Chroneme 1644807 214582230 2008-05-24T06:35:51Z Kwamikagami 93143 {{Suprasegmental}} 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 χρονος (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|/aː/}} as being composed of two [[segment (linguistics)|segments]]: {{IPA|/a/}} and {{IPA|/ː/}}, whereas in a particular analysis, {{IPA|/aː/}} 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 above or after the letters: {| class="wikitable" ! symbol || position || meaning |- | style="font-size:larger;text-align:center;" |''none'' || - || short |- | style="font-size:larger;text-align:center;" | {{IPA|ː}} || after || long |- | style="font-size:larger;text-align:center;" | {{IPA|ˑ}} || after || half-long |- | style="font-size:larger;text-align:center;" | {{IPA|˘}} || above || extra-short |} American English does not have minimal pairs indicating the existence of chronemes or may theoretically be said to have only one chroneme. Some other dialects such as [[Australian English phonology|Australian English]] have contrastive vowel length, but it is not analysed as the consequence of a chroneme. Many [[Indo-European languages]], including Classical [[Latin]] have distinctive length in consonants, for example in [[Italian language|Italian]]: {|class="wikitable" ! word || IPA ||meaning |- | vile ||{{IPA|/'vile/}}|| coward |- | ville ||{{IPA|/'ville/}} || villas |} Classical [[Latin]], [[German language|German]], and [[Thai language|Thai]] have distinctive length in [[vowel]]s. For example in Thai: {|class="wikitable" ! word || IPA || RTGS || quality || meaning |- | เข้า || {{IPA|/kʰâw/}} || khâo || short || enter |- | ข้าว || {{IPA|/kʰâːw/}} || khâo || long || rice |} Almost all [[Uralic languages]], such as [[Finnish language|Finnish]], [[Hungarian language|Hungarian]] and [[Estonian language|Estonian]] have a distinctive [[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]] in the hypothetical [[Proto-Uralic]] language, such that {{IPA|[Vɣ]}} becomes {{IPA|[Vː]}}. For example, ''taka-'' "back-", ''takka'' "fireplace" and ''taakka'' "burden" are unrelated words. It is also grammatically important; the third person marker is a chroneme (''menee'' "s/he goes"), and often in the [[spoken Finnish]] of the Helsinki area there are grammatical minimal pairs, e.g. nominative ''Stadi'' "Helsinki" vs. partitive ''Stadii'' "at Helsinki". In Finnish, Estonian and [[Sami languages]], there are also two [[allophone|allophonic]] lengths of the chroneme, ''half-long'' and ''over-long''. For example, Finnish imperative ''ann'''a'''!'' "give!" has a short vowel, ''om'''a''''' "own" has a half-long vowel, and ''Ann'''aa''''' "at Anna" has an overlong vowel (without any distinctive tonal variation to distinguish these three). Estonian and Sami also have a three-way distinction in consonants, e.g. ''li'''n'''a'' "bed sheet", ''li'''nn'''a'' (half-long 'n') "of the city", ''li'''nn'''a'' (over-long 'n') "to the city". Estonian, in which the phonemic opposition is the strongest, uses tonal contour as a secondary cue to distinguish the two; "over-long" is falling as in other Finnic languages, but "half-long" is rising. Finnish also denotes stress principally by adding more length (approx. 100 ms) to the vowel of the syllable nucleus. This means that Finnish has five different physical lengths. (The half-long vowel is a phonemically short vowel appearing in the second syllable, if the first - and thus stressed - syllable is a single short vowel.) The unstressed short vowels are about 40 ms in physical duration, the unstressed long vowels about 70 ms. The stress adds about 100 ms, giving short stressed as 130-150 ms and long stressed as 170-180 ms. The half-long vowel, which is always short unstressed, is distinctively longer than the standard 40 ms. [[Japanese language|Japanese]] is another language in which vowel length is distinctive. For example, ''biru'' is a foreign loan word (clipped from a longer form) that means 'building' whereas ''bīru'' is a foreign loan word for 'beer'. Using a notion intuitive to a speaker of Japanese, it could be said that more than anything, what differentiates ''bīru'' from ''biru'' is an extra mora (or minimal vowel syllable) in the speech rhythm that signifies a lengthening of the vowel {{IPA|[i]}}. However, upon observation one might also note a rise in pitch and intensity of the longer vowel. It could be said, also, that vowel lengthening—chronemic contrasts—nearly doubles Japanese's rather small inventory of vowel phonemes (though the occurrence of diphthongs also augments vowel counts). Due to native literacy practices, Japanese long vowels are often thought of as sequences of two vowels of the same quality (rather than one vowel of a greater quantity or length) since that is how they are sometimes written. In the case of consonants of Japanese, if treated phonemically, a medial consonant might appear to double, thus creating a contrast, for example, between the word ''hiki'' (meaning 'pull' or 'influence') and ''hikki'' (meaning 'writing'). In terms of articulation and phonetics, the difference between the two words would be that, in the latter ''hikki'', the doubled {{IPA|[kk]}} closes the first syllable {{IPA|[hi-]}} and is realized in the glottis as glottal plosive stop (with some anticipatory articulation evident in the velum of the mouth, where a {{IPA|/k/}} is usually made) while starting the next syllable {{IPA|[-ki]}} as a {{IPA|[k]}} articulated and realized as the regular velar sound. In effect, this consonant doubling then adds one mora to the overall speech rhythm and timing. Hence, among other contrasts, the word ''hik-ki'' is felt to be one mora or beat longer than ''hi-ki'' by a speaker of Japanese. <!--Isn't this essentially the same as Italian?--> ==References== *Suomi, Kari. ''Temporal conspiracies for a tonal end: Segmental durations and accentual f0 movement in a quantity language.'' Journal of Phonetics, Volume 33, Issue 3, July 2005, pages 291-309. *http://www.helsinki.fi/puhetieteet/projektit/Finnish_Phonetics/kvantiteetti_eng.htm [[Category:Phonology]] [[br:C'hronem]] [[de:Chronem]] [[fi:Kroneemi]]