phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

, palatalization (, also ) or palatization is a way of pronouncing a consonant in which part of the tongue is moved close to the hard palate. Consonants pronounced this way are said to be palatalized and are transcribed in the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...

by affixing the letter ⟨ʲ⟩ to the base consonant. Palatalization cannot minimally distinguish words in most dialects of English, but it may do so in languages such as Russian, Mandarin, and Irish.

Types

In technical terms, palatalization refers to the

secondary articulation In phonetics, secondary articulation occurs when the articulation of a consonant is equivalent to the combined articulations of two or three simpler consonants, at least one of which is an approximant. The secondary articulation of such co-articu ...

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced w ...

s by which the body of the

tongue The tongue is a muscular organ in the mouth of a typical tetrapod. It manipulates food for mastication and swallowing as part of the digestive process, and is the primary organ of taste. The tongue's upper surface (dorsum) is covered by taste ...

is raised toward the hard palate and the

alveolar ridge The alveolar process () or alveolar bone is the thickened ridge of bone that contains the tooth sockets on the jaw bones (in humans, the maxilla and the mandible). The structures are covered by gums as part of the oral cavity. The synonymous ...

during the articulation of the consonant. Such consonants are phonetically palatalized. "Pure" palatalization is a modification to the articulation of a consonant, where the middle of the tongue is raised, and nothing else. It may produce a

laminal A laminal consonant is a phone (speech sound) produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue in contact with upper lip, teeth, alveolar ridge, to possibly, as ...

articulation of otherwise apical consonants such as and . Phonetically palatalized consonants may vary in their exact realization. Some languages add

semivowel In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are the c ...

s before or after the palatalized consonant (onglides or offglides). In Russian, both plain and palatalized consonant phonemes are found in words like , and . Typically, the vowel (especially a non-

front vowel A front vowel is a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages, its defining characteristic being that the highest point of the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would otherw ...

) following a palatalized consonant has a palatal onglide. In

Hupa Hupa ( Yurok language term: Huep'oola' / Huep'oolaa = "Hupa people") are a Native American people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group in northwestern California. Their endonym is Natinixwe, also spelled Natinook-wa, meaning "Peopl ...

, on the other hand, the palatalization is heard as both an onglide and an offglide. In some cases, the realization of palatalization may change without any corresponding phonemic change. For example, according to Thurneysen, palatalized consonants at the end of a syllable in

Old Irish Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic ( sga, Goídelc, Ogham script: ᚌᚑᚔᚇᚓᚂᚉ; ga, Sean-Ghaeilge; gd, Seann-Ghàidhlig; gv, Shenn Yernish or ), is the oldest form of the Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive writte ...

had a corresponding onglide (reflected as in the spelling), which was no longer present in

Middle Irish Middle Irish, sometimes called Middle Gaelic ( ga, An Mheán-Ghaeilge, gd, Meadhan-Ghàidhlig), is the Goidelic language which was spoken in Ireland, most of Scotland and the Isle of Man from AD; it is therefore a contemporary of late Old Engl ...

(based on explicit testimony of grammarians of the time). In a few languages, including Skolt Sami and many of the Central Chadic languages, palatalization is a suprasegmental feature that affects the pronunciation of an entire syllable, and it may cause certain vowels to be pronounced more front and consonants to be slightly palatalized. In Skolt Sami and its relatives ( Kildin Sami and Ter Sami), suprasegmental palatalization contrasts with segmental palatal articulation (palatal consonants).

Transcription

In the

(IPA), palatalized consonants are marked by the

modifier letter A modifier letter, in the Unicode Standard Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of ...

, a superscript version of the symbol for the

palatal approximant The voiced palatal approximant, or yod, is a type of consonant used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is j, and in the Americanist phonetic n ...

. For instance, represents the palatalized form of the voiceless alveolar stop . Prior to 1989, a subscript diacritic () and several palatalized consonants were represented by curly-tailed variants in the IPA, e.g., for and for : see palatal hook. The

Uralic Phonetic Alphabet The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) or Finno-Ugric transcription system is a phonetic transcription or notational system used predominantly for the transcription and reconstruction of Uralic languages. It was first published in 1901 by Eemil Nes ...

marks palatalized consonants by an

acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ...

, as do some Finnic languages using the Latin alphabet, as in Võro . Others use an apostrophe, as in Karelian ; or digraphs in ''j'', as in the

Savonian dialects The Savonian dialects (also called Savo Finnish)( fi, Savolaismurteet) are forms of the Finnish language spoken in Savonia and other parts of Eastern Finland. Finnish dialects are grouped broadly into Eastern and Western varieties; Savonian dial ...

of Finnish, .

Phonology

Palatalization has varying phonological significance in different languages. It is

allophonic In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ' ...

in English, but phonemic in others. In English, consonants are palatalized when they occur before front vowels or the palatal approximant, but no words are distinguished by palatalization ( complementary distribution), whereas in some of the other languages, the difference between palatalized consonants and plain un-palatalized consonants distinguish between words, appearing in a contrastive distribution (where one of the two versions palatalized or not, appears in the same environment as the other).

Allophonic palatalization

In some languages, like English, palatalization is

. Some

phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

s have palatalized allophones in certain contexts, typically before

s and unpalatalized allophones elsewhere. Because it is allophonic, palatalization of this type does not distinguish words and often goes unnoticed by native speakers. Phonetic palatalization occurs in American English. Stops are palatalized before the front vowel and not palatalized in other cases.

Phonemic palatalization

In some languages, palatalization is a distinctive feature that distinguishes two consonant

s. This feature occurs in Russian, Irish, and

Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...

, among others. Phonemic palatalization may be contrasted with either plain or velarized articulation. In many of the

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the ...

, and some of the

Baltic Baltic may refer to: Peoples and languages *Baltic languages, a subfamily of Indo-European languages, including Lithuanian, Latvian and extinct Old Prussian *Balts (or Baltic peoples), ethnic groups speaking the Baltic languages and/or originatin ...

and

Finnic languages The Finnic (''Fennic'') or more precisely Balto-Finnic (Balto-Fennic, Baltic Finnic, Baltic Fennic) languages constitute a branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by the Baltic Finnic peoples. There are around 7 ...

, palatalized consonants contrast with plain consonants, but in Irish they contrast with velarized consonants. * Russian "nose" (unpalatalized ) : "(he) carried" (palatalized ) * Irish "cow" (velarized ''b'') : "alive" (palatalized ''b'') Some palatalized phonemes undergo change beyond phonetic palatalization. For instance, the unpalatalized sibilant (Irish , Scottish ) has a palatalized counterpart that is actually

postalveolar Postalveolar or post-alveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the ''back'' of the alveolar ridge. Articulation is farther back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but n ...

, not phonetically palatalized , and the velar fricative in both languages has a palatalized counterpart that is actually palatal rather than palatalized velar . These shifts in primary place of articulation are examples of the sound change of palatalization.

Morphophonemic

In some languages, palatalization is used as a

morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology. In English, morphemes are ...

or part of a morpheme. In some cases, a vowel caused a consonant to become palatalized, and then this vowel was lost by

elision In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run toget ...

. Here, there appears to be a phonemic contrast when analysis of the deep structure shows it to be allophonic. In

Romanian Romanian may refer to: *anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania ** Romanians, an ethnic group **Romanian language, a Romance language ***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language **Romanian cuisine, traditiona ...

, consonants are palatalized before . Palatalized consonants appear at the end of the word, and mark the plural in nouns and adjectives, and the second person singular in verbs. On the surface, it would appear then that "coin" forms a

minimal pair In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, spoken or signed, that differ in only one phonological element, such as a phoneme, toneme or chroneme, and have distinct meanings. They are used to demonstrate ...

with . The interpretation commonly taken, however, is that an underlying morpheme palatalizes the consonant and is subsequently deleted. Palatalization may also occur as a morphological feature. For example, although Russian makes phonemic contrasts between palatalized and unpalatalized consonants, alternations across morpheme boundaries are normal: * ('answer') vs. ('to answer') * ('I carry') vs. ('carries') * ('hunger') vs. ('hungry' masc.)

Sound changes

In some languages, allophonic palatalization developed into phonemic palatalization by phonemic split. In other languages, phonemes that were originally phonetically palatalized changed further: palatal secondary place of articulation developed into changes in manner of articulation or primary place of articulation. Phonetic palatalization of a consonant sometimes causes surrounding vowels to change by coarticulation or

assimilation Assimilation may refer to: Culture * Cultural assimilation, the process whereby a minority group gradually adapts to the customs and attitudes of the prevailing culture and customs ** Language shift, also known as language assimilation, the prog ...

. In Russian, "soft" (palatalized) consonants are usually followed by vowels that are relatively more front (that is, closer to or ), and vowels following "hard" (unpalatalized) consonants are further back. See for more information.

Examples

Slavic languages

In many

, palatal or palatalized consonants are called soft, and others are called hard. Some of them, like Russian, have numerous pairs of palatalized and unpalatalized consonant phonemes.

Russian Cyrillic The Russian alphabet (russian: ру́сский алфави́т, russkiy alfavit, , label=none, or russian: ру́сская а́збука, russkaya azbuka, label=none, more traditionally) is the script used to write the Russian language. ...

has pairs of vowel letters that mark whether the consonant preceding them is hard/soft: /, /, /, /, and /. The otherwise silent soft sign also indicates that the previous consonant is soft.

Goidelic

Irish and

have pairs of palatalized (''slender'') and unpalatalized (''broad'') consonant phonemes. In Irish, most broad consonants are velarized. In Scottish Gaelic, the only velarized consonants are and ; is sometimes described as velarized as well.Nance, C., McLeod, W., O'Rourke, B. and Dunmore, S. (2016), Identity, accent aim, and motivation in second language users: New Scottish Gaelic speakers’ use of phonetic variation. J Sociolinguistics, 20: 164–191.

Mandarin Chinese

Palatalized consonants occur in standard

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language ...

in the form of the alveolo-palatal consonants, which are written in

pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese fo ...

as , , and .

Marshallese

In the Marshallese language, each consonant has some type of secondary articulation (palatalization, velarization, or labiovelarization). The palatalized consonants are regarded as "light", and the velarized and rounded consonants are regarded as "heavy", with the rounded consonants being both velarized and labialized.

Norwegian

Many Norwegian dialects have phonemic palatalized consonants. In many parts of Northern Norway and many areas of Møre og Romsdal, for example, the words ('hand') and /hɑnʲː/ ('he') are differentiated only by the palatalization of the final consonant. Palatalization is generally realised only on stressed syllables, but speakers of the Sør-Trøndelag dialects will generally palatalize the coda of a determined plural as well: e.g. or, in other areas, ('the dogs'), rather than *. Norwegian dialects utilizing palatalization will generally palatalize , , and .

References

Bibliography

* Bynon, Theodora. ''Historical Linguistics''. Cambridge University Press, 1977. (hardback) or (paperback). * * * * Crowley, Terry. (1997) ''An Introduction to Historical Linguistics.'' 3rd edition. Oxford University Press. * *

External links

Erkki Savolainen, Internetix 1998. ''Suomen murteet – Koprinan murretta''.
(with a sound sample with palatalized t')

{{articulation navbox Phonetics Palatal consonants Secondary articulation