|
Pirahã Language
Pirahã (also spelled ''Pirahá, Pirahán''), or Múra-Pirahã, is the indigenous language of the Pirahã people of Amazonas, Brazil. The Pirahã live along the Maici River, a tributary of the Amazon River. Pirahã is the only surviving dialect of the Mura language; all others having died out in the last few centuries as most groups of the Mura people have shifted to Portuguese. Due to this, Pirahã can be considered its own language now, as no other Mura dialects have survived. Suspected relatives, such as Matanawi, are also extinct. Pirahã is estimated to have between 250 and 380 speakers. It is not in immediate danger of extinction, as its use is vigorous and the Pirahã community is mostly monolingual. The Pirahã language is the subject of various controversial claims; for example, that it provides evidence against linguistic relativity. The controversy is compounded by the difficulty of learning the language; the number of linguists with field experience in Pirah� ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brazil
Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population, seventh-largest by population, with over 212 million people. The country is a federation composed of 26 Federative units of Brazil, states and a Federal District (Brazil), Federal District, which hosts the capital, BrasÃlia. List of cities in Brazil by population, Its most populous city is São Paulo, followed by Rio de Janeiro. Brazil has the most Portuguese-speaking countries, Portuguese speakers in the world and is the only country in the Americas where Portuguese language, Portuguese is an Portuguese-speaking world, official language. Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, Brazil has a Coastline of Brazil, coastline of . Covering roughly half of South America's land area, it Borders of Brazil, borders all other countries and ter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Obokuitai Language
Obokuitai (Obogwitai) is a Lakes Plain language of Papua, Indonesia. It is named after ''Obogwi'' village in East Central Mambermano District, Mamberamo Raya Regency. Obokuitai, Sikaritai, and Eritai constitute a dialect cluster. Phonology The following discussion is based on Jenison & Jenison (1991). Unusual phonological features of Obokuitai and other Lakes Plain languages are the complete lack of nasals, even allophones, and a series of extra high or fricativized vowels that developed from loss of a following stop consonant. Obokuitai has one of the smallest phonemic inventories in the world, equal to the Pirahã and Rotokas Rotokas is a North Bougainville language spoken by about 4,320 people on Bougainville Island in Papua New Guinea. Central Rotokas is most notable for its extremely small phonemic consonantal inventory, which lacks phonemic nasals. Dialects ... languages at 11 phonemes. Consonants The small consonant inventory is typical of Lakes Pla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bilabial Consonant
In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a labial consonant articulated with both lips. Frequency Bilabial consonants are very common across languages. Only around 0.7% of the world's languages lack bilabial consonants altogether, including Tlingit, Chipewyan, Oneida, and Wichita, though all of these have a labial–velar approximant /w/. Varieties The bilabial consonants identified by the 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 ... (IPA) are: Owere Igbo has a six-way contrast among bilabial stops: . Other varieties The extensions to the IPA also define a () for smacking the lips together. A lip-smack in the non-percussive sense of the lips audibly parting would be . The IPA chart shades out ''bilabial lateral consonants'', wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Open Vowel
An open vowel is a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned approximately as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels (in U.S. terminology ) in reference to the low position of the tongue. In the context of the phonology of any particular language, a ''low vowel'' can be any vowel that is more open than a mid vowel. That is, open-mid vowels, near-open vowels, and open vowels can all be considered low vowels. Partial list The open vowels with dedicated symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet are: * open front unrounded vowel * open front rounded vowel This vowel is not known to occur as a phoneme distinct from in any language. * open back unrounded vowel * open back rounded vowel There also are central vowels that do not have dedicated symbols in the IPA: * open central unrounded vowel or (commonly written as if it were front vowel, front) * open central rounded vowel There is no unambiguous way of transc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Close Vowel
A close vowel, also known as a high vowel (in U.S. terminology), is any in a class of vowel sounds used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned approximately as close as possible to the roof of the mouth as it can be without creating a constriction. A constriction would produce a sound that would be classified as a consonant. The term "close" is recommended by the International Phonetic Association. Close vowels are often referred to as "high" vowels, as in the Americanist phonetic tradition, because the tongue is positioned high in the mouth during articulation. In the context of the phonology of any particular language, a ''high vowel'' can be any vowel that is more close than a mid vowel. That is, close-mid vowels, near-close vowels, and close vowels can all be considered high vowels. Partial list The six close vowels that have dedicated symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet are: * close front unro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Back Vowel
A back vowel is any in a class of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the highest point of the tongue is positioned relatively back in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark vowels because they are perceived as sounding darker than the front vowels. Near-back vowels are essentially a type of back vowels; no language is known to contrast back and near-back vowels based on backness alone. The category "back vowel" comprises both raised vowels and retracted vowels. Articulation In their articulation, back vowels do not form a single category, but may be either raised vowels such as or retracted vowels such as .Scott Moisik, Ewa Czaykowska-Higgins, & John H. Esling (2012"The Epilaryngeal Articulator: A New Conceptual Tool for Understanding Lingual-Laryngeal Contrasts"/ref> Partial list The back vowels that have dedicated symbols in the I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Front Vowel
A front vowel is a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages, its defining characteristic being that the highest point of the tongue is positioned approximately as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would otherwise make it a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also called bright vowels because they are perceived as sounding brighter than the back vowels. Near-front vowels are essentially a type of front vowel; no language is known to contrast front and near-front vowels based on backness alone. Rounded front vowels are typically centralized, that is, near-front in their articulation. This is one reason they are written to the right of unrounded front vowels in the IPA vowel chart. Partial list The front vowels that have dedicated symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet are: * close front unrounded vowel * close front compressed vowel * near-close front unrounded vowel * near-close front compressed vowel * clos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allophone
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plosive (as in ''stop'' ) and the aspirated form (as in ''top'' ) are allophones for the phoneme , while these two are considered to be different phonemes in some languages such as Central Thai. Similarly, in Spanish, (as in ''dolor'' ) and (as in ''nada'' ) are allophones for the phoneme , while these two are considered to be different phonemes in English (as in the difference between ''dare'' and ''there''). The specific allophone selected in a given situation is often predictable from the phonetic context, with such allophones being called positional variants, but some allophones occur in free variation. Replacing a sound by another allophone of the same phoneme usually does not change the meaning of a word, but the result may sound ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daniel Everett
Daniel Leonard Everett (born July 26, 1951) is an American linguist and author best known for his study of the Amazon basin's Pirahã people and their language. Everett is currently Trustee Professor of Cognitive Sciences at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts. From July 1, 2010, to June 30, 2018, Everett served as Dean of Arts and Sciences at Bentley. Prior to Bentley University, Everett was chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois. He has taught at the University of Manchester and is former chair of the Linguistics Department of the University of Pittsburgh. Some of his claims about the Pirahã language have beecontested by other linguists. Early life Everett was raised near the Mexican border in Holtville, California. His father was an occasional cowboy, mechanic, and construction worker. His mother was a waitress at a local restaurant. Everett played in rock bands from the time he was 11 yea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grave Accent
The grave accent () ( or ) is a diacritical mark used to varying degrees in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan and many other Western European languages as well as for a few unusual uses in English. It is also used in other languages using the Latin alphabet, such as Mohawk and Yoruba, and with non-Latin writing systems such as the Greek and Cyrillic alphabets and the Bopomofo or Zhuyin Fuhao semi-syllabary. It has no single meaning, but can indicate pitch, stress, or other features. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed characters are available. For less-used and compound diacritics, a combining character facility is available. A free-standing version of the symbol (), commonly called a backtick, also exists and has acquired other uses. Uses Pitch The grave accent first appeared in the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek to mark a lower pitch than the high pitch of the acute accent. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Acute Accent
The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin alphabet, Latin, Cyrillic script, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabet, Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed characters are available. Uses History An early precursor of the acute accent was the Apex (diacritic), apex, used in Latin language, Latin inscriptions to mark vowel length, long vowels. The acute accent was first used in French in 1530 by Geoffroy Tory, the royal printer. Pitch Ancient Greek The acute accent was first used in the Greek diacritics, polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, where it indicated a syllable with a high pitch accent, pitch. In Modern Greek, a stress (linguistics), stress accent has replaced the pitch accent, and the acute marks the stressed syllable of a word. The Greek name of the accented syllable was and is (''oxeîa'', Modern Greek ''oxÃa'') "sharp" or "h ... [...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] |
