately 60 phonems.

So, before doing the vocabulary and simplifying to the new phonology, I wanted to see if this is more acceptable. I eliminated most voiced sounds, leaving only the letters "b", "j", "g" and "d" as voiced. There are also some allophones for certain speakers in certain circumstances, however, here I will show first the neutral accent and later, the different phonemes that depending on their native language, they could pronounce; of course, the neutral accent would work like the one used in really formal situations, such as Mandarin Chinese; They work in a similar way to Esperanto dialects.

• Place and Manner

• Alphabet

• Despite the fact that /ts/ and /tʃ/ I consider them “locked” consonants, that is, more than one phoneme they are two phonemes produced at the same time, I decided to put them as part of the alphabet only to use all letter of Latin Alphabet.
• /r/ is used on top of /ɾ.ɾ/ as most speakers would find it easier to pronounce a multiple vibe rather than two singles, however these can also be pronounced seperately.

Now, we are going to check the allophones or variants that can be pronounced depending on the speaker.

For a while now I've been wondering which phones are used for Spanish ⟨y⟩ & ⟨ll⟩ and where exactly they're used. I want to be very specific and stating what is used in all of the Spanish speaking world, like by state/region depending on the country.

So I looked up a bunch of stuff on it and came to a conclusion, which I represent in this (not very good) map: https://imgur.com/ZLlhbKU (please pretend the slashes are square brackets lol I don't know why I used narrow transcription) Also yes Texas is included in the green area at the northern half of Mexico. Stuff in parentheses with a question mark after the phone mean that I was very unsure about whether it was used there or not

My questions are:

• ⁠What of that is right and wrong? • ⁠Where is each phoneme used (something I can put on a map with the clearest marking possible, like even specific states/boundaries in Mexico)? • ⁠Is there a map of this exact thing but... better?
• ⁠What are the situations that certain allophones are used?

I know that the allophones many times are affected by just personal style of speech; [ɟʝ] tends to occur word-initially and after sonorants, and [j] and [ʝ] are equally common between vowels, just being a matter of who you're talking to.

If there's not a map of this, I want to make one so people who wonder the same stuff as me can find the answer easily.

Edit: Maybe maps in this Wikipedia article can help? That would mostly be dependent on each dialect for the most part using specific phones for y/ll throughout the whole dialect, which I'm not so sure about.

Additionally, this same question except for /x/. What parts of the hispanosphere(?) use [x~ç], [h], [χ], etc. for the letter j. From what I've read, in Mexico all three are used, with an [h] stronger than english h being the most common in Mexico.

Paper using Mexico City Spanish: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-international-phonetic-association/article/mexico-city-spanish/C35C97AE9A19C9C222FD614D2D4125AA

I originally posted this in the weekly thread, however I feel like this is a question that would better fit as a whole post, being large-ish and complex-ish and probably needing a lot of peoples' inputs

Bonjour cher Québécois,

Je suis un franco-ontarien qui a déménagé à Gatineau il y a un an. J'ai toujours ressenti un attrait fort pour le Québec, et je suis si heureux d'avoir franchi la frontière provinciale. Je travaille à améliorer mon français après une longue période de déclin depuis que j'ai quitté l'école française au fin de la 8e année. Malheureusement, en grandissant, malgré le fait que nous soyons franco-ontariens, nous parlions anglais à la maison. C'est assez courant chez les franco-ontariens, c'est dommage. :(

Je suis passé à l'école secondaire anglaise, aux encouragements de mon père. J'ai occupé de nombreux emplois pendant une dizaine d'années après le secondaire, et c'est grâce à mes contacts téléphoniques réguliers avec les Québécois que j'ai pu tenir aussi longtemps. J'ai décidé de faire un effort concerté pour reprendre le français il y a environ 3-4 ans.

En tout cas, ma femme a fait un effort pour apprendre et s'améliorer le français. Elle est bien meilleure que la plupart des anglophones que j'ai connus en Ontario. Elle a commencé à apprendre le français il y a au moins 5 ans, mais depuis que nous sommes au Québec, nous l'avons accéléré afin de l'aider à mieux s'intégrer. Elle est brésilienne, donc son français est accentué différemment, mais elle est arrivée à un point où je peux parler en français avec elle et où elle peut suivre et répondre. Je suis très fier d'elle!

Quand elle me parle, elle ne semble pas avoir beaucoup de mal à me comprendre, mais elle a beaucoup de mal à comprendre les Québécois qui ont grandi icitte.. Ce qu'elle trouve difficile, ce sont les calques, le joual, la vitesse à laquelle on parle, ainsi que les anglicismes qui fonctionnent et ceux qui ne fonctionnent pas.

On regarde la télévision québécoise, on écoute de la musique québécoise, on sort autant et on interagit avec les gens. C'est dur avec covid-19 et les règles en place, mais on se débrouille. Nous avons une règle : les interactions avec les gens à l'extérieur de la maison sont exclusivement en français. Je pense qu'elle a des difficultés avec le dialecte, pas avec la langue française elle-même car elle trouve les Français de France plus faciles à comprendre.

Que me conseillez-vous de faire pour l'aider à surmonter? S'agit-il simplement de continuer à faire avancer ce que je fais maintenant ? Malheureusement, je ne suis pas le meilleur professeur, mais j'essaie.

**TL;DR: Ma femme brésilienne a des difficultés avec les calques québécois, le joua

https://imgur.com/a/DSrLNXv

In this case, I realized that high wovels [i] and [u] become voiceless when they are between voiceles consonants.

But, how do I know if they are allophones? My opinion is that the meaning changes so they are not allophones. What do you think?

I have been taking some linguistics courses, and [ɫ], [l], [l̥], [ɫ̪], and [l̪] have all been mentioned. I am wondering what allophones there are apart from these, and where they are found.

I've seen this video by jan Misali where he reviews Futurese and it gives the two of us ideas to create speculated future forms of English that are 30th-century descendants of our dialects, and it leaves me to wonder which sounds besides [ɾ] and [ç] might become official phonemes in less than 300 years, and what will happen in later stages.

Asking about alveolar /t/, /d/, /n/ and /l/. Do palatal or prepalatal realisations occur in any dialect of English?

I can't think of any words where it makes a phonemic difference, but, for example if I said "parce que" with a voiced 'R' in "parce", does that sound ok to a French speaker? Also, I notice from listening to some speakers that produce "-ait" as /e/ and some speakers produce it as /ɛ/, for example in the word "fait". In some cases it almost sounds like a diphthong to me, almost like /ɛe/.

I've been practising my French Rs and according to my French mother I'm getting them right, but she's not a linguist and has lived out of France for over thirty years so her knowledge of French is sort of stuck in the early '90s. Also she's Parisienne and that's also the variety of French we got taught in school here and what I heard around the house. Only shame is she didn't speak French to me due to being so proud of being able to speak English and her being an Anglophile!

For example, in the mutli-cultural English around London, due to th-fronting the sound represented by /ð/ becomes /d/, and the sound represented by /θ/ becomes /f/. E.g., "three" becomes "free", "there" becomes "der".

I'd be interested to learn about any allophones like this or similar phenomena occurring in more modern French.

Another example, in school we were taught that words like "un" should have the nasal vowel /œ̃/, but my mother has always pronounced them with the /ɛ̃/ vowel. Is this just a dialectical thing or is it language-wide shift?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_phonology#Velarization says that /l/ and /r/ had velarized allophones. It then says that they were phonemic, which is confusing. Only one source is cited, Fisiak 1967, a two page article. Then it says Early Modern English evidence doesn't even agree with the velarization.

A quick flip through the bibliographies of Hogg's Phonology, Ringe v2, and Fulk 2018 shows that while Hogg & Ringe reference Fisiak, they don't reference that paper and Fulk has no reference to him. I'd say it's a fringe theory then, due to its lack of being referenced. I've never heard this before though, so my questions are:

• Have any of you ever read about this in any source anywhere?
• If you do know about it, can you:
  • tell more about it?
  • say whether it's actually a fringe theory or not?
  • speak to its phonetic and/or phonological plausibility?
• Is this just a case of a not-so-well written wikipedia section?

Interesting side note: here's another reddit post which builds upon the idea of Old English velarized /l/ and /r/.

I’ve noticed an oddly specific phonetic phenomenon in some General American speakers (as ya do) and was wondering if anyone can just shed some light on it or let me know if it’s known of or just random happenstance in a few speakers that I’m reading too much into.

Near as I can tell, /k/ is followed by a uvular fricative or trill /kχ/ /kʀ̥/ syllable-initially, or is replaced altogether /χ/ /ʀ̥/ syllable-finally, in the vicinity of L, in accents that have pervasively velarised “dark” L [ɫ]—examples: “closure” [k͡χɫoʊʒɚ], “like” [ɫɜɪχ], “technically” [ˈtʰɛk̚.nɪχ.ˌɫi]. (Not sure if I’ve got the rest of the transcription right, but it’s less relevant.)

This seems like a surprising change to me unless it went through some other shift like [kʰ] → [k͡x] first, but again, not sure about that.

These have all been in California (SFBA), but from speakers originally from both coasts (CA, NV, FL that I can recall) so I figured it might be somewhat prevalent.

I'm doing a project for my intro to linguistics class and one of the things I need to find is a list of the phonemes and allophones and the contexts within which the allophones often appear. I've been searching for the past couple of days and honestly am hoping I didn't miss something on google, but this seems like a place where I can hopefully find people who can help me with this. Please and thank you in advance!

Sorry if this is flared wrong, or this is not the subreddit to ask this. Myself, and a few people I know, cannot pronounce /r/ at all. Any time we try, it just becomes /ʀ/. So I was wondering, in languages which do not have both of these sounds, if both sounds are allophones of the same sound. If it is not a general case, is this true for Georgian, Spanish, and Icelandic?

Thank you in advance!

I speak Turkish and I realized that after front vowels, Turkish’s velar stops become palatal stops, and I thought this was interesting, so should I do this with my conlang or is it not a good idea?

Sounds like it’d be interesting to see his in comparison to the average GA idiolect. Maybe Bernie Sanders too.

Current state:

No phonemes have explictly allowed allophones

Proposal 1

Proposed state:

The phomeme /c/ can be realized as [t͡ʃʲ~c~kʲ].

The phomeme /ɟ/ can be realized as [d͡ʒʲ~ɟ~ɡʲ].

Proposal 2

Proposed state:

The phomeme /ɲ/ can be realized as [nj~nʲ~ɲ].

The phomeme /ŋ/ can be realized as [ŋ~ŋᶢ].

The exact distribution of these allophones will be determined either by a future proposal or by use.

Reason:

All languages have allophones due to humans not being perfect sound synthesizers. An allophonic range for every sound in the language should eventually be created, however most likely many of them will come about naturally, since these sounds are some of the stranger ones, I feel that it is appropriate to synthetically define these allophones.

hi! so, elaborating on the question about plosive voicedness: should plosives instead have optional voiced allophones in-between two phonemically voiced sounds, word-initially before a phonemically voiced sound, and word-finally after a phonemically voiced sound? the language's name would then be pronounced [dunibasa].

comment any additional thoughts below.

View Poll

Je comprends que ça a été utile comme classification il y a quelques décennies quand le schisme Anglo/Franco était plus important et qu’il fallait une case « autre » (littéralement) pour les immigrants nouvellement arrivés qui ne parlaient aucune des deux langues et s’enfoutaient carrément de la politique mais j’ai l’impression que c’est devenu la manière PC de dire « francophone pas Blanc ».
En quoi un immigrant Haïtien, Camerounais, Algérien, ou Seychellois est-il allophone? Parce qu’il parle une autre langue des fois alors que la majorité de sa vie se passe en français? Parce que il a un accent qui n’est pas considéré « natif » i.e. pas Européen?

Pire, en quoi quelqu’un qui a grandi au Québec, à fait toutes ses études depuis la maternelle en français, ne communique principalement qu’en français, ne sait écrire qu’en français, travaille en français, rêve en français, somme toutes à le français comme langue principale depuis qu’il sait marcher, est-il allophone? Parce que ses deux premiers mots ont été dans une autre langue?

Dans les milieux Anglo, personne n’utilise allophone. C’est soit tu parles anglais comme langue première, soit pas.

ENGLISH

im too lazy to type the whole thing again but tl;dr the pro-French movement is exclusionary of non-white Francophones and that’s why they don’t connect with it.

I want to speak Turkish, which just happens to have three different 'R' sounds. I already learned to say Voiced Alveolar Flap and Trill in Spanish, but its Turkish version -which is rather soft- and allophones are quite tricky.

According to one source (pg.25), Turkish has

1. /ɾ/ (voiced alveolar flap) intervocalically,
2. /ɾ̞/ (voiced alveolar tapped fricative) word-initally,
3. /ɾ̞̊/ (voiceless alveolar tapped fricative) word-finally and before a voiceless consonant.

• /ɾ/

Definitely different than the Spanish /ɾ/, hear the difference yourself: Spanish, Turkish1, Turkish2. Spanish sounds much more explosive or I'd say vigorous, which is identical to my Turkish /ɾ/. I wonder how I can tone it down. Plus, it's so difficult to say the second Turkish word, 'ararım', if you try to make the /ɾ/ sound like in 'para' as your tongue needs to move really fast to make that sound twice. There must be something I am doing wrong.

• /ɾ̞/

On Turkish Phonology Wikipedia page, it says " the constriction at the alveolar ridge narrows sufficiently to create frication but without making full contact". This one was descriptive enough, I can make the sound, though I need some practice; you have to make sure your tongue isn't touching your alveolus by accident. However, I have a few concerns; hear the difference for the same word in the following set of footage: Radyo1, Radyo2, Radyo3

• /ɾ̞̊/

For this sound, Turkish Phonology says the same thing as the previous one (I guess it only makes sense if you don't let your tongue touch your alveolus b

What are some interesting or uncommon allophones that are attested in at least one natural language?

Eg.

Hawaiian [k~t]

Pirahã [ɡ~n]

This will affect the conculture in various ways... for example communication between the genders is only effective (and lawful) when there is at least two of each gender, one to speak and one to act as "soundboard". This "soundboard" always takes second-person marking, the intended audience takes a focus marker (indicated by gaze and foot position, which is easily comparable English sentences like "Love you" or pro-drop languages like Japanese).
Another issue might be interrogative marking since the soundboard often needs to actually remember the question. We will mark all interrogatives with a minimum level of formality/politeness. Thus, the distinction between questions and statements disappears in informal speech.
The conlang's range is not limited to boxing. The soundboard may be a football player, a cow in a field, a tree, or even a musical instrument. Your communication options are endless! I wonder how such a language handles pick-up lines.

Over the years, I've noticed that some speakers of Standard American English realize the voiceless stops /k/, /p/, and /t/ as /kχ/, /pχ/, or /tχ/ (I'm not sure if that is the correct IPA, but imagine it the "pr" in the French "près") when they precede certain mid or open vowels. For example, at times I hear people realize /klæs/ as /kχlæs/. It can be heard very clearly in this video at 1:01 when he says "point" or at 1:34 when he says "close."

I'm just wondering, has a paper been written on this phenomenon?

(Posted as a post, as I personally feel like the answer to the text body might be a bit more complex, and this could be very useful to someone, and it is easier to search it this way)

What I mean is this: For me I replace the /ɹ/ (and rhoticity in general) by changing the vowel a bit (not sure how exactly!), and this creates something like a diphthong, but I'm not sure if it is. For me the example I've used is "New Pair" as there's also a second kind of shift in a vowel there. Here it is anyways how I pronounce it:

BROAD TRANSCRIPTION: /nʊː pʰeː/

NARROW TRANSCRIPTION: 1. [nʊ̜̑ʏ pʰe̯ɛ] and the ones I prefer: 2. [nʊ̜̑ʊ̙ pʰe̯e̞] and sometimes even 3. [nʊ̜̑ʊ̝]

I'll now break down the narrow transcription ones a bit: 1. I've here used different phonemes in the diphthongs, which is why I call them diphthongs. However, I don't like this approach, as in my opinion it doesn't give the same idea

2. Here I have signaled that the latter FOOT sound is pronounced with advanced tongue root (more like /ʏ/), and that the latter /e/ is pronounced lowered (more like /ɛ/). I personally prefer this one, as it gives the right idea, but is this a diphthong

3. Sometimes the latter FOOT sound is pronounced as a semivowel version. I wanted to include this, as with this I am even more unsure than example 2: The latter FOOT isn't even a vowel anymore, but in the same time if 2 can be a diphthong, can this be as well, as it is still here marked as an allophone of FOOT?

Basically, the question is, can for ex. [ʊ̜̑ʊ̙], [e̯e̞] or [ʊ̜̑ʊ̝] be a diphthong, even while only includes a single phoneme? If not, what are these called? They shouldn't be monophtongs, as the sound does change? What are they called? Am I stupid? Who ate the last cookie out of the cookie jar?

I mean, all 4 of those phonemes simultaneously in one language.

For example, in spanish /g/ and /ɣ/ are allophones, /gato/ is perceived as having the same sound at the start was the second sound in /aɣua/, and yet when spanish phonology comes up they list /g/ and not /ɣ/, but why couldn't if be the other way around?.

And the same could apply to many other languages that have allophones. Is one of the sounds the "main sound" in some way?, or are there rules to determine which sound is listed?.