Talk:Palatalization (phonetics)

Palatalization mechanisms

"Several mechanisms of palatalization" doesn't look well. The "esh" sound [ʃ] is not a palatalization of [s]; it's postalveolar. There are several palatal sibilants one could mention. The difference should be made clear between the physiological/phonetic mechanism of palatalization, and the phonological function. In English, some instances of [ʃ] can be considered a palatalization of [s] from the diachronical POV, but /ʃ/ is not really a palatal(ized) consonant and it's a phoneme in its own right. --Pablo D. Flores 11:29, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That's true, but more often than not, hacek sibilants are called "palatalized". Now, hacek sibilants are contrasted with palatalized sibilants in some languages. Either the haceks are mislabeled, or then there are several mechanisms. --Vuo 12:42, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think we need to distinguish palatalization as a phonetic process, and loose usage of the term "palatalized". A core definition with examples (synchronic and diachronic), and then examples of how this term has been extended to superficially similar phonemes. The "hacek" sibilants are examples of the latter, although for all I know, they resulted historically from an earlier round of palatalization, before the current palatalized fricatives developed. In English, you might argue that cute is palatalized. Church is not, but the ch did arise through palatalization of /k/ a millennium ago. kwami 19:20, 2005 Jun 8 (UTC)

"Cute" isn't independently palatalized as far as I know; there is only a palatal approximant in it ("kjuut"), which colors the surrounding sounds. Independent palatalization is found in Uralic languages. In there, consonants are palatalized and are different sounds, and palatalization is not a result of any nearby phoneme. (Quite the opposite in Erzya, or Erz'ä, where the palatalized consonants turn surrounding A's into fronted Ä's.) For example, Savo and Karelian ves', kot', etc. Palatalization is feature of a phoneme, not a historical sound change. --Vuo 14:35, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It is indeed both things, and that's precisely the problem I was mentioning above. The definition of "palatalization" is loose and it needs to be clarified. The /k/ in "cute" is palatalized, but not phonemically; the average English speaker doesn't find a difference between that and the /k/ in "cook". --Pablo D. Flores 15:20, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

A better example might be key versus coo. Phonetic palatalization of the /k/ in key due to assimilation with the vowel. kwami 18:48, 2005 Jun 19 (UTC)

To the original question, I must note that we should return the removed text. Palatalization may also be a phonemic, lexical feature; I think that Savo Finnish kunj "like" (standard kuin) is distinct from kun "when". Estonian certainly differentiates palatals and non-palatals. --Vuo 22:03, 9 July 2005 (UTC)

Palatal? Palatalized?

I think there's some big confusion here, with "palatalization" meaning at least two completely different things that should be differentiated very clearly. In Russian, for example, ш is palatal (IPA: ʂ), while сь is palatalized (IPA: sʲ).

Some letters with a háček are palatal (š, ž, č: ʂ, ʐ, tʂ-ligature), while others are palatalized (ď, ť, ň, ľ: dʲ, tʲ, nʲ, lʲ).

David Marjanović (... that's tʃʲ-ligature for you!) 23:52 CET-summertime 2005/8/2

This usage of 'palatal' is specific to Slavic and some other linguistics tradition, perhaps due to historical development through palatalization. They are not synchronically palatal consonants by the IPA standards for the use of that term. Part of the difference between them and the English postalveolars is that they aren't palatalized in Russian, while they are (at least somewhat) in English! (The also aren't labialized as in English, I believe.) kwami 01:22, 2005 August 3 (UTC)

Sorry. I wrote the above before I had reasonably understood the IPA and the associated terminology. Retroflexes could be called palatal (being "corono-palatal"), but they almost never are, instead "palatal" normally refers to dorso-palatal consonants only. – The confusion has long ago been cleared up, thanks, everyone! – I agree the Russian retroflexes aren't labialized, at least not as much as the palato-alveolars of English, French, or German. David Marjanović 23:08, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

problem with diacritic

I'm cleaning up the article, and removed the following:

• The digraphs with j are problematic, because /j/ is a separate phoneme: The Savo Finnish word ärjäsj /ärjäś/ uses both meanings.

I removed this because it does not show the digraph <sj> being used for contrastive [sj] vs [sʲ]. Does the person who wrote this have an example of a true contrast, so we can put the illustration back in? kwami 02:46, 2005 August 20 (UTC)

Now, it is hard to find such minimal pairs from Savo, because typically palatalization is final. Maybe parjaa mua [parjaammua] vs. parj aamua [parʲ aammua]. (But, here prosody comes to help.) But, we have inconsistencies such as karja [karja] vs. kaarj [kaarʲ]. This is indeed less problematic than the other method, which prefixing 'j' instead. ([vesʲ] as vejs.) For example, standard vesissä "in the waters" would be [veisʲ] in Karelian dialect (example from [1]), while [vesʲ] would be the singular of the same. Now, write the latter (singular) as vejs, the standard pronounciation becomes [veis], which is a plural as it contains the plural marker -i-. --Vuo 14:12, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

The whole last section about local traditions needs to be reworked by someone who knows the literature. I've merely tried sorting out what was already in the article, along with some comments on this page. kwami

Russian /akʲa/

I speak Russian and i don't understand what /akʲa/ is. There's now such word as "акя" and i can't even think of a word which includes that sounds in that order. There should be an example from the actual language. I would think of an example myself, but i don't know jack about phonology.--Amir E. Aharoni 19:04, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Palatalization to mark past tense

The article says: "Sometimes palatalization is part of a synchronic grammatical process, such as palatalizing the first consonant of a verb root to signal the past tense".

Is there an example for this?--Amir E. Aharoni 19:49, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Template:Ll

I don't know what happened to the template and I don't know what was in there, but the article needs to be fixed now it was deleted. --Mkill 10:48, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

What's so bad about /anʲa/?

1. There's no кя (/kʲa/) in any Russian words and from what i learned about linguistics (i'm doing my fourth year) examples from real life are much better. Why do English, Estonian and Votic deserve a real word as an example and Russian does not?
2. If k is supposed to represent a generic konsonant, then why use IPA at all?
3. I focused much more on syntax than on phonetics in my studies, but /anja/ would be анья or even анъя and i'm quite sure that аня is anʲa.--Amir E. Aharoni 11:26, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, after this grand rewrite i've got no more complaints about Russian. Thanks.--Amir E. Aharoni 13:15, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Unpalatalizable Consonants

Are there any consonants which cannot be palatalized? --84.61.41.214 08:45, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Some languages palatalize all consonants they "can", such as Nenets language and Võro language, but the glottal stop and the velar nasal are not palatalized. The obvious is also /j/ itself. --Vuo 20:45, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I would say that palatalizing a consonant with a palatal point of articulation would be tricky. In a contrastive system it might be feasible if, say, the effect of "palatalization" as a contrastive feature were redundantly signaled by adjacent syllabics, say, /a/ has allophones [æ] preceding palatalized consonants but [a] elsewhere, one might think of a contast between [æɲ] (with phonemically palatalized /ɲ^j/ vs [aɲ] (with plain /ɲ/). But I would imagine that such a setup would be extremely unstable. I would think that it would be a dicey matter to palatalize a uvular r, [ʀ], but according to rumor in 18th and 19th century Russia, some high-hat types transplanted uvular pronunciation of r from French into Russian. Presumably they managed the contrast somehow. I'd have to hear it to believe it, though. Alsihler 15:45, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Irish has [ŋʲ]. A dialect of Hausa has [ʔʲ]. There are IIRC languages in the Caucasus with aspirated and/or ejective versions of [qʲ], and at least one manages [ʀʲ]. As a native speaker of two of the many variants of German with [ʀ], I find [ʀʲ] much more difficult than the Russian [rʲ], which in turn I find much easier than ordinary [r], but that's another story… I agree that palatalized dorso-palatals are probably impossible. David Marjanović 23:01, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Phonetically, it would be more accurate to say that it's not possible to unpalatalize palatal consonants. If you want something which cannot be palatalized primarily nor secondarily, retroflexes - proper subapicals, at least - are commonly considered that; everything else should be possible. (Well, theoretically dorsal linguolabials are also unpalatizable, as well as unvelarizable, but those aren't used in speech anywhere. :b) I've redd a dissertation on this which might be suitable for quoting... --Tropylium 09:25, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

According to Jerzy Rubach, who wrote a whole dissertation on retroflex consonants, retroflexes typically resist palatalization (in the phonetic sense). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 15:06, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Palatised or palatalised?

When a sound is formed on the palate it is palatal. When the sound migrates to be formed on the palate it is palatised.
This is the same as: digit - digital - digitised. It is NOT 'digitalised' is it? Then why is it 'palatalised'? Bill, 2009 April.

The reasoning for "palatalization" is that "palatization" is confusing: are we talking about changing something into a palate? No, we mean "change into consonant produced by tongue touching hard palate" (or one roughly similar).

"Digitization" isn't confusing if understood correctly. "Digit" means both "finger" and "number counted on a finger" (= digital). Therefore, the word-formation sequence is digit → digitization: "change into digits". — Erutuon (talk) 21:46, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

In English please

In English please. So everyone can understand it.--Standforder (talk) 02:52, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Indeed! This is an unintelligible, jargon-filled mess. 76.21.1.194 (talk) 13:19, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

This is a linguistics article, it will use linguistics terms. While it'd be nice for it to be accessible for people who don't know the jargon used in this field, that is not a requirement for an encyclopaedia. I mean, the article on Nucleotides is full of jargon and I can't understand much of it, but if I learnt more about biology it would be less daunting, and I'm not going to insist that it be made easier to understand, since it'd probably make the page less useful for those in the know. Stickinsect2 (talk) 18:36, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't mean there's no room for improovment, however. Here's a checklist of a few terms to see if anything is the problem in particular:

• front vowel
• palatal articulation
• phonetic(al(ly))
• hard palate
• synchronic
• diachronic

Still, these are all link'd in the article, as should! There's no room to explain all of them in full detail here… --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 20:53, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

The Jargon in this article really should be cleaned up.Anhydrobiosis 01:51, 18 January 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anhydrobiosis (talk • contribs)

Difference between palatalization and yod-coalescence?

What is the difference between palatalization and yod-coalescence? Are [ʃ] and [ʒ] palatal consonants? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.22.207.252 (talk) 01:02, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Yod-coalescence is an example of palatalization. Palatalization doesn't always result in palatal consonants, and [ʃ] and [ʒ] are not palatal. Sometimes it just makes consonants that are closer to palatal, as here. [ʃ] and [ʒ] are closer to the palatal place of articulation than the alveolar consonants [s] and [z]: more back, or postalveolar, or alveolopalatal. — Eru·tuon 02:54, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Well said, Erutuon. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 03:00, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Erutuon, [z] and [s] have their panlatal variants. They do not need to convert to [ʃ] and [ʒ] to become palatal.--Anuclanus (talk) 22:17, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

This means that the consonant is pronounced as if followed very closely by the sound [j]

Hi! I wonder what does it mean. In Russian there are many examples when sounds are followed with [j] and are not palatalized. For example, подъём[подйом], въезд[вйэзд], съезд[cйэзд], вражья[вражйа].--Anuclanus (talk) 22:12, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

тема

The articla says Russian тема is pronounced [ˈtˢʲɛmə] but this pronounciation is definitely non-Russian. There is no [s] or [ts] there.--Anuclanus (talk) 22:31, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Russian palatized T and D sound like fricatives ts and dz by many speakers.--2.245.120.223 (talk) 22:46, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Merger proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was to merge and redirect. Miniapolis 20:50, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

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There is a stub article called Mouillé that contains (currently unsourced) information about the development of palatal laterals and nasals in Romance. I propose that any usable information be sourced and merged into the "Diachronic palatalization" section of this article, and for Mouillé to be redirected to Palatal consonant (since mouillé is just French for "palatal(ized)", and I don't think it means anything more than that when used in English, if it is actually used in English with any significant frequency). CapnPrep (talk) 01:44, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I think Mouillé can have a separate section here. It might need to have a fuller treatment to indicate why it's something separate, though. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 01:35, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

I do not object to merging "mouillé" (to an appropriate destination) itself, but the "palatalization" article already devotes too little attention to palatalized consonants, and too many to various ditch–dike, shirt–skirt and other phonological processes resulted in sounds which are not itself palatalized. The phonetic palatalization should not be eclipsed by numerous examples of historical assimilation of [ʲ] to palatalized consonants themselves and succeeding sounds. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 09:51, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

-ize or -ise

The article currently uses -ize in the title, but the body of the article uses -ise. This is strange; shouldn't the two be consistent? Would I be breaking MOS:RETAIN or following it if I changed -ise forms throughout the article to -ize? — Eru·tuon 08:54, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

I think, technically, MOS:RETAIN was violated in this edit by an anon user. So we can pretty easily justify restoring it to its earlier form. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 09:32, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Move material on sound change to Palatalization (sound change)

I suggest we split this article into two. This article, Palatalization, should continue to describe the secondary articulation of consonants, but material on the sound change should be moved to Palatalization (sound change).

It wouldn't work to disambiguate them as Palatalization (phonetics) and Palatalization (phonology), since the articulatory feature is both phonetic and phonological, and the titles Palatalization (historical linguistics) or Palatalization (diachronic linguistics) would be less readable for non-linguists. There isn't an appropriate parenthetical disambiguator for the articulatory feature, because it involves both phonetics and phonology. Therefore, it should remain as the un-disambiguated article name. (Not sure what the technical term for this is.)

As an amateur historical linguist, it is clear to me that the palatalization sound change is much more varied than described in this article. Some of its incarnations include change to a palatal place of articulation, addition of a palatalized secondary articulation, fronting, retraction, raising, diphthongization, monophthongization, alveolarization, alveolo-palatalization, palatal-alveolarization, retroflexion, assibilation, affrication, and frication. (This list assumes the broader definition of palatalization that includes vowel as well as consonant changes.)

At the moment, the article does not describe all of these. Because of the need to constantly disambiguate between the phonetic or phonological feature and the sound change, it is very difficult to add them. If the sound change were given its own article, it would be easy to describe the these variations: just create sections.

In addition, the article should, ideally, list examples of the secondary articulation and of the sound change, as Elision and Debuccalization do. This is impossible in the current article form. Since the secondary articulation and the sound change both occur in the same languages, but in different cases, the same language would have to be mentioned twice.

Splitting the articles would be an option based on common practice. Phonetic and phonological features are frequently described in separate articles from sound changes. This is the case for Sibilant versus Assibilation, Voice (phonetics) and Voicelessness versus Consonant voicing and devoicing, Glottal consonant versus Debuccalization. Velarization does not have separate phonetic–phonological and sound change articles, but velarization as a sound change has fewer examples that I can think of than palatalization.

---

For these varied reasons, I propose splitting the article into two, and titling them Palatalization and Palatalization (sound change). What do others think? (If there are any problems in the way I'm proposing this move or split, let me know or correct them, since I'm new to this.)

I think this move is fairly commonsense and uncontroversial, so I'll go ahead with it if there are no objections. — Eru·tuon 23:25, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

There is a case to be made for Palatalization (phonetics) (with Palatalization (phonology) as a redirect). Namely, the term is prototypically a phonetic one. Languages that feature what we might call phonological palatalization (e.g. Russian and Irish) have acquired the term from in their linguistic descriptions from the phonetic features. Phonology tends to borrow from phonetics in terms and notation.

I happen to like palatalization (historical linguistics), but I'm not enough of a lay person to tell if that's just the linguistics egghead in me. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 01:54, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

I took a look at pages in Category:Phonology and Category:Historical linguistics to see if there was precedent in this area. I didn't see any articles using (sound change) as a disambiguator, but neither did I see any using (historical linguistics). It seems that no article titles have needed to disambiguate between synchronic phonetics and phonology and historical phonology before.

My only reason for liking (sound change) is that it's shorter. There seems to be more precedent for using an area-of-study disambiguator as opposed to a "what this is" disambiguator. It could therefore be argued that (historical linguistics) follows precedent more than (sound change). However, brevity is important, and as far as shortness is concerned, disyllabic is better than hexasyllabic, and a 12-character disambiguator is better than a 22-character one. Therefore, I would argue that breaking precedent in this case is desirable.

Perhaps if we have more articles on language change in other areas, such as syntactic change, and these also require disambiguation, then perhaps using (historical linguistics) would make more sense as a way to unite different historical-linguistical subject areas, but the area of syntactic change seems not to be very thoroughly covered at the moment. — Eru·tuon 04:27, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Whatever we pick between "sound change" and "historical linguistics" we can have the other be a redirect. The closest thing to what you're looking for (as far as precedent) is the disambiguation for Ruki, I think. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 04:44, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Splitting off Palatalization (sound change) sounds like a good idea. I'd support making this page one of disambiguation, though. Palatalization (articulation) might be another possibility for the non-historical sense, but the precedent seems to be to just use (phonetics) for these kind of topics (e.g. Voice (phonetics)). --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 10:38, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Looks like we have two votes for splitting to Palatalization (phonetics). I also think this is a good idea, since it would be good to have a disambiguation page. — Eru·tuon 21:07, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Ƶ§œš¹ has registered his support for Palatalization (historical linguistics), and I have noted mine for Palatalization (sound change). Does anyone else have an opinion either way, like you, Trɔpʏliʊm? — Eru·tuon 21:14, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

If it wasn't implicitly clear enough, I'm in favor of (sound change). Just (historical linguistics) e.g. does not make it very clear that the topic is a process, and also does not apply to synchronic phonological processes of palatalization that involve something other than phonetic palatalization (say, soft g in Spanish, which involves turning /ɣ/ to /x/). --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 21:49, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Those are good points. I can get behind (sound change) too. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 22:30, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

All right. I'll wait a day or two to see if there are other comments, and then make the moves. — Eru·tuon 23:49, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

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One of typically clueless Wikipedian “change for a change”, not for improvement. The splitting created appearance of two different (albeit related) phenomena, bu failed miserably on explaining the difference. After deliberation, they decided that [tʲ]—[t] (and similar) opposition of Slavic languages pertains to palatalization (phonetics), whereas [ɲ]—[n] opposition of Romance languages (mouillé) pertains to palatalization (sound change). IMHO the basis of this “classification” is that IPA has a distinct character for [ɲ], hence it’s a distinct sound, whereas [tʲ] is represented with a modifier, hence it’s only a modified [t] sound. A cute “science”.

Also, examples in “(phonetics)” are chosen arbitrarily. They include Slavic and Gaelic (where it’s phonemic, not just allophonic), but exclude Chinese (where it’s phonemic as well). Incnis Mrsi (talk) 12:44, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

That's an interesting interpretation, but ultimately flawed. Palatalization in this article is about the phonetic feature (that is, isochronic) while the other article covers the body of sound changes (diachronic) that could lead to a phonetically palatalized or palatal consonant. There's probably some wiggle room as far as what examples would be more appropriate for which article but there are some, such as the change of palatovelars to alveolars/dentals in satem languages, that clearly belong in palatalization (sound change).

I suggest you check your snide tone. You won't convince anyone by being rude. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 15:41, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

How the Standard Chinese phonology #Palatal series thing, linked twice from the “sound change”, is a diachronic sound change? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 07:45, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Because at some point in the history of Mandarin Chinese (presumably after the Middle Chinese period), sounds that were not palatal or palatalized (the alveolars and velars) became so in certain contexts. This shift from one pronunciation to another over time would be a diachronic sound change. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 16:39, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Were they really? Where did you learn that, for instance, the modern [sʲ]/[ɕ] phoneme wasn’t palatalized in Middle Chinese? If I understand correctly, there always was palatalization from coarticulation with high front vowels and glides (similarly to Proto-Slavic with its “ь” after consonants), but some times later palatalized consonants became palatal (in some accents) whereas /i/ dropped (also, like in Slavic). There was palatalized→palatal change, and not in all accents. The palatalization predated the change. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 18:10, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm not well-versed in the history of Chinese phonology, so I'm only guessing as to when this occurred. However, because the different Chinese varieties are understood to have all derived from a single mother language, the comparative method leads us to see the dialects that do not merge the alveolar and velar series as more conservative. That's the understanding behind viewing the Chinese example as one of a diachronic change.

It would be interesting to parse from the literature if or how scholars treat cases where a phonetically palatalized consonant becomes, in a sense, more palatal and whether that is considered palatalization in the diachronic sense. My guess is that the diachronic sense is a bit more loose and more generally covers many different sound changes that occur in the context of front vowels. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 20:07, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

@Incnis Mrsi: You could address your comments directly to us. We're here, and listening. That might make you sound a little less rude.

But I'm not sure what you're saying: that there's no difference between the sound change and the phonetic feature, or that the difference isn't explained well? If you're saying there's no difference, please explain. And I agree that the Romance languages thing might not belong in either article. It's (metaphorically speaking) an orphan that has been looking for a home, but nobody really wants it. Maybe it should be moved to palatal consonant. — Eru·tuon 02:16, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Mouillé

I moved the section on mouillé (palatal consonants) to Palatal consonant § Mouillé, because technically it's about palatal /ɲ ʎ/, not palatalized, although these palatal consonants arose by palatalization. It should originally have been moved there, rather than here. — Eru·tuon 04:38, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

I think it might be appropriate to put it in the sound change article that you'll be creating soon. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 04:45, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I think so, although some cases are a little puzzling, like annus > año and caballum > caballo [kaβaʎo], and would be harder to integrate into the overall picture of palatalization as assimilation. — Eru·tuon 05:16, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

It would be inaccurate to characterize palatalization as assimilation, even if that is the most common form. We already have a number of examples that go against that generalization. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 06:15, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, quite right, now that I think of it. I see why my change to the intro was wrong. However, noting that palatalization is frequently assimilatory would be helpful. I think palatalization is either triggered by a palatal or front vowel, or results in a palatal or palatalized consonant or front vowel. Sometimes the sound change is triggered by a palatal but doesn't result in a palatal or palatalized consonant, and can be considered theoretically assimilatory or at least conditioned. In other cases, as above, the result is palatal, but there's no palatal conditioning environment. Noting this fact would help explain to readers why the sound change is called palatalization in both cases: in some cases it refers to the result, in others to the environment. You may be able to verify whether this generalization regarding the name is right; I'm just working from memory here. — Eru·tuon 07:46, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Note on suprasegmental palatalization

See vertical vowel system for some discussion and sources on suprasegmental palatalization in Central Chadic. I've yet to add coverage of this into the main article of the language group. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 15:28, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Another question though is whether a case where underlying representation such as /dam ʲ/ is realized as [dem] (or perhaps [dʒem]) — with possibly no phonetic palatalization — belongs in this article or under Palatalization (sound change). --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 15:32, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the additional examples. Good question; also curious how suprasegmental palatalization relates to advanced and retracted tongue root. Both involve changes in vowel height or frontness, but perhaps the difference is the part of the tongue that is moved. — Eru·tuon 19:48, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Sibilant offglide

The below message was originally posted underneath #What's so bad about /anʲa/?.

Well, I have to disagree on sibilant offglide in Russian palatalized t. Indeed, such a phenomenon is possible and quite frequent, but nevertheless it's a typical feature of some dialects that should be avoided in standard normative speech. --95.26.43.198 (talk) 17:43, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

This seems strange to me, too: Superscript [ʲ] stands for palatalization, so it doesn't make sense to use it as an example for not being phonetically palatalized. Maybe what was meant was it changes to [ˈtˢʲemə] [ˈtˢemə]? This originates from this edit by User:Vuo. — Sebastian 04:04, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Following our conversation at Talk:Semivowel#Does_offglide_belong_here.3F, Aeusoes1 just changed it, which removed what was unclear from the text, but there's one thing remaining that's confusing me: I don't see any affrication in the text anymore, while the edit summary still talk about it. — Sebastian 04:23, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

That's the point. Affrication is kind of a side issue and irrelevant to the point being made. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 15:52, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

OK, I get that. (I was confused because I thought your summary was about what you added, but it was about what you removed.) You write "when Russian "soft" consonants appear before front vowels (particularly [i]), they are unpalatalized", which was news to me, and which may be only a recent suggestion of one linguist^{Russian_phonology#cite_note-38}. Is that indeed the commonly held view nowadays? — Sebastian 19:21, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Google scholar finds 126 sources citing Padgett 2003a, 66 citing Padgett 2003b, and 110 citing the 2001 article in which they first examined and laid out these phonetic particularities of Russian. I'm not sure how many of these are critical (and therefore don't know how representative this view is among modern scholars), but I don't think it's particularly recent or even a mere suggestion. It is, according to this scholar, consistent with cross-linguistic tendencies when phonemic contrasts of palatalized and non-palatalized consonants are maintained before [i] (Irish phonology may mention a similar dynamic with "broad" and "slender" consonants). In other words, it would be kind of weird if Russian weren't this way. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 07:04, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your thorough research! Funny you should mention Irish; that's actually why I got here: I wanted to compare that with something that was a little more familiar to me. — Sebastian 06:42, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Russian: [C,"soft"] → [-palatalized] / _[V,+front]

Unfortunately, I'm still confused by the text in Other uses. It seems to me that it contradicts the examples at Russian phonology#Palatalization. All the examples show pal. there, even the only one actually written with [i], rather than [ɪ]: . — Sebastian 06:42, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

I see what you mean. More examples from other sections of Russian phonology: расчертить , жасми́н , пить , готовить . Either the IPA is wrong, or the text in this article is wrong. (My phonetic ear isn't good enough to figure out if the soundfiles have palatalized consonants before [i] or not...) — Eru·tuon 09:09, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

There's two things to consider. The first is that it might be too confusing to consistently transcribe Russian soft consonants without the palataliation marker before [i]; we already eschew transcribing the velarization marker in phonetic transcription for Russian, even though it's already there.

Padgett (2001) even points out that palatalization may come along with "other phonetic properties such as frication or burst" that help contribute to a distinction.

The second thing is that the claim Padgett makes about palatalization may not hold (or may not be as simple) for all consonants. The initial study, Padgett (2001) looked only at /b/-/bʲ/ contrasts. With a palatalized [bʲ], the primary articulator (the lips) is not affected by the palatalization; there is instead a sort of coarticulation that, Padgett finds in their informants, is missing before /i/. However, this coarticulation is trickier when the main articulator and the secondary articulator are both the tongue. As can be seen at Russian phonology#Consonants, paired coronal consonants differ in more than just palatalization, which may partially be a result of that trickiness. In that sense, although we are using brackets to indicate phonetic transcription of Russian, the transcription is actually somewhat broad in that we don't indicate all the phonetic details for each consonant.

I'm not sure what to recommend here other than to alter the wording in this article to focus more on the actual phonetic scope of Padgett (2001)'s research. Would that make it less of a contradiction with what's found in the Russian phonology article? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 17:50, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, that's a great explanation. I see your first "thing to consider" and the information you give from "In that sense, although we are using brackets" as one block of related information. IMHO such information is sorely needed in the Russian phonology article. I, for one, was so gullible to think that Russian didn't actually have velarization because it's missing in our transcriptions. Nevertheless, I feel it's good to have a broader transcription; I would assume that that would be most helpful for the majority of our readers, many of whom probably visit that article to learn how to pronounce Russian themselves.

I don't know what Padgett (20010 writes, but I feel like the above already would be a nice addition for Wikipedia. It's fascinating stuff, but it feels a bit like focusing on the motion of individual molecules in an article on statistical mechanics. The question is where it should go: In this article or in Russian phonology? One argument for this article may be that something like this may happen in other languages, such as Irish. It even would be nice for its own article, but I'm afraid that would lead to much of the same information being replicated in three articles. — Sebastian 07:25, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Better presentation of examples

I think this article can be dramatically improved if we write the examples a bit differently: (I still not exactly sure what Palatization is, I'll probably get it soon after reading the article a few times...)

1. IMHO the examples should have the palatalized and unpalatalized consonants side by side so that we see and hear the difference.

2. Examples should be given first and formost in the English language which is spoken by the readers of this WP article, even though palatalization in English does not distinguish the sound as a different consonant.

3. Several quick examples from SEVERAL languages, first of all European ones but not just, should be shown in sub sections.

4. Each consonant that can be palatalized should be under a section of its own. L - palatalized sounds so. unplalatalized so. T palatelized sounds so unpalatalized sounds so. These consonants are the ones that can be palatalized, all the other's cannot be palatalized.

I'm willing to assist if someone puts up sets of words in their language. I know how to articulate foreign accents, in many languages which I speak. I'll put it up for your native testing and then publish it in this article.פשוט pashute ♫ (talk) 08:29, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

And from reading here and in other places I'm still not convinced I fully understand what palatalization is in the case of English and Hebrew (or Russian).פשוט pashute ♫ (talk) 11:46, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm confused by your request for examples because there are several audio examples in the phonology section (for instance Russian нос, нёс). Did you not notice them, or are they not enough? — Eru·tuon 21:38, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Examples in English

The article provides a very technical description of palatization, with examples from languages that many English-speaking readers are not familiar with. After going through this article, I have no idea what palatization sounds like.

It would be very helpful if examples of (allophonic) palatization in English were provided.

I found some examples:

• pleaSe - pleaSure
• resiDue - resiDual
• analoG - analoGy

Source: https://englishphonetics.net/blog/vowel-length-palatalization.html

I'm not familiar enough with the matter to judge whether these are good examples. I'm not familiar enough with the matter to judge whether these are good examples.

A picture of the tongue position would also help to clarify "the body of the tongue is raised toward the hard palate and the alveolar ridge during the articulation of the consonant." Han-Kwang (t) 08:10, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Those are examples of Palatalization (sound change), but not of Palatalization (phonetics). Nardog (talk) 09:13, 27 March 2024 (UTC)