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Irish Initial Consonant Mutations
Irish language, Irish, like all modern Celtic languages, is characterised by its initial consonant mutations. These mutations affect the initial consonant of a word under specific morphology (linguistics), morphological and syntax, syntactic conditions. The mutations are an important tool in understanding the relationship between two words and can differentiate various meanings. Irish, like Scottish Gaelic and Manx language, Manx, features two initial consonant mutations: lenition ( ) and Wiktionary:eclipsis, eclipsis ( ) (the alternative names, ''aspiration (linguistics), aspiration'' for lenition and ''nasalisation'' for eclipsis, are also used, but those terms are misleading). Originally these mutations were phonologically governed external sandhi effects: lenition was caused by a consonant being between two vowels, and eclipsis when a nasal consonant, nasal preceded an obstruent, including at the beginning of a word. Irish also features t-prothesis (linguistics), prothes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Castle Street Signs, Strabane, January 2010
A castle is a type of fortification, fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by Military order (monastic society), military orders. Scholars usually consider a ''castle'' to be the private fortified house, fortified residence of a lord or noble. This is distinct from a mansion, palace, and villa, whose main purpose was exclusively for ''pleasance'' and are not primarily fortresses but may be fortified. Use of the term has varied over time and, sometimes, has also been applied to structures such as hill forts and 19th- and 20th-century homes built to resemble castles. Over the Middle Ages, when genuine castles were built, they took on a great many forms with many different features, although some, such as curtain wall (fortification), curtain walls, arrowslits, and portcullises, were commonplace. European-style castles originated in the 9th and 10th centuries after the fall of the Carolingian Empire, which resulted ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Irish Phonology
Irish phonology varies from Irish language#Dialects, dialect to dialect; there is no standard language, standard pronunciation of Irish language, Irish. Therefore, this article focuses on phenomena shared by most or all dialects, and on the major differences among the dialects. Detailed discussion of the dialects can be found in the specific articles: Ulster Irish, Connacht Irish, and Munster Irish. Irish phonology has been studied as a discipline since the late 19th century, with numerous researchers publishing descriptive linguistics, descriptive accounts of dialects from all regions where the language is spoken. More recently, Irish phonology has been a focus of theoretical linguists. One of the most important aspects of Irish phonology is that almost all consonants (except ) come in pairs, a "broad" and a "slender" pronunciation. Broad consonants are either velarized (◌ˠ; back of tongue is pulled back and slightly up in the direction of the soft palate during articulati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Irish Orthography
Irish orthography is the set of conventions used to write Irish. A spelling reform in the mid-20th century led to , the modern standard written form used by the Government of Ireland, which regulates both spelling and grammar. The reform removed inter-dialectal silent letters, simplified some letter sequences, and modernised archaic spellings to reflect modern pronunciation, but it also removed letters pronounced in some dialects but not in others. Irish spelling represents all Irish dialects to a high degree despite their considerable phonological variation, e.g. ("tree") is read in Mayo and Ulster, in Galway, or in Munster. Some words may have dialectal pronunciations not reflected by their standard spelling, and they sometimes have distinct dialectal spellings to reflect this. Alphabet Latin script has been the writing system used to write Irish since the 5th century, when it replaced Ogham, which was used to write Primitive Irish and Old Irish. Prior to the mid- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 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 description, linguistic analysis either: Sign languages have a phonological system equivalent to the system of sounds in spoken languages. The buil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orthography
An orthography is a set of convention (norm), conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, punctuation, Word#Word boundaries, word boundaries, capitalization, hyphenation, and Emphasis (typography), emphasis. Most national and international languages have an established writing system that has undergone substantial standardization, thus exhibiting less dialect variation than the spoken language. These processes can fossilize pronunciation patterns that are no longer routinely observed in speech (e.g. ''would'' and ''should''); they can also reflect deliberate efforts to introduce variability for the sake of national identity, as seen in Noah Webster's efforts to introduce easily noticeable differences between American and British spelling (e.g. ''honor'' and ''honour''). Orthographic norms develop through social and political influence at various levels, such as encounters with print in education, the workplace, and the state. Some nations have established ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fusion (linguistics)
In phonetics and historical linguistics, fusion, or coalescence, is a sound change where two or more segments with distinctive features merge into a single segment. This can occur both on consonants and in vowels. A word like ''educate'' is one that may exhibit fusion, e.g. or . A merger between two segments can also occur between word boundaries, an example being the phrase ''got ya'' being pronounced like ''gotcha'' . Most cases of fusion lead to allophonic variation, though some sequences of segments may lead to wholly distinct phonemes. A common form of fusion is found in the development of nasal vowels, which frequently become phonemic when final nasal consonants are lost from a language. This occurred in French and Portuguese. Compare the French words "a white wine" with their English cognates, ''one, wine, blank,'' which retain the sound of the letter Ns. Often the resulting sound has the place of articulation of one of the source sounds and the manner of articulatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epenthetic
In phonology, epenthesis (; Greek ) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the first syllable ('' prothesis''), the last syllable ('' paragoge''), or between two syllabic sounds in a word. The opposite process in which one or more sounds are removed is referred to as syncope or elision. Etymology The word ''epenthesis'' comes from and ''en-'' and ''thesis'' . Epenthesis may be divided into two types: excrescence for the addition of a consonant, and for the addition of a vowel, svarabhakti (in Sanskrit) or alternatively anaptyxis (). Uses Epenthesis arises for a variety of reasons. The phonotactics of a given language may discourage vowels in hiatus or consonant clusters, and a consonant or vowel may be added to help pronunciation. Epenthesis may be represented in writing, or it may be a feature only of the spoken language. Separating vowels A consonant may be added to separate vowels in hiatus, as is the case with linking and intrusive R in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Middle Irish
Middle Irish, also called Middle Gaelic (, , ), is the Goidelic language which was spoken in Ireland, most of Scotland and the Isle of Man from AD; it is therefore a contemporary of Late Old English and Early Middle English. The modern Goidelic languages—Modern Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx Gaelic—are all descendants of Middle Irish. Grammar Middle Irish is a fusional, VSO, nominative-accusative language, and makes frequent use of lenition. Nouns decline for two genders: masculine and feminine, though traces of neuter declension persist; three numbers: singular, dual, plural; and five cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, prepositional, vocative. Adjectives agree with nouns in gender, number, and case. Verbs conjugate for three tenses: past, present, future; four moods: indicative, subjunctive, conditional, imperative; independent and dependent forms. Verbs conjugate for three persons and an impersonal, agentless form ( agent). There are a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fortis And Lenis
In linguistics, ''fortis'' ( ; Latin for 'strong') and ''lenis'' (, ; Latin for 'weak'), sometimes identified with 'tense' and 'lax', are pronunciations of consonants with relatively greater and lesser energy, respectively. English has fortis consonants, such as the ''p'' in ''pat'', with a corresponding lenis consonant, such as the ''b'' in ''bat''. Fortis and lenis consonants may be distinguished by tenseness or other characteristics, such as voicing, aspiration, glottalization, velarization, length, and length of nearby vowels. ''Fortis'' and ''lenis'' were coined for languages where the contrast between sounds such as 'p' and 'b' does not involve voicing (vibration of the vocal cords). History Originally, the terms were used to refer to an impressionistic sense of strength differences, though more sophisticated instruments eventually gave the opportunity to search for the acoustic and articulatory signs. For example, tested whether articulatory strength could be det ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elide
In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run together by the omission of a final sound. An example is the elision of word-final /t/ in English if it is preceded and followed by a consonant: "first light" is often pronounced "firs' light" (). Many other terms are used to refer to specific cases where sounds are omitted. Citation forms and contextual forms A word may be spoken individually in what is called the Lemma (morphology), citation form. This corresponds to the pronunciation given in a dictionary. However, when words are spoken in context, it often happens that some sounds that belong to the citation form are omitted. Elision is not an all-or-nothing process: elision is more likely to occur in some styles of speaking and less likely in others. Many writers have described the styles ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
