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Upper Kuskokwim Language
The Upper Kuskokwim language (also called Kolchan or Goltsan or Dinak'i) is an Athabaskan language of the Na-Dené language family. It is spoken by the Upper Kuskokwim people in the Upper Kuskokwim River villages of Nikolai, Telida, and McGrath, Alaska. About 40 of a total of 160 Upper Kuskokwim people (Dichinanek’ Hwt’ana) still speak the language. A practical orthography of the language was established by Raymond Collins, who in 1964 began linguistic work at Nikolai. Since 1990s, the language has also been documented by a Russian linguist Andrej Kibrik. Phonology Consonants Vowels /ɪ/ may range to either �or mid as � Morphology Nouns Nouns are divided into two classes: those which can be possessed, but do not have to be (such as clothing, animals and lake names) and those which are always possessed (such as body parts). For the former group, some nouns that are possessed have a change in spelling and pronunciation when they are possessed. For exa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alaska
Alaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the northernmost, westernmost, and easternmost (the Aleutian Islands cross the 180th meridian into the eastern hemisphere) state in the United States. It borders the Canadian territory of Yukon and the province of British Columbia to the east. It shares a western maritime border, in the Bering Strait, with Russia's Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. The Chukchi and Beaufort Seas of the Arctic Ocean lie to the north, and the Pacific Ocean lies to the south. Technically, it is a semi-exclave of the U.S., and is the largest exclave in the world. Alaska is the largest U.S. state by area, comprising more total area than the following three largest states of Texas, California, and Montana combined, and is the seventh-largest subnational division i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alveolar Consonant
Alveolar consonants (; UK also ) are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the upper teeth. Alveolar consonants may be articulated with the tip of the tongue (the apical consonants), as in English, or with the flat of the tongue just above the tip (the "blade" of the tongue; called laminal consonants), as in French and Spanish. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) does not have separate symbols for the alveolar consonants. Rather, the same symbol is used for all coronal places of articulation that are not palatalized like English palato-alveolar ''sh'', or retroflex. To disambiguate, the ''bridge'' (, ''etc.'') may be used for a dental consonant, or the under-bar (, ''etc.'') may be used for the postalveolars. differs from dental in that the former is a sibilant and the latter is not. differs from postalveolar in being unpalatalized. The bare letter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Near-close Vowel
A near-close vowel or a near-high vowel is any in a class of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a near-close vowel is that the tongue is positioned similarly to a close vowel, but slightly less constricted. Other names for a near-close vowel are lowered close vowel and raised close-mid vowel, though the former phrase may also be used to describe a vowel that is as low as close-mid (sometimes even lower); likewise, the latter phrase may also be used to describe a vowel that is as high as close. Near-close vowels are also sometimes described as lax variants of the fully close vowels, though, depending on the language, they may not necessarily be ''variants'' of close vowels at all. It is rare for languages to contrast a near-close vowel with a close vowel and a close-mid vowel based on height alone. An example of such language is Danish, which contrasts short and long versions of the close front unrounded , near-close front unrounded an ... [...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 approximately 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 unro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Back Vowel
A back vowel is any in a class of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the highest point of the tongue is positioned relatively back in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark vowels because they are perceived as sounding darker than the front vowels. Near-back vowels are essentially a type of back vowels; no language is known to contrast back and near-back vowels based on backness alone. The category "back vowel" comprises both raised vowels and retracted vowels. Articulation In their articulation, back vowels do not form a single category, but may be either raised vowels such as or retracted vowels such as .Scott Moisik, Ewa Czaykowska-Higgins, & John H. Esling (2012"The Epilaryngeal Articulator: A New Conceptual Tool for Understanding Lingual-Laryngeal Contrasts"/ref> Partial list The back vowels that have dedicated symbols in the I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Front Vowel
A front vowel is a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages, its defining characteristic being that the highest point of the tongue is positioned approximately as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would otherwise make it a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also called bright vowels because they are perceived as sounding brighter than the back vowels. Near-front vowels are essentially a type of front vowel; no language is known to contrast front and near-front vowels based on backness alone. Rounded front vowels are typically centralized, that is, near-front in their articulation. This is one reason they are written to the right of unrounded front vowels in the IPA vowel chart. Partial list The front vowels that have dedicated symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet are: * close front unrounded vowel * close front compressed vowel * near-close front unrounded vowel * near-close front compressed vowel * clos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sonorant
In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels are sonorants, as are semivowels like and , nasal consonants like and , and liquid consonants like and . This set of sounds contrasts with the obstruents ( stops, affricates and fricatives). For some authors, only the term ''resonant'' is used with this broader meaning, while ''sonorant'' is restricted to the consonantal subset—that is, nasals and liquids only, not vocoids (vowels and semivowels). Types Whereas obstruents are frequently voiceless, sonorants are almost always voiced. In the sonority hierarchy, all sounds higher than fricatives are sonorants. They can therefore form the nucleus of a syllable in languages that place that distinction at that level of sonority; see Syllable for details. Sonorants contrast with obs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fricative
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in the case of German (the final consonant of '' Bach''); or the side of the tongue against the molars, in the case of Welsh (appearing twice in the name '' Llanelli''). This turbulent airflow is called frication. A particular subset of fricatives are the sibilants. When forming a sibilant, one still is forcing air through a narrow channel, but in addition, the tongue is curled lengthwise to direct the air over the edge of the teeth. English , , , and are examples of sibilants. The usage of two other terms is less standardized: "Spirant" is an older term for fricatives used by some American and European phoneticians and phonologists for non-sibilant fricatives. "Strident" could mean just "sibilant", but some authors include also lab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Affricate
An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair. English has two affricate phonemes, and , often spelled ''ch'' and ''j'', respectively. Examples The English sounds spelled "ch" and "j" ( broadly transcribed as and in the IPA), German and Italian ''z'' and Italian ''z'' are typical affricates, and sounds like these are fairly common in the world's languages, as are other affricates with similar sounds, such as those in Polish and Chinese. However, voiced affricates other than are relatively uncommon. For several places of articulation they are not attested at all. Much less common are labiodental affricates, such as in German, Kinyarwanda and Izi, or velar affricates, such as in Tswana (written ''kg'') or in High Alemannic Swiss German dialects. Worldwide, relative ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plosive
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glottal Consonant
Glottal consonants are consonants using the glottis as their primary articulation. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the glottal fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have, while some do not consider them to be consonants at all. However, glottal consonants behave as typical consonants in many languages. For example, in Literary Arabic, most words are formed from a root ''C-C-C'' consisting of three consonants, which are inserted into templates such as or . The glottal consonants and can occupy any of the three root consonant slots, just like "normal" consonants such as or . The glottal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet are as follows: Characteristics In many languages, the "fricatives" are not true fricatives. This is a historical usage of the word. They instead represent transitional states of the glottis (phonation) without a specific place of articulation, and may behave as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Velar Consonant
Velar consonants are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (also known as the "velum"). Since the velar region of the roof of the mouth is relatively extensive and the movements of the dorsum are not very precise, velars easily undergo assimilation, shifting their articulation back or to the front depending on the quality of adjacent vowels. They often become automatically ''fronted'', that is partly or completely palatal before a following front vowel, and ''retracted'', that is partly or completely uvular before back vowels. Palatalised velars (like English in ''keen'' or ''cube'') are sometimes referred to as palatovelars. Many languages also have labialized velars, such as , in which the articulation is accompanied by rounding of the lips. There are also labial–velar consonants, which are doubly articulated at the velum and at the lips, such as . This distinction disappea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
