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Gǀui Dialect
Gǀui or Gǀwi (pronounced in English, and also spelled ''ǀGwi, Dcui, Gcwi,'' or ''Cgui'') is a Khoe dialect of Botswana with 2,500 speakers (2004 Cook). It is part of the Gǁana dialect cluster, and is closely related to Naro. It has a number of loan words from ǂʼAmkoe. Gǀui, ǂʼAmkoe, and Taa form the core of the Kalahari Basin sprachbund, and share a number of characteristic features, including extremely large consonant inventories. Phonology Gǀui has 89 consonants (with 52 clicks) or 52 consonants (and 20 clicks), depending on analysis. There are ten vowels, and two to six tones, again depending on analysis. Clicks Gǀui has 24 simple click consonants, plus complex clicks variously analyzed as consonant clusters or airstream contours. As with many of the Tshu–Khwe languages, clicks have lost some of their importance under the influence of neighboring Bantu languages. Many words which previously began with clicks (as shown by cognates in related languages) hav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Botswana
Botswana (, ), officially the Republic of Botswana ( tn, Lefatshe la Botswana, label= Setswana, ), is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70 percent of its territory being the Kalahari Desert. It is bordered by South Africa to the south and southeast, Namibia to the west and north, and Zimbabwe to the northeast. It is connected to Zambia across the short Zambezi River border by the Kazungula Bridge. A country of slightly over 2.3 million people, Botswana is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. About 11.6 percent of the population lives in the capital and largest city, Gaborone. Formerly one of the world's poorest countries—with a GDP per capita of about US$70 per year in the late 1960s—it has since transformed itself into an upper-middle-income country, with one of the world's fastest-growing economies. Modern-day humans first inhabited the country over 200,000 years ago. The Tswana ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dental Click
Dental (or more precisely denti-alveolar) clicks are a family of click consonants found, as constituents of words, only in Africa and in the Damin ritual jargon of Australia. In English, the ''tut-tut!'' (British spelling, "tutting") or ''tsk! tsk!'' (American spelling, "tsking") sound used to express disapproval or pity is an unreleased dental click, although it is not a lexical phoneme (a sound that distinguishes words) in English but a paralinguistic speech-sound. Similarly paralinguistic usage of dental clicks is made in certain other languages, but the meaning thereof differs widely between many of the languages (e.g., affirmation in Somali but negation in many varieties of Arabic). The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the place of articulation of these sounds is , a vertical bar. Prior to 1989, was the IPA letter for the dental clicks. It is still occasionally used where the symbol would be confounded with other symbols, such as prosod ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voice Onset Time
In phonetics, voice onset time (VOT) is a feature of the production of stop consonants. It is defined as the length of time that passes between the release of a stop consonant and the onset of voicing, the vibration of the vocal folds, or, according to other authors, periodicity. Some authors allow negative values to mark voicing that begins during the period of articulatory closure for the consonant and continues in the release, for those unaspirated voiced stops in which there is no voicing present at the instant of articulatory closure. History The concept of voice onset time can be traced back as far as the 19th century, when Adjarian (1899: 119) [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glottalized Click
Glottalized clicks are click consonants pronounced with closure of the glottis. All click types ( alveolar , dental , lateral , palatal , retroflex , and labial ) have glottalized variants. They are very common: All of the Khoisan languages of Africa have them (the Khoe, Tuu, and Kx'a language families, Sandawe, and Hadza), as does Dahalo and the Bantu languages Yeyi and Xhosa (though Zulu does not). They are produced by making a glottal stop (the catch in the throat in the middle of English ''uh-oh!''), which stops the flow of air, and then using the front of the tongue to make the click sound in the middle of the glottal stop. Glottalized nasal clicks In all languages which have them, glottalized clicks are nasalized, though a few have non-nasal glottalized clicks as well. Glottalized nasal clicks are formed by closing the glottis so that the click is pronounced in silence; however, the nasal passage is left open (the velum is lowered), and any preceding vowel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fricative Consonant
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] |
Linguo-pulmonic Consonant
Pulmonic-contour clicks, also called sequential linguo-pulmonic consonants, are consonants that transition from a click to an ordinary pulmonic sound, or more precisely, have an audible delay between the front and rear release of the click. All click types ( alveolar , dental , lateral , palatal , retroflex , and labial ) have linguo-pulmonic variants, which occur as both stops and affricates, and are attested in four phonations: tenuis, voiced, aspirated, and murmured (breathy voiced). At least a voiceless linguo-pulmonic affricate is attested from all Khoisan languages of southern Africa (the Khoe, Tuu, and Kx'a language families), as well as (reportedly) from the Bantu language Yeyi from the same area, but they are unattested elsewhere. Analysis Traditionally, contour clicks were believed to be uvular in their rear articulation, whereas non-contour clicks were thought to be velar. However, it is now known that all clicks are uvular, at least in the languages that hav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voicelessness
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies voicing and that voicelessness is the lack of phonation. The International Phonetic Alphabet has distinct letters for many voiceless and modally voiced pairs of consonants (the obstruents), such as . Also, there are diacritics for voicelessness, and , which is used for letters with a descender. Diacritics are typically used with letters for prototypically voiced sounds, such as vowels and sonorant consonants: . In Russian use of the IPA, the voicing diacritic may be turned for voicelessness, e.g. . Voiceless vowels and other sonorants Sonorants are sounds such as vowels and nasals that are voiced in most of the world's languages. However, in some languages sonorants may be voiceless, usually allophonically. For example, the Japa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nasal Click
Nasal clicks are click consonants pronounced with nasal airflow. All click types ( alveolar , dental , lateral , palatal , retroflex , and labial ) have nasal variants, and these are attested in four or five phonations: voiced, voiceless, aspirated, murmured (breathy voiced), and—in the analysis of Miller (2011)—glottalized. Modally voiced nasal clicks are ubiquitous: They are found in every language which has clicks as part of its regular sound inventory. This includes Damin, which has only nasal clicks, and Dahalo, which has only plain and glottalized nasal clicks. They are fully nasalized throughout, like the pulmonic nasal and . That is, you pronounce a uvular sound (like English ''ng'') with the back of your tongue, and make the click sound in the middle of it using the front of your tongue. They are typically transcribed something like ; in Khoekhoe, they are written , in Juǀʼhõa as , and in Zulu, Xhosa, Sandawe, and Naro as . Aspirated nasal clicks, often ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glottalized Click
Glottalized clicks are click consonants pronounced with closure of the glottis. All click types ( alveolar , dental , lateral , palatal , retroflex , and labial ) have glottalized variants. They are very common: All of the Khoisan languages of Africa have them (the Khoe, Tuu, and Kx'a language families, Sandawe, and Hadza), as does Dahalo and the Bantu languages Yeyi and Xhosa (though Zulu does not). They are produced by making a glottal stop (the catch in the throat in the middle of English ''uh-oh!''), which stops the flow of air, and then using the front of the tongue to make the click sound in the middle of the glottal stop. Glottalized nasal clicks In all languages which have them, glottalized clicks are nasalized, though a few have non-nasal glottalized clicks as well. Glottalized nasal clicks are formed by closing the glottis so that the click is pronounced in silence; however, the nasal passage is left open (the velum is lowered), and any preceding vowel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aspiration (phonetics)
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of breath that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. In English, aspirated consonants are allophones in complementary distribution with their unaspirated counterparts, but in some other languages, notably most South Asian languages (including Indian) and East Asian languages, the difference is contrastive. In dialects with aspiration, to feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say ''spin'' and then ''pin'' . One should either feel a puff of air or see a flicker of the candle flame with ''pin'' that one does not get with ''spin''. Transcription In the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), aspirated consonants are written using the symbols for voiceless consonants followed by the aspiration modifier letter , a superscript form of the symbol for the voiceless glottal fricati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tenuis Consonant
In linguistics, a tenuis consonant ( or ) is an obstruent that is voiceless, unaspirated and unglottalized. In other words, it has the "plain" phonation of with a voice onset time close to zero (a zero-VOT consonant), as Spanish ''p, t, ch, k'' or English ''p, t, k'' after ''s'' (''spy, sty, sky''). For most languages, the distinction is relevant only for stops and affricates. However, a few languages have analogous series for fricatives. Mazahua, for example, has ejective, aspirated, and voiced fricatives alongside tenuis , parallel to stops alongside tenuis . Many click languages have tenuis click consonants alongside voiced, aspirated, and glottalized series. Transcription In transcription, tenuis consonants are not normally marked explicitly, and consonants written with voiceless IPA letters, such as , are typically assumed to be unaspirated and unglottalized unless otherwise indicated. However, aspiration is often left untranscribed if no contrast needs to b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voice (phonetics)
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts: *Voicing can refer to the ''articulatory process'' in which the vocal folds vibrate, its primary use in phonetics to describe phones, which are particular speech sounds. *It can also refer to a classification of speech sounds that tend to be associated with vocal cord vibration but may not actually be voiced at the articulatory level. That is the term's primary use in phonology: to describe phonemes; while in phonetics its primary use is to describe phones. For example, voicing accounts for the difference between the pair of sounds associated with the English letters "s" and "z". The two sounds are transcribed as and to distinguish them from the English letters, which have several possible pronunciat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |