Linguistics thread

[md0]

Has someone ever studied this phenomenon? I don't mean my specific example, but like, in general.

I know it has been studied within a language community. For example, there have been studies on the saliency of VOT in the perception of voiced plosives in English, or aspirated plosives in Cypriot Greek (and afaik, in both cases, duration came out being more salient than VOT).

So I think the same methodology can apply to your question about L2 representations of vowels.

What you have to make sure though is that you know exactly what vowel the Italian speakers are trying to transfer.

I'm saying that, because there's a consistent pattern of Greece Greek speakers transferring English /ʌ/ as [ɔ] (and /æ/ as [ε]), while Cypriot Greek speakers like myself, transfer /ʌ/ as [ɐ] (/æ/ also becomes [ɐ]).
So, while it could be that we we use a different sound feature to transfer the English vowels, there's a catch. My phonetics professor said to me, when I came up with a similar question, that in Cyprus we are more exposed to varieties of English that have a centralised /ʌ/ and a lower /æ/, but Greeks aren't. Their L2 education etc targets American English instead, so they are actually transferring different vowels than we do.

[dEhiN]

I haven't studied that, but I have thought about that before. Personally I agree with you, that roundedness is a more determining factor. I wonder how Italians would hear [ɯ]. I find English speakers hear it as [ə].

As for consonants, I think it tends to be the same MOA and closest POA. For example, when I teach my English friends Spanish words, I use the phones [t̪, d̪, n̪] and they hear [t, d, n]. I also find this phenomenon with my girlfriend, who speaks English and French. She can hear the trilled Spanish r, but can only pronounce it as the French one.

[md0]

On consonants, I am always surprised that people who doesn't have /ʎ/ have a lot of trouble matching it with a sound they do have. I always expect them to go for [lj], when they don't, it just doesn't register. (Mostly noticed that with Germanic speakers)

With Turkish speakers, I was surprised they don't go for [h] or [g] for /ɣ/, but instead transfer it as [k] of all things!

[IpseDixit]

I wonder how Italians would hear [ɯ].

Hard question. It's usually pronounced [u] in Japanese loanwords but I think this is due to romanization (people see <u> and pronounce it [u] as they would do in Italian) so I guess it doesn't really count.

It's hard to tell because of the lack of loanwords with such a phone but my guesswork is that it would probably be interpreted as [i] rather than [u]. In fact, I have the counterexample: [y] is definitely interpreted as [u], nobody would ever associate it with [i].

[Moritz]

Japanese /ɯ/ is half-rounded,so that [ɯ] is only an approximation

That's why most Italians (and not just them) think it exactly sounds like an /u/
Had the Japanese /ɯ/ been fully unrounded, it'd probably be confused even for an /i/ (see how Italians often realise [i] for the Russian /ɨ/)

[vijayjohn]

[ʌ] is perceived as kind of an [a] by Italians (indeed all English loanwords with it are pronounced with [a]) which is kind of weird when you think about it because we have [ɔ] which shares both height and backness with [ʌ] whereas [a] only shares non-roundedness with [ʌ].

Huh? [a] and [ʌ] share backness, too. [a] is a central vowel just like [ʌ] is.

[Vlürch]

[ʌ] is perceived as kind of an [a] by Italians (indeed all English loanwords with it are pronounced with [a]) which is kind of weird when you think about it because we have [ɔ] which shares both height and backness with [ʌ] whereas [a] only shares non-roundedness with [ʌ].

Huh? [a] and [ʌ] share backness, too. [a] is a central vowel just like [ʌ] is.

wat

V-Vijay, are you ok? [a] is front and [ʌ] is back. Their central equivalents are [a̠~ɐ̞~ä] and [ɜ]. Like, [a] is often used for the central one as well out of convenience, but I don't see why anyone would ever use [ʌ] for [ɜ], especially in the context of English since they're different phonemes...?

Anyway, I've wondered about the approximation thing myself before. AFAIK most Finns perceive Russian /ɨ/ as /y/ (well, at least I kind of do), but that could be at least in part because it's romanised <y>. Same thing with a full-on [ɯ], though, which is kind of weird because it doesn't have anything in common with [y] except that it's a high vowel. Japanese /ɯ/ is definitely perceived as /u/, though, although I guess that when it's [ɨᵝ], it could be perceived as /y/ by people who aren't at all familiar with Japanese?

Funnily and annoyingly enough, in the Mandarin dictionary I bought last week, Pinyin <x> is approximated as <hs>, which makes literally no sense. If anything, logically it should be <š> or even just plain <s>; if the stupid convention of <sh> was used, then that'd make sense, but <hs>, which would literally be /hs/?! How?! I know that's used in some Chinese romanisation system, but most of the other sounds are at least attempted to be approximated to the most logical Finnish (or English) sounds and explained (using weird terms like "thick S, make a boat shape with your tongue" for /ʂ/) when no close sounds exist.

~

A question about the pegative case: why is it so rare? I mean, only one language has been more or less confirmed to have it... it's not a strangely specific or even strange concept, just the "opposite" of dative. What's even weirder is that the only language documented to have it is, albeit ergative, one where the absolutive is marked, so it's not some super-animacy extension that it could "logically" be. Is there any explanation to this, or is the reason too obvious and I'm just too dumb to realise it?

[vijayjohn]

[a] is not front; [a] is central. [æ] is front.

EDIT: Also, central vs. back is not much of a crucial difference.

[Naava]

Well, looks like you're both right. Wikipedia lists [a] as front but also notes that...

In practice, it is considered normal by many phoneticians to use the symbol ⟨a⟩ for an open central unrounded vowel and instead approximate the open front unrounded vowel with ⟨æ⟩ (which officially signifies a near-open front unrounded vowel).[4] This is the usual practice, for example, in the historical study of the English language. The loss of separate symbols for open and near-open front vowels is usually considered unproblematic, because the perceptual difference between the two is quite small, and very few languages contrast the two.

[vijayjohn]

Yes, he's right, too.

[linguoboy]

Has someone ever studied this phenomenon? I don't mean my specific example, but like, in general.

Seems like it would be easy to do within an optimality theory framework.

Of course, it's not as simple as just looking at common features. You also have to look at the role each phone plays within the larger phonological system. If, say, you have fricative phone which doesn't pattern like the other fricatives in the target language, then it might get matched to a plosive instead.

For instance, English-speakers often borrow [x] as [h] in initial (e.g. chutzpah) or medial (e.g. cojones) position but as /k/ (e.g. loch) in coda position, because /h/ isn't allowed in onsets. Initial [ŋ] may get matched to /g/, /n/, or deleted entirely. Sometimes it's even preserved with the help of an prothetic vowel.

[JackFrost]

She can hear the trilled Spanish r, but can only pronounce it as the French one.

Most likely she hears them as allophones. Canadian French and Spanish r's share one trait: they're trilled.

[Ciarán12]

On consonants, I am always surprised that people who doesn't have /ʎ/ have a lot of trouble matching it with a sound they do have. I always expect them to go for [lj], when they don't, it just doesn't register. (Mostly noticed that with Germanic speakers)

Before I learned to distinguish /ʎ/ properly in Spanish, I used to consistently hear it as /j/. It's still a sound that requires an effort for me to produce.

[vijayjohn]

Before I learned to distinguish /ʎ/ properly in Spanish, I used to consistently hear it as /j/.

I'd think some native speakers of Spanish did, too.

[Moritz]

The majority of the Spanish speaking world do merge /ʎ/ and /j/ into /j/ (Including very frequently, more "constrictive" and stopstrictive taxophones): yeismo is a spreading feature even inside of Spain, especially because of Madrid

[vijayjohn]

Do they produce [j] or [ʝ]?

[Vlürch]

cojones

I thought it'd be pronounced with [h] in Mexican Spanish?

[vijayjohn]

cojones

I thought it'd be pronounced with [h] in Mexican Spanish?

Yes, but Mexican Spanish isn't the only variety of Spanish American English is in contact with (see: Puerto Rican Spanish, Dominican Spanish, Cuban Spanish...to some extent, even Castillian), and [h] isn't the only sound a word-medial dorsal fricative is converted to in English (but then this is probably true of dorsal fricatives in other positions, too). Compare baksheesh, which, contrary to what Wiktionary claims, seems to have come into English via Urdu according to Hobson-Jobson (so [x] > [kʰ] > [k]).

[linguoboy]

By no means all varieties of Mexican Spanish have [h] as the chief realisation of /x/. This is a Caribbean feature and as such is primarily found in southern coastal varieties (although not Oaxaca or areas of Mayan influence, where the most common realisation is uvular).

[vijayjohn]

My co-worker from Oaxaca insists he has [h] and not [x].