An asterisk (*) represents zero or more phones or diacritics.
When it represents zero or more phones in a search pattern, the asterisk must occur at the beginning of 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-final vowels, use the following pattern:
[V]/*_#
To find all word-initial phones, use the following pattern:
{[C],[V]}/#_*
Notice the OR group of any consonant or vowel represents any phone.
To find all vowels occurring anywhere in a word, use the following pattern:
[V]/*_*
In this version of Phonology Assistant, you cannot search for zero or more phones between two specified phones. For example, [V]/[C]*[C]_# or [V]*[V]/*_*.
Asterisks are necessary in a search pattern only when they occur alone in the preceding environment, or the following environment, or both. For example, using the asterisk in the pattern [V]/*[C]_[C]* is redundant because the asterisks are implied when anything else occurs in the preceding or following environments. Therefore, the pattern could be written [V]/[C]_[C].
When it represents zero or more diacritics, the asterisk must occur immediately before a closed square bracket that surrounds a diacritic placeholder.
For example, to find all alveolars modified by the dental diacritic and zero or more other diacritics, use the following search pattern:
[[alveolar][◌̪*]]/*_*
Notice the AND group specifies that the search pattern finds phones that are alveolar and that are modified by diacritics.
Examples of search pattern elements