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Cluster Reduction
In phonology and historical linguistics, cluster reduction is the simplification of consonant clusters in certain environments or over time. Cluster reduction can happen in different languages, dialects of those languages, in world Englishes, and as a part of language acquisition. Uses Dialects of English Different varieties of cluster reduction can be observed in numerous examples of English dialects around the world, including but not limited to New Zealand English, South Atlantic English, and African American Vernacular English. In some dialects of English such as AAVE certain historical consonant clusters reduce to single consonants at the ends of words, and is common in words in which one of the final consonants is alveolar (/t/, /d/, /s/, /z/): ''friend'' rhymes with ''Ben'', and ''cold'' is homophonous with ''coal''. In both cases, a historical cluster of homorganic consonants loses a stop: However, in ''colder'', where the consonant cluster falls between vowels, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phonology
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a particular language variety. At one time, the study of phonology related only to the study of the systems of phonemes in spoken languages, but may now relate to any linguistic analysis either: Sign languages have a phonological system equivalent to the system of sounds in spoken languages. The building blocks of signs are specifications for movement, location, and handshape. At first, a separate terminology was used for the study of sign phonology ('chereme' instead of 'phoneme', etc.), but the concepts are now considered to apply universally to all human languages. Terminology The word 'phonology' (as in ' phonology of English') can refer either to the field of study or to the phonological system of a given language. This is one ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catalan Phonology
The phonology of Catalan, a Romance language, has a certain degree of dialectal variation. Although there are two standard varieties, one based on Central Eastern dialect and another one based on South-Western or Valencian dialect, this article deals with features of all or most dialects, as well as regional pronunciation differences. Various studies have focused on different Catalan varieties; for example, Wheeler and Mascaró analyze Central Eastern varieties, the former focusing on the educated speech of Barcelona and the latter focusing more on the vernacular of Barcelona, and Recasens does a careful phonetic study of Central Eastern Catalan. Catalan is characterized by final-obstruent devoicing, lenition, and voicing assimilation; a set of 7 or 8 phonemic vowels, vowel assimilations (including vowel harmony), many phonetic diphthongs, and vowel reduction, whose precise details differ between dialects. Several dialects have a dark ''l'', and all dialects have palata ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stop Consonant
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips (, ), or glottis (). Plosives contrast with nasals, where the vocal tract is blocked but airflow continues through the nose, as in and , and with fricatives, where partial occlusion impedes but does not block airflow in the vocal tract. Terminology The terms ''stop, occlusive,'' and ''plosive'' are often used interchangeably. Linguists who distinguish them may not agree on the distinction being made. The terms refer to different features of the consonant. "Stop" refers to the airflow that is stopped. "Occlusive" refers to the articulation, which occludes (blocks) the vocal tract. "Plosive" refers to the release burst (plosion) of the consonant. Some object to the use of "plosive" for inaudibly released stops, which may then instead ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fricative
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in the case of German (the final consonant of ''Bach''); or the side of the tongue against the molars, in the case of Welsh (appearing twice in the name '' Llanelli''). This turbulent airflow is called frication. A particular subset of fricatives are the sibilants. When forming a sibilant, one still is forcing air through a narrow channel, but in addition, the tongue is curled lengthwise to direct the air over the edge of the teeth. English , , , and are examples of sibilants. The usage of two other terms is less standardized: "Spirant" is an older term for fricatives used by some American and European phoneticians and phonologists. "Strident" could mean just "sibilant", but some authors include also labiodental and uvular fricatives ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Language Acquisition
Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language (in other words, gain the ability to be aware of language and to understand it), as well as to produce and use words and sentences to communicate. Language acquisition involves structures, rules and representation. The capacity to use language successfully requires one to acquire a range of tools including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and an extensive vocabulary. Language can be vocalized as in speech, or manual as in sign. Human language capacity is represented in the brain. Even though human language capacity is finite, one can say and understand an infinite number of sentences, which is based on a syntactic principle called recursion. Evidence suggests that every individual has three recursive mechanisms that allow sentences to go indeterminately. These three mechanisms are: ''relativization'', ''complementation'' and ''coordination''. There are two m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spanish Language
Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a global language with more than 500 million native speakers, mainly in the Americas and Spain. Spanish is the official language of 20 countries. It is the world's second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese; the world's fourth-most spoken language overall after English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu); and the world's most widely spoken Romance language. The largest population of native speakers is in Mexico. Spanish is part of the Ibero-Romance group of languages, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The oldest Latin texts with traces of Spanish come from mid-northern Iberia in the 9th century, and the first systematic written use of the language happened in Toledo, a prominent c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chicano English
Chicano English, or Mexican-American English, is a dialect of American English spoken primarily by Mexican Americans (sometimes known as Chicanos), particularly in the Southwestern United States ranging from Texas to California,Newman, Michael.The New York Latino English Project Page" Queens College. Accessed 2015. "Almost all recent research on Latino English in the US has been done in the Southwest, particularly California. NYLE New_York_Latino_English">nowiki/>New_York_Latino_English.html" ;"title="New_York_Latino_English.html" ;"title="nowiki/>New York Latino English">nowiki/>New York Latino English">New_York_Latino_English.html" ;"title="nowiki/>New York Latino English">nowiki/>New York Latino Englishdiffers in two respects from these forms." as well as in Chicago. Chicano English is sometimes mistakenly conflated with Spanglish, which is a mixing of Spanish language, Spanish and English language, English; however, Chicano English is a fully formed and native dialect of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nigerian English
Nigerians or the Nigerian people are citizens of Nigeria or people with ancestry from Nigeria. The name Nigeria was taken from the Niger River running through the country. This name was allegedly coined in the late 19th century by British journalist Flora Shaw, who later married Baron Frederick Lugard, a British colonial administrator. ''Nigeria'' is composed of various ethnic groups and cultures and the term Nigerian refers to a citizenship-based civic nationality. Nigerians derive from over 250 ethnic groups and languages.Toyin Falola. ''Culture and Customs of Nigeria''. Westport, Connecticut, USA: Greenwood Press, 2001. p. 4. Though there are multiple ethnic groups in Nigeria, economic factors result in significant mobility of Nigerians of multiple ethnic and religious backgrounds to reside in territories in Nigeria that are outside their ethnic or religious background, resulting in the mixing of the various ethnic and religious groups, especially in Nigeria's cities.Toyin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Singapore English
Singapore English (SgE, SE, en-SG) (similar and related to British English) is the set of varieties of the English language native to Singapore. In Singapore, English is spoken in two main forms: Singaporean Standard English (indistinguishable grammatically from Standard British English) and Singapore Colloquial English (better known as Singlish). Singapore is a cosmopolitan city, with 37% of its population born outside the country. Singaporeans, even those of the same ethnic group, have many different first languages and cultures. For example, in 2005, among Chinese Singaporeans, over a third spoke English as their main language at home while almost half spoke Mandarin, and the rest spoke various mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. In the Indian community, most Singaporeans of Indian descent speak either English or a South Asian language. The English language is now the most popular medium of communication among students from primary school to university. Many fa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deletion (linguistics)
In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run together by the omission of a final sound. An example is the elision of word-final /t/ in English if it is preceded and followed by a consonant: "first light" is often pronounced /fɜ:s laɪt/. Many other terms are used to refer to particular cases where sounds are omitted. Citation forms and contextual forms A word may be spoken individually in what is called the citation form. This corresponds to the pronunciation given in a dictionary. However, when words are spoken in context, it often happens that some sounds that belong to the citation form are omitted. Elision is not an all-or-nothing process: elision is more likely to occur in some styles of speaking and less likely in others. Many writers have described the styles of speech in which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glottalization
Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and other sonorants is most often realized as creaky voice (partial closure). Glottalization of obstruent consonants usually involves complete closure of the glottis; another way to describe this phenomenon is to say that a glottal stop is made simultaneously with another consonant. In certain cases, the glottal stop can even wholly replace the voiceless consonant. The term 'glottalized' is also used for ejective and implosive consonants; see glottalic consonant for examples. There are two other ways to represent glottalization of sonorants in the IPA: (a) the same way as ejectives, with an apostrophe; or (b) with the under-tilde for creaky voice. For example, the Yapese word for "sick" with a glottalized ''m'' could be transcribed as either or . (In some typefaces, the apostrophe will occur above the m.) Types Glottalization varies along three pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metathesis (linguistics)
Metathesis (; from Greek , from "I put in a different order"; Latin: ''transpositio'') is the transposition of sounds or syllables in a word or of words in a sentence. Most commonly, it refers to the interchange of two or more contiguous segments or syllables, known as adjacent metathesis or local metathesis: * ''foliage'' > ''**foilage'' (adjacent segments) * ''anemone'' > ''**anenome'' (adjacent syllables) * ''cavalry'' > ''**calvary'' (codas of adjacent syllables) Metathesis may also involve interchanging non-contiguous sounds, known as nonadjacent metathesis, long-distance metathesis, or hyperthesis, as shown in these examples of metathesis sound change from Latin to Spanish: * Latin > Spanish "word" * Latin > Spanish "miracle" * Latin > Spanish "danger, peril" * Latin > Spanish "crocodile" Many languages have words that show this phenomenon, and some even use it as a regular part of their grammar, such as Hebrew and Fur. The process of metathesis has altered th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
