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What does "long", "half-long", "short" and "extra short" mean? Specifically, what does it mean with respect to length of time? For example, is a half-long vowel really half as long as a long vowel? How much shorter than a long vowel is a short vowel? Half as short? One third as short? Those things are not explicitly explained in the article, but they should be, because they're not obvious. 2004-12-29T22:45Z 05:54, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
>>>>>>Attempts at showing the lengths as being 'isochronous' units flounder. The best thing I know to say is that, like tone, they are relative to immediate context. unlogged user>>>>>>
>>>>>>>This discussion could be updated if it brought in discussions from metrical phonology.
As for examples from American English, well, I'm not one for using minimal pairs to establish anything (as if we communicated meaning with one and two-syllable words anyway), but take for example the American English pronunciation of 'latter' vs. 'ladder'. If we treated it metrically, we might say there is some sort of lengthening of the medial consonant that distinguishes 'ladder' from 'latter'. Or are they really homophones (with soundalike allophones of different phonemes)? Using what others have said about beats, I'd like to think I add about 1/4 to 1/2 a beat to the medial sound of 'ladder'.
What about Japanese consonants: is the 'k' in 'hikki' actally longer than the 'k' in 'hiki', or is it just perceived to be longer? (to make the word longer?) FT77 20:46, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Can you be more specific what "Greek" -eme is? − Woodstone 17:25, July 25, 2005 (UTC)
For God's sake, it means nothing at all. -ema is way too functional to mean something. It's just a suffixed root (again, not a suffix but a suffixed root, which is different) with the ending -ma, which usually shows that the Greek noun is neutral/neuter in grammatical gender. That's my take at least. Ask someone else to see what they think. 2004-12-29T22:45Z 18:17, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
Google gives almost a thousand hits, take your pick. − Woodstone 22:58, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
About the term's origin, I always attributed the term to Pike (1948). Who in linguistics hasn't at least read of Pike? And isn't it a nice parallel piece of word derivation (we have phonemes, we have tonemes (Jones 1921), so why not chronemes?
Addendum: now I read that Jones also used the term, so I wonder if these are independent inventions of terms, or if Pike was citing Jones? Don't have enough of the original sources to figure it out.
One more thought: at least the chroneme deserves its parallel to phoneme more than toneme: that is, since the chroneme could still be treated segmentally, it is closer to a type of phoneme conceptually speaking than toneme, which is better treated prosodically and/or seen to spread across more than one segment.
Danish also distinguishes words by vowel length; here are some minimal pairs--
(This length-distinction occurs only in words of more than one syllable; however, the commonplace examples should convince you that Danes don't consider it trivial.)
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by ISNorden ( talk • contribs) 10:13, 25 July 2006 AEST.
The IPA in the second table is wrong. I think that the correct transcriptions for the second column are /ˈviːle/ and /ˈvile/. If someone else can confirm this please change it. hac ( talk) 01:49, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
The article rightly points out that 'chroneme' has limited currency. I feel that, since this concept appears not to have been seriously put forward as a phonological entity since the days of Jones and Pike, it should be described also as obsolete. Does anyone disagree? RoachPeter ( talk) 10:31, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
![]() | This article has not yet been rated on Wikipedia's
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What does "long", "half-long", "short" and "extra short" mean? Specifically, what does it mean with respect to length of time? For example, is a half-long vowel really half as long as a long vowel? How much shorter than a long vowel is a short vowel? Half as short? One third as short? Those things are not explicitly explained in the article, but they should be, because they're not obvious. 2004-12-29T22:45Z 05:54, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
>>>>>>Attempts at showing the lengths as being 'isochronous' units flounder. The best thing I know to say is that, like tone, they are relative to immediate context. unlogged user>>>>>>
>>>>>>>This discussion could be updated if it brought in discussions from metrical phonology.
As for examples from American English, well, I'm not one for using minimal pairs to establish anything (as if we communicated meaning with one and two-syllable words anyway), but take for example the American English pronunciation of 'latter' vs. 'ladder'. If we treated it metrically, we might say there is some sort of lengthening of the medial consonant that distinguishes 'ladder' from 'latter'. Or are they really homophones (with soundalike allophones of different phonemes)? Using what others have said about beats, I'd like to think I add about 1/4 to 1/2 a beat to the medial sound of 'ladder'.
What about Japanese consonants: is the 'k' in 'hikki' actally longer than the 'k' in 'hiki', or is it just perceived to be longer? (to make the word longer?) FT77 20:46, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Can you be more specific what "Greek" -eme is? − Woodstone 17:25, July 25, 2005 (UTC)
For God's sake, it means nothing at all. -ema is way too functional to mean something. It's just a suffixed root (again, not a suffix but a suffixed root, which is different) with the ending -ma, which usually shows that the Greek noun is neutral/neuter in grammatical gender. That's my take at least. Ask someone else to see what they think. 2004-12-29T22:45Z 18:17, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
Google gives almost a thousand hits, take your pick. − Woodstone 22:58, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
About the term's origin, I always attributed the term to Pike (1948). Who in linguistics hasn't at least read of Pike? And isn't it a nice parallel piece of word derivation (we have phonemes, we have tonemes (Jones 1921), so why not chronemes?
Addendum: now I read that Jones also used the term, so I wonder if these are independent inventions of terms, or if Pike was citing Jones? Don't have enough of the original sources to figure it out.
One more thought: at least the chroneme deserves its parallel to phoneme more than toneme: that is, since the chroneme could still be treated segmentally, it is closer to a type of phoneme conceptually speaking than toneme, which is better treated prosodically and/or seen to spread across more than one segment.
Danish also distinguishes words by vowel length; here are some minimal pairs--
(This length-distinction occurs only in words of more than one syllable; however, the commonplace examples should convince you that Danes don't consider it trivial.)
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by ISNorden ( talk • contribs) 10:13, 25 July 2006 AEST.
The IPA in the second table is wrong. I think that the correct transcriptions for the second column are /ˈviːle/ and /ˈvile/. If someone else can confirm this please change it. hac ( talk) 01:49, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
The article rightly points out that 'chroneme' has limited currency. I feel that, since this concept appears not to have been seriously put forward as a phonological entity since the days of Jones and Pike, it should be described also as obsolete. Does anyone disagree? RoachPeter ( talk) 10:31, 28 December 2012 (UTC)