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Phonemic Contrast
Phonemic contrast refers to a minimal phonetic difference, that is, small differences in speech sounds, that makes a difference in how the sound is perceived by listeners, and can therefore lead to different mental lexical entries for words. For example, whether a sound is voiced or unvoiced (consider /b/ and /p/ in English) matters for how a sound is perceived in many languages, such that changing this phonetic feature can yield a different word (consider ''bat'' and ''pat'' in English); see Phoneme. Another example in English of a phonemic contrast would be the difference between ''leak'' and ''league;'' the minimal difference of voicing between and does lead to the two utterances being perceived as different words. On the other hand, an example that is not a phonemic contrast in English is the difference between and . In this case the minimal difference of vowel length is not a contrast in English and so those two forms would be perceived as different pronunciations of t ...
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Phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. The field of phonetics is traditionally divided into three sub-disciplines on questions involved such as how humans plan and execute movements to produce speech (articulatory phonetics), how various movements affect the properties of the resulting sound (acoustic phonetics) or how humans convert sound waves to linguistic information (auditory phonetics). Traditionally, the minimal linguistic unit of phonetics is the phone (phonetics), phone—a speech sound in a language which differs from the phonological unit of phoneme; the phoneme is an abstract categorization of phones and it is also defined as the smallest unit that discerns meaning between sounds in any given language. Phonetics deals with two aspects of human speech: production ( ...
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Aspirated Consonant
In phonetics, aspiration is a 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 and East Asian languages, the difference is contrastive. Transcription In 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), 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 fricative . For instance, represents the voiceless bilabial stop, and represents the aspirat ...
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Hindi
Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government of India, alongside English language, English, and is the ''lingua franca'' of North India. Hindi is considered a Sanskritisation (linguistics), Sanskritised Register (sociolinguistics), register of Hindustani. Hindustani itself developed from Old Hindi and was spoken in Delhi and neighbouring areas. It incorporated a significant number of Persian language, Persian loanwords. Hindi is an Languages with official status in India, official language in twelve states (Bihar, Gujarat , Mizoram , Maharashtra ,Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand), and six Union territory, union territories (Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Delhi, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Di ...
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Voiceless Pharyngeal Fricative
The voiceless pharyngeal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication, spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is an h with stroke, h-bar, , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is X\. In the transcription of Arabic, Berber (and other Afro-Asiatic languages) as well as a few other scripts, it is often written , . Typically characterized as fricative in the upper pharynx, it is often characterized as a whispering, whispered . Features Features of the voiceless pharyngeal fricative: Occurrence This sound is the most commonly cited realization of the Semitic letter hēth, which occurs in all dialects of Arabic language, Arabic, Syriac language, Classical Syriac, Western Neo-Aramaic, Central Neo-Aramaic, Ge'ez language, Ge'ez, Tigre language, Tigre, Tigrinya language, Tigrinya as well as Biblical Hebrew, Biblical, Mishnaic Hebrew, Mishnaic and Mizrahi Hebrew, Mizrahi Hebrew language, Hebrew. I ...
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Voiced Glottal Fricative
The voiced glottal fricative, sometimes called breathy-voiced glottal transition, is a type of sound used in some spoken languages which patterns like a fricative or approximant consonant '' phonologically'', but often lacks the usual ''phonetic'' characteristics of a consonant. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is h\. In many languages, has no inherent place or manner of articulation. Thus, it has been described as a breathy-voiced counterpart of the following vowel from a phonetic point of view. However, its characteristics are also influenced by the ''preceding'' vowels and whatever other sounds surround it. Therefore, it can be described as a segment whose only consistent feature is its breathy voice phonation in such languages. It may have real glottal constriction in a number of languages (such as Finnish), making it a fricative. Northern Wu languages such as Shanghainese contrast the ...
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Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic, including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic, which is derived from Classical Arabic. This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as ( "the eloquent Arabic") or simply ' (). Arabic is the List of languages by the number of countries in which they are recognized as an official language, third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations, and the Sacred language, liturgical language of Islam. Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the wo ...
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Psychoacoustics
Psychoacoustics is the branch of psychophysics involving the scientific study of the perception of sound by the human auditory system. It is the branch of science studying the psychological responses associated with sound including noise, speech, and music. Psychoacoustics is an interdisciplinary field including psychology, acoustics, electronic engineering, physics, biology, physiology, and computer science. Background Hearing is not a purely mechanical phenomenon of wave propagation, but is also a sensory and perceptual event. When a person hears something, that something arrives at the ear as a mechanical sound wave traveling through the air, but within the ear it is transformed into neural action potentials. These nerve pulses then travel to the brain where they are perceived. Hence, in many problems in acoustics, such as for Auditory system, audio processing, it is advantageous to take into account not just the mechanics of the environment, but also the fact that both the ear ...
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Second Language
A second language (L2) is a language spoken in addition to one's first language (L1). A second language may be a neighbouring language, another language of the speaker's home country, or a foreign language. A speaker's dominant language, which is the language a speaker uses most or is most comfortable with, is not necessarily the speaker's first language. For example, the Canadian census defines first language for its purposes as "What is the language that this person first learned at home in childhood and still understands?", recognizing that for some, the earliest language may be lost, a process known as language attrition. This can happen when young children start school or move to a new language environment. Second-language acquisition The distinction between acquiring and learning was made by Stephen Krashen as part of his monitor theory. According to Krashen, the ''acquisition'' of a language is a natural process; whereas ''learning'' a language is a conscious one. In ...
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Crosslinguistic Influence
Crosslinguistic influence (CLI) refers to the different ways in which one language can affect another within an individual speaker. It typically involves two languages that can affect one another in a bilingual speaker.  An example of CLI is the influence of Korean on a Korean native speaker who is learning Japanese or French. Less typically, it could also refer to an interaction between different dialects in the mind of a monolingual speaker. CLI can be observed across  subsystems of languages including pragmatics, semantics, syntax, morphology, phonology, phonetics, and orthography.Odlin, Terence (2003). "Cross-Linguistic Influence". ''The Handbook of Second Language Acquisition''. Oxford: Blackwell. p. 437. Discussed further in this article are particular subcategories of CLI—transfer, attrition, the complementarity principle, and additional theories. History The question of how languages influence one another within a bilingu ...
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Language Acquisition
Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language. In other words, it is how human beings gain the ability to be aware of language, to understand it, and to produce and use words and sentence (linguistics), sentences to communicate. Language acquisition involves structures, rules, and representation. The capacity to successfully use language requires human beings to acquire a range of tools, including phonology, morphology (linguistics), morphology, syntax, semantics, and an extensive vocabulary. Language can be vocalized as in speech, or manual as in sign language, sign. Human language capacity is language processing in the brain, 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 of mindfulness meditation, mech ...
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Multilingualism
Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. When the languages are just two, it is usually called bilingualism. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all Europeans claim to speak at least one language other than their mother tongue; but many read and write in one language. Being multilingual is advantageous for people wanting to participate in trade, globalization and cultural openness. Owing to the ease of access to information facilitated by the Internet, individuals' exposure to multiple languages has become increasingly possible. People who speak several languages are also called '' polyglots''. Multilingual speakers have acquired and maintained at least one language during childhood, the so-called first language (L1). The first language (sometimes also referred to as the mother tongue) is usually acquired without formal ...
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First Language
A first language (L1), native language, native tongue, or mother tongue is the first language a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period hypothesis, critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongue'' refers to the language of one's ethnic group rather than the individual's actual first language. Generally, to state a language as a mother tongue, one must have full native fluency in that language. The first language of a child is part of that child's personal, social and cultural identity. Another impact of the first language is that it brings about the reflection and learning of successful social patterns of acting and speaking. Research suggests that while a non-native speaker may develop fluency in a targeted language after about two years of immersion, it can take between five and seven years for that child to be on the same working level as their native speaking counterparts. On 17 November 1999, UNESCO design ...
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