Talk:Close front unrounded vowel

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is part of WikiProject Phonetics, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to phonetics and descriptive phonology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.

Just a comment about the Swedish superscripted [j]. It's there because the Central Swedish dialect this is spoken in happens to feature this specific kind of diphthong of long [i]. The transcription has been taken from a Swedish-language textbook on phonetics, so it's not my own idea.

Peter ^Isotalo 23:50, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

I've seen superscripts used for diphthongs but I've changed it to just j, not superscripted, because I'm not a big fan of superscripting for diphthongs (especially with j since it looks like patalalization. I've seen people correct /j/ in diphthongs and use /i̯/ instead, but from my understanding, they're the same thing. AEuSoes1 00:32, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, "fan" or not, I'm going to insist on the transcription actually used by Swedish phoneticians. It's superscripted because it's a diphthong specific to Central Swedish, not a separate phonological segment.

Peter ^Isotalo 12:14, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

In narrow trascription [j] is a consonant, not a vowel, so [ij] would not be a diphthong. kwami 23:26, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

In all transcriptions [j] is a vowel-like consonant, which sort of blurs the distinction between vowel and consonant. If you really want to, you can use / ;/, but as for the superscripting, it is simply a convention that those authors have used to represent a diphthong. As far as I know, there is no phonetic difference between /i^j/ and /ij/. I've never seen /ij/ used to represent a vowel and "a separate phonological segment." AEuSoes1 08:19, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

In Swedish the difference does exist, even if diphtongized [j] is not a phoneme (Swedish is virtually void of phonemic diphthongs). Rendering the words frie /friːɛ/ "free" (masc. def. adjective) and frige /friːjeː/ "to set free" with the same [j] is not a satisfactory representation. The sound in the adjective is merely a byproduct of the long vowel while it's an actual phoneme in the verb and pronounced much more clearly and (mostly) with more frication. This is also evident when comparing with true /js/-sequences such as mejsel /mɛjsɛl/ "chisel".

And [j] isn't really representing a diphthong the way they appear in German or English, since there is often very clear frication in the Central ίSwedish sound, even when it's just due to a long [i]. One could probably describe it even better by using [ʝ]. We're not being overly orthodox about IPA-usage when describing various /r/-realizations, so I don't see why this can't another acceptable non-standard usage standard.

Peter ^Isotalo 15:21, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The meaning of Greek πίνω

Are you sure that πίνω means "to drink" (infinitive)? I don't know modern Greek, but in old Greek it means "I drink" (or "I'm drinking": present indicative). 82.57.95.229 01:31, 16 March 2007 (UTC)