Existence of [tʃwV] and [tɕjV]

[youkai01]

I was wondering if the [tʃwV] and [tɕjV] clusters are possible to exist. They'd have to be one single syllable, V standing for whatever vowel. It seems weird to me that [w, j] would remain (at least as actual approximants), but at the same time I can't come up with an organic rule or anything else that would prohibit it.

[Qwynegold]

I don't see why tʃw couldn't exist. It's a heterorganic cluster. t̜ɕj is a little odd, but I think I can pronounce it.

[Ser]

I was wondering if the [tʃwV] and [tɕjV] clusters are possible to exist. They'd have to be one single syllable, V standing for whatever vowel. It seems weird to me that [w, j] would remain (at least as actual approximants), but at the same time I can't come up with an organic rule or anything else that would prohibit it.

Mandarin almost fits the bill, having [ʈʂw] and [tɕj], as in 莊稼人 zhuāngjiarén 'farmer', pronounced [ʈʂwɑŋ˥ tɕja˧ ʐən˧˥].

[vokzhen]

They are entirely unremarkable and definitely possible.

For forbidding them, that's easy. /j/ drops after palatals, or /tɕ/ only formed by assimilating and absorbing /j/ in the first place (Japanese tjV>tɕV) so as to preclude any possible clustering in the first place. And coronal+/w/ > labial/labiodental is possible, e.g. Northwestern Mandarin where /tʂw tʂʰw ʂw ɻw/ > /pf pfʰ f v/.

EDIT: I'm a native English speaker, really

[Vijay]

I was wondering if the [tʃwV] and [tɕjV] clusters are possible to exist. They'd have to be one single syllable, V standing for whatever vowel. It seems weird to me that [w, j] would remain (at least as actual approximants)

Why?

As Serafín pointed out, Mandarin has [tɕj], and in Swahili, [tʃwa] is a verb stem in and of itself meaning 'to set' (referring to the sun. The opposite, 'to rise', is [tʃa]).

EDIT: There are probably even speakers of Taiwanese Mandarin who have both [tʃw] (instead of [ʈʂw]) and [tɕj].

[M Mira]

In my opinion, the presence or absence of a yod between tɕ and another vowel is merely stylistic in phonetic transliteration and represents the same sound, for example, :

Here's Mandarin [t͡ɕi̯a] from Forvo:
http://forvo.com/search/掐/
And Japanese [t͡ɕa]:
http://forvo.com/search/茶/

The two words are both high leveled to minimize interference from tones.

Okay phpBB hates url with non ASCII characters, please copy-paste the link.

[Sumelic]

Russian contrasts /t͡ɕ/ and /t͡ɕj/, apparently: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=18712
I don't really know what's up with Russian /j/ phonetically though, since that language is supposed to generally contrast /CʲV/, /CʲjV/ and /CjV/.

[Hallow XIII]

In my opinion, the presence or absence of a yod between tɕ and another vowel is merely stylistic in phonetic transliteration and represents the same sound, for example, :

Here's Mandarin [t͡ɕi̯a] from Forvo:
http://forvo.com/search/掐/
And Japanese [t͡ɕa]:
http://forvo.com/search/茶/

The two words are both high leveled to minimize interference from tones.

Okay phpBB hates url with non ASCII characters, please copy-paste the link.

what, no
You've picked two languages that only have alveolo-palatals before either a yod or a high front vowel, so this fails to work.
As a possible counterexample, consider somebody pronouncing 去 as [ts\_hjy_F] -- there is a recognizable difference to the normal pronunciation, and I reckon it would sound weird to most native Mandarin speakers.

[M Mira]

In my opinion, the presence or absence of a yod between tɕ and another vowel is merely stylistic in phonetic transliteration and represents the same sound, for example, :

Here's Mandarin [t͡ɕi̯a] from Forvo:
http://forvo.com/search/掐/
And Japanese [t͡ɕa]:
http://forvo.com/search/茶/

The two words are both high leveled to minimize interference from tones.

Okay phpBB hates url with non ASCII characters, please copy-paste the link.

what, no
You've picked two languages that only have alveolo-palatals before either a yod or a high front vowel, so this fails to work.
As a possible counterexample, consider somebody pronouncing 去 as [ts\_hjy_F] -- there is a recognizable difference to the normal pronunciation, and I reckon it would sound weird to most native Mandarin speakers.

Um, there's no yod nor a high front vowel in [t͡ɕa] <cha>? That's how everyone transcribe that Japanese phone, no yod, no high front vowel.

And the example of 去 is due to the intruding yod interrupting the labialization of /t͡ɕ/ before /y/, which is implied and mandatory in Mandarin, but not necessary in other languages.

[Hallow XIII]

You can analyze Japanese either as having a series of palatalized consonants or syllable-initial Cj clusters. In the first case <ch> is the phonetic realization of /tʲ/, in the second case it is an allophone of t before j or i. In both cases the affrication is incidental, and the dominant feature is [+palatal], which is hardly a good environment to attempt to find palatality distinctions in your affricates in.

Even apart from that, the idea that you can prove with just two examples, which are areally close, the impossibility of a distinction between /ts\/ and /ts\j/, which is itself premised on the fact that notation accurately reflects all facts about the phonology and phonetics of your examples, is spectacularly unsound on all possible criteria. Pls go back to the drawing board.

[Nortaneous]

how are russian чьё and чья pronounced

[Chengjiang]

how are russian чьё and чья pronounced

Wonky spelling aside, I'm pretty sure they're just [tɕjɵ] and [tɕja] respectively.

[Vijay]

Really, Russian has [ɵ]?? Weird, it just sounds like [o] to me.

[Chengjiang]

Really, Russian has [ɵ]?? Weird, it just sounds like [o] to me.

I'm going off stuff I've read here. The Russian I've heard personally doesn't seem to noticeably front /o/ next to palatal(ized) segments, but reportedly it does for some speakers and (according to some sources) in the standard accent.

[Sumelic]

how are russian чьё and чья pronounced

Wonky spelling aside, I'm pretty sure they're just [tɕjɵ] and [tɕja] respectively.

I don't think so. As I understand it, /j/ in Russian usually does not occur after consonants. When it does, it seems like this is generally indicated by writing a soft sign (after a palatalized consonant) or a hard sign (after a non-palatalized consonant). In the Language Log post I linked to earlier, there is the following comment:

Russian has чих /tɕix/ "sneeze" vs. чьих /tɕjix/ "whose.PL.GEN" – or, somewhat more seriously, чей /tɕej/ "whose.M.NOM" vs. чьей /tɕjej/ "whose.F.GEN" – as a kind-of minimal pair, but the cluster /tɕj/ isn't otherwise particularly common (and I can't think of any words starting with it that aren't forms of that pronoun).

But as I said earlier, I'm also not sure what how the phonemic distinction in Russian between /CʲV/ and /CʲjV/ is realized phonetically. For all I know, the former is [CʲjV], and there's an epenthetic vowel or something in the latter.

[Chengjiang]

how are russian чьё and чья pronounced

Wonky spelling aside, I'm pretty sure they're just [tɕjɵ] and [tɕja] respectively.

I don't think so. As I understand it, /j/ usually does not occur after a palatalized consonant inside a word. When it does, it seems like this is generally indicated by writing a soft sign after the consonant. In the Language Log post I linked to earlier, there is the following comment:

Russian has чих /tɕix/ "sneeze" vs. чьих /tɕjix/ "whose.PL.GEN" – or, somewhat more seriously, чей /tɕej/ "whose.M.NOM" vs. чьей /tɕjej/ "whose.F.GEN" – as a kind-of minimal pair, but the cluster /tɕj/ isn't otherwise particularly common (and I can't think of any words starting with it that aren't forms of that pronoun).

But чьё and чья are forms of чей. Unless this person's saying that even those are actually pronounced without the [j], I don't understand your objection.

[Sumelic]

No, I just completely missed the soft sign in their spelling and made a stupid post.

[Hallow XIII]

CьjV is realized as a noticeable lengthening of the palatalized consonant with an off-glide. The j is quite clearly heard.

[Rory]

I realize I'm late to this party, but there's a well-known language with [tʃwV] - American English! There's a sound change in progress where /tw/ clusters are being produced as [tʃw]. It's not very well documented, but if you listen out for it you'll notice it.

As for [tɕjV], there are some nice example already presented, and I don't see any a priori reason it shouldn't be possible. If [tɕi] is possible, then [tɕj] is possible too, since they're practically the same thing. (Don't let the symbols fool you!)

[Travis B.]

I realize I'm late to this party, but there's a well-known language with [tʃwV] - American English! There's a sound change in progress where /tw/ clusters are being produced as [tʃw]. It's not very well documented, but if you listen out for it you'll notice it.

I don't have this, but I do hear other people here in southeastern Wisconsin who do have this. (Note that when I do try to pronounce it it comes out as [tɕʰw], as the /w/ imparts palatalization onto preceding coronals.)

(I particularly remember a particular local commercial here about a decade back where twenty was repeatedly pronounced as [tɕʰwʌ̃niː] with very noticeable affrication of the /t/.)

[Valdeut]

Palatalized and dorso-palatal sounds are naturally followed by a short [j]-like glide when they are followed by a vowel other than , due to the fact that the back of the tongue is around the [j]-position during the articulation of the consonant and then has to move to the place of the vowel.

So it's hard for [tɕa] not to be something like [tɕja]. This glide may be shorter than a regular [j], though, so it's still possible to distinguish /tɕa/ and /tɕja/ based on timing, which seems to be what Russian does.

You can also start the movement away from the palatal position earlier to have a prepalatal(ized) consonant but it may not be that distinctive unless preceded by a vowel.

There's no reason why a language couldn't have [tʃwV], but [tʃ] seems to already be slightly labialized in English which might be why the original poster has trouble distinguishing it from [tʃw].

[Zaarin]

I realize I'm late to this party, but there's a well-known language with [tʃwV] - American English! There's a sound change in progress where /tw/ clusters are being produced as [tʃw]. It's not very well documented, but if you listen out for it you'll notice it.

I have that in rapid speech--except I think mine is more like [ts̱w]: twenty [ˈts̱wɐn(ː)i], in slower speech [ˈtwɐnti~ˈtwɛnti].

[Rory]

I realize I'm late to this party, but there's a well-known language with [tʃwV] - American English! There's a sound change in progress where /tw/ clusters are being produced as [tʃw]. It's not very well documented, but if you listen out for it you'll notice it.

(I particularly remember a particular local commercial here about a decade back where twenty was repeatedly pronounced as [tɕʰwʌ̃niː] with very noticeable affrication of the /t/.)

Nice! Was the [ɕ] sound noticeably different from the [ʃ] sound in shed or check?

I realize I'm late to this party, but there's a well-known language with [tʃwV] - American English! There's a sound change in progress where /tw/ clusters are being produced as [tʃw]. It's not very well documented, but if you listen out for it you'll notice it.

I have that in rapid speech--except I think mine is more like [ts̱w]: twenty [ˈts̱wɐn(ː)i], in slower speech [ˈtwɐnti~ˈtwɛnti].

Yes, that's another variant! Smith (2013) referred to these as the retracted and advanced variants, and found 6 retracted affricators (with [tʃw]) and two advanced affricators (with [tsw]) out of a sample of 107 people in the lab. (Note that you'd expect actual use in casual speech to be much higher - lab speech is usually quite hyperarticulated and people try to speak "properly".)

[Travis B.]

I realize I'm late to this party, but there's a well-known language with [tʃwV] - American English! There's a sound change in progress where /tw/ clusters are being produced as [tʃw]. It's not very well documented, but if you listen out for it you'll notice it.

(I particularly remember a particular local commercial here about a decade back where twenty was repeatedly pronounced as [tɕʰwʌ̃niː] with very noticeable affrication of the /t/.)

Nice! Was the [ɕ] sound noticeably different from the [ʃ] sound in shed or check?

I am not sure of how to describe the audible difference between [tʃʰ] and [tɕʰ] except that the latter sounds "duller" and lower in pitch.

Note that my dialect has generalized palatalization before /uː ʊ w ər/, and stressed, aspirated /t/ has a tendency to affricate before these (as well as unaspirated but unflapped /t/ in some words) in less careful speech. When I notice other people affricating it it tends to be [tɕʰ], but what I have is [tsʲʰ] for stressed, aspirated /t/ before /uː/ (e.g. [tsʲʰʉuː] for two) and [tɕ] for unstressed but unflapped before /ər/ (e.g. [ˈfɛʔktɕʁ̩ːʁiː] for factory).