Palatal consonant

Abstract: The alveolar fricative consonants (/s,z/) are sometimes palatalized when they appear adjacent to a palatal consonant (/s,ž,y/) as, for instance, in “this ship” or “us yet.” Two questions about this process were studied for six speakers recorded during both spontaneous conversation and sentence reading: (1) When do these palatalizable sequences merge toward a single phonetic unit? and (2) How similar are the resulting merged sounds to the corresponding English palatal segments (/s,ž/)? Both duration and spectral measurements were made. Preliminary results indicate that an alveolar fricative palatalizes more frequently and more completely when it is followed by a palatal fricative than when it is preceded by one. In addition, some palatalizable sequences merge toward the form of a palatal segment, but others merge into acoustic forms which do not correspond to any English segment. Detailed analyses of temporal and spectral characteristics can be used to evaluate alternative accounts of palatalization in ter...

Abstract: Teachers of Russian are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of the formal study of morphology, both inflectional and derivational, for improving the student's ability to produce and recognize forms In general, however, courses which treat morphology have not dealt adequately, if at all, with the relevant aspects of the spelling system Specifically, they have not made explicit the regularities which obtain in the orthographic representation of morphemes' It is the purpose of this paper to define these regularities and comment on their pedagogical value The Russian spelling system is alphabetic That is to say, its minimal unit of representation is the phoneme2 Hence in considering its morphological aspects we are in effect attempting to determine the manner in which it reflects the changes that may occur in the phonemic composition of morphemes These are the changes traditionally termed MORPHOPHONEMIC, the most important of which are replacement of velar or dental consonant by palatal consonant, replacement of nonpalatalized consonant by its palatalized counterpart, deletion of a segment, assimilation of a segment in point or manner of articulation, and vowel reduction- With regard to orthographic representation, morphophonemic changes in Russian are either SPELLED, in which case underlying and surface alternants both appear in written forms (eg, inf pisat', lsg pigu, where s and 9 both appear), or they are UNSPELLED, in which case the underlying alternant alone appears (eg, nom sg [sat], gen sg [sAda], where d appears throughout) Spelled morphophonemic changes include replacement of velar or dental by palatal, replacement of nonpalatalized consonant by its palatalized counterpart, and deletion of a segment Unspelled changes include consonant assimilation and vowel reduction4 This difference in spelling correlates with an important difference in behavior; viz, spelled changes are NONAUTOMATIC (ie, implemented under morphological conditions), while unspelled ones are AUTOMATIC (ie, implemented under phonological conditions)5 It follows that the orthographic representation of a morphophonemic change in Russian can be predicted from its status in relation to the nonautomatic/automatic distinction6 There are only three major

Abstract: DID YOUR TEACHER SAY THIS TO YOU? Or your choir director? Have you said it? It's OK. We all say silly things, for very good reasons. We tell our adolescent children "Don't go outside without your coat. You'll catch your death of pneumonia!" even though we know it isn't really true.This is the fifth in a series of articles aimed at clarifying misconceptions about vocal production that can cause technical problems or reduced efficiency in singing. One of the reasons to call these misconceptions "myths" is that they seem to be passed down from generation to generation, like old wives' tales. We repeat them without stopping to think about whether they actually make sense. Unfortunately, this causes confusion for singers, who try to base their technique on conflicting information, or images that are at odds with physical reality.MYTH #1: "SNIFF TO RAISE THE PALATE"When I gave my first "Dispelling Vocal Myths" presentation for a breakout session at the NATS 2006 National Conference, the general consensus in the room seemed to be that while everyone in attendance knew that "sniff to raise the palate" is incorrect, it's a phrase that still gets used. (Those in the room who believed the phrase, or used it, wisely didn't let on.) This phrase is illustrative of the nature of vocal myths, and why teaching of singing is so hard.Truth #1: Sniffing Lowers the PalateLet's review of the anatomy of the velopharyngeal closure mechanism (this information should be available in any voice pedagogy textbook).1 The hard palate is a bony structure, part of the maxilla, that you can feel as you run your tongue backward from your upper teeth. Once you've reached the place that feels soft, you've reached the soft palate, also known as the velum. The posterior, inferior (back, lower) end of the velum is the uvula, which many of my patients seem to know as "the hangy thingy." The uvula itself is an indicator of the movement of the soft palate, or velum, but it doesn't actually have much to do with your voice quality. (It vibrates during snoring, so it may have something to do with the quality of your sleep.)Remember that we divide the pharynx into the nasopharynx, oropharynx, and laryngopharynx. Those are important distinctions for swallowing and other considerations which we won't discuss now. The velum separates the oropharynx from the nasopharynx, although the structure is continuous.At rest, the velum is in a position to allow air to flow through the nose and the mouth simultaneously, through both the oropharynx and nasopharynx, and down into the larynx, trachea, and finally the lungs. If you close your mouth to breathe, the velum is lowered to allow passage of all the inhaled air. So, if you sniff, you lower the palate. If you raise the palate and inhale, you will snore or snort. By the way, when singers refer to "the palate," they are almost always referring to the soft palate, as the hard palate is bone and cannot be manipulated to change the sound. However, when we talk about articulation and refer to a palatal consonant, we are referring to the hard palate.If you say or sing a nasal continuant "m," "n," or "ng," all the air will pass through the nasopharynx and exit out the nose. Your oropharynx will be occluded, either at the lips for "m," the alveolar ridge for "n," or the velum for "ng." All the other sounds of English, vowels and consonants, are produced with air passing through the oropharynx, and out the mouth. In those sounds, the velum should be raised so that it presses against the posterior wall of the pharynx, and closes off the nasopharynx. This is known as velopharyngeal closure, or closing the velopharyngeal port. Since the soundwave depends on the moving column of air, your "voice" comes out your nose on the nasal phonemes, and out your mouth on the non-nasal phonemes.Of course, there can be many variations on those non-nasal phonemes. If you say a sentence that contains many nasal phonemes, the velum may not have time to close the velopharyngeal port completely for the vowels between the nasal phonemes, and those vowels will be produced with both oral and nasal airflow. …