Where does onset collide?

In phonology the onset is the consonant or cluster of consonants that opens a syllable, coming before the vowel that forms its core. Fudge's 1969 Syllables analysed the internal structure of the syllable and treated the opening consonants as a unit separate from the following rime (the vowel and any consonants after it), and Selkirk's 1982 The syllable gave this division its standard formal treatment as onset plus rime. Here the referent is a position in the sound shape of a word, for example the str that begins string. It has nothing to do with the moment a disease begins in a patient or the instant a musical note starts.[1][2]

Unit

One syllable-initial consonant or consonant cluster

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Identified by phonological analysis of a syllable into onset, nucleus, and coda

In epidemiology and medicine the onset is the time at which a disease begins in a person, the point that separates being unaffected from being a case. Rothman's 1981 Induction and latent periods defined this beginning as the moment the last causal component acts to complete a disease, and used it to divide the induction period before onset from the latent period before the disease is detected. Age of onset, the person's age at that point, is recorded as a variable in genetic and clinical studies. This referent is a moment in the course of an illness, measured in time or age, not the opening consonants of a syllable or the start of a musical note.[3]

Unit

One person's time or age when a disease begins

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Dated from first symptoms or diagnosis, and summarised across people as age of onset

In music and signal processing the onset is the instant at which a musical note or other sound event begins, the start of the rise in its loudness. Gordon's 1987 The perceptual attack time of musical tones separated a note's physical onset, where its sound first appears, from the slightly later moment a listener perceives the attack, and Bello and colleagues' 2005 A tutorial on onset detection in music signals set out the standard ways to find onsets automatically in a recording. The referent is a marked point in time within an audio signal, located to milliseconds. It is unrelated to the consonants that open a syllable or the time a disease begins.[4][5]

Unit

One time point marking where a note begins in an audio signal

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Detected from rises in signal energy or spectral change, and timed in seconds or milliseconds