|
Proto-Malayo-Polynesian
Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (PMP) is the reconstructed ancestor of the Malayo-Polynesian languages, which is by far the largest branch (by current speakers) of the Austronesian language family. Proto-Malayo-Polynesian is ancestral to all Austronesian languages spoken outside Taiwan, as well as the Yami language on Taiwan's Orchid Island. The first systematic reconstruction of Proto-Austronesian ("''Uraustronesisch''") by Otto Dempwolff was based on evidence from languages outside of Taiwan, and was therefore actually the first reconstruction of what is now known as Proto-Malayo-Polynesian. Phonology Consonants The following consonants can be reconstructed for Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (Blust 2009): The phonetic value of the reconstructed sounds *p, *b, *w, *m, *t, *d, *n, *s, *l, *r, *k, *g, *ŋ, *q, *h was as indicated by the spelling. The symbols *ñ, *y, *z, *D, *j, *R are orthographic conventions first introduced by Dyen (1947). The assumed phonetic values are given in the t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Austronesian Language
Proto-Austronesian (commonly abbreviated as PAN or PAn) is a proto-language. It is the reconstructed ancestor of the Austronesian languages, one of the world's major language families. Proto-Austronesian is assumed to have begun to diversify in Taiwan. Lower-level reconstructions have also been made, and include Proto-Malayo-Polynesian, Proto-Oceanic, and Proto-Polynesian. Recently, linguists such as Malcolm Ross and Andrew Pawley have built large lexicons for Proto-Oceanic and Proto-Polynesian. Phonology Proto-Austronesian is reconstructed by constructing sets of correspondences among consonants in the various Austronesian languages, according to the comparative method. Although in theory the result should be unambiguous, in practice given the large number of languages there are numerous disagreements, with various scholars differing significantly on the number and nature of the phonemes in Proto-Austronesian. In the past, some disagreements concerned whether certain ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luzon Strait
The Luzon Strait (Tagalog: ''Kipot ng Luzon'', ) is the strait between Luzon and Taiwan. The strait thereby connects the Philippine Sea to the South China Sea in the western Pacific Ocean. This body of water is an important strait for shipping and communications. Many ships from the Americas use this route to go to important East Asian ports. Many submarine communications cables pass through the Luzon Strait. These cables provide important data and telephony services to mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. Description The Luzon Strait is approximately wide containing a number of islands belonging to the Philippines that are grouped into two: the islands comprising the province of Batanes and the Babuyan Islands, which are part of the province of Cagayan. The strait is divided into a number of smaller channels. The Babuyan Channel separates Luzon from the Babuyan Islands, which is separated from Batanes by the . Batanes is separated from Taiwan by t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palatal Consonant
Palatals are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex. Characteristics The most common type of palatal consonant is the extremely common approximant , which ranks among the ten most common sounds in the world's languages. The nasal is also common, occurring in around 35 percent of the world's languages, in most of which its equivalent obstruent is not the stop , but the affricate . Only a few languages in northern Eurasia, the Americas and central Africa contrast palatal stops with postalveolar affricates—as in Hungarian, Czech, Latvian, Macedonian, Slovak, Turkish and Albanian. Consonants with other primary articulations may be palatalized, that is, accompanied by the raising of the tongue surface towards the hard palate. For example, English (spelled ''sh'') has such a palatal componen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roger Blench
Roger Marsh Blench (born August 1, 1953) is a British linguist, ethnomusicologist and development anthropologist. He has an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and is based in Cambridge, England. He researches, publishes, and works as a consultant. Career Blench is known for his wide-ranging interests and has made important contributions to African linguistics, Southeast Asian linguistics, anthropology, ethnomusicology, ethnobotany, and various other related fields. He has done significant research on the Niger–Congo, Nilo-Saharan, and Afroasiatic families, as well as the Arunachal languages. Additionally, Blench has published extensively on the relationship between linguistics and archaeology. Blench is currently engaged in a long-term project to document the languages of central Nigeria. He has also expressed concern about ranching in Nigeria. Blench collaborated with the late Professor Kay Williamson, who died in January 2005, and is now a trustee of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Approximant Consonant
Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no turbulence. This class is composed of sounds like (as in ''rest'') and semivowels like and (as in ''yes'' and ''west'', respectively), as well as lateral approximants like (as in ''less''). Terminology Before Peter Ladefoged coined the term ''approximant'' in the 1960s, the terms ''frictionless continuant'' and ''semivowel'' were used to refer to non-lateral approximants. In phonology, ''approximant'' is also a distinctive feature that encompasses all sonorants except nasals, including vowels, taps, and trills. Semivowels Some approximants resemble vowels in acoustic and articulatory properties and the terms ''semivowel'' and ''glide'' are often used for these non-syllabi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trill Consonant
In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound manner of articulation, produced by vibrations between the active articulator and passive articulator. Standard Spanish as in , for example, is an alveolar trill. A trill is made by the articulator being held in place and the airstream causing it to vibrate. Usually a trill vibrates for 2–3 contacts, but may be up to 5, or even more if geminate consonant, geminate. However, trills may also be produced with only one contact. While single-contact trills are similar to Flap consonant, taps and flaps, a tap or flap differs from a trill in that it is made by a muscular contraction rather than airstream. Individuals with ankyloglossia may have issues producing the trill sound. Phonemic trills Trill consonants included in the International Phonetic Alphabet: * – Voiced alveolar trill * – Voiceless alveolar trill * – Voiced bilabial trill * – Voiceless bilabial trill * – Voiced retroflex trill * – Voiced uvular trill * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flap Consonant
In phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator (such as the tongue) is thrown against another. Contrast with stops and trills The main difference between a tap or flap and a stop is that in a tap/flap there is no buildup of air pressure behind the place of articulation and consequently no release burst. Otherwise a tap/flap is similar to a brief stop. Taps and flaps also contrast with trills, where the airstream causes the articulator to vibrate. Trills may be realized as a single contact, like a tap or flap, but are variable, whereas a tap/flap is limited to a single contact. When a trill is brief and made with a single contact it is sometimes erroneously described as an (allophonic) tap/flap, but a true tap or flap is an active articulation whereas a trill is a passive articulation. That is, for a tap or flap the tongue makes an active gesture to contact the target place of artic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lateral Consonant
A lateral is a consonant in which the airstream proceeds along one or both of the sides of the tongue, but it is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth. An example of a lateral consonant is the English ''L'', as in ''Larry''. Lateral consonants contrast with central consonants, in which the airstream flows through the center of the mouth. For the most common laterals, the tip of the tongue makes contact with the upper teeth (see dental consonant) or the upper gum (see alveolar consonant), but there are many other possible places for laterals to be made. The most common laterals are approximants and belong to the class of liquids, but lateral fricatives and affricates are also common in some parts of the world. Some languages, such as the Iwaidja and Ilgar languages of Australia, have lateral flaps, and others, such as the Xhosa and Zulu languages of Africa, have lateral clicks. When pronouncing the labiodental fricatives , the lip blocks th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fricative Consonant
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 labiod ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nasal Stop
In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majority of consonants are oral consonants. Examples of nasals in English are , and , in words such as ''nose'', ''bring'' and ''mouth''. Nasal occlusives are nearly universal in human languages. There are also other kinds of nasal consonants in some languages. Definition Nearly all nasal consonants are nasal occlusives, in which air escapes through the nose but not through the mouth, as it is blocked (occluded) by the lips or tongue. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound. Rarely, non-occlusive consonants may be nasalized. Most nasals are voiced, and in fact, the nasal sounds and are among the most common sounds cross-linguistically. Voiceless nasals occur in a few languages such as Burmese, Welsh, Iceland ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Obstruent
An obstruent ( ) is a speech sound such as , , or that is formed by ''obstructing'' airflow. Obstruents contrast with sonorants, which have no such obstruction and so resonate. All obstruents are consonants, but sonorants include vowels as well as consonants. Subclasses Obstruents are subdivided into: * plosives (oral stops), such as , with complete occlusion of the vocal tract, often followed by a release burst; * fricatives, such as , with limited closure, not stopping airflow but making it turbulent; * affricates, which begin with complete occlusion but then release into a fricative-like release, such as . Voicing Obstruents are often prototypically voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies v ..., but voiced obstruents are common. This contrasts with sonorant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
