How many syllables are there in the word palatalization

Decomposition of palatalization into syllables

There are many reasons to learn how to divide palatalization into syllables. Separating a word like palatalization into syllables is mainly to make it easier to read and pronounce. The syllable is the smallest sound unit in a word, and the separation of the palatalization into syllables allows speakers to better segment and emphasize each sound unit.

Reasons for separating palatalization into syllables

Knowing how to separate palatalization into syllables can be especially useful for those learning to read and write, because it helps them understand and pronounce palatalization more accurately. Furthermore, separating palatalization into syllables can also be useful in teaching grammar and spelling, as it allows students to more easily understand and apply the rules of accentuation and syllable division.

How many syllables are there in palatalization?

In the case of the word palatalization, we find that when separating into syllables the resulting number of syllables is 3. With this in mind, it’s much easier to learn how to pronounce palatalization, as we can focus on perfecting the syllabic pronunciation before trying to pronounce palatalization in full or within a sentence. Likewise, this breakdown of palatalization into syllables makes it easier for us to remember how to write it.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In phonetics, palatalization (, also ) or palatization is a way of pronouncing a consonant in which part of the tongue is moved close to the hard palate. Consonants pronounced this way are said to be palatalized and are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet by affixing the letter ⟨ʲ⟩ to the base consonant. Palatalization cannot minimally distinguish words in most dialects of English, but it may do so in languages such as Russian, Mandarin, and Irish.

Types[edit]

In technical terms, palatalization refers to the secondary articulation of consonants by which the body of the tongue is raised toward the hard palate and the alveolar ridge during the articulation of the consonant. Such consonants are phonetically palatalized. «Pure» palatalization is a modification to the articulation of a consonant, where the middle of the tongue is raised, and nothing else. It may produce a laminal articulation of otherwise apical consonants such as /t/ and /s/.

Phonetically palatalized consonants may vary in their exact realization. Some languages add semivowels before or after the palatalized consonant (onglides or offglides). In Russian, both plain and palatalized consonant phonemes are found in words like большой [bɐlʲˈʂoj] (listen), царь [tsarʲ] (listen) and Катя [ˈkatʲə] (listen). Typically, the vowel (especially a non-front vowel) following a palatalized consonant has a palatal onglide. In Hupa, on the other hand, the palatalization is heard as both an onglide and an offglide. In some cases, the realization of palatalization may change without any corresponding phonemic change. For example, according to Thurneysen,^{[full citation needed]} palatalized consonants at the end of a syllable in Old Irish had a corresponding onglide (reflected as ⟨i⟩ in the spelling), which was no longer present in Middle Irish (based on explicit testimony of grammarians of the time).

In a few languages, including Skolt Sami and many of the Central Chadic languages, palatalization is a suprasegmental feature that affects the pronunciation of an entire syllable, and it may cause certain vowels to be pronounced more front and consonants to be slightly palatalized. In Skolt Sami and its relatives (Kildin Sami and Ter Sami), suprasegmental palatalization contrasts with segmental palatal articulation (palatal consonants).

Transcription[edit]

In the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), palatalized consonants are marked by the modifier letter ⟨ʲ⟩, a superscript version of the symbol for the palatal approximant ⟨j⟩. For instance, ⟨tʲ⟩ represents the palatalized form of the voiceless alveolar stop [t]. Prior to 1989, a subscript diacritic (⟨ᶀ ꞔ ᶁ ᶂ ᶃ ꞕ ᶄ ᶅ ᶆ ᶇ ᶈ ᶉ ᶊ ƫ ᶌ ᶍ ᶎ⟩) and several palatalized consonants were represented by curly-tailed variants in the IPA, e.g., ⟨ʆ⟩ for [ʃʲ] and ⟨ʓ⟩ for [ʒʲ]: see palatal hook. The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet marks palatalized consonants by an acute accent, as do some Finnic languages using the Latin alphabet, as in Võro ⟨ś⟩. Others use an apostrophe, as in Karelian ⟨s’⟩; or digraphs in j, as in the Savonian dialects of Finnish, ⟨sj⟩.

Phonology[edit]

Palatalization has varying phonological significance in different languages. It is allophonic in English, but phonemic in others. In English, consonants are palatalized when they occur before front vowels or the palatal approximant, but no words are distinguished by palatalization (complementary distribution), whereas in some of the other languages, the difference between palatalized consonants and plain un-palatalized consonants distinguish between words, appearing in a contrastive distribution (where one of the two versions palatalized or not, appears in the same environment as the other).

Allophonic palatalization[edit]

In some languages, like English, palatalization is allophonic. Some phonemes have palatalized allophones in certain contexts, typically before front vowels and unpalatalized allophones elsewhere. Because it is allophonic, palatalization of this type does not distinguish words and often goes unnoticed by native speakers. Phonetic palatalization occurs in American English. Stops are palatalized before the front vowel /i/ and not palatalized in other cases.

Phonemic palatalization[edit]

In some languages, palatalization is a distinctive feature that distinguishes two consonant phonemes. This feature occurs in Russian, Irish, and Scottish Gaelic, among others.

Phonemic palatalization may be contrasted with either plain or velarized articulation. In many of the Slavic languages, and some of the Baltic and Finnic languages, palatalized consonants contrast with plain consonants, but in Irish they contrast with velarized consonants.

• Russian нос /nos/ «nose» (unpalatalized /n/)

нёс /nʲos/ «(he) carried» (palatalized /nʲ/)

• Irish bó /bˠoː/ «cow» (velarized b)

beo /bʲoː/ «alive» (palatalized b)

Some palatalized phonemes undergo change beyond phonetic palatalization. For instance, the unpalatalized sibilant (Irish /sˠ/, Scottish /s̪/) has a palatalized counterpart that is actually postalveolar [ʃ], not phonetically palatalized [sʲ], and the velar fricative /x/ in both languages has a palatalized counterpart that is actually palatal [ç] rather than palatalized velar [xʲ]. These shifts in primary place of articulation are examples of the sound change of palatalization.

Morphophonemic[edit]

In some languages, palatalization is used as a morpheme or part of a morpheme. In some cases, a vowel caused a consonant to become palatalized, and then this vowel was lost by elision. Here, there appears to be a phonemic contrast when analysis of the deep structure shows it to be allophonic.

In Romanian, consonants are palatalized before /i/. Palatalized consonants appear at the end of the word, and mark the plural in nouns and adjectives, and the second person singular in verbs.^[1] On the surface, it would appear then that ban [ban] «coin» forms a minimal pair with bani [banʲ]. The interpretation commonly taken, however, is that an underlying morpheme |-i| palatalizes the consonant and is subsequently deleted.

Palatalization may also occur as a morphological feature. For example, although Russian makes phonemic contrasts between palatalized and unpalatalized consonants, alternations across morpheme boundaries are normal:^[2]

Sound changes[edit]

In some languages, allophonic palatalization developed into phonemic palatalization by phonemic split. In other languages, phonemes that were originally phonetically palatalized changed further: palatal secondary place of articulation developed into changes in manner of articulation or primary place of articulation.

Phonetic palatalization of a consonant sometimes causes surrounding vowels to change by coarticulation or assimilation. In Russian, «soft» (palatalized) consonants are usually followed by vowels that are relatively more front (that is, closer to [i] or [y]), and vowels following «hard» (unpalatalized) consonants are further back. See Russian phonology § Allophony for more information.

Examples[edit]

Slavic languages[edit]

In many Slavic languages, palatal or palatalized consonants are called soft, and others are called hard. Some of them, like Russian, have numerous pairs of palatalized and unpalatalized consonant phonemes.

Russian Cyrillic has pairs of vowel letters that mark whether the consonant preceding them is hard/soft:
⟨а⟩/⟨я⟩,
⟨э⟩/⟨е⟩,
⟨ы⟩/⟨и⟩,
⟨о⟩/⟨ё⟩, and
⟨у⟩/⟨ю⟩.
The otherwise silent soft sign ⟨ь⟩ also indicates that the previous consonant is soft.

Goidelic[edit]

Irish and Scottish Gaelic have pairs of palatalized (slender) and unpalatalized (broad) consonant phonemes. In Irish, most broad consonants are velarized. In Scottish Gaelic, the only velarized consonants are [n̪ˠ] and [l̪ˠ]; [r] is sometimes described as velarized as well.^[3][4]

Mandarin Chinese[edit]

Palatalized consonants occur in standard Mandarin Chinese in the form of the alveolo-palatal consonants, which are written in pinyin as j, q, and x.

Marshallese[edit]

In the Marshallese language, each consonant has some type of secondary articulation (palatalization, velarization, or labiovelarization). The palatalized consonants are regarded as «light», and the velarized and rounded consonants are regarded as «heavy», with the rounded consonants being both velarized and labialized.

Norwegian[edit]

Many Norwegian dialects have phonemic palatalized consonants. In many parts of Northern Norway and many areas of Møre og Romsdal, for example, the words /hɑnː/ (‘hand’) and /hɑnʲː/ (‘he’) are differentiated only by the palatalization of the final consonant. Palatalization is generally realised only on stressed syllables, but speakers of the Sør-Trøndelag dialects will generally palatalize the coda of a determined plural as well: e.g. /hunʲː.ɑnʲ/ or, in other areas, /hʉnʲː.ɑn/ (‘the dogs’), rather than */hunʲː.ɑn/. Norwegian dialects utilizing palatalization will generally palatalize /d/, /l/, /n/ and /t/.

See also[edit]

• Iotation, a related process in Slavic languages
• Soft sign, a Cyrillic grapheme indicating palatalization
• Manner of articulation
• List of phonetics topics
• Labio-palatalization
• Yōon

References[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

• Bynon, Theodora. Historical Linguistics. Cambridge University Press, 1977. ISBN 0-521-21582-X (hardback) or ISBN 978-0-521-29188-0 (paperback).
• Bhat, D.N.S. (1978), «A General Study of Palatalization», Universals of Human Language, 2: 47–92
• Buckley, E. (2003), «The Phonetic Origin and Phonological Extension of Gallo-Roman Palatalization», Proceedings of the North American Phonology Conferences 1 and 2, CiteSeerX 10.1.1.81.4003
• Chițoran, Ioana (2001), The Phonology of Romanian: A Constraint-based Approach, Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter, ISBN 3-11-016766-2
• Crowley, Terry. (1997) An Introduction to Historical Linguistics. 3rd edition. Oxford University Press.
• Lightner, Theodore M. (1972), Problems in the Theory of Phonology, I: Russian phonology and Turkish phonology, Edmonton: Linguistic Research, inc
• Pullum, Geoffrey K.; Ladusaw, William A. (1996). Phonetic Symbol Guide. University of Chicago Press.

External links[edit]

• Erkki Savolainen, Internetix 1998. Suomen murteet – Koprinan murretta. (with a sound sample with palatalized t’)
• Frisian assibilation as a hypercorrect effect due to a substrate language

In linguistics, palatalization ( /ˌpælətəlɨˈzeɪʃən/), also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate.

In describing the phonetics of an existing language (i.e., in synchronic descriptions), a palatalized consonant is one pronounced with a palatal secondary articulation. This means that the consonant is pronounced as if followed very closely by the sound [j] (a palatal approximant, like the sound of «y» in «yellow»). For example, in the Polish word kiedy («when»), the letters ki represent a palatalized [k], indicated in IPA notation as [kʲ], with a superscript «j». This sound is similar to the combination of «k» and «y» in English «thank you».

The other meaning of palatalization is encountered in historical linguistics, and refers to a sound change in which a consonant’s place of articulation becomes closer to the palatal position. This change is often triggered by a following [j] sound or a front vowel. For example, in Italian, before the front vowels e and i, the letter c (which otherwise represents [k], a velar consonant), has come to be pronounced as the palato-alveolar consonant [tʃ], like English «ch» (see [hard and soft c]]).

Palatalization of both types is widespread across languages in the world, though its actual manifestation varies. In some languages, such as the Slavic languages, palatal or palatalized consonants are frequently referred to as soft consonants, with others called hard consonants.

The term palatalized vowel is also sometimes used, to refer to a vowel that has become fronter or closer.

Types

In technical terms, palatalization refers to one of several things:

• A phonetic term of the secondary articulation of consonants by which the body of the tongue is raised toward the hard palate and the alveolar ridge during the articulation of the consonant. Such consonants are phonetically palatalized, and in the International Phonetic Alphabet they are indicated by a superscript ⟨j⟩, as with [tʲ] for a palatalized [t].^{[nb 1]}

• A common assimilatory process or the result of such a process, which involves front vowels (that is, sounds with a higher second formant such as [i] and [e]) and/or the palatal approximant [j] causing nearby phones to shift towards (though not necessarily coming to) the palatal articulatory position or to positions closer to the front of the mouth.

The first may be the result of the second, but they are often different. A vowel may «palatalize» a consonant (sense 2), but the result might not be a palatalized consonant in the phonetic sense (sense 1), or the phonetically palatalized (sense 1) consonant may occur irrespective of adjacency to front vowels.

The word «palatalization» may also be used for the effect a palatal or palatalized consonant exerts on nearby sounds, as in the history of Old French where Bartsch’s law turned low vowels into [e] or [ɛ] after a palatalized velar consonant, or in the Uralic language Erzya, where the near-open low front unrounded vowel [æ] only occurs as an allophone of the open vowel [a] after a palatalized consonant, as seen in the pronunciation of the name of the language itself, [erzʲæ]. Something similar may have been the case for some or even all low vowels in Old French, which could explain the palatalization of almost all velar plosives before /a/.^[1] However, while the process may be called palatalization, the resulting vowel [æ] is not called a palatalized vowel in the phonetic sense. Terminology such as «palatal vowel» is found, but this is primary and not secondary articulation.

Phonetics

«Pure» palatalization is denoted by a small superscript ⟨ʲ⟩ in IPA. This is a modification to the articulation of a consonant, where the middle of the tongue is raised, and nothing else. It may produce a laminal articulation of otherwise apical consonants such as /t/ and /s/. It is a phonemic feature in some languages; a common misconception is that it is merely allophonic, like in English. Phonemic palatalization may be contrasted with either plain or velarized articulation. In Finnic languages, Baltic languages and Slavic languages, the contrast is with plain consonants, but in Irish, it is with velarized consonants.

Phonetically palatalized consonants may vary in their exact realization. Some, but not all languages add offglides or onglides. In Russian, both plain and palatalized consonant phonemes are found in words like пальто [pɐˈlʲto], царь [tsarʲ] and Катя [ˈkatʲə]. Typically, the vowel (especially a non-front vowel) following a palatalized consonant has a palatal offglide. In Hupa, on the other hand, the palatalization is heard as both an onglide and an offglide. In some cases, the realization of palatalization may change without any corresponding phonemic change. For example, according to Thurneysen,^{[Full citation needed]} palatalized consonants at the end of a syllable in Old Irish had a corresponding onglide (reflected as ⟨i⟩ in the spelling), which was no longer present in Middle Irish (based on explicit testimony of grammarians of the time period).

Palatalization can also occur as a suprasegmental feature that affects the pronunciation of an entire syllable. This is the case in Skolt Sami, a language which is unusual in contrasting suprasegmental palatalization with segmental palatalization (i.e., inherently palatalized consonants).

Phonology

Mechanism

Palatalization is usually triggered only by mid, close (high) front vowels and the semi-vowel [j]; but counterexamples to this are also found. In addition, tongue-fronting )a process mainly induced by front vowels) typically affects velar consonants, while tongue-raising typically affects apical and coronal consonants. On the other hand, most of the palatalized consonants also undergo spirantization, except for the palatalized labials.^{[citation needed]}

In Gallo-Romance, Vulgar Latin *[ka] became *[tʃa] very early, with the subsequent deaffrication and some further developments of the vowel. For instance:

• *cattus (‘cat’) → chat /ʃa/
• calvus (‘bald’) → chauve /ʃov/
• *blanca (‘white’ fem.) → blanche /blɑ̃ʃ/
• catena (‘chain’) → chaine /ʃɛn/
• carus (‘dear’) → cher /ʃɛʁ/

Early English borrowings from French show the original affricate, as chamber (‘[private] room’) < Old French chambre < camera; cf French chambre /ʃɑ̃bʁ/ (‘room’)

Historical (diachronic) palatalization

Palatalization may result in a phonemic split, that is, a historical change by which a phoneme becomes two new phonemes over time through phonetic palatalization.

Old historical splits have frequently drifted since the time they occurred, and may be independent of current phonetic palatalization. The lenition tendency of palatalized consonants (by assibilation and deaffrication) is important here. According to some analyses,^[2] the lenition of the palatalized consonant is still a part of the palatalization process itself.

For example, Votic has undergone such a change historically, in for example *keeli → tšeeli (‘language’), but there is currently an additional distinction between palatalized laminal and non-palatalized apical consonants. An extreme example occurs in Spanish, where palatalized (‘soft’) g has ended up as [x]; this results from a long process where /ɡ/ became palatalized to [ɡʲ], then assibilated to [dʒ], deaffricated to [ʒ], devoiced to [ʃ] shifted back to the velar place of articulation (See History of Spanish and ceceo for more information).

While the great majority of palatalization effects are connected with sequences with a consonant adjacent to a high front or mid front vowel or glide, palatalization may occur spontaneously in a sense. In Southwestern Romance, /l/ in word-initial clusters with a voiceless obstruent became palatalized, as Latin clamare (‘to call’) → Italian chiamare /kjamare/ and Old Portuguese chamar; in Spanish, the obstruent drops before the palatalized liquid: llamar /ʎamar/. Differently, in an even larger area, Latin *[kt] became *[kʲt] (or even *[kʲtʲ]), thus from a form like Latin octō (‘eight’) comes French huit, Spanish ocho, and Portuguese oito /oitu/.

Such phonemic splits due to historic palatalization are common in many other languages. Some English examples of cognate words distinguished by historical palatalization are church vs. kirk, witch vs. wicca, ditch vs. dike, and shirt vs. skirt. The pronunciation of wicca as [ˈwɪkə] is a spelling pronunciation based on unfamiliarity with Old English spelling conventions (wicca was presumably [ˈwɪtʃːa] < *wikjā ); in the other cases, the words come from related dialects or languages (skirt from Danish) which differed in the place and degree of palatalization. More recently, the original /t/ of question and nature have come to be pronounced [tʃ] before [j] in a number of English dialects, and the original /d/ of soldier and procedure have come to be [dʒ]. This effect can also be seen in casual speech in some dialects, where Do you want to go? comes out as [dʒuː ˈwʌnə ɡoʊ], and Did you eat yet? as [ˈdɪdʒə ˈiːtʃɛt].

Examples

Palatalization has played a major role in the history of English in addition to the Uralic, Romance, Slavic, Goidelic, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Twi, Micronesian languages and Indic languages, among many others throughout the world. In pre-Old English, for example (c. 400 AD), palatalization produced new phonemes /tʃ/, /dʒ/ and /ʃ/, along with many new cases of /j/. Palatal/non-palatal alternations from this time are still visible in pairs such as speak vs. speech, and less obviously in day vs. dawn. A more recent palatalization (c. 1600 AD) has produced extensive alternations, as in close /z/ vs. closure /ʒ/, face /s/ vs. facial /ʃ/, -ate /t/ vs. -ature /tʃ/, etc.

In Japanese, allophonic palatalization affected the dental plosives /t/ and /d/, turning them into alveolo-palatal affricates [tɕ] and [dʑ] before [i]. Japanese has only recently regained phonetic [ti] and [di] through borrowed words, and thus this originally allophonic palatalization has become lexical. A similar change has also happened in Polish and Belarusian.

In some Zoque languages, [j] does not palatalize velar consonants while it does turn alveolars into palato-alveolars. In the Nupe language, /s/ and /z/ are palatalized both before front vowels and /j/, while velars are only palatalized before front vowels. In Ciluba, /j/ palatalizes only a preceding /t/, /s/, /l/ or /n/. In some variants of Ojibwe velars are palatalized before /j/, while apicals are not. In Indo-Aryan languages, dentals and /r/ are palatalized when occurring in clusters before /j/ while velars are not.

Synchronic palatalization

Palatalization may be a synchronic phonological process, i.e., some phonemes have palatalized allophones in certain contexts, typically before front vowels, and unpalatalized allophones elsewhere. Because it is allophonic, it often goes unnoticed by native speakers. As an example, compare the /k/ of English key with that of of coo, or tea with took. The consonant in the first word of each pair is palatalized, but few English speakers would perceive them as distinct.

The process gets complicated when other phonological and morphological processes that delete the palatalizing sound, such as syncope or elision, make the surface realization appear to be a phonemic contrast when analysis of the deep structure shows it to be allophonic. For example, Romanian consonants are palatalized before /i/. Palatalized consonants also appear terminally as the manifestation of certain morphological markers, particularly to indicate plurality in nouns and adjectives and the second person singular in verbs.^[3] On the surface, it would appear then that ban [ban] (‘coin’) forms a minimal pair with bani [banʲ] The interpretation commonly taken, however, is that an underlying morpheme |-i| palatalizes the consonant and is subsequently deleted.

Palatalization may also occur as a morphological process. For example, although Russian makes phonemic contrasts between palatalized and unpalatalized consonants, alternations across morpheme boundaries are normal:^[4]

• ответ [ɐˈtvʲɛt] (‘answer’) vs. ответить [ɐˈtvʲetʲɪtʲ] (‘to answer’)
• несу [nʲɪˈsu] (‘I carry’) vs. несёт [nʲɪˈsʲot] (‘carries’)
• голод [ˈɡolət] (‘hunger’) vs. голоден [ˈɡolədʲɪn] (‘hungry’ masc.)

Local uses of the word

There are various other local or historical uses of the word. In Slavic linguistics, the «palatal» fricatives marked by a háček are really postalveolar consonants that arose from palatalization historically. There are also phonetically palatalized consonants (marked with an acute accent) that contrast with this; thus the distinction is made between «palatal» (postalveolar) and «palatalized». Such «palatalized» consonants are not always phonetically palatalized; e.g., in Russian, when /t/ undergoes palatalization, a palatalized sibilant offglide appears, as in тема [ˈtˢʲɛmə].

In Uralic linguistics, «palatalization» has the standard phonetic meaning. /s/, /sʲ/, /ʃ/, /t/, /tʲ/, /tʃ/ are distinct phonemes, as they are in the Slavic languages, but /ʃ/ and /tʃ/ are not considered either palatal or palatalized sounds. Also, the Uralic palatalized /tʲ/ is a stop with no frication, unlike in Russian.

In using the Latin alphabet for Uralic languages, palatalization is typically denoted with an acute accent, as in Võro ⟨ś⟩; an apostrophe, as in Karelian ⟨s’⟩; or digraphs in j, as in the Savo dialect of Finnish, ⟨sj⟩. Postalveolars, in contrast, take a caron, ⟨š⟩, or are digraphs in ⟨h⟩, ⟨sh⟩.

See also

• Iotation, a form of palatalization in Slavic languages
• Soft sign, a Cyrillic alphabet grapheme indicating palatalization
• Manner of articulation
• List of phonetics topics
• Labio-palatalization
• Palatalization in Vulgar Latin
• Mouillé

References

Bibliography

• Bynon, Theodora. Historical Linguistics. Cambridge University Press, 1977. ISBN 0-521-21582-X (hardback) or ISBN 978-0-521-29188-0 (paperback).
• Bhat, D.N.S. (1978), «A General Study of Palatalization», Universals of Human Language 2: 47–92
• Buckley, E. (2003), «The Phonetic Origin and Phonological Extension of Gallo-Roman Palatalization», Proceedings of the North American Phonology Conferences 1 and 2, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.81.4003&rep=rep1&type=pdf
• Chițoran, Ioana (2001), The Phonology of Romanian: A Constraint-based Approach, Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter, ISBN 3110167662
• Crowley, Terry. (1997) An Introduction to Historical Linguistics. 3rd edition. Oxford University Press.
• Lightner, Theodore M. (1972), Problems in the Theory of Phonology, I: Russian phonology and Turkish phonology, Edmonton: Linguistic Research, inc
• Pullum, Geoffrey K.; Ladusaw, William A. (1996). Phonetic Symbol Guide. University of Chicago Press.

Notes

1. ^ Prior to 1989, several palatalized consonants were represented by curly-tailed variants in the IPA, e.g., [ʆ] for [ʃʲ] and [ʓ] for [ʒʲ]. See also Palatal hook.

External links

• Erkki Savolainen, Internetix 1998. Suomen murteet – Koprinan murretta. (with a sound sample with palatalized t’)
• Frisian assibilation as a hypercorrect effect due to a substrate language

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PRONUNCIATION OF PALATALIZATION

GRAMMATICAL CATEGORY OF PALATALIZATION

Palatalization is a noun.

WHAT DOES PALATALIZATION MEAN IN ENGLISH?

Definition of palatalization in the English dictionary

The definition of palatalization in the dictionary is the pronunciation of consonants with the front of the tongue drawn up further toward the roof of the mouth than in their normal pronunciation.

WORDS THAT RHYME WITH PALATALIZATION

TRANSLATION OF PALATALIZATION

Find out the translation of palatalization to 25 languages with our English multilingual translator.

TENDENCIES OF USE OF THE TERM «PALATALIZATION»

The term «palatalization» is normally little used and occupies the 146.307 position in our list of most widely used terms in the English dictionary.

Principal search tendencies and common uses of palatalization

FREQUENCY OF USE OF THE TERM «PALATALIZATION» OVER TIME

10 ENGLISH BOOKS RELATING TO «PALATALIZATION»

Discover the use of palatalization in the following bibliographical selection. Books relating to palatalization and brief extracts from same to provide context of its use in English literature.

7 NEWS ITEMS WHICH INCLUDE THE TERM «PALATALIZATION»

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REFERENCE

« EDUCALINGO. Palatalization [online]. Available <https://educalingo.com/en/dic-en/palatalization>. Apr 2023 ».

Asked by: Andreanne Trantow

Score: 4.2/5
(19 votes)

Palatalization sometimes refers to vowel shifts, the fronting of a back vowel or raising of a front vowel. The shifts are sometimes triggered by a nearby palatal or palatalized consonant or by a high front vowel. The Germanic umlaut is a famous example.

What is palatalization in phonology?

Palatalization, in phonetics, the production of consonants with the blade, or front, of the tongue drawn up farther toward the roof of the mouth (hard palate) than in their normal pronunciation.

What is the process of palatalization?

The term “palatalization” denotes a phonological process by which consonants acquire secondary palatal articulation or shift their primary place to, or close to, the palatal region. The /k/ sounds then become /t/ and the /g/ sounds then become the /d/ sound.

Which language has a rule of palatalization?

Is there palatalization in English?

Palatalization occurs in English, like t sound becomes ch sounds, for example, in got you.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Palatalization or palatalisation (pronounced /ˌpælətəlɨˈzeɪʃən/) generally refers to two phenomena:

• As a process or the result of a process, the effect that front vowels and the palatal approximant [j] frequently have on consonants;

• As a phonetic description, the secondary articulation of consonants by which the body of the tongue is raised toward the hard palate during the articulation of the consonant. Such consonants are phonetically palatalized, and in the International Phonetic Alphabet they are indicated by a superscript ‘j’, as [tʲ] for a palatalized [t]. Prior to 1989, several palatalized consonants were represented by curly-tailed variants in the IPA, e.g. [ʆ] for [ʃʲ] and [ʓ] for [ʒʲ] (see Palatal hook).

The second may be the result of the first, but they often differ. A vowel may «palatalize» a consonant (sense 1), but the result might not be a palatalized consonant in the phonetic sense (sense 2), or the phonetically palatalized (sense 2) consonant may occur irrespective of front vowels.

Conversely, the word «palatalization» may also be used for the effect a palatal or palatalized consonant exerts on nearby sounds, as in the history of old French where Bartsch’s law turned low vowels into [e] or [ɛ] after a palatalized velar, or in the Uralic language Erzya, where the front vowel [æ] only occurs as an allophone of [a] after a palatalized consonant, as seen in the pronunciation of the name of the language itself, [erzʲæ]. However, while the process may be called palatalization, the resulting vowel [æ] is not called a palatalized vowel in the phonetic sense. Terminology such as «palatal vowel» is found, however, but this is primary and not secondary articulation.

Phonetic description

«Pure» palatalization is denoted by a small superscript < ʲ > in IPA. This is a modification to the articulation of a consonant, where the middle of the tongue is raised, and nothing else. It may produce a laminal articulation of otherwise apical consonants such as /t/ and /s/. It is a phonemic feature in some languages; a common misconception is that it’s merely allophonic, like in English. Phonemic palatalization may be contrasted with either plain or velarized articulation. In Baltic-Finnic languages, Baltic and Slavic languages, the contrast is with plain consonants, but in Irish, it is with velarized consonants.

Phonetically palatalized consonants may vary in their exact realization. Some, but not all languages add offglides or onglides. In Russian, both plain and palatalized consonant phonemes are found in words like пальто [pɐˈlʲto], царь [tsarʲ] and Катя [ˈkatʲə]. Typically, the vowel following a palatalized consonant has a palatal offglide. In Hupa, on the other hand, the palatalization is heard as both an onglide and an offglide: [aʲkʲa].

Palatalization can also occur as a suprasegmental feature that affects the pronunciation of an entire syllable. This is the case in Skolt Sami, a language which is unusual in contrasting suprasegmental palatalization with segmental palatalization (i.e., inherently palatalized consonants).

Phonological (synchronic) palatalization

Palatalization may be a synchronic phonological process, i.e., some phonemes are palatalized in certain contexts, typically before front vowels or especially high front vowels, and remain non-palatalized elsewhere. This is usually phonetic palatalization, as described above, but need not to be. It is usually allophonic and it may go unnoticed by native speakers. As an example, compare the /k/ of English key with the /k/ of coo, or the /t/ of tea with the /t/ of took. The first word of each pair is palatalized, but few English speakers would perceive them as distinct.

The variation might be seen as allophonic variation as long as the «palatal» sound causing the palatalization is there. However, syncope or elision might delete this sound, and thus only the palatalization remains as a distinct feature. This process is widespread in Baltic-Finnic languages, which have lost their original (Uralic) phonemic palatalization but some have regained it. For a minimal pair, consider Estonian kass [kɑsʲː] from *kassi «cat» vs. kas [kɑsː] (interrogative).

Sometimes palatalization is part of a synchronic grammatical process, such as palatalizing the first consonant of a verb root to signal the past tense. This type of palatalization is phonemic, and is recognized by the speakers as a contrasting feature. However, what may have started off as phonetic palatalization can quickly evolve into something else, so not all of the resulting consonants are necessarily palatalized phonetically.

Historical (diachronic) palatalization

Palatalization may be a diachronic phonemic split, that is, a historical change by which a phoneme becomes two new phonemes over time through phonetic palatalization. Old historical splits have frequently drifted since the time they occurred, and may be independent of current phonetic palatalization. For example, Votic has undergone such a change historically, in for example keeli → tšeeli (‘language’), but there is currently an additional distinction between palatalized laminal and non-palatalized apical consonants.

While the great majority of palatalization effects are connected with sequences with a consonant adjacent to a high front or mid front vowel or glide, palatalization may occur spontaneously in a sense. In Southwestern Romance, l in word-initial clusters after a voiceless obstruent became palatalized, as Latin clamare (‘to call’) → Italian chiamare /kjamare/, Old Portuguese chamar, while in Spanish the obstruent drops before the palatalized liquid: llamar /ʎamar/. Differently, in an even larger area, Latin *[kt] became *[kʲt] (or even *[kʲtʲ]) thus from a form like Latin octō (‘eight’) French huit, Spanish ocho, Portuguese oito /oitu/.

Palatalization is usually triggered only by mid and close (high) front vowels; but counterexamples to this are also found. Certain dialects of American English that have a front [æ] in words like car and garden (most notably, those participating in the Northern Cities Vowel Shift) may pronounce them with a noticeable palatal offglide: [ˈkʲæɹ], [ˈɡʲæɾɪn] and the like for car, garden. In Gallo-Romance, *[ka] became *[tʃa] very early, with the subsequent deaffrication and some further developments of the vowel, thus *cattus (‘cat’) → chat /ʃa/, calvus (‘bald’) → chauve /ʃov/, *blanca (‘white’ fem.) → blanche /blɑ̃ʃ/, catena (‘chain’) → chaine /ʃɛn/, carus (‘dear’) → cher /ʃɛʀ/, and so on. Early English borrowings from French show the original affricate, as chamber (‘[private] room’) < Old French chambre < camera; cf French chambre /ʃɑ̃bʀ/ (‘room’)

Palatalization has played a major role in the history of the Uralic, Romance, Slavic, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Twi, and Indic languages, among many others throughout the world. In Japanese, for example, allophonic palatalization affected the alveolar stops /t/ and /d/, turning them into alveolo-palatal affricates [tɕ] and [dʑ] before /i/. Japanese has only recently regained phonetic [ti] and [di] through borrowed words, and thus this originally allophonic palatalization has become lexical. Similar change has also happened in Polish.

Such phonemic splits due to historic palatalization are common in many other languages. Some English examples of cognate words distinguished by historical palatalization are church vs. kirk, witch vs. wicca, ditch vs. dike, and shirt vs. skirt. The pronunciation of wicca as [ˈwɪkə] is a spelling pronunciation based on unfamiliarity with Old English spelling conventions (wicca was presumably [ˈwɪtʃːa] < *wikjā ); in the other cases the words come from related dialects or languages (skirt from Danish) which differed in the place and degree of palatalization. More recently, the original /t/ of question and nature have come to be pronounced [tʃ] before [j] in some English dialects, and similarly the original /d/ of soldier and procedure have come to be [dʒ]. This effect can also be seen in casual speech in some dialects, where Do you want to go? comes out as [dʒuː ˈwʌnə ɡoʊ], and Did you eat yet? as [ˈdɪdʒə ˈiːtʃɛt].

Local uses of the word

There are various other local or historical uses of the word. In Slavic linguistics, the «palatal» fricatives marked by a háček are really postalveolar consonants that arose from palatalization historically. There are also phonetically palatalized consonants (marked with an acute accent) that contrast with this; thus the distinction is made between «palatal» (postalveolar) and «palatalized». Such «palatalized» consonants are not always phonetically palatalized; e.g. in Russian, when /t/ undergoes palatalization, a palatalized sibilant offglide is actually added, as in тема [ˈtʲ^sʲɛmə].

In Uralic linguistics, «palatalization» has the standard phonetic meaning. /s/, /sʲ/, /ʃ/, /t/, /tʲ/, /tʃ/ are distinct phonemes, as they are in the Slavic languages, but /ʃ/ and /tʃ/ are not considered either palatal or palatalized sounds. Also, the Uralic palatalized /tʲ/ is a stop with no frication, unlike in Russian.

In using the Latin alphabet for Uralic languages, palatalization is typically denoted with an acute accent, as in Võro <ś>; an apostrophe, as in Karelian <s’>; or digraphs in j, as in the Savo dialect of Finnish, <sj>. Postalveolars, in contrast, take a caron, <š>, or are digraphs in h, <sh>.

See also

• Iotation, a form of palatalization in Slavic languages
• Soft sign, a Cyrillic alphabet grapheme indicating palatalization
• Manner of articulation
• List of phonetics topics
• Labio-palatalization
• Palatalization in Vulgar Latin

References

• Bynon, Theodora. Historical Linguistics. Cambridge University Press, 1977. ISBN 0-521-21582-X (hardback) or ISBN 978-0-521-29188-0 (paperback).
• Crowley, Terry. (1997) An Introduction to Historical Linguistics. 3rd edition. Oxford University Press.
• Pullum, Geoffrey K.; Ladusaw, William A. (1996). Phonetic Symbol Guide. University of Chicago Press. pp. 174, 209.

External links

• Erkki Savolainen, Internetix 1998. Suomen murteet — Koprinan murretta. (with a sound sample with palatalized t’)