Talk:mancikka

Ala-Laukka pronunciation

@Thadh, vowel reduction happens in the 2nd syllable as well. I'm not sure, how to transcribe it in IPA: Wikipedia article on vowel reduction mentions that IPA lack specific characters for this case. Kuznetsova uses ĭ̥, which breaks the IPA macros.
Palatalization is apparently not phonemic and can be mostly deducted from the kirjakeeli form. Though not showing it might be confusing in the words like paljo, which is pronounced IPA^(key): /palʲːŭ/ (the last sound is reduced u).
Vowel reduction is phonemic to some extent. The most obvious example would be partitive case for a-words: IPA^(key): /koirə/ (NOM) vs IPA^(key): /koira/ (PTV). --KirillW (talk) 20:19, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

@KirillW: There is officially the symbol ◌̆ for extra-short vowels (which corresponds with a reduced vowel), but I think it's far too specific for non-phonetic IPA. I think just the V > schwa reduction should be given in the phonemic transcription. Thadh (talk) 13:32, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

@Thadh: I am not sure it is a good approximation, because these vowels don't loose its quality completely. You could see the difference for yourself: for this you need to start pronouncing the vowel, but quickly exhale instead. Try words like nappu, tyttö or kuppi. Front-row vowels and, especially, /i/ will add some palatalization to the preceding consonant as well, i.e. short /i/ would act similarly to a soft sign. In Kuznetsova's thesis there's section 3.9 with some details on this; especially interesting is example (21), where informant (whom I have mentioned already as a person who tried to systematize his language himself) calls these vowels "half-vowels".

Could it be reasonable to give such vowels in parenthesis? I'm not sure if this a part of IPA or just a relatively commonly used "extension". It might convey the nature of these sounds. --KirillW (talk) 16:02, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

I think we're getting into detail too much - mancikka is pronounced as something like /ˈmɑnt͡sikːə/, [ˈmɑnt͡sʲĭkʲ(ːə)], but I'm not confident enough to even start adding phonetic pronunciations, especially unsourced. We could come back to the phonetics later, when we've finished the morphological part of this project (perhaps with an automatic template?), but I think the phonemic pronunciation as it is now (except the geminate sign, which I'll be fixing this evening) is okay, isn't it? Thadh (talk) 17:55, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

Ok, I see your point. I agree that it's better to revisit phonetics later. --KirillW (talk) 18:05, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

@KirillW: I just realised that the second vowel (i) should probably reduce to a schwa (/ə/; see your overview rule 2b). Is this correct? Because that I should probably note. Thadh (talk) 20:59, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

@Thadh: you're right, should be a schwa, but probably it happens after the last vowel is lost completely... This case (along with 2 others) is explained on p. 109 of Kuznetsova's thesis. --KirillW (talk) 18:02, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

@KirillW: I'm a bit hesitant to give the schwas that are derived from {i, o, ö, u, y}, they seem to be very variant and open a door to many more problems, like deciding whether to give vowel deletion in phonemic transcription or not. I propose just transcribing {a, ä, e} reduction, since these are most often the source of deletions (so we take the middle of the reduction pattern V > ə > ∅), but I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, since I'm very unsure of this. Thadh (talk) 20:15, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

@Thadh: Yes, I totally see the problem and it's kind of expected. I'm not sure as well on what route to take. Could that be a viable option to not add Ala-Laukaa pronunciation altogether at this moment? The guide to Ala-Laukaa pronunciation I'm compiling now might allow to make a more informed decision in the future. --KirillW (talk) 17:43, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

@KirillW: I would prefer to do give them, because they are often grounds for the spelling: The entry neegla, for example, would look very strange with only the Soikkola pronunciations, because they aren't phonemic, even though Ingrian is (somewhat) phonemically spelled. We could alternatively decide that the schwa isn't phonemic enough, and just give the full vowel (which would also make the comparison with the extinct dialects better, since we don't know if they had vowel reduction). Of course if you think that the way I'm going now will only lead to incorrect or useless information, I'll stop adding the pronunciations. Thadh (talk) 18:32, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

@Thadh: I've reviewed Kuznetsova's thesis on this matter (yet again). There's a table 31 (p. 100), where "phonological interpretation" (not sure about this term in English) for all the reduced vowels is just a vowel. A side note: long vowels in all non-initial syllables are also considered "phonologically short" (at least for Soikkola dialect, see 2.1 at p. 57). Regarding /ə/, it is part of a vowel system for all but Northern subdialects, as described in section 3.9 (p. 163). Hope it helps.

On the extinct dialects I could get more information on Saturday. Though there's still a backlog of questions since the last Saturday.

All in all, since I am not a professional linguist, I can only share data I already have and question Mehmet Muslimov. In the end the one who does the job is right :) --KirillW (talk) 20:15, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

@KirillW: I think it may be a good idea to let reduction rest for now (and maybe give it in phonetic transcription when we get to that), and give Ala-Laukaa vowels as full - reduction seems to be both predictable and variable among speakers and dialects. About long vowels: Kuznetsova seems to interpret long vowels as just a pitch rather than length, but that's some hardcore phonetics, not anything we may actually need. Note that Wiktionary is rather phonemic in its nature, it strives to simplification (and generalisation) over maximal description. Thadh (talk) 20:49, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

@KirillW Since you don't seem to oppose this idea, I'll get to changing. Thadh (talk) 11:11, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

@Thadh: We agreed with Mehmet on Saturday that he would give his opinion on this here himself. The problem is that I haven't sent him a link :( I'll do it now anyway. --KirillW (talk) 14:40, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

@KirillW: Sure, I can revert my changes any moment, nothing's set in stone on here :) Thadh (talk) 14:50, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Also we've questioned above how this would compare to the extinct dialects. Mehmet has explained that in Hevaha vowel reduction has happened in non-initial syllables, but it hasn't become phonemic. In Ylä-Laukaa there's not vowel length difference in non-initial syllables. So the short/reduced vowel opposition is a distinctive feature of Ala-Laukaa dialect (shared by most of the speakers of this dialect) --KirillW (talk) 14:58, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

I'm going to compile the information necessary to derive Ala-Laukka pronunciation from spelling here: Appendix:Ala-Laukka_pronunciation. Not sure about the timeline, though.