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Urap Language
Tifal is an Ok language spoken in Papua New Guinea. Dialects are (1) Tifal (Tifalmin) and Urap (Urapmin) and (2) Atbal (Atbalmin). Geography The Tifal language is bounded by Papuan and Irian Jaya speakers to the south and west, the Telefomin valley in the east, and the Sepik river to the north. Orthography Phonology Consonants : is realized as word finally, as in syllable-coda position before a consonant, and elsewhere. : is realized as in syllable coda before a consonant and elsewhere. : is realized as intervocalically, e.g. : 'water container'. : is intervocalically, in syllable coda before consonants, and elsewhere. : is realized as before . : is alveolar adjacent to back vowels and alveodental elsewhere. One dialect realizes as intervocalically. Vowels and rarely contrast. Phonotactics Syllable structure is (C)V()(C). The expression ''kwiin takan'' 'oh my!' may be an exception. only occurs word-initially. only occurs syllable-initially. is a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and its offshore islands in Melanesia (a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean north of Australia). Its capital, located along its southeastern coast, is Port Moresby. The country is the world's third largest island country, with an area of . At the national level, after being ruled by three external powers since 1884, including nearly 60 years of Australian administration starting during World War I, Papua New Guinea established its sovereignty in 1975. It became an independent Commonwealth realm in 1975 with Elizabeth II as its queen. It also became a member of the Commonwealth of Nations in its own right. There are 839 known languages of Papua New Guinea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Denti-alveolar Consonant
In linguistics, a denti-alveolar consonant or dento-alveolar consonant is a consonant that is articulated with a flat tongue against the alveolar ridge and the upper teeth, such as and in languages such as French, Italian and Spanish. That is, a denti-alveolar consonant is (pre)alveolar and laminal rather than purely dental. Although denti-alveolar consonants are often labeled as " dental" because only the forward contact with the teeth is visible, the point of contact of the tongue that is farthest back is most relevant, as it defines the maximum acoustic space of resonance and gives a characteristic sound to a consonant. In French, the contact that is the farthest back is alveolar or sometimes slightly pre-alveolar. In Spanish, and are laminal denti-alveolar, and and are alveolar but assimilate to a following or . Similarly, in Italian, , , , are denti-alveolar, and and are alveolar. The dental click Dental (or more precisely denti-alveolar) clicks are a fam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transitivity (grammatical Category)
In linguistics, transitivity is a property of verbs that relates to whether a verb can take objects and how many such objects a verb can take. It is closely related to valency, which considers other verb arguments in addition to direct objects. The obligatory noun phrases and prepositional phrases determine how many arguments a predicate has. Obligatory elements are considered arguments while optional ones are never counted in the list of arguments. Traditional grammar makes a binary distinction between intransitive verbs, which cannot take a direct object (such as ''fall'' or ''sit'' in English), and transitive verbs, which take a direct object (such as ''throw'', ''injure'', or ''kiss'' in English). In practice, many languages (including English) also have verbs that have two objects (ditransitive verbs) or even verbs that can be used as both a transitive verb and an intransitive verb (ambitransitive verbs, for example ''She walked the dog'' and ''She walked with a dog''). ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allomorph
In linguistics, an allomorph is a variant phonetic form of a morpheme, or, a unit of meaning that varies in sound and spelling without changing the meaning. The term ''allomorph'' describes the realization of phonological variations for a specific morpheme. The different allomorphs that a morpheme can become are governed by morphophonemic rules. These phonological rules determine what phonetic form, or specific pronunciation, a morpheme will take based on the phonological or morphological context in which they appear. In English English has several morphemes that vary in sound but not in meaning, such as past tense morphemes, plural morphemes, and negative morphemes. Past tense allomorphs For example, an English past tense morpheme is ''-ed'', which occurs in several allomorphs depending on its phonological environment by assimilating the voicing of the previous segment or the insertion of a schwa after an alveolar stop: *as or in verbs whose stem ends with the alveolar st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Suppletion
In linguistics and etymology, suppletion is traditionally understood as the use of one word as the inflected form of another word when the two words are not cognate. For those learning a language, suppletive forms will be seen as "irregular" or even "highly irregular". The term "suppletion" implies that a gap in the paradigm was filled by a form "supplied" by a different paradigm. Instances of suppletion are overwhelmingly restricted to the most commonly used lexical items in a language. Irregularity and suppletion An irregular paradigm is one in which the derived forms of a word cannot be deduced by simple rules from the base form. For example, someone who knows only a little English can deduce that the plural of ''girl'' is ''girls'' but cannot deduce that the plural of ''man'' is ''men''. Language learners are often most aware of irregular verbs, but any part of speech with inflections can be irregular. For most synchronic purposes—first-language acquisition studies, psych ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grammatical Aspect
In linguistics, aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how an action, event, or state, as denoted by a verb, extends over time. Perfective aspect is used in referring to an event conceived as bounded and unitary, without reference to any flow of time during ("I helped him"). Imperfective aspect is used for situations conceived as existing continuously or repetitively as time flows ("I was helping him"; "I used to help people"). Further distinctions can be made, for example, to distinguish states and ongoing actions ( continuous and progressive aspects) from repetitive actions ( habitual aspect). Certain aspectual distinctions express a relation between the time of the event and the time of reference. This is the case with the perfect aspect, which indicates that an event occurred prior to (but has continuing relevance at) the time of reference: "I have eaten"; "I had eaten"; "I will have eaten". Different languages make different grammatical aspectual distinction ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Instrumental Case
In grammar, the instrumental case ( abbreviated or ) is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the ''instrument'' or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action. The noun may be either a physical object or an abstract concept. General discussion The instrumental case appears in this Russian sentence: Here, the inflection of the noun indicates its instrumental rolethe nominative ''перо'' changes its ending to become ''пером''. Modern English expresses the instrumental meaning by use of adverbial phrases that begin with the words ''with'', ''by'', or ''using'' then followed by the noun indicating the ''instrument'': :''I wrote the note with a pen.'' :''I wrote the note (by) using a pen.'' Technical descriptions often use the phrase "by means of", which is similar to "by use of", as in: :''I wrote the note by means of a pen.'' :''I wrote the note by use of a pen.'' This can be replaced by "via", which is a Latin ablative of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subjunctive Mood
The subjunctive (also known as conjunctive in some languages) is a grammatical mood, a feature of the utterance that indicates the speaker's attitude towards it. Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unreality such as: wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, obligation, or action that has not yet occurred; the precise situations in which they are used vary from language to language. The subjunctive is one of the irrealis moods, which refer to what is not necessarily real. It is often contrasted with the indicative, a realis mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact. Subjunctives occur most often, although not exclusively, in subordinate clauses, particularly ''that''-clauses. Examples of the subjunctive in English are found in the sentences "I suggest that you ''be'' careful" and "It is important that she ''stay'' by your side." Indo-European languages Proto-Indo-European The Proto-Indo-Europe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Possessive Case
A possessive or ktetic form ( abbreviated or ; from la, possessivus; grc, κτητικός, translit=ktētikós) is a word or grammatical construction used to indicate a relationship of possession in a broad sense. This can include strict ownership, or a number of other types of relation to a greater or lesser degree analogous to it. Most European languages feature possessive forms associated with personal pronouns, like the English ''my'', ''mine'', ''your'', ''yours'', ''his'' and so on. There are two main ways in which these can be used (and a variety of terminologies for each): * Together with a noun, as in ''my car'', ''your sisters'', ''his boss''. Here the possessive form serves as a ''possessive determiner''. * Without an accompanying noun, as in ''mine is red'', ''I prefer yours'', ''this book is his''. A possessive used in this way is called a ''substantive possessive pronoun'', a possessive pronoun or an ''absolute pronoun''. Some languages, including English, al ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Open Vowel
An open vowel is a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned 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) * open central rounded vowel There is no unambiguous way of transcribing the open cent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mid Vowel
A mid vowel (or a true-mid vowel) is any in a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned midway between an open vowel and a close vowel. Other names for a mid vowel are lowered close-mid vowel and raised open-mid vowel, though the former phrase may also be used to describe a vowel that is as low as open-mid; likewise, the latter phrase may also be used to describe a vowel that is as high as close-mid. Vowels The only mid vowel with a dedicated symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is the mid central vowel with ambiguous rounding . The IPA divides the vowel space into thirds, with the close-mid vowels such as or and the open-mid vowels such as or equidistant in formant space between open or and close or . Thus a true mid front unrounded vowel can be transcribed as either a lowered (with a lowering diacritic) or as a raised (with a raising diacritic). Typical truly mid vowe ... [...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 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 unrounded vowel * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |