Talk:Voiced palatal approximant

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hi,

please help me in learning russian. need assistance from basic till advanced level

/j/ is the same as /i_^/ in X-Sampa.

Intro

What's the deal with the following paragraph?

In most languages of Central, Northern and Eastern Europe, the letter "j" denotes the palatal approximant, like the German word "Jacke". In Finnic languages such as Finnish, this is mostly without exception, but the Savo dialect also marks palatalization with 'j'. In Germanic languages, there are exceptions such as the Swedish and Norwegian digraph "tj" ([t̠ɕ], [ɕ], or [ç]).

It's talking about letters a bit too much, isn't it? Seems more appropriate for the article on the letter J. FilipeS 00:41, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

It might be because there's not much else about the sound. What if it were "In most languages of ...Europe, the palatal approximant is represented by the letter j"? Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 06:43, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I would replace that with "in many languages of Europe", or "in many languages that use the Latin alphabet", adding the examples between parentheses. FilipeS 18:24, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Jägermeister is an English word?? Poor example, using a trademark name that preserves an approximation of foreign pronunciation. It would be proper to note that that pronunciation of this phoneme does not occur "naturally" in English, but is found in borrowed words such as hallelujah. Dr.Luke.sc (talk) 16:14, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Since English has other names that preserves the approximation of a foreign pronunciations, I don't see a problem with Jägermeister. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 18:51, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Unvoiced

How common is the unvoiced palatal approximant? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.241.230.43 (talk) 21:29, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

French occurence error

The following occurence si wrong: french yeux [jø] 'eyes' The sound is in french but the example is wrong. 'yeux' (irregular plural of 'oeil') is not pronounced [jø] but [ziə] The french phonology page has: miel [mjɛl] 'honey' A french word with an initial [j] would be better, but i have none in mind right now. 88.175.74.22 (talk) 20:50, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

According to my dictionary, the transcription is correct. You either speak an irrepresentative dialect or one of us has been misinformed about French pronunciation. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 03:19, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

You are right! Mea culpa. I'm a native french, so i thought it was [ziə] because actually in french, you never hear it as [jø]. Because it's a plural, it's almost always preceded by words like "les" or "des" and you make the link between the 's' and 'yeux', even in a sentence like "Il a de beaux yeux", where the adjectives is marked with plural, you make the link with the 'x' and it's pronounced like [ziə]. I thought so because of that the pronounciation of this word as [jø] sounded very awckward to me. But i check several dictionaries, and you're right, the standalone pronouciation is [jø]. However because it can rarely be heard pronouced like that, I'd propose another word i just found in the dictionary: yaourt [jauʀt] 'yoghurt'. It is also a very common word.88.175.74.22 (talk) 10:16, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Aha, it all makes sense. The [z] is from the preceding determiner, the [i] is simply a syllabic version of [j], and [ə] is, in French, often phonetically identical to [ø]. The logic of your proposal is sound, so I've changed the French example to yaourt. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 04:12, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Yea, and for [ə] vs [ø], it's possible there is a merger in france (for me there's no difference between 'ce' and 'ceux' like it's said in the french phonology page), this is sure for my accent (lower normandy), and i don't here it in paris too, i think it applies at least to the whole north-west quarter of france, however, it's possible there's no merger in the south, i know they say [ø] for some words, what i don't know is whether they always say [ø] or if they sometimes say [ə] depending on the word. In all case, merger or not, [ə] or [ø] is an accent issue and doesn't affect the understanding, i think. 88.177.169.145 (talk) 11:08, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Saia is not a good example for Portuguese

Saia is not a good example for Portuguese because it if frequently pronounced as ['saj.ja] which can give you an impression of ['saʝa]. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Linda Martens (talk • contribs) 18:09, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

What's a better example? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 20:15, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Early 2013 reverts

Aeusoes1, all my edits here were improvements. Spanish palatal fricative is most often approximant. Japanese u isn't unrounded. And pátria is indeed good because we have a /j/ at the onset and not at the coda. At the coda, and especially in the coda before another vowel, three possible pronunciations, a fricative and non-syllabic vowels of 2 different qualities may arise, as the user above indicated in 2011. 177.98.96.111 (talk) 15:54, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

The situation with Spanish is complicated because of the different dialectal pronunciations. In the dialects that /ʝ/ is palatal, it is indeed often a palatal approximant, but there are many dialects where it is postalveolar. It is also false to say that [j] is an allophone of /ʎ/, which is why I removed it from both Spanish and Portuguese.

Your edit summary regarding saia doesn't really explain why saia is wrong. Even if it is syllabified as sai-a, that would make it [saj.ɐ] rather than [ˈsa.jɐ]; the palatal approximant is still there either way. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 16:32, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I said it was among the allophones for the actual phoneme. How in the world is that wrong?

I thought yeísmo made this realization an allophone in both languages. If yeísmo's [j] isn't an allophone, then what it is? O.o

No, dude. It may be [sai̯.ɐ] (according to kwami, a coda glide is different from the second vocalic element of a diphthong), [saɪ̯.ɐ] and even [ˈsa.ʝɐ] (as fortition for [ˈsaj.jɐ]). Pátria is necessarily [ˈpatɾjɐ], what is wholly different.

BTW, since you are an expert in this field and we are in an article about a glide, I would want to ask, is the bilabial approximant an equivalent to [ʉ̯]? Because AFAIK glide equivalents to [ɨ̯] in Indigenous American languages are reported to be [ɰ]-like, so it is as velar as, to say, English and Japanese double-ues. Or, if it is not velar, then what the approximant that is equivalent to [ɨ̯] would it be?

Also, is the uvular approximant an equivalent to [ɐ̯]? It is a common vocalization in European languages with an uvular rhotic. 177.98.96.111 (talk) 17:24, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Yeísmo dialects are basically losing /ʎ/ so that there can't be any allophones of /ʎ/ because there is no /ʎ/. In dialects that do have /ʎ/, AFAIK [j] is never an allophone of it.

In a number of Western Romance languages, the glide formation process that would turn /i/ to [j] is blocked by consonant clusters so that French nier is [nje] but prier is [pri.e] or [pri.je]. I would think that Portuguese is no different, so perhaps a different example would be in order.

I know the uvular approximant doesn't have the same phonetic relationship with [ɐ̯] that the other vowels have with their corresponding approximants. That's more of a particularity with German. I don't think there's much agreement on the relationship between high vowels other than the front and back ones and corresponding approximants. It may be that it's a lot more language-dependent than the front and back high vowels. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 19:48, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Portuguese doesn't lose /ʎ/, at least no one interprets it this way. I would say, explaining it to a layman, that it becomes kind of a "moribund" or a "phantom" e.g. it has a continuum of disappearance from pronunciation, but we still know that it is there (and it has no phoneme to merge to as [j] is a glided vowel in Portuguese, it is just "lazy" pronunciation). In Brazilian Portuguese, it gets [ɫ] and [j] as allophones in colloquial, non-educated speech sometimes (and ell precedes yod in our ieísmo), and even more so at "true vernacular" registers, such as caipira, when [ʎ] is only used when all three sounds contrast. I tried to the max finding a source from a site I got while browsing in father's home about this issue, but Google doesn't show me it now where I am.

Certainly, Spanish and Portuguese both do have TONS of cognate words, and I expect many to come from evolution down from Vulgar Latin, with a consonant + liquid + glide + vowel combination. It is a boring exercise to try to catch words with it, but it is certainly not uncommon. Pétreo and supérfluo are the easiest from my POV. In French, though, the only uvular rhotic and the coalescence of [lj] to [ʎ] (as in general Brazilian Portuguese Bíblia) may have given an enormous problem to the development of such words the way they are for Iberian language-speakers. 177.65.49.210 (talk) 11:37, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

os olhos

Why is the first word of the Brazilian Portuguese example "os olhos" rendered as [ujˈz]? As per my question at Portuguese phonology#Epenthesis in Brazilian Portuguese, it doesn't seem to correlate to what that article says. — Sebastian 15:34, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

It now has [ujˈzɔj.ju], but shouldn't it end in a [s] or [ʃ] or something? --JorisvS (talk) 09:33, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Do not undo the alveolo-palatal approximant

The UPSID officially has it in its inventory, which is called voiced palato-alveolar approximant. The Young Prussian (talk) 14:30, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

@The Young Prussian: Please tell us on which pages of Larsen & Pike (1949), Ochoa Peralta (1984), Maddieson (1984), and Maddieson & Precoda (1990), and on which webpage on web.phonetik.uni-frankfurt.de, one can verify the claim that an alveolar-palatal approximant occurs in Huastec. Nardog (talk) 14:33, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

http://web.phonetik.uni-frankfurt.de/S/S0571.html The Young Prussian (talk) 14:35, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Okay, that's one out of five, and it says "palato-alveolar", not "alveolo-palatal". Nardog (talk) 14:36, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Maddieson and Precota were responsible for publishing the UPSID Huastec inventory, based on the work of Larsen & Pike, Ochoa Peralta. https://phoible.org/inventories/view/360 The Young Prussian (talk) 14:47, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

That leads back to my question: on which pages do Larsen & Pike and Ochoa Peralta say what they phonemicize as /y/ is alveolo-palatal? I'm asking because I wasn't able to confirm. Nardog (talk) 14:51, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

I also can't access the Larsen & Pike's entire document, but it seems to be a proper interpretation of the UPSID from Larsen & Pike. The Young Prussian (talk) 15:07, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

I can, and, as I've said, they say nothing about the articulation of /y/. The place and manner of articulation are only implied by the (non-IPA) symbol itself. Nardog (talk) 15:08, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

https://mediateca.inah.gob.mx/repositorio/islandora/object/tesis%3A1949

Ha! I found, Larsen & Pike really don't make the articulation of /y/ explicit, but Ochoa Peralta does, pages 33 and 34, both voiced and voiceless as "alveopalatal" (alveolo-palatal). Did you see, I got it, I won it. The Young Prussian (talk) 15:23, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Someone didn't read my summary. And there is no such thing as winning. Nardog (talk) 15:26, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

It's your own interpretation that Ochoa Peralta is ambiguous, it seems pretty clear to me. The Young Prussian (talk) 15:31, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Trask (1996: 19):

alveopalatal [...] 1. [rare] A cover term including both palato-alveolar and alveolo-palatal. 2. See palato-alveolar. NOTE: This second use, while not rare, is objectionable.

Pullum & Ladusaw (1996: 204):

The term alveopalatal used by Gleason, Pike, and Smalley corresponds to the IPA's palato-alveolar.

Fromkin et al. (2000: 502):

postalveolar: active tongue blade to passive behind alveolar. (When the passive place is specifically the back part or corner of the alveolar ridge, this is also called palatoalveolar or alveopalatal.) [...] The alveolo-palatal place lies between alveolar and palatal; the active articulator is the blade of the tongue. Note that this is different from palatoalveolar or alveopalatal (see above).

Nardog (talk) 15:52, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africada_alveopalatal_sorda

And Trask himself places the use of the word directed at the palato-alveolar as something objectionable, but even so, this is irrelevant, because most languages in the world cannot differentiate the alveolo-palatal articulation from the palato-alveolar, and Huastec is within this majority, and also in any case, there is no source that places Huastec's /y/ as being a defaut and blank palato-alveolar ɹ̠, All sources indicate a pre-palatal articulation, be it properly alveolo-palatal, or a super palatalized palato-alveolar but which bizarrely is not platalized enough for an alveolo-palatal, sources that place /y/ as being purely palatal or purely palato-alveolar place it for reasons of simplicity, which is very common in the study of indigenous languages. The Young Prussian (talk) 16:11, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

And it's not just clear to me, to UPSID too, "palato-alveolar" was probably for simplicity's sake, since most languages have the alveolo-palatal and palato-alveolar articulation as the same, with the exception of some Caucasian languages that contrast these two. The Young Prussian (talk) 15:36, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

And how can one verify what UPSID calls "palato-alveolar" is actually alveolo-palatal? Nardog (talk) 14:35, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

http://web.phonetik.uni-frankfurt.de/L/L2008.html Here, the called voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant fricative should be alveolo-palatal, apparently the website's database does not differentiate between them. The Young Prussian (talk) 14:44, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

If they don't differentiate between them then how do you know j_ in Huastec is definitely alveolo-palatal? Nardog (talk) 14:56, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Because here it is represented by the same symbol as the palatal approximant, which indicates that it is closer to the alveolo-palatal articulation ɹ̠ʲ than the standard palato-alveolar ɹ̠, just as all alveolo-palatal consonants can be represented by adding the sum symbol to the corresponding palatal consonant on the chart. The Young Prussian (talk) 15:05, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree with this. Nardog may be correct on the point of uniqueness, but the phoneme is clearly attested in the literature and should not be removed from the article.

Re: uniqueness, though... it's impossible to prove a negative, and I can't find anything else in the literature about this, so I'm not sure what the Wikipedia criteria are for such a situation, but it seems to me that if no one can turn up evidence of any other language as having such a a phone(me), it's fine for the article to say that Huastec is unique in this regard. Brusquedandelion (talk) 07:40, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

And what makes you believe that alveopalatal here is synonymous with alveolo-palatal and not with palato-alveolar, which Trask says is the more common definition? Nardog (talk) 15:09, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Trask does not say that the most common definition of alveopalatal is palato-alveolar, only that it is not rare, while it is suspicious. Furthermore, it would not make sense to represent a palato-alveolar segment with /j/ or /y/, showing that the segment is more dorsal than in the umbrella-group of post-alveolars (and being obligatorily laminal), removing the possibility of any ambiguity in Ochoa Peralta's definition. The Young Prussian (talk) 17:09, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

I do not see how calling one definition "rare" and another "not rare" is not equivalent to saying that the latter is more common. Nardog (talk) 17:39, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

If it were common, Trask would be using common, not "not rare", Trask specifically says that the definition is not common, and it is also not rare, furthermore he clearly points out that even though it is not rare, it is suspect. The first definition, then, is much more possible for the case of Huastec /y/, in addition to being more reliable. The Young Prussian (talk) 17:51, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

And what makes you believe that alveopalatal here is synonymous with alveolo-palatal and not with palato-alveolar

Refer to the Wikipedia page on the Alveolo-palatal consonant, where, in the lead, it states that synonymous terms include alveolopalatal, alveo-palatal or alveopalatal. This has also been the sum total of my practical experience dealing with phonologists as well: I have never heard alveo-palatal used to mean anything other than alveolo-palatal. Brusquedandelion (talk) 04:31, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

I am searching in the phonology of Australian English, but also other dialects of English, for any possibility of allophony that performs /j/ at a more advanced point of articulation. The Young Prussian (talk) 17:23, 8 February 2024 (UTC)