Talk:Slovene phonology

Labial-velar approximants and syllable structure

Citation from this article:

• "Thus, vsi may be pronounced as disyllabic [uˈsi] or monosyllabic [ʍsi]."

(And simlarly in article Slovene language, using the same example.)

In my understanding the claimed monosyllable [ʍsi] contradicts the transcriptions [wˈzéːti] and [w̥ˈsɛ̀] in Greenberg (2006:18), in which the IPA symbol for primary stress [ˈ] seems to indicate that there is a syllable that starts immediately after the labial-velar approximant, and the approximant therefore either forms a syllable of its own or is "extrasyllabic," depending on phonological theory. I think we should either cite a better source and elaborate more on Slovene syllable structure, or stop claiming that [ʍsi] is monosyllabic. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 16:36, 20 April 2019 (UTC)

Pronunciation of "od"

In the pronunciation v. orthographic conparison at the end of the article, the word "od" is shown as being pronounced [ɔd]. Why isn't the D devoiced? The following phoneme is /n/, a consonant which I don't think has been described as voiced in the article. Bearsca (talk) 13:51, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

It's proclitic, with no open juncture between od and njiju, and so [ɔd] is correct. Doremo (talk) 14:15, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Allophones of ⟨v⟩ and other changes I made

Phonetic alphabet used in SP2001 clearly separates the sound of ⟨v⟩ if preceded by a vowel and followed by a consonant and the sound of it if preceded and followed by a consonant, which are in this article both written as [w]. For the first sound, a marking [u̯] (bilabial u) is used but for the latter one, [w] is used. Unfortunately, I don't have access to Handbook of the IPA, but according to [this source] (unfortunately in Slovene), [u] is used for transcribing [u̯] and [w] for [w]. The transcription of [w] is thus correct, but that isn't true for [u̯]. However, [u] also isn't completely correct as the sound is actually a semivowel (but the other one is pure sonorant). The writer of the linked source says that the issue has not been yet addressed and he also didn't really come up with a solution. I am not an expert in phonetics, so I don't think I'm eligible to find a solution. However, I do speak Slovene, so I will write some major features of [u̯] that are listed in the linked source and on SP2001:

• The sound is a bilabial semivowel, often referred to as bilabial u.
• It appears when ⟨v, l⟩ are preceded by a vowel and followed by a consonant (even if the vowel is in the word before it, such as in bi ušla); it is also sometimes written with ⟨u⟩ (nauk).
• It only appears as the second vowel in diphthongs.

In the Slovene version of the article, [uʷ] is used. If you can come up with a better representation of the sound, please let me know. Garygo golob (talk) 12:41, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

As requested, I am also starting the conversation about the recent changes that I made that were reverted. I apologize, I rarely write articles on English Wikipedia and I mostly stick to the Slovene one and usually isn't necessary to first start a debate there. Some of the changes that I made can be found in the rules section of SP2001 (available [here] (pages 139–143). In it are the following allophones the article is missing:

• Soft /l, n/, which appear when ⟨lj, nj⟩ is followed by a consonant. The reduction is noted in the article, but palatalization isn't mentioned. Other way of pronunciation the sequences is as long /lː, nː/.
• /ə/, similarly to /əɾ/ also appears in sequences with other sonorants except j, but please keep in mind that ⟨v, l⟩ become semivowels in that case. The only case when schwa is stressed apart from /əɾ/ is /əl/ (Vltava), but schwa that is not stressed also occurs when followed by ⟨m, n⟩ (tovarn, film).
• Judging by the fact that this is listed in SP2001, /e̞, o̞/ have been widely accepted to occur in sequences ⟨ej, ov, ol⟩.
• And of course the problem listed at the start of the section.

I did some more research and I found [this article] (in Slovene) that is more relevant and it includes labiodental plosives and nasal and lateral plosives as well.
I also think that it would be better if we at least note that some research shows that ⟨r⟩ is pronounced as /r/, but that most speakers reject this pronunciation and transcription as /ɾ/ is favoured. Doremo, I would also like you to cite the reference where you found this, because I cannot find such an experiment anywhere and I could use it on Slovene Wikipedia. Thank You. I again apologize for my impatience. Garygo golob (talk) 15:45, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Transcription varies. If you are a Slovene speaker, you can listen to the audio samples of ɾ and r to judge which is most appropriate for Slovene. Doremo (talk) 17:08, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

I listened to both of them. /ɾ/ sounds unnatural to me and I wasn't even able to replicate the sound accurately while the trill sounds excessive and too long. According to the research that I was referring, trill in Slovene usually touches the gum twice, not multiple times like in the audio sample. But I am not an expert in phonology, so I don't really know which transcription is more appropriate to use. Garygo golob (talk) 18:27, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

There are probably better samples of [ɾ] and [r] available on YouTube (e.g., on videos on how to pronounce Spanish, where they are contrastive phonemes). Pronunciation of almost any phoneme will vary somewhat from speaker to speaker (in this case, single tap, double tap, etc.); I even know some Slovenes that pronounce r as [ʁ] (but this is usually characterized as a speech defect rather than a pronunciation variant). It should also be borne in mind that r will often appear as a "lazy transcription" because it is available on keyboards; some American linguistic systems also transcribe [ɹ] as r simply for convenience. Doremo (talk) 18:59, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

OK, but what about other issues? Garygo golob (talk) 19:02, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Peter Herrity's Slovene: A Comprehensive Grammar offers a good overview of these issues, including allophonic variants. Doremo (talk) 19:16, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Jurgec (2007) references

@Garygo golob, following your edit yesterday there are two Jurgec (2007) sources in the article bibliography. I have edited to make them (2007a) and (2007b); could you go through the article and choose the appropriate source for each of the short footnotes (the {{harvcoltxt}} templates)? There's a short explanation of what to do here. Thanks, Wham2001 (talk) 18:32, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

I fixed it. Thank you for your help. Garygo golob (talk) 20:17, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks! Wham2001 (talk) 21:08, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Toporšič (2001) and Šolar (1950) are also lacking full citation. Nardog (talk) 22:00, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

I've fixed the first (it's a pretty clear typo for Toporišič 2001), but no idea about the second. Wham2001 (talk) 06:38, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

Fixed. It was quite a hassle to find which paper by Srebot-Rejec it was referring to and where it came from! Nardog (talk) 08:05, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

About the help page

Which of these new changes should be included in the help page Help:IPA/Slovene? I have left a more thorough opinion on its talk page, however there are one more thing that I forgot to mention. It would be great to also add geminated consonants, but there is a lot of them and they can also be pronounced as non-geminated consonants. Therefore, I suggest these are transcribed as non-geminated counterparts to keep it simple. Garygo golob (talk) 07:18, 4 July 2022 (UTC)