Talk:Tenseness

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April 2005 to January 2009

Tensing vs. raising[edit]

Anyone know if there is some definitive difference between "tensing" and "raising"? The term tensing appears a lot regarding happy tensing and æ tensing, so I know it's used as a verb.Wolfdog (talk) 22:09, 31 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Wolfdog: I used to think that these terms mean the same. It's partially true, because sometimes they do. Sometimes, however, they don't. The way I understand it is that in the latter case, "tense vowel" and "lax vowel" refer to the tenseness of the tongue present during the production of the vowel. For instance, German /iː/ is a tense vowel, but /ɪ/ is a lax vowel. This distinction can be transcribed in the IPA using the "strongly articulated" and "weakly articulated" diacritics: [i͈ː, ɪ͉]. It's pretty much a kind of a fortis–lenis distinction.

In case of vowels, 'raising' always means articulating a vowel closer to the roof of the mouth than some point of reference. Peter238 (talk) 11:29, 6 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

OK. So then it goes beyond just vowels? Wolfdog (talk) 23:45, 10 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Wolfdog: If you're talking about raising, then yes, the 'raised' diacritic can be applied to consonants as well, e.g. in case of ⟨ɹ̝⟩ (constricted ⟨ɹ⟩), which is equivalent to both ⟨ð̠⟩ (retracted ⟨ð⟩) and ⟨ð͇⟩ (alveolarized ⟨ð⟩). All three symbols denote a voiced alveolar non-sibilant fricative, found e.g. in Icelandic.

In short: when the 'raised' diacritic is used on an approximant, it means either "strengthened to a non-sibilant fricative" or "a continuant with some friction" (=weak fricative, more or less). When it is used on a fricative, it means either "a fricative with a strong friction", or "this is a fricative, as opposed to an approximant" (e.g. in case of the symbols ⟨β, ð, ʁ⟩, which commonly denote both, despite the fact that they are labelled "fricatives" in the official IPA). It is also used on the symbols denoting alveolar/uvular trills and flaps to denote fricative trills and fricative flaps, found e.g. in Czech and Turkish. Peter238 (talk) 05:24, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Oh no, sorry, I meant "tensing." I guess I'm still confused about the distinction in any case. Are there scenarios where something is tensed but NOT raised, or raised but NOT tensed? Wolfdog (talk) 18:51, 12 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No problem, and I'm not sure. This article features the following sentence: Unlike most distinctive features, the feature [tense] can be interpreted only relatively, that is, in a language like English that contrasts [i] (e.g. beat) and [ɪ] (e.g. bit), the former can be described as a tense vowel while the latter is a lax vowel. My guess is 'no'. Peter238 (talk) 20:20, 12 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it's puzzling. I'm beginning to assume that "tensed" is a matter of mere perception, while "raised" is a matter of measurable production. Wolfdog (talk) 23:10, 18 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Wolfdog: I don't know what else I could contribute here besides getting back to German vowels. That's the best I can do. Morciniec & Prędota (2005) say in their "Podręcznik wymowy niemieckiej" that "/iː/ is tense and long. The muscles are tense, so that the air is more compressed and has higher pressure than it is the case with lax vowels." They describe the other tense vowels /yː, uː, eː, øː, oː, ɑː/ (the last one is transcribed /aː/ on Wikipedia) similarly. Peter238 (talk) 23:36, 18 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm... the /ɑː/ vowel certainly seems to be the odd one out there, doesn't it? I can't even imagine what tenseness of the muscles is being referred to in that case. Well, thanks for your investigations! Wolfdog (talk) 23:42, 18 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Wolfdog: Maybe it's my bad translation. Vowels are produced with the tongue, so they probably refer to it. According to them, /ɑː/ is the tense counterpart of the front /a/. I think this distinction is archaic though. Max Mangold, Eva Krech and other scholars describe both /a/ and /aː/ as open central. Actually, Eva Krech et al. in their "Deutsches Aussprachewörterbuch" say nothing about /a/ nor /aː/ being tense/lax (contrary to the other vowel pairs... but on second thought, they may be simply writing "tense" and "lax" instead of "close" and "open"). They simply say that /a/ is "short", whereas /aː/ is "long". I also suspect that German spoken with all vowels being "lax" (or "tense"), but having the right quality would be perfectly intelligible to native speakers. I can't imagine any teacher/voice coach/whatever making a fuss about it. Peter238 (talk) 23:55, 18 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The way I describe it to my intro linguistics students is, tense vowels are more extreme in their articulation than lax vowels: a tense front vowel is fronter than a lax front vowel; a tense back vowel is backer than a lax back vowel; a tense rounded vowel is rounder than a lax rounded vowel; etc. Tensing often leads to raising, but it is not the same thing. AJD (talk) 03:36, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Peter238 and Ajd: You may be interested in a (merger?) discussion I've started here, and all the crazy nuances of tenseness vs. raising vs. fortis.

In Dutch, tense vowels are not longer in duration?[edit]

Let's take "lied" (song) and "lid" (member) as an example, corresponding in pronunciation to "beat" and "bit" in English. Indeed, the vowel in "beat" is longer than in "bit" in received pronunciation, but in Dutch, "lied" is not always longer than "lid". HOWEVER, the Brabantic dialect makes "lied" longer than "lid", while for instance the West-Flemish or even Hollandic dialect pronounces "lied" and "lid" with the same duration. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:2C40:0:A001:B8E4:4E56:AD82:2ED8 (talk) 10:23, 22 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The lede is ambiguous as to which qualities define tenseness. You cannot define a tense vowel as being "generally" longer, and then go on to say that length and tenseness go together only in some languages. Muscular tension is also a bad defining criterion if studies don't confirm that connection. --46.114.36.90 (talk) 09:03, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Contradiction[edit]

This article claims tenseness is a common feature, however the article on vowels claims it is uncommon, occurring mainly in Germanic languages. 100.34.46.136 (talk) 19:03, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]