reimprove date February 2011 In linguistics, a chroneme is a basic, theoretical unit of sound that can distinguish words by duration only of a vowel or consonant. The noun chroneme is derived from Greek chronos, time , and the suffixed eme , which is analogous to the eme in phoneme . However, this term does not have wide currency, and may even be unknown to phonologists who work on languages claimed to have chronemes. Most languages have differences in length phonetics length of vowels or consonants, but in the case of most languages it would not be treated phonemically or phonologically as distinctive or contrastive. Even in those languages which do have phonologically contrastive length, a chroneme is only posited in particular languages. Use of a chroneme views IPA a as being composed of two segment linguistics segments IPA a and IPA , whereas in a particular analysis, IPA a may be a considered a single segment with length one of its distinctive feature features . This may be compared to the analysis of a diphthong like IPA ai as a single segment IPA ai or as the sequence of a consonant and vowel IPA aj . For the purposes of analysis of a chronemic contrast, two words with different meaning that are spoken exactly the same except for length of one segment are considered a minimal pair . The International Phonetic Alphabet IPA denotes length by doubling the letter or by diacritics ... or may theoretically be said to have only one chroneme. Some other dialects such as Australian English ... of a chroneme. Many Indo European languages , including Classical Latin have distinctive length ... mora linguistics moraic chroneme as a phoneme also arguably called archiphoneme or epenthetic vowel consonant . The etymology of the vocalic chroneme has been traced to a voiced velar fricative ... person marker is a chroneme menee s he goes , and often in the spoken Finnish of the Helsinki ... . In Finnish, Estonian and Sami languages , there are also two allophone allophonic lengths of the chroneme ... more details
Contrastive may refer to one of several concepts in linguistics Contrast linguistics Contrastive linguistics Contrastive distribution Contrastive analysis Contrastive rhetoric Contrastive focus reduplication Contrastive stress Contrastive wa see Japanese grammar Contrastive units, a basic unit of sound Chroneme Phoneme See also Contrast disambig ... more details
Sound change In phonology and historical linguistics , cluster reduction is the simplification of consonant cluster s in certain environments or over time. In some dialects of English such as African American Vernacular English AAVE certain historical consonant clusters reduce to single consonants at the ends of words friend rhymes with Ben, and cold is homonymous with coal . In both cases, a historical cluster of homorganic consonants loses a plosive IPA fr n , ko l However, in colder, where the consonant cluster falls between vowels, the IPA d remains IPA ko ld . The similar word final reduction of IPA mb to IPA m and IPA to IPA is complete in standard English eg. lamb , long , as it is in many other Germanic languages eg. Swedish lamm , l ng . Italian phonology Italian is well known to have undergone cluster reduction, where stop clusters have become gemination geminates . For example, Victoria has become Vittoria . In other words, articulation but not chroneme length has reduced. A similar occurrence is observed in Portuguese as well, but gemination is absent. Cluster reduction also takes place in Catalan phonology Catalan , and in a similar way as it happens in English. Certain consonant clusters placed at the end of a word are reduced cent IPA sen instead of IPA sent , although they recover the reduced consonant when the cluster falls between vowels centenar IPA s nt na . This phenomenon does not exist in Valencian , though cent IPA sent and centenar IPA sente na . References Crowley, Terry. 1997 An Introduction to Historical Linguistics. 3rd edition. Oxford University Press. Category Phonetics phonetics stub ... more details
pp p kauppa kaupan p b v chroneme kalpa kalvan kk k tikka tikan k g k, j, v, chroneme ik i n tt t matto maton t d d , chroneme mato madon The realization of d varies from dialect to dialect, some ... as a chroneme , a consonant exhibited as a lengthening of the previous consonant. In terms ... person singular suffix pi is represented by a chroneme, i.e. a lengthening of the preceding vowel ... between palatalization palatalized stops, and the alternations between nasal consonant nasal chroneme ... more details
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