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Tone Sandhi
Tone sandhi is a phonological change that occurs in tonal languages. It involves changes to the tones assigned to individual words or morphemes, based on the pronunciation of adjacent words or morphemes. This change typically simplifies a bidirectional tone into a one-directional tone. Tone sandhi is a type of sandhi, which refers to fusional changes, and is derived from the Sanskrit word for "joining." Languages with tone sandhi Tone sandhi occurs to some extent in nearly all tonal languages, manifesting itself in different ways. Tonal languages, characterized by their use of pitch to affect meaning, appear all over the world, especially in the Niger-Congo language family of Africa, and the Sino-Tibetan language family of East Asia, as well as other East Asian languages such as Kra-Dai, and Papuan languages. East and Southeast Asian languages tend to have larger tonal libraries compared to African languages. However, African languages frequently exhibit downdrift and mo ...
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Sandhi
Sandhi ( ; , ) is any of a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on nearby sounds or the grammatical function of the adjacent words. Sandhi belongs to morphophonology. Sandhi occurs in many languages, e.g. in the phonology of Indian languages (especially Sanskrit, Tamil, Sinhala, Telugu, Marathi, Hindi, Pali, Kannada, Bengali, Assamese and Malayalam). Many dialects of British English show linking and intrusive R. A subset of sandhi called tone sandhi more specifically refers to tone changes between words and syllables. This is a common feature of many tonal languages such as Burmese and Chinese. Types Internal and external sandhi Sandhi can be either: * internal, at morpheme boundaries within words, such as ''syn- + pathy'': ''sympathy'', or * external, at word boundaries, such as the pronunciation "''tem books''" for ''ten books' ...
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Taiwanese Hokkien Tones
Taiwanese may refer to: * of or related to Taiwan **Culture of Taiwan **Geography of Taiwan ** Taiwanese cuisine *Languages of Taiwan ** Formosan languages ** Taiwanese Hokkien, also known as the Taiwanese language * Taiwanese people, residents of Taiwan or people of Taiwanese descent ** Taiwanese indigenous peoples, or Formosan peoples, formerly called Taiwanese aborigines ** Han Taiwanese, Taiwanese people of full or partial ethnic Han descent *** Hoklo Taiwanese Hoklo Taiwanese or Holo people ( zh, t=河洛人/鶴老人/福佬人, poj=Ho̍h-ló-lâng) are a major ethnic group in Taiwan whose ancestry is wholly or partially Hoklo. Being Taiwanese of Han origin, their mother tongue is Taiwanese ( or ), ..., Taiwanese people of full or partial ethnic Hoklo descent See also * * Formosan * Taiwanese language (other) * Republic of China (other) {{disambiguation Language and nationality disambiguation pages ...
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Derivation (linguistics)
Morphological derivation, in linguistics, is the process of forming a new word from an existing word, often by adding a prefix or suffix, such as For example, ''unhappy'' and ''happiness'' derive from the root word ''happy.'' It is differentiated from inflection, which is the modification of a word to form different grammatical categories without changing its core meaning: ''determines'', ''determining'', and ''determined'' are from the root ''determine''. Derivational patterns Derivational morphology often involves the addition of a derivational suffix or other affix. Such an affix usually applies to words of one lexical category (part of speech) and changes them into words of another such category. For example, one effect of the English language, English derivational suffix ''-ly'' is to change an adjective into an adverb (''slow'' → ''slowly''). Here are examples of English derivational patterns and their suffixes: * adjective-to-noun: ''-ness'' (''slow'' → ''slowness ...
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Romanized Popular Alphabet
The Romanized Popular Alphabet (RPA) or Hmong RPA (also Roman Popular Alphabet), is a system of romanization for the various dialects of the Hmong language. Created in Laos between 1951 and 1953 by a group of missionaries and Hmong advisers, it has gone on to become the most widespread system for writing the Hmong language in the West. It is also used in Southeast Asia and China alongside other writing systems, most notably Nyiakeng Puachue Hmong and Pahawh Hmong. History In Xiangkhoang Province, Protestant missionary G. Linwood Barney began working on the writing system with speakers of Green Mong (Mong Leng), Geu Yang and Tua Xiong, among others. He consulted with William A. Smalley, a missionary studying the Khmu language in Luang Prabang Province at the time. Concurrently, Yves Bertrais, a Roman Catholic missionary in Kiu Katiam, Luang Prabang, was undertaking a similar project with Chong Yeng Yang and Chue Her Thao. The two working groups met in 1952 and reconciled any di ...
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Hmong Language
Hmong or Mong ( ; Romanized Popular Alphabet, RPA: , Chữ Hmông Việt, CHV: ''Hmôngz'', Nyiakeng Puachue Hmong, Nyiakeng Puachue: , Pahawh: , ) is a dialect continuum of the West Hmongic branch of the Hmongic languages spoken by the Hmong people of Southwestern China, northern Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos. There are an estimated 4.5 million speakers of varieties that are largely mutually intelligible, including over 280,000 Hmong Americans as of 2013. Over half of all Hmong speakers speak the various dialects in China, where the Dananshan dialect forms the basis of the standard language. However, Hmong Daw and Mong Leng are widely known only in Laos and the United States; Dananshan is more widely known in the native region of Hmong. Varieties Mong Leng () and Hmong Daw () are part of a dialect cluster known in China as (), called the "Chuanqiandian ''cluster''" in English (or "Miao cluster" in other languages) since West Hmongic is also called . The variety spoken from Sichu ...
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Shanghainese
The Shanghainese language, also known as the Shanghai dialect, or Hu language, is a variety of Wu Chinese spoken in the central districts of the city of Shanghai and its surrounding areas. It is classified as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Shanghainese, like the rest of the Wu language group, is mutually unintelligible with other varieties of Chinese, such as Mandarin. Shanghainese belongs to a separate group of the Taihu Wu subgroup. With nearly 14 million speakers, Shanghainese is also the largest single form of Wu Chinese. Since the late 19th century, it has served as the lingua franca of the entire Yangtze River Delta region, but in recent decades its status has declined relative to Mandarin, which most Shanghainese speakers can also speak. Like other Wu varieties, Shanghainese is rich in vowels and consonants, with around twenty unique vowel qualities, twelve of which are phonemic. Similarly, Shanghainese also has voiced obstruent initials, which is ra ...
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Journal Of The Southeast Asian Linguistics Society
The Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (SEALS) is a linguistic society dedicated to the study of languages and linguistics in mainland and insular Southeast Asia. It was founded in 1991 by Martha Ratliff and Eric Schiller. Paul Sidwell is currently president. Journal The ''Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society'' is the society's peer-reviewed open-access academic journal covering research on the languages of mainland and insular Southeast Asia, including Sino-Tibetan, Austroasiatic, Kra-Dai, Hmong-Mien, and Austronesian languages. It was established in 2009 and is published by the University of Hawaii Press. The editor-in-chief is Mark Alves (Montgomery College). The journal was formally established at the SEALS 17 meeting in September 2007 at the University of Maryland. It supersedes the ''SEALS Conference Proceedings'', which were published by Arizona State University. The first volume was published in 2009. The journal uses a Creative Commons License. Conferen ...
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Varieties Of Chinese
There are hundreds of local Chinese language varieties forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages, Sino-Tibetan language family, many of which are not Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast part of mainland China. The varieties are typically classified into several groups: Mandarin Chinese, Mandarin, Wu Chinese, Wu, Min Chinese, Min, Xiang Chinese, Xiang, Gan Chinese, Gan, Jin Chinese, Jin, Hakka Chinese, Hakka and Yue Chinese, Yue, though some varieties remain unclassified. These groups are neither clades nor individual languages defined by mutual intelligibility, but reflect common phonological developments from Middle Chinese. Chinese varieties have the greatest differences in their phonology, and to a lesser extent in vocabulary and syntax. Southern varieties tend to have fewer initial consonants than northern and central varieties, but more often preserve the Middle Chinese final consonants. All ...
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Glottal Stop
The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many Speech communication, spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . As a result of the obstruction of the airflow in the glottis, the glottal vibration either stops or becomes irregular with a low rate and sudden drop in intensity. Features Features of the glottal stop: * It has no phonation at all, as there is no airflow through the glottis. It is voiceless, however, in the sense that it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords. Writing In the traditional romanization of many languages, such as Arabic, the glottal stop is transcribed with the Modifier letter apostrophe, apostrophe ʼ, or the symbol ʾ, , which is the source of the IPA character . In many Polynesian languages that use the Latin alphabet, however, the glottal stop is written wit ...
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Neutral Tone
The phonology of Standard Chinese has historically derived from the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. However, pronunciation varies widely among speakers, who may introduce elements of their local varieties. Television and radio announcers are chosen for their ability to affect a standard accent. Elements of the sound system include not only the segments—e.g. vowels and consonants—of the language, but also the tones applied to each syllable. In addition to its four main tones, Standard Chinese has a neutral tone that appears on weak syllables. This article uses the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to compare the phonetic values corresponding to syllables romanized with pinyin. Consonants The sounds shown in parentheses are sometimes not analyzed as separate phonemes; for more on these, see below. Excluding these, and excluding the glides , , and , there are 19 consonant phonemes in the inventory. Between pairs of plosives or affricates having the same place of ar ...
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Phonological Phrase
Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often preferred by the American Structuralists and reflecting the importance in structuralist work of phonemics in sense 1.": "phonematics ''n.'' 1. 'obsolete''An old synonym for phonemics (sense 2).") is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages systematically organize their phonemes or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a particular language variety. At one time, the study of phonology related only to the study of the systems of phonemes in spoken languages, but now it may relate to any linguistic analysis either: Sign languages have a phonological system equivalent to the system of sounds in spoken languages. The building blocks of signs are speci ...
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Stop Consonant
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips (, ), or glottis (). Plosives contrast with nasals, where the vocal tract is blocked but airflow continues through the nose, as in and , and with fricatives, where partial occlusion impedes but does not block airflow in the vocal tract. Terminology The terms ''stop, occlusive,'' and ''plosive'' are often used interchangeably. Linguists who distinguish them may not agree on the distinction being made. "Stop" refers to the stopping of the airflow, "occlusive" to the articulation which occludes (blocks) the vocal tract, and "plosive" to the plosion (release burst) of the consonant. Some object to the use of "plosive" for inaudibly released stops, which may then instead be called "applosives". The International Phonetic Association and ...
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