Symbology
[c]
What is a voiceless palatal stop?
Frequency bands that correlate to a vowel's height, backness, and rounding.
What are formants?
These four English consonants can be syllabic.
What are l̩, n̩, m̩, and ɹ̩?
Speakers in the western US feel there was no need to distinguish these back vowels.
What is the cot-caught merger? /ɑ/ = /ɔ/
MIT Linguist and political thinker responsible for the theory of Universal Grammar
Who is Noam Chomsky?
What is a voiced lateral fricative?
This politically charged word originated as a term used by linguists when discussing nouns.
What is gender?
This fronted realization of English /r/ is often treated as a speech impediment.
What is the labiodental approximate /ʋ/?
Most Americans felt it was better if these synonyms for dad and annoyance rhymed, though NYC sometimes disagrees.
What is the father-bother merger? /ɑ/ = /ɒ/
This alien-centric film stars Amy Adams as a linguistics professor.
What is Arrival?
[ɰ]
What is a velar approximate?
Phonemes that share a place of articulation are said to be this.
What is homorganic?
This word stems from Old English hlǣfdīge, meaning roughly 'bread-maker'
What is 'lady'?
In the US, you might mix up a revolutionary thinker with a revolutionary musician.
What is the unstressed vowel merger? Lennon = Lenin
The Bantu languages are considered to be part of what phylum?
What is Niger-Congo?
[t̼] or [p̺]
What is a voiceless linguolabial stop?
A unit of time equal to or shorter than a syllable
What is a mora?
When /ɑj/, but not /aw/, is raised before voiceless consonants, it is called this, contrasting with its neighbor to the north.
What is American Raising?
After an incident in a china shop, some might have trouble distinguishing the perpetrator from the victim.
What is the bull-bowl merger? /ʊɫ/ = /owɫ/
This Linguist, whose Altas of North American English largely defines our understanding of NA dialects, passed away in December of 2024.
Who is William Lobov?
[ʩ]
What is a voiceless velopharyngeal fricative?
Type of lenition in which a phoneme that would usually involve the tongue and/or mouth no longer does.
What is debuccalization?
The four English diphthong phonemes with high-front end points.
What are ɪj, ej, aj, and ɔj?
American intro phonetics courses often must teach a rule so students can distinguish these vowels, even if it isn't entirely true.
What is the commA-Strut merger?
Michele Obama among others have this r-induced sound change. When only one letter is affected, it goes unnoticed, but ire can be raised when it spreads further.
/stɹ/ → /ʃtʃɹ/