User:Adept-eX/Sandbox

=Phonology and Phonetics for Vocaloid users= Vocaloid being a musical tool who attempts to rebuild the speech and expressive elements of a singing voice, the phonologic and phonetic aspect are important aspects behind it, due this sooner or later, the user can't avoid to bump with this in a given time. For that reason, the users must be aware that some phonological and phonetic knwoledge can be required.

This article is an simplified attempt to help to user to understand the phonogical and phonetic terms and definitions that he can encounter. This guide is focused more in the sound aspect of phonology/phonetic than in the technical definitions

Obstruent
Obstruents is a kind of consonant sound produced by obtruction total or partial of the airflow in the vocal track.

The obstruent can be voiced or unvoiced, this mean they can produced with vibration of the vocal chords or not, respectively. The IPA's chart usually groups the consonant in voiceless-voiced pairs. The voiced obstruents due the vibration of the vocal chords, have a characteristic buzzing when are compared agains their voiceless counterparts (Examples). In the coloquial speech isn't weird to change the voiceless consonants by their voiced counterparts when these are in a voiced context (example: intervowel) or for change the emphasis of a the speech, even more in some languages like Korean or Chinese, there isn't a clear distintion of the voiced-voiceless pairs, being considered allophones and their phonation determined just by the context.

This groups of consonants includes the plosives (also known as stops or occlusives due the total stop of the airflow), the affricates (with a combinated articulation of the plosives and fricatives) and the fricatives (characterized by the partial obstruction of the airflow). Inside the affricates and fricatives it's possible find the groups of the sibilants consonants.

It's possible group the obstruents by its voicing and place of articulation.

Plosives
Also known as oral stops or oclussive, these kind of consonants are produced with obstruction total of the airflow.

Affricate
The affricates are consonants that start as a plosive but has a release as a fricative. The typical example in various languages is the CH, which usually corresponds to the [tʃ] in the IPA.

Fricative
Fricatives are the group of consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators (generally the tongue and another one) close together. This produce a partial block which generates a turbulent airflow knows as frication .

The fricatives have a softer pronunciation in comparison with the corresponding plosive, but have a stronger comparison to the respective approximant. However the stability between some plosives-fricatives or fricative-approximant equivalents is weak, and are know to shift between one or the another in relation to the context. Other fricatives like the voiceless glottal fricative or [h] hasn't clear distintion as fricatives or approximant, behaving as both, and being definied just by the linguitical rules of each tongue.

Sibilant
A sibilant is a manner of articulation of some fricatives and affricates consonants characterized for be made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the sharp edge of the teeth, which are held close together. The sibilant usually are related to the letters S, Z & C; and are characterized by their intense sound (for this usually their are used for call the attention, like when you are quieting someone using "shhhh!")

In relation as the perceived sound, the sibilants can classified in two categories: the hissing sibilants and the hushing sibilant. The hissing sibilants are related with the phonemes s, z and their variation. In the case of the hushing sibilants, most of them are Post-Alveolar Consonants, with different degree of patalization, and where the main different is the shape of the tongue when they're articulated. The voiceless hissing and hushing sibilant (mainly the first ones) has a soothing sound and isn't weird find them in words with a calming meaning or connotation in several languages.

Sonorant
A Sonorants is the speech sounds produced without turbulence or obstruction of the airflow. The group is diverse including to the vowel, semivowels, approximants, liquids (rhotics and laterals) and nasals. Although the definitons varies per author or source, they share a series of traits as could act as syllable nucleous or be modally voiced (rarely are unvoiced).

A feature in Vocaloid3 is the addition of devoiced variants of the sonorants. Those ones are characterized by the addition of the suffix _0 the phoneme, which correspond to the X-SAMPA representation for the voiceless diacritic. Due the sonorants group is diverse, those ones are different for each language available for Vocaloid.

Nasals
A nasal consonant is a consonant where the airflow is directed through the nose. The term is generally used for refer to the nasal stops, the most common kind of nasal consonant and the only one found in the different languages available for Vocaloid.

The nasal stops are know for its strong tendency to assimilation processes. They're known for assimilates the place of articulation of the following consonant, due this is quite common found various allophones for the nasal consonants in the most of the languages. Similarly they can cause assimalation of the preceding vowels inducing the nasalization of those ones.

Approximants
Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no turbulence. This class of sounds is varied and includes lateral approximants (L-related, see liquid consonants section further ahead), non-lateral approximants, and the semivowels or glides.

To distingish the case of the different sonorous quality between the velar approximant of the Korean and one of the Spanish, the article will utilize the classification proposed by Eugenio Martínez-Celdrán.

Semivowel Approximants
The semivowels or glides are a kind of consonants that has phonetic behavior of a vowel, but acts as syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. In simple terms those ones sounds as a vowel but behaves as consonant.

Some linguists prefers call them semi-consonants to difference them of the non-syllabic vowels (which also are semivowels and are important elements of the diphthong), while other linguist consider both as the same. The distintion isn't clear and are subject mainly to the gramatical rules of each language.

Deepen further the relation between the vowels and the semivowels, occurs that each semivowel has its respective vowel counterpart. Both having practically the same sound and where the first one can be considered as the non-syllabalic counterpart of the last one.

Spirant Approximants
The spirants approximant is. Like any sonorant, they don't produce obstruction or turbulence of the airflow, being similar to the vowels. However in terms of sound, they are closer to the fricatives.

Like the semivowels, each spirant approximant can be related to a respective fricative. In some language the stability of some fricatives is low, and shifts to other articulations.

Liquid Consonants
The liquids are a kind of consonants which groups the lateral and rhotics consonants. Both kind of consonants shares a series of characteristics like: they often have the greatest freedom in occurring in consonant clusters, and they can be prolonged (or shortened) in the same manner as a vowel, and even having the possibility of act as syllable nucleus like the nasals. Their name comes from often be referred to have a "fluid" sound.

In the European Languages usually the are 2 liquid consonts, one lateral (usually related to the L) and one rhotic (usually related to the R), while in general the Asian countries only have one liquid with little distinction between the laterals and the rothics.

Laterals
A lateral consonant is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth. Associated to the letter L, the laterals included to taps, approximants, fricatives, affricates and clicks, the two first are the most common in the vocaloid phonetic system.

Rhotics
The rhotics, tremulants or R-like sounds, are a group of liquid consonants, they're associated to the letter R and the greek symbol rho (hence the name). The rhotics has little association phonetically talking (the kind of consonants is diverse, with little articulatory relation between them). Instead the rothics seems to have similar phonological funtions and share some phonological features (like the lowered third formant) across the different languages.

Beside the rhotic consonants is possible found rothic vowels. These vowels are characterized for have certain R-like tone (produced by the low frecuency in their third formant) and are represented as diphones in the Vocaloid's English Phonetic System. It's important stand out the R-colored vowels may differ stongly between the different voicebanks, being bind to the differences between the rhotic and non-rhotic accents.

Vowels
The vowels are the sounds that, phonetically talking, are pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis and, phonologically talking are the nucleus or peak of syllables, whereas consonants form the onset and (in languages that have them) the coda.

The vowels quality is determined by 3 articulatory features which determinate their sound, differenciating between them. Those ones are
 * height (vertical dimension) : Vowel height is named for the vertical position of the tongue relative to either the roof of the mouth or the aperture of the jaw. In close vowels (or high vowels), tongue is positioned and /or the jaw is more closed high in the mouth, whereas in open vowels (or low vowels) the tongue is positioned low in the mouth and/or the jaw is more open. The IPA recognizes 7 degrees of height for vowels (4 cardinal degrees and 3 intermediate).
 * ​Example: [u] and [i] are close (high) vowels whereas [a] is an open (low) vowel.
 * backness (horizontal dimension) : Vowel backness is named for the position of the tongue during the articulation of a vowel relative to the back of the mouth. In front vowels the tongue is positioned forward in the mouth, whereas in back vowels towards the back of the mouth. The IPA recognizes 5 degrees of backness for the vowels (3 cardinals and 2 intermediate).
 * Example: The vowel [u] is a back vowel, while the vowel [i] is a front vowel.
 * roundedness (lip position) : Roundedness shape of the lips when a vowel is pronounced, being rounded or not. It can identified 3 kinds of labialization or shapes the lips can take. Those ones are rounded (exolabial, the lips are protuding and it's possible see the inner of them), compressed (endolabial, rounded too, but instead the lips are inwards), and spread (unrounded, the lips are relaxed without take any rounding). The most common articulation for the vowels are the rounded and unrounded one. The compressed articulation is less common, appearing in few languages, being the Japanese one of them.

Pure Vowels
Also known as monophthong or stable vowels, are vowel sounds whose their quality doesn't change over time, staying stable as one vowel in the syllable.

Semivowels
Basically non-syllabic vowels. They're important elements of the diphthong. In Vocaloid, they generaly are part of the Dipthongs and Diaphonemes, however the Spanish Phonetic System represent them as separated phonemes instead and used mainly for form falling diphthongs.

Diphthong and Diaphonemes
The dipthongs are vowel sound that glides from one quality to another, making them as join of two vowels in the same syllable. For form a diphthong is required a vowel and a semivowel (it can be an approximant consonant or a a non-syllabic vowel), the first with major prominence, being the syllable nucleus, whereas the other one has minor prominence, acting a border of the syllable. Depending of the order of the pair, the dipthong can be classified as: In Vocaloid, the languages that features the use of diphthongs and diaphonemes are the English and the Korean. In the case of the English the most are falling diphthongs, whereas the Korean the correspond to rising diphthongs.
 * Rising Diphthongs: are the ones who shifts from the minor prominence to a higher one (the semivowel comes first and is followed by the vowel).
 * Falling Diphthongs: are the ones who shifts from the higher prominence to the minor one (the vowel comes first and is followed by the semivowel).

Palatals
Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex.. The palatals are usually related to the vowel /i/ and its glide /j/, the most common palatal consonants in the world's languages.

Palatalization
In linguistics, palatalization 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.

As phonetic term, it refers to a 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 is said that it's phonetically palatalized and in the International Phonetic Alphabet they are indicated by a superscript , as with [tʲ] for a palatalized [t]. The palatalized consonant is pronounced as if followed very closely by the sound [j] (a palatal approximant, like the sound of "y" in "yellow").

The second definition refers to 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 (palatalized or palatal. Remember doesn't confuse palatal consonants with palatalized consonants, while the first one has a primary palatal articulation, the second ones are modified consonants which now includes a secondary palatal articulation, without lost its primary one.).

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

Labials
A group of consonants produced with one or both lips. Actually there are two kinds of labials consonants, the bilabials and labiodentals. They can be related with the letters B, P (bilabials) and V, F (labiodentals) and if we should clasiffy them accord their sound we could define as B-like and F-like group.

Dental
T

Labiovelars and labiovelarization
Problems in the classification of approximants Eugenio Martínez-Celdrán