A plus sign (+) represents one or more phones or diacritics.
When it represents one or more phones in a search pattern, the plus sign must occur at the beginning the preceding environment (immediately following the slash), or at the end of the following environment, or both. It must not occur in the search item.
For example, to find all word-medial vowels, use the following pattern:
[V]/+_+
To find bilabial plosives occurring between two vowels, when the following vowel is not word final, use the following pattern:
{p,b}/[V]_[V]+
Notice the OR group of voiceless bilabial plosive [p] or voiced bilabial plosive [b].
In this version of Phonology Assistant, you cannot search for one or more phones between two specified phones. For example, [V]/[C]+[C]_# or [V]+[V]/*_*.
When it represents one or more diacritics, the plus sign must occur immediately before a closed square bracket that surrounds a diacritic placeholder.
For example, to find all alveolars modified by at least one, but possibly more, diacritics, use the following pattern:
[[alveolar][◌+]]/*_*
Notice the AND group specifies that the search pattern finds phones that are alveolar and that are modified by diacritics. This search pattern finds alveolars that are aspirated, palatalized, labialized, unreleased, and so on.
Examples of search pattern elements