Palatalization (phonetics)

Palatalised
◌ʲ
IPA Number	421
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ʲ
Unicode (hex)	U+02B2

In linguistics, palatalisation /ˌpælətəlaɪˈzeɪʃən/ or palatisation may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate.

In describing the phonetics of an existing language (i.e., in synchronic descriptions), a palatalised consonant is one pronounced with a palatal secondary articulation. This means that the consonant is pronounced as if followed very closely by the sound [j] (a palatal approximant, like the sound of "y" in "yellow"). For example, in the Polish word kiedy ("when"), the letters ki represent a palatalised [k], indicated in IPA notation as [kʲ], with a superscript "j". This sound is similar to the combination of "k" and "y" in English "thank you".

The other meaning of palatalisation is encountered in historical linguistics, and refers to a sound change in which a consonant's place of articulation becomes closer to the palatal position. This change is often triggered by a following [j] sound or a front vowel. For example, in Italian, before the front vowels e and i, the letter c (which otherwise represents [k], a velar consonant), has come to be pronounced as the palato-alveolar consonant [tʃ], like English "ch" (see hard and soft C).

Palatalisation of both types is widespread across languages in the world, though its actual manifestation varies. In some languages, such as the Slavic languages, palatal or palatalised consonants are frequently referred to as soft consonants, with others called hard consonants.

The term palatalised vowel is also sometimes used, to refer to a vowel that has become fronter or closer.

Types

In technical terms, palatalisation refers to one of several things:

• A phonetic term of the secondary articulation of consonants by which the body of the tongue is raised toward the hard palate and the alveolar ridge during the articulation of the consonant. Such consonants are phonetically palatalised, and in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) they are indicated by a superscript ⟨j⟩, as with [tʲ] for a palatalised [t].

• A common assimilatory process or the result of such a process, which involves front vowels (that is, sounds with a higher second formant such as [i] and [e]) and/or the palatal approximant [j] causing nearby phones to shift towards (though not necessarily coming to) the palatal articulatory position or to positions closer to the front of the mouth.

The first may be the result of the second, but they are often different. A vowel may "palatalise" a consonant (sense 2), but the result might not be a palatalised consonant in the phonetic sense (sense 1), or the phonetically palatalised (sense 1) consonant may occur irrespective of adjacency to front vowels.

The word "palatalisation" may also be used for the effect a palatal or palatalised consonant exerts on nearby sounds, as in the history of Old French where Bartsch's law turned low vowels into [e] or [ɛ] after a palatalised velar consonant, or in the Uralic language Erzya, where the near-open low front unrounded vowel [æ] only occurs as an allophone of the open vowel [a] after a palatalised consonant, as seen in the pronunciation of the name of the language itself, [erzʲæ]. Something similar may have been the case for some or even all low vowels in Old French, which could explain the palatalisation of almost all velar plosives before /a/. However, while the process may be called palatalisation, the resulting vowel [æ] is not called a palatalised vowel in the phonetic sense. Terminology such as "palatal vowel" is found, but this is primary and not secondary articulation.

Phonetics

"Pure" palatalisation is denoted by a small superscript ⟨ʲ⟩ in IPA. This 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 articulation of otherwise apical consonants such as /t/ and /s/. It is a phonemic feature in some languages; a common misconception is that it is merely allophonic, as it is in English. Phonemic palatalisation may be contrasted with either plain or velarised articulation. In Finnic languages, Baltic languages and Slavic languages, the contrast is with plain consonants, but in Irish, it is with velarised consonants.

Phonetically palatalised consonants may vary in their exact realization. Some, but not all languages add offglides or onglides. In Russian, both plain and palatalised consonant phonemes are found in words like пальто [pɐˈlʲto], царь [tsarʲ] and Катя [ˈkatʲə]. Typically, the vowel (especially a non-front vowel) following a palatalised consonant has a palatal onglide. In Hupa, on the other hand, the palatalisation is heard as both an onglide and an offglide. In some cases, the realization of palatalisation may change without any corresponding phonemic change. For example, according to Thurneysen, palatalised consonants at the end of a syllable in Old Irish had a corresponding onglide (reflected as ⟨i⟩ in the spelling), which was no longer present in Middle Irish (based on explicit testimony of grammarians of the time).

Palatalisation can also occur as a suprasegmental feature that affects the pronunciation of an entire syllable. This is the case in Skolt Sami, a language which is unusual in contrasting suprasegmental palatalisation with segmental palatalisation (i.e., inherently palatalised consonants).

Phonology

Mechanism

Palatalisation as a sound change is usually triggered only by mid, close (high) front vowels and the semi-vowel [j]; but counterexamples to this are also found. The sound that results from palatalisation may vary from language to language. For example, palatalisation of [t] may produce [tʲ], [tʃ], [tɕ], [tsʲ], [ts], etc. A change from e.g. [t] to [tʃ] may pass through [tʲ] as an intermediate state, but there is no requirement for this to happen.

Palatalisation of velar consonants commonly causes them to front, while apical and coronal consonants are usually raised. In the process, stop consonants are often spirantised, except for the palatalised labials.

In Gallo-Romance, Vulgar Latin *[ka] became *[tʃa] very early, with the subsequent deaffrication and some further developments of the vowel. For instance:

• cattus ‘cat’ → chat /ʃa/
• calva ‘bald’ (fem.) → chauve /ʃov/
• *blanca ‘white’ (fem.) → blanche /blɑ̃ʃ/
• catēna ‘chain’ → chaîne /ʃɛn/
• carus ‘dear’ → cher /ʃɛʁ/

Early English borrowings from French show the original affricate, as chamber /ˈtʃeɪmbəɾ/ ‘(private) room’ ← Old French chambre /tʃɑ̃mbrə/ ← camera; cf. French chambre /ʃɑ̃bʁ/ ‘room’.

Historical (diachronic) palatalisation

Palatalisation may result in a phonemic split, that is, a historical change by which a phoneme becomes two new phonemes over time through phonetic palatalisation.

Old historical splits have frequently drifted since the time they occurred, and may be independent of current phonetic palatalisation. The lenition tendency of palatalised consonants (by assibilation and deaffrication) is important here. According to some analyses, the lenition of the palatalised consonant is still a part of the palatalisation process itself.

For example, Votic has undergone such a change historically, in for example *keeli → tšeeli ‘language’, but there is currently an additional distinction between palatalised laminal and non-palatalised apical consonants. An extreme example occurs in Spanish, where palatalised ('soft') g has ended up as [x]; this results from a long process where Latin /ɡ/ became palatalised to [ɡʲ] (Late Latin), then affricated to [dʒ] (Proto-Romance), deaffricated to [ʒ] (Old Spanish), devoiced to [ʃ] (16th century), and finally retracted to a velar, giving [x] (c. 1650). (See History of Spanish and ceceo for more information).

While the majority of palatalisation effects are connected with sequences with a consonant adjacent to a high front or mid front vowel or glide, palatalisation may occur spontaneously in a sense. In southwestern Romance, /l/ in word-initial clusters with a voiceless obstruent palatalised to /ʎ/, as Latin clāmāre ‘to call’ → Aromanian cl’imari /kʎimari/, Aragonese clamar /kʎamar/ → Italian chiamare /kjaˈmare/, Istriot ciamà /tʃaˈma/, and Portuguese chamar /ʃɐˈmaɾ/; in Spanish, the obstruent drops before the palatalised liquid: llamar /ʎamar/. Differently, in the former Celtic zone, Latin [kt] fricativises to [çt], vocalises to [i̯t], and in some varieties palatalises to [tʃ], e.g. Latin noctem ‘night’ → Mozarabic noxte /noçte/ → French nuit [nɥi], Portuguese noite [ˈnoj.tɨ], eastern Occitan nuèit, Catalan nit → Spanish noche, western Occitan nuèch, Romansh notg.

Such phonemic splits due to historic palatalization are common in many other languages. Some English examples of cognate words distinguished by historical palatalization are church vs. kirk, witch vs. wicca, ditch vs. dike, and shirt vs. skirt. The pronunciation of wicca as [ˈwɪkə] is a spelling pronunciation based on unfamiliarity with Old English spelling conventions (wicca was presumably [ˈwitʃːɑ] ← *wikjō̃); in the other cases, the words come from related dialects or languages (skirt from Danish) which differed in the place and degree of palatalization. More recently, the original /t/ of question and nature have come to be pronounced [tʃ] before [j] in a number of English dialects, and the original /d/ of soldier and procedure have come to be [dʒ]. This effect can also be seen in casual speech in some dialects, where Do you want to go? comes out as [dʒuː ˈwʌnə ɡoʊ], and Did you eat yet? as [ˈdɪdʒə ˈiːtʃɛt].

Examples

Palatalization has played a major role in the history of English in addition to the Uralic, Romance, Slavic, Baltic, Goidelic, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Twi, Micronesian languages and Languages of India, among many others throughout the world. In pre-Old English, for example (c. AD 400), palatalization produced new phonemes /tʃ/, /dʒ/ and /ʃ/, along with many new cases of /j/. Palatal/non-palatal alternations from this time are still visible in pairs such as speak vs. speech, and less obviously in day vs. dawn. A more recent palatalization (c. 1600) has produced extensive alternations, as in close (verb) /z/ vs. closure /ʒ/, face /s/ vs. facial /ʃ/, -ate /t/ vs. -ature /tʃ/, etc.

In Japanese, allophonic palatalization affected the dental plosives /t/ and /d/, turning them into alveolo-palatal affricates [tɕ] and [dʑ] before [i]. Japanese has only recently regained phonetic [ti] and [di] through borrowed words, and thus this originally allophonic palatalization has become lexical. A similar change has also happened in Polish and Belarusian. This would also be true about most dialects of Brazilian Portuguese if not for the strong phonotactical resistancy of its native speakers that turn dental plosives into post-alveolar affricates even in loanwords e.g. McDonalds IPA: [mɛ̞kiˈdõnɐwdʑ(is)].

In some Zoque languages, [j] does not palatalise velar consonants while it does turn alveolars into palato-alveolars. In the Nupe language, /s/ and /z/ are palatalised both before front vowels and /j/, while velars are only palatalised before front vowels. In Ciluba, /j/ palatalises only a preceding /t/, /s/, /l/ or /n/. In some variants of Ojibwe velars are palatalised before /j/, while apicals are not. In Indo-Aryan languages, dentals and /r/ are palatalised when occurring in clusters before /j/ while velars are not.

Synchronic palatalization

Palatalization may be a synchronic phonological process, i.e., some phonemes have palatalised allophones in certain contexts, typically before front vowels, and unpalatalised allophones elsewhere. Because it is allophonic, it often goes unnoticed by native speakers. As an example, compare the /k/ of English key with that of coo, or tea with took. The consonant in the first word of each pair is palatalised, but few English speakers would perceive them as distinct.

The process gets complicated when other phonological and morphological processes that delete the palatalizing sound, such as syncope or elision, make the surface realization appear to be a phonemic contrast when analysis of the deep structure shows it to be allophonic. For example, Romanian consonants are palatalised before /i/. Palatalised consonants also appear terminally as the manifestation of certain morphological markers, particularly to indicate plurality in nouns and adjectives and the second person singular in verbs. On the surface, it would appear then that ban [ban] ('coin') forms a minimal pair with bani [banʲ] The interpretation commonly taken, however, is that an underlying morpheme |-i| palatalises the consonant and is subsequently deleted.

Palatalization may also occur as a morphological process. For example, although Russian makes phonemic contrasts between palatalised and unpalatalised consonants, alternations across morpheme boundaries are normal:

• ответ [ɐˈtvʲet] ('answer') vs. ответить [ɐˈtvʲetʲɪtʲ] ('to answer')
• несу [nʲɪˈsu] ('I carry') vs. несёт [nʲɪˈsʲɵt] ('carries')
• голод [ˈɡolət] ('hunger') vs. голоден [ˈɡolədʲɪn] ('hungry' masc.)

Phonetic palatalization of a consonant often correlates with surrounding vowels. In Russian, "soft" (palatalised) consonants are usually followed by vowels that are relatively more front (that is, closer to [i] or [y]), and vowels following "hard" (unpalatalised) consonants are further back. See Russian phonology for more information.

Local uses of the word

There are various other local or historical uses of the word. In Slavic linguistics, the "palatal" fricatives marked by a háček are really postalveolar consonants that arose from palatalization historically. There are also phonetically palatalised consonants (marked with an acute accent) that contrast with this; thus the distinction is made between "palatal" (postalveolar) and "palatalised". Such "palatalised" consonants are not always phonetically palatalised; e.g., in Russian, when /t/ undergoes palatalization, a palatalised sibilant offglide appears, as in тема [ˈtˢʲemə].

In Uralic linguistics, "palatalization" has the standard phonetic meaning. /s/, /sʲ/, /ʃ/, /t/, /tʲ/, /tʃ/ are distinct phonemes, as they are in the Slavic languages, but /ʃ/ and /tʃ/ are not considered either palatal or palatalised sounds. Also, the Uralic palatalised /tʲ/ is a stop with no frication, unlike in Russian.

In using the Latin alphabet for Uralic languages, palatalization is typically denoted with an acute accent, as in Võro ⟨ś⟩; an apostrophe, as in Karelian ⟨s’⟩; or digraphs in j, as in the Savo dialect of Finnish, ⟨sj⟩. Postalveolars, in contrast, take a caron, ⟨š⟩, or are digraphs in ⟨h⟩, ⟨sh⟩.

See also

• Iotation, a related process in Slavic languages
• Soft sign, a Cyrillic grapheme indicating palatalization
• Manner of articulation
• List of phonetics topics
• Labio-palatalization
• Palatalization in Vulgar Latin
• Mouillé
• Tatar accent, Russian accent without palatalization

Bibliography

• Bynon, Theodora. Historical Linguistics. Cambridge University Press, 1977. ISBN 0-521-21582-X (hardback) or ISBN 978-0-521-29188-0 (paperback).
• Bhat, D.N.S. (1978), "A General Study of Palatalization", Universals of Human Language, 2: 47–92
• Buckley, E. (2003), "The Phonetic Origin and Phonological Extension of Gallo-Roman Palatalization", Proceedings of the North American Phonology Conferences 1 and 2, CiteSeer^x: 10.1.1.81.4003
• Chițoran, Ioana (2001), The Phonology of Romanian: A Constraint-based Approach, Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter, ISBN 3-11-016766-2
• Crowley, Terry. (1997) An Introduction to Historical Linguistics. 3rd edition. Oxford University Press.
• Lightner, Theodore M. (1972), Problems in the Theory of Phonology, I: Russian phonology and Turkish phonology, Edmonton: Linguistic Research, inc
• Pullum, Geoffrey K.; Ladusaw, William A. (1996). Phonetic Symbol Guide. University of Chicago Press.

External links

• Erkki Savolainen, Internetix 1998. Suomen murteet – Koprinan murretta. (with a sound sample with palatalised t')
• Frisian assibilation as a hypercorrect effect due to a substrate language