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Cheshirization
In historical linguistics, transphonologization (also known as rephonologization or cheshirization, see Transphonologization#Other names, below) is a type of sound change whereby a phonemic contrast that used to involve a certain Distinctive feature, feature X evolves in such a way that the contrast is preserved, yet becomes associated with a different feature Y. For example, a language contrasting two words * vs. * may evolve historically so that final consonants are dropped, yet the modern language preserves the contrast through the nature of the vowel, as in a pair vs. . Such a situation would be described by saying that a former contrast between Oral consonant, oral and nasal consonants has been ''transphonologized'' into a contrast between nasal vowel, oral and nasal vowels. The term ''transphonologization'' was coined by André-Georges Haudricourt. The concept was defined and amply illustrated by Hagège & Haudricourt; it has been mentioned by several followers of panchro ...
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Transphonologization
In historical linguistics, transphonologization (also known as rephonologization or cheshirization, see below) is a type of sound change whereby a phonemic contrast that used to involve a certain feature X evolves in such a way that the contrast is preserved, yet becomes associated with a different feature Y. For example, a language contrasting two words * vs. * may evolve historically so that final consonants are dropped, yet the modern language preserves the contrast through the nature of the vowel, as in a pair vs. . Such a situation would be described by saying that a former contrast between oral and nasal consonants has been ''transphonologized'' into a contrast between oral and nasal vowels. The term ''transphonologization'' was coined by André-Georges Haudricourt. The concept was defined and amply illustrated by Hagège & Haudricourt; it has been mentioned by several followers of panchronic phonology, and beyond. Resulting in a new contrast on vowels Umlaut A comm ...
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Historical Linguistics
Historical linguistics, also known as diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of how languages change over time. It seeks to understand the nature and causes of linguistic change and to trace the evolution of languages. Historical linguistics involves several key areas of study, including the reconstruction of ancestral languages, the classification of languages into families, ( comparative linguistics) and the analysis of the cultural and social influences on language development. This field is grounded in the uniformitarian principle, which posits that the processes of language change observed today were also at work in the past, unless there is clear evidence to suggest otherwise. Historical linguists aim to describe and explain changes in individual languages, explore the history of speech communities, and study the origins and meanings of words ( etymology). Development Modern historical linguistics dates to the late 18th century, having originally grown o ...
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Proto-Oceanic Language
Proto-Oceanic (abbreviated as POc) is a proto-language that historical linguists since Otto Dempwolff have reconstructed as the hypothetical common ancestor of the Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian language family. Proto-Oceanic is a descendant of the Proto-Austronesian language (PAN), the common ancestor of the Austronesian languages. Proto-Oceanic was probably spoken around the late 2nd millennium BCE in the Bismarck Archipelago, east of Papua New Guinea. Archaeologists and linguists currently agree that its community more or less coincides with the Lapita culture. Linguistic characteristics The methodology of comparative linguistics, together with the relative homogeneity of Oceanic languages, make it possible to reconstruct with reasonable certainty the principal linguistic properties of their common ancestor, Proto-Oceanic. Like all scientific hypotheses, these reconstructions must be understood as obviously reflecting the state of science at a particular moment in ti ...
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Disyllable
A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are most often consonants). In phonology and studies of languages, syllables are often considered the "building blocks" of words. They can influence the rhythm of a language, its prosody, its poetic metre; properties such as stress, tone and reduplication operate on syllables and their parts. Speech can usually be divided up into a whole number of syllables: for example, the word ''ignite'' is made of two syllables: ''ig'' and ''nite''. Most languages of the world use relatively simple syllable structures that often alternate between vowels and consonants. Despite being present in virtually all human languages, syllables still have no precise definition that is valid for all known languages. A common criterion for finding syllable boundarie ...
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Af2005
AF, af, Af, etc. may refer to: Arts and entertainment * A-F Records, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania *'' Almost Family'', US TV series Businesses and organizations European * ÅF, a Swedish technical consulting company * AF Gruppen, a construction company, Norway * Action Française, a French political movement * Air France, IATA code and stock symbol * Anarchist Federation (British Isles) International * Abercrombie & Fitch, A&F, US clothing shops * The Adaptation Fund, for climate change adaptation, UN * Adventist Forums, of Seventh-day Adventists Elsewhere * American Freightways, US trucking company, merged into FedEx Freight Language * Académie française, for French language matters * Alliance Française, promoting French language and culture * Acronym Finder, an online database * Afrikaans language (ISO 639-1 language code AF) * "...as fuck", meaning "very", in SMS language Medicine * Amniotic fluid * Atrial fibrillation, an abnormal heart rhythm Military * AF Guardian, ...
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Sakao Language
Sakao (also Nkep or Nekep) is an Oceanic language spoken on the northeast horn of Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu. Name Sakao is the name of the language as used by foreigners and linguists. It is named after Sakao Island, an islet off the northeastern shore of Espiritu Santo, almost opposite Port-Olry. (Incidentally, this is not the native name of that island, which is called ''Laðhi'' by Sakao speakers. The name ''sakau'' 2nd pers., "to sing", perfective, continuous Grammar Number Like Tolomako, Sakao distinguishes four numbers for its personal pronouns. However, they are not singular, dual, trial, plural, but singular, dual, paucal, plural. The Sakao paucal derives from the Tolomako trial, thus Tolomako "they three", Sakao "they, from three to ten" ( and are regularly derivable from < and ). One says in Sakao < "the five of them" which is, etymologically, "they three, five." Substantives are not inflected for number, except kinship terms which distinguish singular and p ...
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Mota Language
Mota is an Oceanic language spoken by about 750 people on Mota island, in the Banks Islands of Vanuatu. It is the most conservative Torres–Banks language, and the only one to keep its inherited five-vowel system intact while also preserving most final vowels. Name The language is named after the island. History During the period 1840–1940, Mota was used as a missionary ''lingua franca'' throughout areas of Oceania included in the Melanesian Mission, an Anglican missionary agency. Mota was used on Norfolk Island, in religious education; on other islands with different vernacular languages, it served as the language of liturgical prayers, hymns, and some other religious purposes. Elizabeth Fairburn Colenso translated religious material into the language. Robert Henry Codrington compiled the first dictionary of Mota (1896), and worked with George Sarawia and others to produce a large number of early publications in this language. Phonology Phoneme inventory Mota phon ...
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Torres–Banks Languages
The Torres–Banks languages form a linkage of Southern Oceanic languages spoken in the Torres Islands and Banks Islands of northern Vanuatu. Languages François (2011) recognizes 17 languages spoken by 9,400 people in 50 villages, including 16 living (3 of which are moribund) and one extinct language. François (2011). The 17 languages, ranked from northwest to southeast, are: : Comparative studies A. François has published several studies comparing various features of the Torres–Banks languages: * François (2005): Inventories of vowel systems, and their historical development; * François (2007): Systems of noun articles, and their historical development; * François (2009): How several languages grammaticalized a set of light personal pronouns into markers for “aorist” aspect; * François (2011): How Torres–Banks languages tend to show structural isomorphism, yet lexical diversity; * François (2013): Etymological reconstruction of spiritual terms in Torres� ...
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Austronesian Languages
The Austronesian languages ( ) are a language family widely spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia, parts of Mainland Southeast Asia, Madagascar, the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Taiwan (by Taiwanese indigenous peoples). They are spoken by about 328 million people (4.4% of the world population). This makes it the fifth-largest language family by number of speakers. Major Austronesian languages include Malay (around 250–270 million in Indonesia alone in its own literary standard named " Indonesian"), Javanese, Sundanese, Tagalog (standardized as Filipino), Malagasy and Cebuano. According to some estimates, the family contains 1,257 languages, which is the second most of any language family. In 1706, the Dutch scholar Adriaan Reland first observed similarities between the languages spoken in the Malay Archipelago and by peoples on islands in the Pacific Ocean. In the 19th century, researchers (e.g. Wilhelm von Humboldt, Herman van der Tuuk) started to apply the ...
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Great Vowel Shift
The Great Vowel Shift was a series of English phonology, pronunciation changes in the vowels of the English language that took place primarily between the 1400s and 1600s (the transition period from Middle English to Early Modern English), beginning in southern England and today having influenced effectively all dialects of English. Through this massive vowel shift, the pronunciation of all Middle English Vowel length, long vowels altered. Some consonant sounds also changed, specifically becoming silent; the term ''Great Vowel Shift'' is occasionally used to include these consonantal changes. The standardization of English spelling began in the 15th and 16th centuries; the Great Vowel Shift is the major reason English spellings now often deviate considerably from how they Phonemic orthography, represent pronunciations. Notable early researchers of the Great Vowel Shift include Alexander John Ellis, Alexander J. Ellis, in ''On Early English Pronunciation, with Especial Referenc ...
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Phoneme
A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages contain phonemes (or the spatial-gestural equivalent in sign languages), and all spoken languages include both consonant and vowel phonemes; phonemes are primarily studied under the branch of linguistics known as phonology. Examples and notation The English words ''cell'' and ''set'' have the exact same sequence of sounds, except for being different in their final consonant sounds: thus, versus in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), a writing system that can be used to represent phonemes. Since and alone distinguish certain words from others, they are each examples of phonemes of the English language. Specifically they are consonant phonemes, along with , while is a vowel phoneme. The spelling of Engli ...
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Old English
Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literature dates from the mid-7th century. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, English was replaced for several centuries by Anglo-Norman language, Anglo-Norman (a langues d'oïl, type of French) as the language of the upper classes. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, since during the subsequent period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into what is now known as Middle English in England and Early Scots in Scotland. Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or Ingvaeonic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles (tribe), Angles, Saxons and Jutes. As the Germanic settlers ...
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