Talk:Sonority hierarchy

Semivowels
(copied from Everything2 and posted here by the original author, Ryan Gabbard (elwethingol of Everything2))

What about semivowels? Where do they fall on the scale? neatnate 09:55, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Semivowels are basically just short vowels (more precisely, non-syllabic vowels). High semivowels = high vowels, low semivowels = low vowels. Peace. - ishwar User_talk:Ish_ishwar 06:11, 2005 Mar 14 (UTC)


 * Semivowels are officially classed as approximant consonants, unless you're talking about within diphthongs, which would be an element of the nucleus rather than part of an onset or coda. What are low semivowels? Coyne025 14:16, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

How about sonorous voices?
Hi peoples, why is there no article about sonorous? i have no idea what this page has to do with it. Thnx

Yes, I found this trying to look up what a "sonorous voice" would be. This article has nothing to do with that, yet I am redirected here. I don't know enough about the topic to even start the article I am actually looking for. Tenbergen (talk) 19:51, 30 November 2009 (UTC)


 * It seems to me that the everyday, nontechnical sense of the words "sonorous" and "sonority" are more suitable to a dictionary than to an encyclopedia.  I don't know what we would say about them here.  Maybe we should have a disambiguating interwiki link to Wiktionary? --Jim Henry (talk) 16:10, 19 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Maybe something like:


 * This page is about the linguistics concept of sonority. For the nontechnical sense of the word "sonorous", see the Wiktionary entry on the word.


 * ...Also maybe there should be a disambig link for the band named "Sonorous" as well. --Jim Henry (talk) 16:17, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Exceptions to the Sonority Sequencing Principle
In english as well as other germanic languages there are a lot of words beginning with sp, st etc., which obviously violate the sonority hierarchy. Are there any "explanations" for this, or at least some attempts to make it fit into the theory? --Schuetzm 18:54, 9 May 2005 (UTC)


 * The best explanation I know of is simply to say that sibilants are best treated as an exception. 84.70.37.244 20:23, 3 May 2006 (UTC)


 * In phonology we studied the idea of a phonotactic "index," which would be a segment or natural class of segments that can be added to word boundaries, such as sonorants in French (no good examples come to mind) or /s/ in English. In essence this is saying the same thing as /s/ is best treated as an exception, but it at least gives a little more info behind the idea. Coyne025 14:13, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Sound change
Can a sound change violate the sonority hierarchy? --84.61.62.55 12:11, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Categorisation
I added some categories here, but I'm sure there's at least one more set of categories that I missed. If anyone knows what they are, feel free to put them in

-- TimNelson 13:02, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, what about approximants??? Where exactly do they fit in?201.37.64.244 17:32, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Approximants are covered by liquids and (nonsyllabic) high vowels in the chart. —Angr 18:48, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

This age is linked to from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanlab, refering to the Trance group named 'Sonorous'. I'm a tad confused why. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.109.145.97 (talk) 19:38, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

-- Priff895 (talk) 22:07, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

I was also wondering about where some other places of articulations would be placed, so I did a bit of searching, and I found 2 documents that might help fill in the missing categories, but I haven't looked over them completely. I hope this might help to fill in some of the missing details.

"The Sonority Scale: Categorical or Gradient?" "Quantifying the Sonority Hierarchy"

Questions
Hello. Congratulations for the article. I have some questions about it: It is written:

"In English, the sonority scale, from lowest to the highest, is the following: p t k] [b d g] [f θ] [v ð z] [s] [m n] [l] [r] [i u] [e o] [a"


 * Shouldn't it be: [f θ s] [v ð z] [m n ŋ] [l] [r] [j w] [i u], or maybe [f θ] [v ð] [s z] [m n ŋ] [l] [r] [j w] [i u]?
 * How about: [tʃ dʒ], [ʃ ʒ], and [h]?

Thanks for reading this message. Best wishes!--Alpinu (talk) 00:21, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

My intro linguistics text doesn't go into this much detail. Can someone who knows a better source place [tʃ dʒ], [ʃ ʒ], and [h] into the chart on the page? Ryan 1729 (talk) 06:28, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

This list doesn't have [j] either Ryan 1729 (talk) 06:36, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Origin of concept
Can someone track down the origin of the concept and term in modern linguistics? LokiClock (talk) 01:05, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

HI PEOPLE!!! isn't there a meaning of sonority for music? I don't think i can find it here! please correct me if i am wrong. have a nice day bye :D —Preceding unsigned comment added by 14.136.44.158 (talk) 08:53, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Nasals
The chart on this page assigns nasals the feature +CONT. I've never seen a situation where this is the appropriate analysis. I have always understood nasals to be defined by the values -CONT and +SON. There doesn't seem to be a source for the chart on the page anyways. As long as it doesn't correspond to any reference can we change it or find something to cite? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.17.10.66 (talk) 16:08, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Delayed release
In the table with distinctive features, the use of "delayed release" is inconsistent with the description at Delayed_release_(feature): that page claims that the feature separates affricates from fricatives, not fricatives from (oral) stops. According to, "delrel" is "−" for oral stops, "+" for affricates, and "0" for everything else. neatnate (talk) 01:49, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Vowel backness
Could sb. please add whether, regarding the horizontal axis, back vowels (o) more sonorous than front ones (e)? Thanks in advance.--Backinstadiums (talk) 12:01, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

'Ecological patterns in sonority'
Citations aside, this entire section is basically a meme. Nicodene (talk) 19:58, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

"Complex Plosives"
The two linked sources (3 and 4) for the Sonority Scale table are dead links, and upon checking them with the Wayback Machine, one can find that the table was copied verbatim from there, and there are no other explanations at the linked pages. However, a publication named "Phonological analysis: A functional approach" is mentioned. I've managed to get a look at a copy at a revised edition of said publication (ISBN: 1556710674), and it's possible to find that the same table was copied verbatim from page 149 of said publication.

There isn't further explanation along with the table as to what "complex plosives" are, other than a hint ("complex, e.g., aspirated, plosives"), and that is the only occurrence of the term across the whole book. There are, however, some further hints scattered around the book as to what "complex consonants" might be:

"(...) complex consonants, those with aspiration, glottalization, prenasalization, palatalization, labialization, etc. (...)" "(...) or any complex consonant, e.g., labiovelars, alveopalatals, voiceless sonorants, retroflexed consonants (...)" "Consonants with modifications like aspiration or glottalization, being more complex, are considered stronger than their simpler counterparts, and those allophones tend to occur in stronger consonant positions, i.e., syllable initial."

So, this gives a decent idea as to what a "complex consonant" might be: co-articulated consonants, secondary articulation points (eg, palatalisation, glottalisation, etc.), aspirated consonants, prenasalised consonants, etc. That would contradict the statement on this article that English has no complex plosives, as aspirated voiceless plosives are word-initial allophones for voiceless plosives across many English dialects.

I find that very unsatisfactory, though, as that publication seems to not even be the source of the term "complex plosive"; the definition of such term is nowhere to be found within Wikipedia, and a quick web search mostly leads back to this article itself, a Reddit page that points to this article, and some academic publications that use the term but do not define it. There is a footnote at the same page as the table that says "For a similar notion in terms of degree of stricture, see E. Pike 1954.", but I haven't managed to even find what that might be. Tanshoku (talk) 17:18, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

broken or innacessible links
too many links seems to be unavailable. Stjohn1970 (talk) 16:41, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Nasals as continuants
In the table, nasals are described as +continuant. Nasals are not continuants. See the relevant article. Flawja (talk) 20:49, 5 June 2024 (UTC)