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Downstep
Downstep is a phenomenon in tone languages in which if two syllables have the same tone (for example, both with a high tone or both with a low tone), the second syllable is lower in pitch than the first. Two main kinds of downstep can be distinguished. The first, more usually called automatic downstep, downdrift or catathesis, occurs when high and low tones come in the sequence H L (L) H; the second high tone tends to be lower than the first because of the intervening low-toned syllable. It is common in African languages, such as Chichewa. It has also been argued that the same phenomenon is heard in English sentences, if these sentences are pronounced with a falling intonation, for example ''I really believe Ebenezer was a dealer in magnesium'', or ''I bought blueberries, bayberries, raspberries, mulberries, and brambleberries''. Downstep proper, or non-automatic downstep, is another phenomenon found in many African languages, such as Igbo (see for an overview of downstep in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tone Languages
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All oral languages use pitch to express emotional and other para-linguistic information and to convey emphasis, contrast and other such features in what is called intonation, but not all languages use tones to distinguish words or their inflections, analogously to consonants and vowels. Languages that have this feature are called tonal languages; the distinctive tone patterns of such a language are sometimes called tonemes, by analogy with ''phoneme''. Tonal languages are common in East and Southeast Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific. Tonal languages are different from pitch-accent languages in that tonal languages can have each syllable with an independent tone whilst pitch-accent languages may have one syllable in a word or morpheme that is more prominent than the others. Mechanics Most languages use pitch as intonation to convey ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tone (linguistics)
Tone is the use of pitch (music), pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or to inflection, inflect words. All oral languages use pitch to express emotional and other para-linguistic information and to convey emphasis, contrast and other such features in what is called intonation (linguistics), intonation, but not all languages use tones to distinguish words or their inflections, analogously to consonants and vowels. Languages that have this feature are called tonal languages; the distinctive tone patterns of such a language are sometimes called tonemes, by analogy with ''phoneme''. Tonal languages are common in East Asia, East and Southeast Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific islands, Pacific. Tonal languages are different from pitch-accent languages in that tonal languages can have each syllable with an independent tone whilst pitch-accent languages may have one syllable in a word or morpheme that is more prominent t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation for the sounds of speech. The IPA is used by linguists, lexicography, lexicographers, foreign language students and teachers, speech–language pathology, speech–language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators, and translators. The IPA is designed to represent those qualities of speech that are part of lexical item, lexical (and, to a limited extent, prosodic) sounds in oral language: phone (phonetics), phones, Intonation (linguistics), intonation and the separation of syllables. To represent additional qualities of speechsuch as tooth wikt:gnash, gnashing, lisping, and sounds made with a cleft lip and cleft palate, cleft palatean extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet, extended set of symbols may be used ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Floating Tone
A floating tone is a morpheme or element of a morpheme that contains neither consonants nor vowels, but only tone. It cannot be pronounced by itself but affects the tones of neighboring morphemes. An example occurs in Bambara, a Mande language of Mali that has two phonemic tones, ''high'' and ''low.'' The definite article In grammar, an article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech. In English, both "the" ... is a floating low tone, and with a noun in isolation, it is associated with the preceding vowel and turns a high tone into a falling tone: á''river;'' â''the river''. When it occurs between two high tones, it downsteps the following tone: * ''it's not a river'' * (or ) ''it's not the river'' Also common are floating tones associated with a segmental morpheme such as an affix. For example, in Okphela, an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Downdrift
In phonetics, downdrift (also known as ''automatic downstep'') is the cumulative lowering of pitch in the course of a sentence due to interactions among tones in a tonal language. Downdrift often occurs when the tones in successive syllables are H L H (high, low, high) or H L L H (high, low, low, high). In this case the second high tone tends to be lower than the first. The effect can accumulate so that with each low tone, the pitch of the high tones becomes slightly lower, until the end of the intonational phrase, when the pitch is "reset". However, not every sequence of H L H leads to downdrift. In some languages, in some circumstances, the two high tones in a sequence H L H can be pronounced on the same level, with a "plateau" between them; that is, H L H changes to H H H. This occurs for example in Chichewa if the first H is a proclitic word, e.g. "of" + "Malawi" is pronounced "of Malawi", with a plateau. In other languages, in some circumstances, even longer sequences suc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Upstep
In linguistics, upstep is a phonemic or phonetic upward shift of tone between the syllables or words of a tonal language. It is best known in the tonal languages of Sub-Saharan Africa. Upstep is a much rarer phenomenon than its counterpart, downstep. The symbol for upstep in the International Phonetic Alphabet is a superscript upward arrow [] ([]). However, it is common, especially in the early research, to find a superscript (or sometimes subscript) inverted exclamation mark [] ([]) or [], because of typographical constraints. Hausa has upstep because of the interaction of tones when they are placed in context: : :''It's English.'' Upstep is superficially similar to pitch reset, which is nearly universal in the prosody of the world's languages. The most common prosodic contours occur in chunks with gradually declining pitch (here transcribed as a global fall, ��. Between such chunks, the pitch resets: :Been there. Done that. : Occurrence Upstep occurs in various Sub- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chewa Language
Chewa ( ; also known as Nyanja ) is a Bantu languages, Bantu language spoken in Malawi and a recognised minority in Zambia and Mozambique. The noun class prefix ''chi-'' is used for languages, so the language is often called or Chinyanja. In Malawi, the name was officially changed from Chinyanja to Chichewa in 1968 at the insistence of President Hastings Banda, Hastings Kamuzu Banda (himself of the Chewa people), and this is still the name most commonly used in Malawi today. In Zambia, the language is generally known as Nyanja or '(language) of the lake' (referring to Lake Malawi). Chewa belongs to the same language group (Guthrie classification of Bantu languages#Zone N, Guthrie Zone N) as Tumbuka language, Tumbuka, Sena language, Sena and Nsenga language, Nsenga. Throughout the history of Malawi, only Chewa and Tumbuka language, Tumbuka have at one time been the primary dominant national languages used by government officials and in school curricula. However, the Tumbuka lang ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Igbo Language
Igbo ( , ; Standard Igbo: ''Ásụ̀sụ́ Ìgbò'' ) is the principal native language cluster of the Igbo people, an ethnicity in the Southeastern part of Nigeria. Igbo languages are spoken by a total of 31 million people. The number of Igboid languages depends on how one classifies a language versus a dialect, so there could be around 35 different Igbo languages. The core Igbo cluster, or Igbo proper, is generally thought to be one language but there is limited mutual intelligibility between the different groupings (north, west, south and east). A standard literary language termed 'Igbo izugbe' (meaning "general igbo") was generically developed and later adopted around 1972, with its core foundation based on the Orlu, Imo, Orlu (Isu people, Isu dialects), Anambra (Awka dialects) and Umuahia (Ohuhu dialects), omitting the nasal vowel, nasalization and aspiration (phonetics), aspiration of those varieties. History The first book to publish Igbo terms was ''History of the Mis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Superscript
A subscript or superscript is a character (such as a number or letter) that is set slightly below or above the normal line of type, respectively. It is usually smaller than the rest of the text. Subscripts appear at or below the baseline, while superscripts are above. Subscripts and superscripts are perhaps most often used in formulas, mathematical expressions, and specifications of chemical compounds and isotopes, but have many other uses as well. In professional typography, subscript and superscript characters are not simply ordinary characters reduced in size; to keep them visually consistent with the rest of the font, typeface designers make them slightly heavier (i.e. medium or bold typography) than a reduced-size character would be. The vertical distance that sub- or superscripted text is moved from the original baseline varies by typeface and by use. In typesetting, such types are traditionally called " superior" and "inferior" letters, figures, etc., or just "superi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exclamation Mark
The exclamation mark (also known as exclamation point in American English) is a punctuation mark usually used after an interjection or exclamation to indicate strong feelings or to show wikt:emphasis, emphasis. The exclamation mark often marks the end of a sentence, for example: "Watch out!". Similarly, a bare exclamation mark (with nothing before or after) is frequently used in warning signs. Additionally, the exclamation mark is commonly used in writing to make a character seem as though they are shouting, excited, or surprised. Other uses include: * In mathematics, it denotes the factorial operation. * Several computer languages use at the beginning of an expression (computer science), expression to denote logical negation. For example, means "the logical negation of A", also called "not A". This usage has spread to ordinary language (e.g., "!clue" means no-clue or clueless). * Some languages use ǃ, a symbol that looks like an exclamation mark, to denote a click consonant. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alveolar Click
The alveolar or postalveolar clicks are a family of click consonants found only in Africa and in the Damin ritual jargon of Australia. The tongue is more or less concave (depending on the language), and is pulled down rather than back as in the palatal clicks, making a hollower sound than those consonants. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the place of articulation of these sounds is . The symbol is not an exclamation mark in origin, but rather a vertical bar with a subscript dot, the dot being the old diacritic for retroflex consonants. Prior to 1989, (stretched c) was the IPA letter for the alveolar clicks, and this is still preferred by some phoneticians. The tail of may be the tail of retroflex consonants in the IPA, and thus analogous to the underdot of . Either letter may be combined with a second letter to indicate the manner of articulation, though this is commonly omitted for tenuis clicks. Alveolar click consonants and their tr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bambara Language
Bambara, also known as Bamana (N'Ko script: ) or Bamanankan (N'Ko script: ; Arabic script: ), is a lingua franca and national language of Mali spoken by perhaps 14 million people, natively by 4.2 million Bambara people and about 10 million second-language users. It is estimated that about 80 percent of the population of Mali speak Bambara as a first or second language. It has a subject–object–verb clause structure and two lexical tones. Classification Bambara is a variety of a group of closely related languages called Manding, whose native speakers trace their cultural history to the medieval Mali Empire. Varieties of Manding are generally considered (among native speakers) to be mutually intelligible – dependent on exposure or familiarity with dialects between speakers – and spoken by 9.1 million people in the countries Burkina Faso, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Liberia, Ivory Coast and the Gambia. Manding is part of the larger Mandé family of languages. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
