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Boundary Tone
The term boundary tone refers to a rise or fall in pitch that occurs in speech at the end of a sentence or other utterance, or, if a sentence is divided into two or more intonational phrases, at the end of each intonational phrase. It can also refer to a low or high intonational tone at the beginning of an utterance or intonational phrase. The term was first introduced in a PhD thesis on English intonation by Mark Liberman in 1975 but without being developed further. It was taken up again in 1980 in another PhD thesis on English intonation by Janet Pierrehumbert. In Pierrehumbert's model, which later developed into the ToBI system of intonational transcription, every intonational phrase is marked as ending in a boundary tone, written either H% when the speaker's voice rises up or remains high, or L% when it falls or remains low. In modern intonational studies the term 'boundary tone' replaces the notion of 'terminal junctures' (falling #, rising //, and level /) used in earli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chichewa Tones
Chewa language, Chichewa (a Bantu language of Central Africa, also known as Chewa, Nyanja, or Chinyanja) is the main language spoken in south and central Malawi, and to a lesser extent in Zambia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Like most other Bantu languages, it is tone (linguistics), tonal; that is to say, pitch patterns are an important part of the pronunciation of words. Thus, for example, the word (high-low-low) 'maize' can be distinguished from (low-low-high) 'cassava' not only by its consonants but also by its pitch pattern. These patterns remain constant in whatever context the nouns are used. Tonal patterns also play an important grammatical role in Chichewa verbs, helping to distinguish one tense from another, and relative clause verbs from main clause verbs. Tones are also used in intonation and phrasing. Conventionally Chichewa is said to have high tones (H) and low tones (L). However, it has been argued that it is more accurate to think of it as having high-toned syllables ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prosodic Unit
In linguistics, a prosodic unit is a segment of speech that occurs with specific prosodic properties. These properties can be those of stress, intonation (a single pitch and rhythm contour), or tonal patterns. Prosodic units occur at a hierarchy of levels, from the syllable, the metrical foot and phonological word to the intonational unit (IU) and to a complete utterance. However, the term is often restricted to intermediate levels which do not have a dedicated terminology. Prosodic units do not generally correspond to syntactic units, such as phrases and clauses; it is thought that they reflect different aspects of how the brain processes speech, with prosodic units being generated through on-line interaction and processing, and with morphosyntactic units being more automated. Defining characteristics Prosodic units are characterized by several phonetic cues, such as pitch movement, pre-boundary lengthening, and pauses. Breathing, both inhalation and exhalation, only occ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dutch Language
Dutch ( ) is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million as a second language and is the List of languages by total number of speakers, third most spoken Germanic language. In Europe, Dutch is the native language of most of the population of the Netherlands and Flanders (which includes 60% of the population of Belgium). "1% of the EU population claims to speak Dutch well enough in order to have a conversation." (page 153). Dutch was one of the official languages of South Africa until 1925, when it was replaced by Afrikaans, a separate but partially Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible daughter language of Dutch. Afrikaans, depending on the definition used, may be considered a sister language, spoken, to some degree, by at least 16 million people, mainly in South Africa and Namibia, and evolving from Cape Dutch dialects. In South America, Dutch is the native l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luganda Tones
Luganda, the language spoken by the Baganda people from Central Uganda, is a tonal language of the Bantu family. It is traditionally described as having three tones: high ('), low (') and falling ('). Rising tones are not found in Luganda, even on long vowels, since a sequence such as automatically becomes ''Luganda Basic Course'', p. xiii. Tones perform various functions in Luganda: they help to distinguish one word from another, they distinguish one verb tense from another, and they are also used in sentence intonation, for example, to distinguish a statement from a question. The complexity of the Luganda tonal system has attracted the attention of numerous scholars, who have sought ways of describing Luganda tones most economically according to different linguistic models. Overview In Luganda some words have a lexical tone: 'city', 'teacher'. The tone can be a falling one: 'country', 'child', 'hospital'. Some words have a double tone or a tone spread across three sylla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uganda
Uganda, officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The southern part includes a substantial portion of Lake Victoria, shared with Kenya and Tanzania. Uganda is in the African Great Lakes region, lies within the Nile basin, and has a varied equatorial climate. , it has a population of 49.3 million, of whom 8.5 million live in the capital and largest city, Kampala. Uganda is named after the Buganda, Buganda kingdom, which encompasses a large portion of the south, including Kampala, and whose language Luganda is widely spoken; the official language is English. The region was populated by various ethnic groups, before Bantu and Nilotic groups arrived around 3,000 years ago. These groups established influential kingdoms such as the Empire of Kitara. The arrival of Arab trade ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luganda
Ganda or Luganda ( ; ) is a Bantu language spoken in the African Great Lakes region. It is one of the major languages in Uganda and is spoken by more than 5.56 million Ganda people, Baganda and other people principally in central Uganda, including the country's capital, Kampala. Linguistic typology, Typologically, it is an agglutinative, Tone (linguistics), tonal language with subject–verb–object word order and nominative–accusative language, nominative–accusative morphosyntactic alignment. With at least 5.6 million first-language speakers in the Buganda region and 5.4 million second language speakers fluent elsewhere in different regions especially in major urban areas like Mbale, Tororo, Jinja, Uganda, Jinja, Gulu, Mbarara, Hoima, Kasese etc. Luganda is Uganda's de facto language of national identity as it is the most widely spoken Ugandan language used mostly in trade in urban areas. The language is also the most-spoken unofficial language in Rwanda's capital Kigali. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Downstep
Downstep is a phenomenon in tone languages in which if two syllables have the same tone (for example, both with a high tone or both with a low tone), the second syllable is lower in pitch than the first. Two main kinds of downstep can be distinguished. The first, more usually called automatic downstep, downdrift or catathesis, occurs when high and low tones come in the sequence H L (L) H; the second high tone tends to be lower than the first because of the intervening low-toned syllable. It is common in African languages, such as Chichewa. It has also been argued that the same phenomenon is heard in English sentences, if these sentences are pronounced with a falling intonation, for example ''I really believe Ebenezer was a dealer in magnesium'', or ''I bought blueberries, bayberries, raspberries, mulberries, and brambleberries''. Downstep proper, or non-automatic downstep, is another phenomenon found in many African languages, such as Igbo (see for an overview of downstep in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Italian Language
Italian (, , or , ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family. It evolved from the colloquial Latin of the Roman Empire. Italian is the least divergent language from Latin, together with Sardinian language, Sardinian. It is spoken by about 68 million people, including 64 million native speakers as of 2024. Italian is an official language in Languages of Italy, Italy, Languages of San Marino, San Marino, Languages of Switzerland, Switzerland (Ticino and the Grisons), and Languages of Vatican City, Vatican City; it has official Minority language, minority status in Minority languages of Croatia, Croatia, Slovene Istria, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the municipalities of Santa Teresa, Espírito Santo, Santa Tereza, Encantado, Rio Grande do Sul, Encantado, and Venda Nova do Imigrante in Languages of Brazil#Language co-officialization, Brazil. Italian is also spoken by large Italian diaspora, immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Austral ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carlos Gussenhoven
Carlos Gussenhoven (born 19 July 1946, Amsterdam) is a professor of linguistics at Radboud University Nijmegen. He specializes in phonetics and phonology 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 pre .... Books * Carlos Gussenhoven, ''On the Grammar and Semantics of Sentence Accents'' (Publications in Language Sciences), Walter de Gruyter & Co, 1984, * Carlos Gussenhoven & Natasha Warner, editors, ''Laboratory Phonology VII'', Mouton de Gruyter, 2002, * Carlos Gussenhoven, ''The Phonology of Tone and Intonation'' (Research Surveys in Linguistics), Cambridge University Press, 2004, * Tomas Riad & Carlos Gussenhoven, ''Tones and Tunes: Typological Studies in Word and Sentence Prosody'' (Phonology and Phonetics), Mouton de Gruyter, 2007, * Carlos Gussenhoven & Tomas Riad, ''Tones an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Language
German (, ) is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, mainly spoken in Western Europe, Western and Central Europe. It is the majority and Official language, official (or co-official) language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. It is also an official language of Luxembourg, German-speaking Community of Belgium, Belgium and the Italian autonomous province of South Tyrol, as well as a recognized national language in Namibia. There are also notable German-speaking communities in other parts of Europe, including: Poland (Upper Silesia), the Czech Republic (North Bohemia), Denmark (South Jutland County, North Schleswig), Slovakia (Krahule), Germans of Romania, Romania, Hungary (Sopron), and France (European Collectivity of Alsace, Alsace). Overseas, sizeable communities of German-speakers are found in the Americas. German is one of the global language system, major languages of the world, with nearly 80 million native speakers and over 130 mi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Doctor Of Philosophy
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original research. The name of the degree is most often abbreviated PhD (or, at times, as Ph.D. in North American English, North America), pronounced as three separate letters ( ). The University of Oxford uses the alternative abbreviation "DPhil". PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Since it is an earned research degree, those studying for a PhD are required to produce original research that expands the boundaries of knowledge, normally in the form of a Thesis, dissertation, and, in some cases, defend their work before a panel of other experts in the field. In many fields, the completion of a PhD is typically required for employment as a university professor, researcher, or scientist. Definition In the context o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Persian Language
Persian ( ), also known by its endonym and exonym, endonym Farsi (, Fārsī ), is a Western Iranian languages, Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian languages, Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and used officially within Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan in three mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible standard language, standard varieties, respectively Iranian Persian (officially known as ''Persian''), Dari, Dari Persian (officially known as ''Dari'' since 1964), and Tajik language, Tajiki Persian (officially known as ''Tajik'' since 1999).Siddikzoda, S. "Tajik Language: Farsi or not Farsi?" in ''Media Insight Central Asia #27'', August 2002. It is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within Uzbekistan, as well as within other regions with a Persianate society, Persianate history in the cultural sphere o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
