Phonological Characteristics of English, French, German, and Portuguese

Characteristics	Language: English Language Family: Indo-European	Language: French Language Family: Indo-European	Language: German Language Family: Indo-European	Language: European Portuguese Language Family: Romance
Syllable shapes	Syllables can be as small as a single vowel or diphthong (e.g. I) and as large as three consonants before and after the vowel (C(0–3)VC(0–3)) (e.g. sprints) (Smit, 2007), with words like sixths [sɪksθs] a more extreme, rarely occurring case. In terms of internal syllable structure, English allows both vowels and sonorant consonants (such as [ɹ] or [n]) to occur in the nucleus of the syllable.	French displays, at the phonetic level, a syllable structure of C(0–3)VC(0–3) (Rose & Wauquier-Gravelines, 2007). In syllable nucleus, only vowels are allowed. French allows for branching onsets, which must have rising sonority, as per the Sonority Sequencing Principle.	German syllables can be as small as a single vowel and as large as three consonants in prevocalic and postvocalic position in a monosyllabic word (i.e. C(0–3)VC(0–3)) (e.g. Strasse /ʃtʁ/; Wiese, 1996).	Portuguese has a syllable structure of C(0–2)VC(0–2) and allows for up to two consonants in prevocalic and postvocalic position. The rhyme always contains a vowel or diphthong within the nucleus; Portuguese does not have syllabic consonants (Mateus & d’Andrade, 2000).
Tones	None	None	None	None
Syllable stress	English has lexical stress, which implies that every content word must have one stressed syllable while most multi-syllabic words show alternating stress patterns. Stress is often assigned to the first syllable of words, however a multitude of factors, such as word’s grammatical category or the number of affixes present in a word, can affect stress placement (Smit, 2007).	Stress consistently falls on the final syllable of phrases (e.g. Tranel, 1981; Kaye & Lowenstamm, 1984; Charette 1991). With the exception of schwa, vowels that occur in the last syllable of a phrase (or isolated word) consistently receive stress.	Penultimate stress placement is considered the regular stress pattern in German (Kohler, 1977; Fox, 2007). A number of factors affect stress placement, including morphological affixation. However, one of the last three syllables of the word always receives stress (Wiese 1996).	Stress assignment in Portuguese is affected by word category and morphological inflection. Stress always falls on one of the last three syllables (i.e. the final, penultimate, or antepenultimate syllable). In general (about 80% of the native vocabulary), stress falls on the final syllable of bare stems and on the penultimate syllable if there is a class marker (Mateus & d’Andrade, 2000).
Vowels and diphthongs	[i, ɪ, e, ɛ, æ, ʌ, ɑ, o, ʊ, u, ə, aɪ, aʊ, ɔɪ]	[i, y, u, e, ø, o, ɛ, $\tilde{\epsilon }$, œ, $\widetilde{œ}$, ə, ɔ, $\widetilde{ɔ}$, a, $\tilde{\text{a}}$, j, ɥ, w]	[iː, ɪ, eː, ɛ, ɛː, ʊ, uː, oː, ɔ, yː, ʏ, øː, œ, ə, ɐ, a, aː, j, w] *[ɐ] is a common allophone of post-vocalic [ʀ] (Wiese 1996); a diphthong ending in [ɐ] may be formed by syllables ending in [ʀ]	[i, $\tilde{\text{I}}$, u, $\tilde{\text{u}}$, ɯ, e, $\tilde{\text{e}}$, o, $\tilde{\text{o}}$, ɐ, $\widetilde{ɐ}$, ɛ, a, ɔ, j, w]
Consonants	[p, b, t, d, k, g, w, r, l, j, m, n, ŋ, f, v, θ, ð, s, z, ʃ, ʒ, h, tʃ, dʒ, ʔ]	[p, b, t, d, k, ɡ, f, v, s, z, ʃ, ʒ, m, n, ɲ, l, ʁ, w, ɥ, j]	[p, b, t, d, k, ɡ, (ʔ), f, v, s, z, ʃ, (ʒ), (ç), (x), (h), $\left(\widehat{\text{pf}}\right)$, (ts), (tʃ), (dʒ), ʁ, m, n, (ŋ), l] *German contains 15 uncontroversial consonant phonemes (there is debate over the allophonic vs. phonemic status of the sounds listed between parenthesis).	[p, b, t, d, k, g, f, v, s, z, ʃ, ʒ, m, n, ɲ, l, ʎ, ɾ, ʀ
Clusters	English allows clusters in word-initial, -medial, and -final position. Word-initially, /tl/, /dl/, /pw/, and /bw/ are not permitted. Additionally, voiced fricatives cannot occur as the first member of a branching onset.	Before a vowel, clusters are restricted to /s/ followed by an obstruent and a liquid (e.g. splendide $\left[\text{spl}\tilde{\text{a}}\text{did}\right]$) or they can consist of an obstruent followed by a liquid-glide combination (e.g. pluie [plɥi]), where the glide [ɥ] is part of the nucleus (Kaye & Lowenstamm, 1984). After the nucleus, French does not allow nasal codas, as already mentioned, but allows obstruent and liquid codas. Adjacent obstruents agree in terms of voicing values (i.e. adjacent obstruents are voiced or voiceless) (e.g. opter [ɔpte], but not *[ɔbte]). Word-initial clusters: [pl, pr, bl, br, fl, fr, vl, vr, tr, dr, kl, kr, ɡl, ɡr, sp, st, sk, spl, spr, str, skl, skr, pn, ps, pf, pt, kn, km, kv, ks, kt, tl, tm, ts, tʃ, sl, sm, sn, sv, sf, ʃl, ʃr, ʃn, ʃv, ʃpr, psk, ɡn, ɡz, dz, dʒ, zl, zv, zb, zɡr, mn, ft] Sonorant-obstruent clusters: [ʀl, ʀm, ʀn, ʀf, ʀs, ʀʃ, ʀç, ʀp, ʀt, ʀk, lm, ln, lf, ls, lʃ, lç, lp, lt, lk, mf, ms, mʃ, mp, mt, nf, ns, nʃ, nç, nt, ŋs, ŋʃ, ŋt, ŋk] Obstruent-obstruent clusters: [sf, sp, st, sk, fs, ft, χs, χt, ʃs, ʃt, ts, tʃ, ks, kt, pf, ps, pʃ, pt]	Syllable initial: [pl, pʀ, pn, ps, tʀ, tv, kl, kʀ, kn, km, ks, kv, bl, bʀ, dʀ, ɡl, ɡʀ, ɡn, ɡm, fl, fʀ, vl, vʀ, tsv, pfl, pfʀ, ʃl, ʃʀ, ʃn, ʃm, ʃv] Syllable final: [ʀl, ʀm, ʀn, ʀf, ʀs, ʀʃ, ʀç, ʀp, ʀt, ʀk, m, ln, lf, ls, lʃ, lç, lp, lt, lk, mf, ms, mʃ, mp, mt, nf, ns, nʃ, nç, nt, ŋs, ŋʃ, ŋt, ŋk, sf, sp, st, sk, fs, ft, χs, χt, ʃs, ʃt, ts, tʃ, ks, kt, pf, ps, pʃ, pt]	Syllable initial: [pɾ, bɾ, tɾ, dɾ, kɾ, ɡɾ, fɾ, pl, bl, fl, kl, ɡl, pt, bd, kt, ps, pn, tm, ɡn, mn] Syllable final: [pt, bt, bd, dk, kt, bs, bv, bʒ, tz, dv, ks, pn, bn, tm, tn, dm, dn, ɡm, ɡn, mn]
Examples of phonological constraints	The flap [ɾ] and glottal stop [ʔ] are frequently occurring allophones in English, with flap especially prominent in North-American dialects. The flap [ɾ] is an allophone of /t, d/ and occurs in between vowels in onsets of unstressed syllables (e.g. atom [æɾəm]); the glottal stop [ʔ] occurs frequently as an allophone of post-vocalic /t/ when it occurs before an alveolar (syllabic) nasal (e.g. button [bʌʔən]) (Hammond, 1999). Syllable- and word-final /t/ is also commonly expressed as [ʔ] in words such as department [dɪpɑʔmənt], foot [fʊʔ], and start [stɑɹʔ]. English also has two /l/ sounds. /l/ is velarized as [ɫ] when it occurs after a vowel or before a consonant at the end of a word (e.g. pool [puɫ] and help [hɛɫp]).	A word-initial onset in French can contain any consonant except /ɲ/. Medial codas can contain any single consonant with the exception of nasals; nasals occur in word-final position (e.g. canne [ka.n]), where they are syllabified as onsets of empty-headed syllables, similar to all consonants in this position (Piggott, 1999; Rose, 2000).