Palatalization (phonetics)

In phonetics, palatalization (/ˌpælətəlaɪˈzeɪʃən/, also

Palatalized
US: /-lɪˈzeɪʃən/) or palatization is a way of pronouncing a

◌ʲ
consonant in which part of the tongue is moved close to the hard
palate. Consonants pronounced this way are said to be palatalized
and are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet by
affixing the letter ⟨ʲ⟩ to the base consonant. Palatalization cannot
minimally distinguish words in most dialects of English, but it may
IPA Number 421
do so in languages such as Russian, Mandarin, and Irish.
Encoding
Entity (decimal) ʲ
Contents Unicode (hex) U+02B2

Types
Transcription
Phonology
Allophonic palatalization
Phonemic palatalization
Morphophonemic
Sound changes
Examples
Slavic languages
Goidelic
Mandarin Chinese
Marshallese
Norwegian
Other uses
See also
References
Bibliography
External links

Types
In technical terms, palatalization refers to 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 palatalized. "Pure" palatalization 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/.
Phonetically palatalized consonants may vary in their exact realization. Some languages add semivowels
before or after the palatalized consonant (onglides or offglides). In Russian, both plain and palatalized
consonant phonemes are found in words like большой [bɐlʲˈʂoj] ( listen), царь [tsarʲ] ( listen) and Катя
[ˈkatʲə] ( listen). Typically, the vowel (especially a non-front vowel) following a palatalized consonant has
a palatal onglide. In Hupa, on the other hand, the palatalization is heard as both an onglide and an offglide.
In some cases, the realization of palatalization may change without any corresponding phonemic change.
For example, according to Thurneysen, palatalized 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).

In a few languages, including Skolt Sami and many of the Central Chadic languages, palatalization is a
suprasegmental feature that affects the pronunciation of an entire syllable, and it may cause certain vowels
to be pronounced more front and consonants to be slightly palatalized. In Skolt Sami and its relatives
(Kildin Sami and Ter Sami), suprasegmental palatalization contrasts with segmental palatal articulation
(palatal consonants).

Transcription
In the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), palatalized consonants are marked by the modifier letter ⟨ʲ⟩, a
superscript version of the symbol for the palatal approximant ⟨j⟩. For instance, ⟨tʲ⟩ represents the palatalized
form of the voiceless alveolar stop [t]. Prior to 1989, a subscript diacritic (⟨ᶀ ꞔ ᶁ ᶂ ᶃ ꞕ ᶄ ᶅ ᶆ ᶇ ᶈ ᶉ ᶊ ƫ ᶌ
ᶍ ᶎ⟩) and several palatalized consonants were represented by curly-tailed variants in the IPA, e.g., ⟨ʆ⟩ for
[ʃʲ] and ⟨ʓ⟩ for [ʒʲ]: see palatal hook. The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet marks palatalized consonants by an
acute accent, as do some Finnic languages using the Latin alphabet, as in Võro ⟨ś⟩. Others use an
apostrophe, as in Karelian ⟨s’⟩; or digraphs in j, as in the Savonian dialects of Finnish, ⟨sj⟩.

Phonology
Palatalization has varying phonological significance in different languages. It is allophonic in English, but
phonemic in others. In English, consonants are palatalized when they occur before front vowels or the
palatal approximant, but no words are distinguished by palatalization (complementary distribution),
whereas in some of the other languages, the difference between palatalized consonants and plain un-
palatalized consonants distinguish between words, appearing in a contrastive distribution (where one of the
two versions palatalized or not, appears in the same environment as the other).

Allophonic palatalization

In some languages, like English, palatalization is allophonic. Some phonemes have palatalized allophones
in certain contexts, typically before front vowels and unpalatalized allophones elsewhere. Because it is
allophonic, palatalization of this type does not distinguish words and often goes unnoticed by native
speakers. Phonetic palatalization occurs in American English. Stops are palatalized before the front vowel
/i/ and not palatalized in other cases.

Phonemic palatalization

In some languages, palatalization is a distinctive feature that distinguishes two consonant phonemes. This
feature occurs in Russian, Irish, and Scottish Gaelic.
Phonemic palatalization may be contrasted with either plain or velarized articulation. In many of the Slavic
languages, and some of the Baltic and Finnic languages, palatalized consonants contrast with plain
consonants, but in Irish they contrast with velarized consonants.

Russian нос /nos/ "nose" (unpalatalized /n/)

нёс /nʲos/ "(he) carried" (palatalized /nʲ/)

Irish bó /bˠoː/ "cow" (velarized b)

beo /bʲoː/ "alive" (palatalized b)

Some palatalized phonemes undergo change beyond phonetic palatalization. For instance, the unpalatalized
sibilant (Irish /sˠ/, Scottish /s̪/) has a palatalized counterpart that is actually postalveolar /ʃ/, not phonetically
palatalized [sʲ], and the velar fricative /x/ in both languages has a palatalized counterpart that is actually
palatal /ç/ rather than palatalized velar [xʲ]. These shifts in primary place of articulation are examples of the
sound change of palatalization.

Morphophonemic

In some languages, palatalization is used as a morpheme or part of a morpheme. In some cases, a vowel
caused a consonant to become palatalized, and then this vowel was lost by elision. Here, there appears to
be a phonemic contrast when analysis of the deep structure shows it to be allophonic.

In Romanian, consonants are palatalized before /i/. Palatalized consonants appear at the end of the word,
and mark the plural in nouns and adjectives, and the second person singular in verbs.[1] 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| palatalizes the consonant and is
subsequently deleted.

Palatalization may also occur as a morphological feature. For example, although Russian makes phonemic
contrasts between palatalized and unpalatalized consonants, alternations across morpheme boundaries are
normal:[2]

ответ [ɐˈtvʲet] ('answer') vs. ответить [ɐˈtvʲetʲɪtʲ] ('to answer')

несу [nʲɪˈsu] ('I carry') vs. несёт [nʲɪˈsʲɵt] ('carries')
голод [ˈɡolət] ('hunger') vs. голоден [ˈɡolədʲɪn] ('hungry' masc.)

Sound changes
In some languages, allophonic palatalization developed into phonemic palatalization by phonemic split. In
other languages, phonemes that were originally phonetically palatalized changed further: palatal secondary
place of articulation developed into changes in manner of articulation or primary place of articulation.

Phonetic palatalization of a consonant sometimes causes surrounding vowels to change by coarticulation or

assimilation. In Russian, "soft" (palatalized) consonants are usually followed by vowels that are relatively
more front (that is, closer to [i] or [y]), and vowels following "hard" (unpalatalized) consonants are further
back. See Russian phonology § Allophony for more information.

Examples
Slavic languages

In many Slavic languages, palatal or palatalized consonants are called soft, and others are called hard.
Russian has pairs of palatalized and unpalatalized consonant phonemes. The pairs of vowel letters that
distinguish that the consonant preceding them is hard/soft:
⟨а⟩/⟨я⟩,
⟨э⟩/⟨е⟩,
⟨ы⟩/⟨и⟩,
⟨о⟩/⟨ё⟩, and
⟨у⟩/⟨ю⟩.
The soft sign ⟨ь⟩ also indicates that the previous consonant is soft.

Goidelic

Irish and Scottish Gaelic have pairs of palatalized (slender) and unpalatalized (broad) consonant phonemes.
In Irish, most broad consonants are velarized. In Scottish Gaelic, the only velarized consonants are [n̪ˠ] and
[l̪ˠ]; [r] is sometimes described as velarized as well.[3][4]

Mandarin Chinese

Palatalized consonants occur in standard Mandarin Chinese in the form of the alveolo-palatal consonants,
which are written in pinyin as j, q, and x.

Marshallese

In the Marshallese language, each consonant has some type of secondary articulation (palatalization,
velarization, or labiovelarization). The palatalized consonants are regarded as "light", and the velarized and
rounded consonants are regarded as "heavy", with the rounded consonants being both velarized and
labialized.

Norwegian

Many Norwegian dialects have phonemic palatalized consonants. In many parts of Northern Norway and
many areas of Møre og Romsdal, for example, the words /hɑnː/ ('hand') and /hɑnʲː/ ('he') are differentiated
only by the palatalization of the final consonant. Palatalization is generally realised only on stressed
syllables, but speakers of the Sør-Trøndelag dialects will generally palatalize the coda of a determined
plural as well: e.g. /hunʲː.ɑnʲ/ or, in other areas, /hʉnʲː.ɑn/ ('the dogs'), rather than */hunʲː.ɑn/. Norwegian
dialects utilizing palatalization will generally palatalize /d/, /l/, /n/ and /t/.

Other uses
There are local or historical uses of the term palatalization.

In Slavic linguistics, the "palatal" fricatives marked by a háček are really postalveolar consonants, which
historically arose from palatalization. There are also phonetically palatalized consonants, marked with an
acute accent, which contrast with that. Thus, a distinction is made between "palatal" (postalveolar) and
"palatalized". Such "palatalized" consonants are not always phonetically palatalized. For example, when
Russian "soft" consonants appear before front vowels (particularly [i]), they are not palatalized and contrast
with "hard" consonants (which are typically not palatalized) that are velarized in the same context.

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

References
1. Chițoran (2001:11)
2. See Lightner (1972:9–11, 12–13) for a fuller list of examples.
3. Bauer, Michael. Blas na Gàidhlig: The Practical Guide to Gaelic Pronunciation. Glasgow:
Akerbeltz, 2011.
4. Nance, C., McLeod, W., O'Rourke, B. and Dunmore, S. (2016), Identity, accent aim, and
motivation in second language users: New Scottish Gaelic speakers’ use of phonetic
variation. J Sociolinguistics, 20: 164–191. doi:10.1111/josl.12173 (https://doi.org/10.1111%2
Fjosl.12173)

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,
CiteSeerX 10.1.1.81.4003 (https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.81.40
03)
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. (https://web.archiv
e.org/web/20050415185822/http://www.internetix.ofw.fi/opinnot/opintojaksot/8kieletkirjallisu
us/aidinkieli/murteet/koprina.html) (with a sound sample with palatalized t')
Frisian assibilation as a hypercorrect effect due to a substrate language (http://www.oocities.
org/ekfrysk/ASHYP5b2.htm)

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