intro-voc4.htm
by U Kyaw Tun, M.S. (I.P.S.T., U.S.A.). Not for sale. Prepared for students of TIL Computing and Language Center, Yangon, MYANMAR.
UKT: Based on
• Properties of Consonants and Vowels, Kevin Russell, Linguistics Department, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3T 5V5, CANADA http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/linguistics/russell/138/notes.htm.
• Online Phonetics Course (UNIL), Department of Linguistics, University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
(This source was downloaded in 2000 or a few years later, and instead of the original links, you can still get to them from: http://www.unil.ch/ling/page30184_fr.html -- UKT: 070823)
Voice quality
Phonation or voicing
Supra-glottal phonation
Terminology
Fricative production
True Fricatives -- hissers and hushers
Nasality
Tongue tip articulation
Passages worthy of note:
• Not all phonation types are mutually
exclusive, on the contrary, some of them work together to modify phonation.
• English and French are
intonation languages;
Chinese and Thai are tonal languages. -- Burmese-Myanmar is a
pitch-register language.
• The glottal "fricatives"
[
{ha.}] are actually unaccompanied phonation states of the glottis,
without any accompanying manner, fricative or otherwise. However,
they are called fricatives for historical reasons.
UKT notes :
• assimilation
• fortition
• glottal consonants
• grapheme
• intonation
• larynx
• lenition
• lexeme
• morpheme
• obstruents and sonorants (sonority hierarchy)
• pharynx
• phonation types
• phone
• phoneme (phonemic distinction)
• phonology
• pitch (music)
• pitch accent • pitch-register (lingusitic)
• prosody
• sibilant
• sonorant
• strident consonant
• strident vowel
• supraglottal
• suprasegmental
• voiceless interdental fricative {þa.}/{tha.}
• VOT (voice onset time)
• vowel register
• vowel tone
• word
Temporary index of figures (in order of insertion) (Does not include figures in
my notes.):
• Map of Saraswati -- Fig.6.01
• Fig.2 Laryngeal anatomy -- Fig.6.02
• McGrath Video Laryngoscope -- Fig.6.03
• Larynx -- Fig.6.04
• Hissers -- Fig.6.05
• Hushers -- Fig.6.06
UKT: I always compare the sound-producing air-stream, flowing from the lungs to the lips or nostrils, to that of water flowing along a stream (or pipe) with various obstructions such as weeds (comparable to vocal cords), weirs (comparable to soft palate), stones, and water-falls.
I always imagine (scientists also day dream) the ancient sages such as Panini (520-460BC) ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panini 070910) and those before him, living along the great river Saraswati studying the human voice, some two thousand years before the invention of IPA by the modern phoneticians and linguists. According to the present day studies, (Saswati Pai k, GIS Development, www.gsbkerala.com/saraswati.htm), Saraswati flowed for 2000 years, between 6000 and 4000 B.C., from Himalayas in the north to empty into the Arabian Sea. The river was obliterated within a short span, in the Quarternary period of the Cenozoic era, through a combination of destructive catastrophic events. The decline of the river appears to have commenced between 5000 and 3000 B.C., probably precipitated by a major tectonic event in the Siwalik Hills of Sirmur region.
As a material scientist, I neither do nor don't believe in reincarnation. Yet being brought up as a Buddhist, I sometimes imagine that I must have lived many, many previous lives. Maybe, I was one of those ancient sages, perhaps a student of Panini. Or, how could I explain why I was always interested in the study of language -- I tried typing Burmese-Myanmar on my father's English typewriter before I was even a teenager. I am now 74, a retired university chemistry teacher and researcher. Now, without a laboratory to work in, I have turned my attention to Linguistics which has kept my mind sharp, and yet "a crazy old man" as my grownup grandson Kan Tun would tease me.
Much of the material has been covered previously in intro.voc2.htm
The following is based on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larynx 070909
See also The Phonetic Description of Voice quality, John Laver, Univ. of Edinburgh. Cambridge Univ. Press, First published 1980. ISBN 0 521 231 760. The html version is in TIL library.
Definition of VQ: Perceived characteristic ‘acoustic colouring’ of voice, derived from a variety of laryngeal and supra-laryngeal features that are not unique to one individual but form clusters of identifiable voice types. Examples of voice types:
• Whisper voice • Modal voice • Breathy voice • Pressed voice • Creaky voice • Tense voice • Harsh voice • Nasal voice
UKT: From time to time, I have come across very neat sets of papers on the internet. Though I would like to give credit to the authors concerned, I am unable to do so. I can only give the source. This section is written based on two such sources. They have been downloaded, reformatted to suit TIL requirements, and are available in the TIL library (available in CD version only for research purposes.).
• Introduction to VQ, http://dea.brunel.ac.uk/cmsp/Home_Emir_Turajlic/introduction.html 080109
There's no doubt I must have heard all the above voice types. Do I know which is which? No. The following online links will let you hear the voice types.• EGG and VQ, http://www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/phonetik/EGG/page10.htm 080107. The whole set of these papers have been downloaded and are in TIL library. I have gone through Chapter 1, from which the following sound files are taken.
Those who have just come across this page (file) might be wondering what the little figures in blue (given below) are. They are highly stylized drawings of the muscles of the larynx used for opening and closing the glottis. See the preceding chapter, intro-voc2.htm: Opening the glottis and Closing the glottis (080311). However, please remember that these papers are my working papers, the links to them may or may not work depending on whether I have made changes to the referred file. I have given the date when I have made this linkage: 080311.
 |
• Whisper: Whisper sound quality is produced through turbulences generated by the friction of the air in and above the larynx with vocal folds not vibrating. <)). Apart from the rather seldom linguistic uses, whisper is widely used paralinquistically to signal secrecy and confidentiality. • Modal voice: The neutral mode of phonation is modal voiced phonation. <)). The modal phonation of a male speaker occurs at an average of 120 Hz, while for a female speaker it is approx. 220 Hz. |
|
 |
• Breathy voice: It is normally regarded as a compound phonation type (voiceless +modal). <)) Vocal fold vibration is inefficient and, because of the incomplete closure of the glottis, a constant glottal leakage occurs which causes the production of audible friction noise. The vibration frequency is just below the value of typical modal voice. • Creaky voice: Creak phonation (also called vocal fry) <)) is also produced with vibrating vocal folds but at a very low frequency. |
|
|
• Harsh voice: It is due to the very strong tension of the vocal folds (especially medial compression and adductive tension), which results in an excessive approximation of the vocal folds. <)) When the whole larynx is subjected to this extremely high tension, the upper larynx becomes highly constricted with the ventricular folds pressing on the upper surfaces of the vocal folds, making their vibration ineffective. Harsh phonation is therefore irregular in both cycle duration and amplitude. The characteristic frequency is above 100 Hz. A lighter degree of tension is sometimes described as a tense voice. • Falsetto: The frequency of vibrations in falsetto phonation is noticeably higher than in modal voice. <)) The vocal folds are stretched longitudinally, thus becoming relatively thin. Consequently, the vibrating mass is smaller and the generated tone higher. The adduction of the folds is high and the medial compression is also strong. The glottis often remains slightly open, resulting in low subglottal pressure (due to constant glottal leakage) and the generation of the audible friction noise component. |
|
Not all phonation types are mutually exclusive, on the contrary, some of them work together to modify phonation. Only modal and falsetto are incompatible because they use the structure of the larynx differently.
Voice quality is an effect of vocal tract anatomy, laryngeal anatomy and vocal habits.
This is illustrated in the following examples. The characteristic sound of the voice is brought about by the mode of vibration of the vocal cords and folds.
Differences in the degree and manner of glottal closure distinguish modal voice, breathy voice and whispery voice. The quality of the voice depends on the degree of tension in the larynx and pharynx, and on the vertical displacement of the larynx: a raised larynx produces a thin tense voice, and a lowered larynx a booming voice.
Perceptual importance: In English, apart from distinguishing voiced and voiceless sounds, voice quality does not make linguistic contrasts, but conveys information about the speaker. In some languages such as Gujerati and Mazatec differences in voice quality or pitch trajectory [{The term "pitch" can mean many things. The term "pitch trajectory" is no better.}] are used to convey linguistic meanings. Languages and dialects have characteristic voice qualities; personal voice quality enables a listener to recognize a particular individual. Furthermore, the quality of someone's voice also conveys emotions and attitudes.
Anatomy of human voice: In order to understand different voice types it is beneficial to link them to the voice producing anatomy. For this purpose the author of the website refers to myoelastic aerodynamic theory of vocal fold vibrations. For a model of human voice production system, see intro-voc1.htm POA or see Fig. 1online to http://dea.brunel.ac.uk/cmsp/Home_Emir_Turajlic/introduction.html. It is consisted of the sub-glottal area (containing diaphragm, trachea and lungs), larynx (containing vocal folds) and supra-glottal area (vocal tract). The vocal folds are made of muscles tendon and mucous, and are of variable mass and elasticity. In-between the fold, the glottis of variable geometric properties controls the airflow towards the vocal tract. For the informative purpose only: Above the vocal folds there is a pair of what is commonly referred to as fake vocal folds but they are rarely used and hence are not considered in this project. Vocal tract is consisted of oral and nasal cavity, pharyngeal cavity and larynx tube. The human voice is a series of puffs of air separated by (partial) closure of the vocal folds between each puff. Voice is thereby produced by the vibrations of the vocal folds activated by the air pressure from the lungs and is characterised by the shape and the physiology of the vocal folds and larynx.
During the phonation cycle, air pressure from the lungs
builds up under closed vocal folds. Built up air pressure
forces vocal folds to open and release air. Vocal folds
close due to their elasticity and a sudden drop in pressure.
The air pressure builds up and the cycle is repeated.
The main factors affecting the vibrations are:
• Pressure and airflow: The respiratory system
• Active muscle contraction and position of arytenoid cartilages
• Elastic properties of vocal folds, mass length and elasticity
So phonation can be defined as a self-sustaining quasi-periodic oscillation of vocal folds that arises from the interaction of muscular aerodynamic forces in the vocal tract. A single cycle of opening and closing is at 100Hz rate for a male speaker. As such it is too rapid for the human ear to be able to discriminate each individual cycle of oscillations. However, we are sensitive to the change in overall rate of vibration and perceive it as changes in the pitch of the voice.
The intrinsic muscles of the larynx may be categorised by function: their effect on the shape of the glottis and on the vibratory behaviour of vocal folds. The following are the basic features of laryngeal adjustments to the different phonological settings:
a) abduction or adduction of vocal folds
b) constriction of supra-glottal structures-adjustment of length,
c) stiffness and thickness of the vocal folds,
d) elevation and lowering of larynx.
The glottal flow excites the vocal tract resonator. Vocal tract provides two paths for the excitation air flow, through nasal and/or oral cavity. This is controlled by velum. The more open it is, the more nasal the sound. Velum together with other articulators (lips, tongue and jaw) controls the spectral shape of the resonator. It is important to be aware that source excitation and the vocal tract are not linearly independent systems. ... ...
UKT: Voicing can mean :
• In phonetics, voice (phonetics) is a characteristic of phonation. I have split up the Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonation into 2 parts. The first part on voicing, and state of the glottis, is in my notes as phonation. The second part on supra-glottal phonation and phonation in familiar languages, has been incorporated into the text below.
• In music, voicing (music) is a representation of a chord.
• In the construction of musical instruments, the process of manipulating the mechanics of an individual note in order to change or refine the timbre or volume of that note.Read phonation types (EGG measuremnents), phonology in my notes.
For phonation types (EGG measurements), see http://www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/phonetik/EGG/ 080311
As with consonants, the vocal cords may or may not be vibrating regardless of what the rest of the vocal tract is doing. Vowels are almost always voiced. But a few languages have contrastive voiceless vowels (that is, the word can mean something different if your vocal cords aren't vibrating during the vowel). English has a few environments where vowels may be (non-contrastively) voiceless.
In the last few decades it has become apparent that phonation may involve the entire larynx, with as many as six valves and muscles working either independently or together. From the glottis upward, these articulations are:
1. glottal (the vocal cords), producing the distinctions described in phonation types in my notes.
2. ventricular (the 'false vocal cords', partially covering and damping the glottis)
3. arytenoid (sphincteric compression forwards and upwards)
4. epiglotto-pharyngeal (retraction of the tongue and epiglottis, potentially closing onto the pharyngeal wall)
5. raising or lowering of the entire larynx . See larynx in my notes.
6. narrowing of the pharynx . See pharynx in my notes.
Until the development of fiber-optic laryngoscopy,
the full involvement of the larynx during speech production
was not observable, and the interactions among
the six laryngeal articulators is still poorly understood.
However, at least two supra-glottal phonations appear
to be widespread in the world's languages. These are
harsh voice ('ventricular' or 'pressed' voice)
<)) , which involves overall
constriction of the larynx, and
faucalized voice ('hollow' or 'yawny' voice), which involves
overall expansion of the larynx.
fiber-optic laryngoscopy
The advantage of this method is the direct examination, however, the disadvantage is because it is invasive. I had watched a U-tube video on the Internet (080314) how the McGrath Video Laryngoscope was used (movie taken in 061002). The person was under general anesthesia! It is definitely not a tool I would be able to see how the vowels are produced. If you would like to watch the video online http://www.wanderings.net/notebook/Main/McGrathVideoLaryngoscope 080314
Faucalized voice, also called hollow or yawny voice, is the production of speech sounds with an expanded laryngeal cavity. It contrasts with harsh voice, in which the larynx is compressed. ... A well known language with faucalized voice is Korean, with its "tense" consonants. The entire vocal tract is tense, and the occlusion lasts longer than other consonants. For this reason they are often called fortis. There also appears to be elements of stiff voice in the Korean consonants, though faucalized voice is not yet well enough described to know how common this is.
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faucalized_voice download 070910Stiff voice: The term stiff voice describes the pronunciation of consonants with a glottal opening narrower, and the vocal cords stiffer, than what occurs in modal voice (or "normal" voice). Although there is no specific IPA diacritic for stiff voice, the voicing diacritic (a subscript wedge) may be used in conjunction with the symbol for a voiced consonant. One language with stiff voice is Thai: stiff voice [b̬âː] (crazy ); tenuis [pâː] (aunt ); aspirated [pʰâː] (cloth). [{Notice the onsets which correspond to : {pa.} (Thai "aunt"), {hpa.} (Thai "cloth"), {ba.} (Thai "crazy").}]
In languages such as French, all obstruents (see obstruents and sonorants in my notes) occur in pairs, one modally (meaning "normally") vl and one vd. In English, every vd fricative corresponds to a vl one. For the pairs of English, however, the distinction is better specified as VOT (voice onset time) rather than simply voice: In initial position /b d g/ are only partially voiced (voicing begins during the hold of the consonant), while /p t k/ are aspirated (voicing doesn't begin until well after its release).
UKT: it should be noted that there are two allophones for each: /p/ [p] [pʰ]; /t/ [t] [tʰ]; /k/ [k] [kʰ]. The Western idea of taking [pʰ tʰ kʰ] as "aspirated forms" is contrary to the Eastern idea of taking them to be usual sounds in their own right. Thus for /p t k/ we have six, {pa. hpa.} {ta. hta.} and {ka. hka.}
Certain English morphemes (compare with phoneme) have vd. and vl. allomorphs, such as the plural, verbal, and possessive endings spelled -s (voiced in <kids> /kɪdz/ but voiceless in <kits> /kɪts/ and the past-tense ending spelled -ed (voiced in <buzzed> /bʌzd/ but voiceless in <fished> /fɪʃt/.
terminology n. pl. terminologies 1. The vocabulary of technical terms used in a particular field, subject, science, or art; nomenclature. 2. The study of nomenclature. -- AHTD
Each branch of learning (or discipline of knowledge), has its own terms (vocabulary), and it is a must for all new comers to learn and understand them. For one like me, who has dabbled in a number of branches, unless I keep myself informed of the meanings and understand them to the best of my ability (memorizing them is useless), I usually get into trouble with those who are really from that field (my peers). I always thank them, whenever someone pointed out how misinformed I am. I never claim myself to be an expert, and that is what I always tell my friend U Tun Tint (of MLC) that I am just an "ignorant cow-herd boy" with a catapult in hand throwing smallest of all pebbles at my patient friends and peers (with no intention of hurting them) who are experts in their fields.
Here are some words which have always confused me.:
('wordform', 'word' and 'morpheme', and 'syllable') from: http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/ComparisonAndContrastOfWordfor.htm)
http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/Index.htm 080314
Though the SIL (Summer Institute of Language or SIL International) glossary is handy as a "quickie", for more explanations I usually refer to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.Words ending in <-eme> (definitions):
• Grapheme : -- not in SIL glossary
• Lexeme : the minimal unit of language which: 1. has a semantic interpretation, and 2. embodies a distinct cultural concept. It is made up of one or more form-meaning composites called lexical units
• Morpheme : the smallest unit of syntax, that has a distinctive meaning, but which cannot occur by itself unless it is in a monomorphenic word.
• Phoneme : A phoneme is the smallest contrastive unit in the sound system of a language.
• Wordform: the smallest unit of 'speech or writing', that has distinctive meaning and which can occur by itself. In most orthographies, it is separated from other wordforms by a space.
• Word: the smallest unit of syntax, that has distinctive meaning, and which can occur by itself.
• Syllable: smallest unit of pronunciation, that has no inherent distinctive meaning, and which cannot occur by itself unless it is in monosyllabic word.
• An allomorph is a linguistics term for a variant form of a morpheme. The concept occurs when a unit of meaning can vary in sound (phonologically) without changing meaning. It is used in linguistics to explain the comprehension of variations in sound for a specific morpheme. -- Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allomorph download 070911
From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fricative download 070911
Follow the following links also:
• aeroacoustic production of fricative speech sounds http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2001ASAJ..115.2633K
• Differences in fricative production between children and adults: evidence from an acoustic analysis of /sh/ and /s/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=3343442&dopt=AbstractPlus
Fricatives (or spirants) are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These are the lower lip against the upper teeth in the case of [ f ], or the back of the tongue against the soft palate in the case of German [x], the final consonant of <Bach>. This turbulent airflow is called frication. A particular subset of fricatives are the sibilants (sometimes referred to as stridents. See strident consonants, and strident vowels in my notes.). 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 [s], [z], [ ʃ ], and [ ʒ ] are examples of this.
Sibilant fricatives: (UKT: take note of the diacritics)
• [s] vl. coronal sibilant; [z] vd. coronal sibilant | [s’] ejective coronal sibilant
• [s̪] vl. dental sibilant; [z̪] vd. dental sibilant
• [s̺] vl. apical sibilant; [z̺] vd. apical sibilant
• [s̠] vl. posalveolar sibilant (laminal) ;
[z̠] vd. postalveolar sibilant (laminal)
• [ ʃ ] vl. palato-alveolar sibilant (domed, partially palatalized) ;
[ʒ] vd. palato-alveolar sibilant (domed, partially palatalized)
• [ɕ] vl. alveolo-palatal sibilant (laminal, palatalized) ; [ʑ] vd.
alveolo-palatal sibilant (laminal, palatalized)
• [ʂ] vl. retroflex sibilant (apical or sub-apical) ; [ʐ] vd.
retroflex sibilant (apical or sub-apical)
All sibilants are coronal, but may be dental, alveolar,
postalveolar or palatal (retroflex) within that range.
However, at the postalveolar place of articulation the tongue may take several shapes:
domed, laminal, or apical, and each of these is given a separate symbol
and a separate name. Prototypical retroflexes are sub-apical and palatal, but they are usually
written with the same symbol as the apical postalveolars.
The alveolars and dentals may also be either apical or
laminal, but this difference is indicated with diacritics
rather than with separate symbols.
Central non-sibilant fricatives: (UKT: take note of the diacritics)
• [ɸ] vl. bilabial fricative; [β] vd. bilabial fricative
• [f] vl labiodental fricative ; [v] vd labiodental fricative
• [θ̼] vl linguolabial fricative ; [ð̼] vd linguolabial fricative
• [θ̟] vl interdental fricative ; [ð̟] vd interdental fricative
• [θ] vl dental nonsibilant fricative ; [ð] vd dental nonsibilant fricative
• [θ̠], [ɹ̝̊]
vl alveolar nonsibilant fricative ; [ð̠], [ɹ̝]
vd alveolar nonsibilant fricative
• [ç] vl palatal fricative ; [ʝ] vd palatal fricative
• [x] vl velar fricative ; [ɣ] vd velar fricative
• [ɧ] vl palatal-velar fricative (articulation disputed)
• [χ] vl uvular fricative
• [ħ] vl pharyngeal fricative (UKT: {ha.}? See sonorant in my notes)
• [ʜ] vl epiglottal fricative
UKT: One question that has kept my interest in phonetics and linguistics alive, is the pronunciation and transcription [θ] {tha.}/{þa.}. See voiceless interdental fricative {tha.} in my notes.
Lateral fricatives:
[ɬ]
vl coronal lateral fricative ;
[ɮ]
vd coronal lateral fricative
[ɬ̢]
vl retroflex lateral fricative
[ʎ̥]
vl palatal lateral fricative (needs a raising diacritic:
[ʎ̝̊])
[ʟ̝̊]
vl velar lateral fricative
Symbols used for both fricatives and approximants:
• [ʁ] voiced uvular fricative
• [ʕ] voiced pharyngeal fricative
• [ʢ] voiced epiglottal fricative
No language distinguishes voiced fricatives from approximants at these places, so the same symbol is used for both. For the pharyngeals and epiglottals, approximants are more numerous than fricatives. A fricative realization may be specified by adding the uptack to the letters, [ʁ̝, ʕ̝, ʢ̝]. Likewise, the downtack may be added to specify an approximant realization, [ʁ̞, ʕ̞, ʢ̞].
Pseudo-fricatives:
• [h] voiceless glottal transition
• [ɦ] breathy-voiced glottal transition
The glottal "fricatives" are actually unaccompanied phonation states of the glottis, without any accompanying manner, fricative or otherwise. However, they are called fricatives for historical reasons.
In addition, [ʍ] is usually called a " voiceless labial-velar fricative", but it is actually an approximant. True doubly-articulated fricatives may not occur in any language; but see voiceless palatal-velar fricative for a putative (and rather controversial) example.
See table of consonants (UKT: this link will take you online to IPA table) for a table of fricatives in English.
Ubykh language may be the language with the most fricatives (twenty-seven in all), some of which do not have symbols or diacritics in the IPA. This number actually outstrips the number of all consonants in English (which has 24 consonants). By contrast, some languages have no phonemic fricatives at all. This is a typical feature of Australian Aboriginal languages, where the few fricatives that exist result from changes to plosives or approximants, but also occurs in some indigenous languages of New Guinea and South America that have especially small numbers of consonants. However, whereas [h] is entirely unknown in indigenous Australian languages, most of the other languages without true fricatives do have [h] in their consonant inventory.
Voicing contrasts in fricatives are largely confined to Europe, Africa and Western Asia. Languages of South and East Asia, such as the Dravidian and Austronesian languages, typically do not have such voiced fricatives as [z] and [v] which are very familiar to European speakers. These voiced fricatives are also relatively rare in indigenous languages of the Americas. Overall, voicing contrasts in fricatives are much rarer than in plosives, being found only in about a third of the world's languages as compared to 60 percent for plosive voicing contrasts.
UKT: The English fricative <th> has both vl. /θ/ and vd. /ð/ pronunciations. Similarly, Burmese-Myanmar, r6c5 {tha.}/ has two pronunciations, vl. and vd. The link /θ/ will take you to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_dental_fricative 080315 in which it is given that two Myanmar languages, Burmese: suṃ [θòʊ̃]
{þoän:} , "three" and S'gaw Karen: thö33 [θø˧], "three" , have this sound. It is interesting to note that two First Nation American languages of Algonquian , the Kickapoo (United States): nethwi [nɛθwi], "three" and Shawnee: nthwi [nθwɪ], "three" , not only have this sound, but the word with this sound means "three". Of course, the English word with this sound is <three> /θriː/. What an extraordinary coincidence! I hope none in his right mind would suggest that these languages all have a common ancestor! The word, for "three" in Pali-Myanmar is {ti.} with a /t/ instead of a /θ/.
It strange that the transcriptions given for these languages has <th>, whereas for Burmese it is given with an <s> as suṃ [θòʊ̃]. [{You will notice that the in IPA transcript, the onset consonant is given as [θ] which shows that the transcription given by Wikipedia 080315 is totally unacceptable. Notice that
About 15 percent of the world's languages, however, have unpaired voiced fricatives i.e. a voiced fricative without a voiceless counterpart. Two-thirds of these, or 10 percent of all languages, have unpaired voiced fricatives but no voicing contrast between any fricative pair.
This phenomenon occurs because voiced fricatives have developed from lenition of plosives or fortition of approximants. This phenomenon of unpaired voiced fricatives is scattered throughout the world, but is confined to nonsibilant fricatives with the exception of a couple of languages which have [ ʒ ] but lack [ ʃ ] (it is worth noting that several languages have the voiced affricate [dʒ] but lack [ ʧ ]). The fricatives which occur most often without a voiceless counterpart are, in order of ratio of unpaired occurrences to total occurrences, [ʝ], [β], [ð], [ʁ] and [ɣ].
UKT: A reader familiar with my works would notice that my interest in phonetics had its beginning in the pronunciation of Pali-Myanmar <th>/<þa> which has become the <s> in Pali-Latin or the so-called International Pali. When I recite my prayers I would, as all in Myanmar would, say in Pali-Myanmar
{boad~Däm þa.ra.Nän}, whereas those who have been tainted by Sanskrit would say
{boad~Däm sa.ra.Nän} all the while claiming that his pronunciation is the correct one.
Which is more authentic? I had started out with that question. And now I must insist that my pronunciation is the same as those of the Magadhi speakers, to which linguistic group Buddha had belonged. Leaving aside this contentious issue, there seem to be two kinds of speakers who can pronounce the <th> (the thibilant group) and those who can only pronounce the <s> (the sibilant group). So I how should I describe the sound had been my quest until I come across the term "the hissers and the hushers" in University of Lausanne (UNIL) http://www.unil.ch/ling/page24535.html 080316
The following is almost entirely from UNIL website.
Among the fricatives below are ones described as hissers and hushers.
The realization of a hisser requires a high degree of tension in the tongue: a
groove is formed along the whole length of the tongue, in particular at the
place of articulation where the air passes through a little round opening. The
hushers are produced similarly, but with a shallower groove in the tongue, and a
little opening more oval than round. The lips are often rounded or projected
outwards during the realization of a husher. The sound clips are also from the
UNIL website. .
Hissers: <))
{sa.} [s];
<))
{za.} [z]
Hushers: <))
{þhya.}
[ ʃ ]; { -} <)) [ ʒ ]
UKT: If you listen carefully, the "pronunciation" of
{sa.} [s] is
actually that of
{hsa.} [sʰ].
It should be noted that one of failures of IPA in representing the Asian sounds,
is its failure to provide separate symbols for the so-called allophones.
UKT: This subsection has materials from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_vowel 070908
See also Velopharyngeal settings in The Phonetic Description of Voice quality, by John Laver, Univ. of Edinburgh, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1980, p068. In particular, see p077-092. My html version of Laver's book is available in TIL library.UKT: It is said of the traditional Burmese-Myanmar singing:
{yauk~kya: a / maim:ma. nha//} meaning "male singing comes from throat; female from nose."
"The velopharyngeal settings describes the position of the velum which in its neutral setting facilitates nasality only on certain segments. The other (open or closed) position of the velum during the production of speech segments is regarded as the specific (nasalized or denasalized) setting. The coupling of the nasal resonator dramatically changes the spectral characteristics of the vocal tract. Additional formants and antiformants are produced while the high frequency components are suppressed.
<)) (Pharyngalized voice)
<)) (Nasalized voice ) " -- http://www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/phonetik/EGG/page11.htmUKT: During the annual nat-puja in Myanmar (celebrated in the month of {nat-tau} in November-December}, the nat-medium in imitation of one possessed by {ma.nhè:lé:}-nat sings and speaks with a supposedly child's voice. To the hearers, she sings and speaks with a highly nasalized voice. We call that {nat þu-ngèý þän} literally meaning "the voice of a child-nat" implying that the speaker is a hoax.
As with consonants, air may or may not be flowing through the nose, regardless of what the tongue or lips may be doing. Vowels tend to be oral, but many languages also have a set of nasal vowels (e.g., French). English has a few environments where vowels may be (non-contrastively) nasalized. Nasal vowels are produced with a lowering of the soft palate (velum) so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. The term stands in opposition to the term "oral vowel" refers to an ordinary vowel without this nasalisation. Note that these terms can be slightly misleading as the air does not come exclusively out of the nose in nasal vowels.
In most languages, vowels that are adjacent to nasal consonants are produced partially or fully with a lowered velum in a natural process of assimilation and are therefore technically nasal, though few speakers would notice. This is the case in English: vowels preceding nasal consonants are nasalized, but there is no phonemic distinction between nasal and oral vowels (and all vowels are considered phonemically oral). However, the word "huh" is generally pronounced with a nasal vowel.
UKT: Nasals are: English-Latin <ng, n, m>, and Burmese-Myanmar {nga., Ña./ña., Na., na., ma.}. In Burmese-Myanmar, the inherent vowel is hidden and there is no problem of assimilation. However, in Romabama because we are using the Latin alphabet in the same way as English, we need to show the peak vowel, V, of the CVÇ syllable. Once, the peak vowel is shown the problem of nasality and assimilation comes in.
In French, by contrast, nasal vowels are phonemes distinct from oral vowels, since words exist which differ mainly in the nasal or oral quality of a vowel. For example, the words beau /bo/ "beautiful" and bon /bõ/ "good" are pronounced virtually the same (the vowel in bon is slightly more open, leading many dictionaries to transcribe it /bɔ̃/), except that the former is oral and the latter is nasal.
UKT: Though I cannot speak French, since my alternate home is in Canada which is officially a bilingual country in English and French, I am familiar with French pronunciation. When you speak Romabama as it is spelled, pronouncing your words as if speaking French, you will be able to pronounce Burmese words quite closely. Even if you don't speak French, don't despair - just don't pronounce the end consonants of CVÇ. If you would like to sample French pronunciations, or learn French the easy way, just visit a language teaching site such as www.rocketlanguages.com/french/premium/index.php?hop=hcb25 where you will get free lessons.
In Min Chinese, nasal vowels carry persistent air flow though both the mouth and the nose, producing an invariant and sustainable vowel quality. That is, this type of nasalization is synchronic and suprasegmental to the voicing. In contrast, nasal vowels in French or Portuguese are transitional, where the velum ends up constricting the mouth airway.
In languages which have transitional nasal vowels, it is commonly the case that there are fewer nasal vowels than oral ones. This appears to be due to a loss of distinctivity caused by the nasal articulation.
Abugida scripts, which are used for most Indian languages, use the bindu (.) {þé:þé:ting} symbol and its variations to denote nasal vowels and nasal junctions between consonants.
The tongue tip may be curled back to perform a retroflex approximant, whatever the tongue body is doing. The "R-colouring" that this adds to the vowel is often called rhoticization. -- http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/linguistics/russell/138/sec3/morevowl.htm
The pronunciation of c4 consonants of the {wag.}-akshara, is not
straight forward for the Burmese-Myanmar speakers. We tend to pronounce them
exactly as the c3, e.g.
{ga.} and
{Ga.}
are pronounced the same. However, according to Burmese-Myanmar Buddhist monks
(and my experience as well, when I was ordained and spent a short time
as a full-fledge monk -- as mandated by our culture), there is a difference.
This is confirmed by Rev. U Kaw-wi-da, the head of Toronto Burmese-Buddhist monastery.
According to him, {Ga.} is pronounced with a grave "h-sound".
This distinction is very important when the monks are reciting {ka.ma.wa} (MEDict024).
Since, the same c4 consonants are also present in Sanskrit-Devanagari,
I am curious to know, how Hindi-Devanagari (Hindi is the living modern version,
while Sanskrit is a "dead" language) would speak.
(Though I have heard the Hindi-Devanagari speakers speak, as I have said before,
I am "phoneme-deaf"). The following is a paper on the same topic.
Identification of Hindi dental and retroflex consonants by native English and Japanese speakers (A) , by John S. Pruitt, Dept. of Psychol., Univ. of South Florida, in J. of Acoustical Soc. of America, May 1994, vol 95, issue 5, pp.3011-3012:
"Previous research has shown that English speakers have great difficulty distinguishing dental and retroflex stop consonants of the Hindi language (which occur in five pairs of stop consonants in Hindi). While both dental and retroflex consonants, in almost all of the manner/voicing contexts of Hindi, occur as allophones in English, they do not occur phonemically. Unlike English, Japanese includes an alveolar-retroflex distinction (the Japanese /d/ versus the flapped /r/). However, no research has determined whether Japanese speakers can distinguish the Hindi contrast. This research compared English and Japanese speakers' ability to distinguish these Hindi stop consonants in four of the five manner/voicing contexts (breathy-voiced, prevoiced, voiceless-aspirated, and voiceless-unaspirated). Subjects were presented consonant-vowel syllables in three vowel contexts (/a/, /e/, /o/) that were produced by two native Hindi speakers. Marked differences were found between these two language groups that were dependent upon the manner/voicing context of the consonants. This research contributes to our understanding of the role of native language experience phonemic versus phonetic) in the perception of non-native speech contrasts." -- http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/... 080315
UKT: "Five pairs of stop consonants in Hindi" are obviously those I have given
below. To relate them to Burmese-Myanmar, I have given their equivalents. I
have already above that the c3 and c4 of the respective row, say r1,
{ga.} and
{Ga.},
are pronounced exactly the same in Burmese-Myanmar. However, in Pali-Myanmar,
they are supposedly different. That is what Myanmar Buddhist monks are given to
understand. In Hindi-Devanagari, they are also stated to be different as can be
seen from the transcriptions given by IAST (International Alphabet of Sanskrit
Transliteration) established by the Congress of Orientalists at Athens in
1912. It should be noted that the "Orientalists" were undoubted under Western
influence because, the transliteration allows capitalizations of proper nouns
and also for the first letter at the beginning of a sentence, and also because
c2 and c4 aksharas were thought be "aspirated" allophones. I must insist (my
view of 2008 Mar which can change) c3 and c4 are essentially the same in
Burmese-Myanmar, and that there is no aspiration sound in c4 aksharas. Because
of this, the Romabama transliteration gives for r1,
{ga.} and
{Ga.}
without using <h>.
In Burmese-Myanmar, probably because we have lost the ability to "curl back" the tongue, the tongue-tip cannot reach the "retroflex" area of the hard palate, and there is no rhoticization described by Russell -- there is no R-colouring of the vowel.
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assimilation_(linguistics) download 070913
UKT: How important is assimilation within my life time in spoken Burmese written in Myanmar? From the text which follows you will see that for educators and other educated Burmese-Myanmar, who speak clearly and distinctly, assimilation is not important. Please remember, my aim is to come up with a reliable means of transliteration between Burmese-Myanmar and English-Latin, and I am not concerned with colloquial speech.
Assimilation is a typical sound change process by which the phonetics of a speech segment becomes more like that of another segment in a word (or at a word boundary), so that a change of phoneme occurs. A common example of assimilation would be <don't be silly> where the /n/ and /t/ in <don't> become /m/ and /p/, where said naturally in many accents and discourse styles. A related process is coarticulation where one segment influences another to produce an allophonic variation, such as vowels acquiring the feature [nasal] before nasal consonants when the velum opens prematurely or /b/ becoming labialised as in "boot". This article will describe both processes under the term, assimilation.
The physiological or psychological mechanisms of coarticulation are unknown, but we often loosely speak of a segment as "triggering" an assimilatory change in another segment. In assimilation, the phonological patterning of the language, discourse styles and accent are some of the factors contributing to changes observed.
There are four configurations found in assimilations: an increase in phonetic similarity between adjacent segments and between segments separated by one or more intervening segments; and the changes may be in reference to a preceding segment or a following one. Although all four occur, changes in regard to a following adjacent segment account for virtually all assimilatory changes (and most of the regular ones). And assimilations to an adjacent segment are vastly more frequent than assimilations to a non-adjacent one. (These radical asymmetries might contain hints about the mechanisms involved, but they are unobvious.)
If a sound changes with reference to a following segment, it is traditionally called "regressive assimilation"; changes with reference to a preceding segment are traditionally called "progressive". Many find these terms confusing, as they seem to mean the opposite of the intended meaning. Accordingly, a variety of alternative terms have arisen — not all of which avoid the problem of the traditional terms. Regressive assimilation is also known as right-to-left or anticipatory assimilation. Progressive assimilation is also known as left-to-right or perseveratory or preservative or lag assimilation. The terms anticipatory and lag will be used here.
Very occasionally two sounds (invariably adjacent) may influence one another in reciprocal assimilation. When such a change results in a single segment with some of the features of both components, it is known as coalescence or fusion.
Some authorities distinguish between partial and complete assimilation, i.e., between assimilatory changes in which there remains some phonetic difference between the segments involved, and those in which all differences are obliterated. There is no theoretical advantage to such a classification, as one of the following examples will show.
Tonal languages may exhibit tone assimilation (tonal umlaut, in effect), while sign languages also exhibit assimilation when the characteristics of neighbouring phonemes may be mixed. ...
Go back assimilation-note-b
From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortition download 070913
Fortition is a consonantal mutation in which a sound is changed from one considered 'weak' to one considered 'strong.' For example, a fricative or an approximant may become a plosive (i.e. [v] becomes [b] or [r] becomes [d]). An approximant is also considered to be affected by fortition if it becomes a fricative.
An example of fortition is where the extremely common approximant sound [ j ] {ya.} has changed into the very rare voiced fricative [ ʝ ] in a number of indigenous languages of the Arctic, such as the Eskimo-Aleut languages. In some varieties of Spanish this change has also occurred. In most continental Germanic languages, the [ þ ] ({tha.} ?) sound has hardened to become [ d ]).
It is the opposite of lenition. Fortition is a much rarer sound change than lenition, and is not found in many languages.
Go back fortition-note-b
UKT: What are glottal consonants? How do they compare to aspirated consonants?
In both types of consonants there is a relationship with
{ha.}. They
are represented in IPA by three characters:
From: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottal_consonant 080313
[ʔ] voiceless glottal stop -- Hawaiian ‘okina [ʔo.ˈki.na]
[ɦ] breathy voiced glottal "fricative" -- Czech Praha [pra.ɦa]
[h] voiceless glottal "fricative" -- English hat [hæt]
Glottal consonants are consonants
articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them,
or at least the so-called fricatives, to be
transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other
consonants have; in fact, some do not consider them to be consonants at all.
However, the glottal stop at least behaves as a typical consonant in languages
such as Tsou language.
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.
[h] is a voiceless transition. [ɦ]
is a breathy-voiced transition, and could be transcribed as [h̤]. [{Notice
(U0324) diaeresis below <h>. }]
The glottal stop occurs in many languages.
Often all vocalic onsets are preceded by a glottal stop,
for example in German. The Hawaiian language writes the glottal
stop [{because it occurs at the beginning of the syllable, I wonder if it
would be more appropriate to call it "glottal plosive"?}]
as an opening single quote ‘. Some alphabets use diacritics
for the glottal stop, such as hamza <ء> in the
Arabic alphabet; in many languages of
Mesoamerica, the Latin letter <h> is used for glottal stop.
hamza also hamzah n. 1. A sign in Arabic orthography used to represent the sound of a glottal stop, transliterated in English as an apostrophe. [Arabic from hamaza to urge on, goad] -- AHTD
Because the glottis is necessarily closed for the glottal stop, it cannot be voiced.
UKT: Since no amount of descriptive language is nearly as good as actual listening, read Tips for pronouncing glottalized consonants in Chumash languages and listen.
From: http://www.chumashlanguage.com/pronun/pronun-06-fr.html 080313
For a description of the Chumash people see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chumash_people 080313
Pronouncing a glottalized consonant can pose a challenge.
Here are some tips on how to do it, along with sound clips so you can hear it.
• Close off your air as if you’re lifting something heavy. Pronounce the consonant sound.
Then continue breathing out.
• <)) (ka-run-tg.mp3) Say k
a.
Say it faster and run the consonant and glottal stop together into
ka<.
• As you say the word, pronounce the consonant then glottal stop and then the vowel.
• <)) (suku-run-tg3.mp3) Say
suk u.
Do this quickly enough and the consonant and glottal stop run together
• Stick an extra vowel between the consonant and the glottal stop,
then say the word as you make the extra vowel weaker
and weaker until the consonant and glottal stop run together.
• <)) (suku-run-tg2.mp3) Say
sukuu,
then sukau,
suku
and finally suku.
Do this quickly enough and the consonant and glottal stop run together.
UKT: We know how we say the Burmese-Myanmar {ka.} and {hka.}, which the English hear as [k] and [kʰ] -- they heard {hka.} as an aspirated {ka.}. But we know we articulate {hka.} not with just an aspiration, but as a phoneme in its own right. For the moment, let's just say that {ha.} behaves like English <h> in the onset and a "glottal stop" in the coda -- the {ha.þût}. The trouble is we don't really know what the {ha.þût} sounds like.
Go back glottal-conso-note-b
From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapheme 080314
In typography, a grapheme is the fundamental unit in written language. Graphemes include alphabetic letters, Chinese characters, numerals, punctuation marks, and all the individual symbols of any of the world's writing systems.
In a phonemic orthography, a grapheme corresponds to one phoneme. In spelling systems that are non-phonemic — such as the spellings used most widely for written English — multiple graphemes may represent a single phoneme. These are called digraphs (two graphemes for a single phoneme) and trigraphs (three graphemes). For example, the word <ship> contains four graphemes (<s>, <h>, <i>, and <p>) but only three phonemes, because <sh> is a digraph.
UKT: The "letters" of the alphabet are graphemes.
Different glyphs can represent the same grapheme, meaning they are allographs. For example, the minuscule letter a can be seen in two variants, with a hook at the top, and without. Not all glyphs are graphemes in the phonological sense; for example the logogram ampersand (&) represents the Latin word et (English word <and>), which contains two phonemes.
Go back grapheme-note-b
From: Wikpedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intonation_(linguistics) download 070914
In linguistics, intonation is the variation of pitch when speaking. Intonation and stress are two main elements of linguistic prosody.
Many languages use pitch syntactically, for instance to convey surprise and irony or to change a statement to a question. Such languages are called intonation languages. English and French are well-known examples. Some languages use pitch to distinguish words; these are known as tonal languages. Chinese, Thai, and Hausa are examples. An intermediate position is occupied by languages with tonal word accent, for instance Norwegian or Japanese.
Rising intonation means the pitch of the voice increases over time; falling intonation means that the pitch decreases with time. A dipping intonation falls and then rises, whereas a peaking intonation rises and then falls.
The classic example of intonation is the question-statement distinction. For example, north-eastern American English, like very many languages (Hirst & DiCristo, eds. 1998), has a rising intonation for echo or declarative questions <He found it on the street?>, and a falling intonation for wh- questions <Where did he find it?> and statements <He found it on the street.>. Yes or no questions <Did he find it on the street?> often have a rising end, but not always. The Chickasaw language [{ a Native American language of Muskogean family. It is agglutinative and follows the pattern SOV.}] has the opposite pattern, rising for statements and falling with questions.
Dialects of British and Irish English vary substantially, with rises on many statements in urban Belfast, and falls on most questions in urban Leeds.
UKT: One observation made on the way I spoke (during my first trip to the US in 1957-59) by my American class-mates was: whenever I asked a wh-question, I always ended with a rising intonation. I have made the same observation on how other Burmese-Myanmar speak English in Myanmar. We are encouraged by our English language-teachers (whose L1's are other than English), to end our written questions with a question-mark <?>, and in speaking to end our questions with a rising intonation [↗ ].
Transcription: In the IPA, "global" rising and falling intonation are marked with a diagonal arrow rising left-to-right [↗] (U2197) and falling left-to-right [↘] (U2198), respectively. These may be written as part of a syllable, or separated with a space when they have a broader scope:
He found it on the street?
[hi faʊnd ɪt | ɑn ðə ↗stɹit ‖ ]
In the previous example, the global rise symbol is placed between the transcriptions for the words <the> and <street>.
Yes, he found it on the street.
[↘ jɛs ‖ hi faʊnd ɪt | ɑn ðə ↘stɹit ‖ ]
In that example, the symbol for a global fall was placed before the transcription for the word <yes>, as well as between the transcriptions for the words <the> and <street>.
How did you ever escape?
[↗haʊ dɪdju | ɛvɚ | ɪ↘skeɪp ‖ ]
Here, the global rise symbol is place before the transcription for the word <how> and the global fall symbol is placed between the two syllables in <escape>, after the small capital letter < I > which represents the sound [ɪ].
More specific transcription systems for intonation have also been developed, such as ToBI (Tones and Break Indices), RaP (Rhythm and Pitch) and INTSINT (Hirst & Di Cristo, eds. 1998).
Go back intonation-note-b
From: Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larynx download 070909
The larynx (plural larynges), colloquially known as the voicebox, is an organ in the neck of mammals involved in protection of the trachea and sound production. The larynx houses the vocal folds, and is situated just below where the tract of the pharynx splits into the trachea and the esophagus.
Sound is generated in the larynx, and that is where pitch and volume are manipulated. The strength of expiration from the lungs also contributes to loudness, and is necessary for the vocal folds to produce speech.
Fine manipulation of the larynx is used in a great way to generate a source sound with a particular fundamental frequency, or pitch. This source sound is altered as it travels through the vocal tract, configured differently based on the position of the tongue, lips, mouth, and pharynx. The process of altering a source sound as it passes through the filter of the vocal tract creates the many different vowel and consonant sounds of the world's languages.
During swallowing, the larynx (at the epiglottis and at the glottis) closes to prevent swallowed material from entering the lungs; the larynx is also pulled upwards to assist this process. Stimulation of the larynx by ingested matter produces a strong cough reflex to protect the lungs.
The vocal folds can be held close together (by adducting the arytenoid cartilages), so that they vibrate (see phonation). The muscles attached to the arytenoid cartilages control the degree of opening. Vocal fold length and tension can be controlled by rocking the thyroid cartilage forward and backward on the cricoid cartilage, and by manipulating the tension of the muscles within the vocal folds. This causes the pitch produced during phonation to rise or fall.
Go back larynx-note-b
From: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenition download 070912
Lenition is a kind of consonant mutation that appears in many languages. Along with assimilation, it is one of the primary sources of the historical change of languages.
Lenition means 'softening' or 'weakening' (from Latin lenis, the root of 'lenient'), and it refers to the change of a consonant considered 'strong' into one considered 'weak' (fortis → lenis). Common examples include:
• voicing or sonorization, as in [f] → [v]
• affrication or spirantization (turning into an affricate or a fricative), as in [t] → [ts] or [s]
• debuccalization (loss of POA), as in [s] → [h]
• degemination, as in [k:] → [k]
• deglottalization, such as [k’] → [k], etc.
Ultimately, consonants may be lost completely. Lenition, then, can be seen as a movement on the sonority scale from less sonorous to more sonorous. ...
Go back lenition-note-b
From: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexeme 080314
A lexeme is an abstract unit of morphological analysis in linguistics, that roughly corresponds to a set of words that are different forms of the same word. For example, in the English language, <run>, <runs>, <ran> and <running> are forms of the same lexeme, conventionally written as RUN. A related concept is the lemma (or citation form), which is a particular form of a lexeme that is chosen by convention to represent a canonical form of a lexeme. Lemmas are used in dictionaries as the headwords, and other forms of a lexeme are often listed later in the entry if they are unusual in some way.
A lexeme belongs to a particular syntactic category, has a particular meaning (semantic value), and in inflecting languages, has a corresponding inflectional paradigm; that is, a lexeme in many languages will have many different forms. For example, the lexeme RUN has a present third person singular form <runs>, a present non-third-person-singular form <run> (which also functions as the past participle and non-finite form), a past form <ran>, and a present participle <running>. (It does not include runner, runners, runnable, etc.) The use of the forms of a lexeme is governed by rules of grammar; in the case of English verbs such as RUN, these include subject-verb agreement and compound tense rules, which determine which form of a verb can be used in a given sentence.
UKT: English is an example of inflecting language, whereas examples of agglutinative languages include many Tibeto-Burman languages (Burmese-Myanmar included?), Malay, the Dravidian languages, many Uralic languages, Inuktitut, some Mesoamerican and North American languages, etc. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agglutinative_language 080314
A lexicon consists of lexemes.
In many formal theories of language, lexemes have subcategorization frames to account for the number and types of complements they occur with in sentences and other syntactic structures.
The notion of a lexeme is very central to morphology, and thus, many other notions can be defined in terms of it. For example, the difference between inflection and derivation can be stated in terms of lexemes:
• Inflectional rules relate a lexeme to its forms.
• Derivational rules relate a lexeme to another lexeme.
Go back lexeme-note-b
From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morpheme 080314
In morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest linguistic
unit that has semantic meaning. In spoken language, morphemes are composed of
phonemes (the smallest linguistically distinctive units of sound), and in
written language morphemes are composed of graphemes (the smallest units of
written language).
The concept morpheme differs from the concept word,
as many morphemes cannot stand as words on their own. A morpheme is free
if it can stand alone, or bound if it is used exclusively alongside a
free morpheme. Its actual phonetic representation is the morph, with the
morphs representing the same morpheme being grouped as its allomorphs.
English example:
The word <unbreakable> has three morphemes: <un-> (meaning not x),
a bound morpheme; <-break->, a free morpheme; and <-able>,
a free morpheme. "un-" is also a prefix, "-able"
is a suffix. Both are affixes.
The morpheme plural-s has the morph "-s", IPA:
[s], in <cats> ([kæts]), but "-es", [ɪz],
in <dishes> ([dɪʃɪz]),
and even the voiced "-s", [z], in <dogs> ([dɒgz]).
These are the allomorphs of "-s". It might even change entirely into -ren in
<children>.
Types of morphemes
• Free morphemes like <town>, and <dog> can appear with other lexemes (as in <town hall> or <dog house>) or they can stand alone, i.e. "free".
• Bound morphemes ([{"also-known-as" or aka}] affixes) like "un-" appear only together with other morphemes to form a lexeme. Bound morphemes in general tend to be prefixes and suffixes. Unproductive, non-affix morphemes that exist only in bound form are known as "cranberry" morphemes, from the "cran" in that very word.
• Derivational morphemes can be added to a word to create (derive) another word: the addition of <-ness> to <happy>, for example, to give <happiness>. They carry semantic information.
• Inflectional morphemes modify a word's tense, number, aspect, and so on (as in the <dog> morpheme if written with the plural marker morpheme <-s> becomes <dogs>). They carry grammatical information.
• Allomorphs are variants of a morpheme, e.g. the plural marker in English is sometimes realized as [-z], [-s] or [-ɪz].
Other variants
Morphological analysis:
In natural language processing for Japanese, Chinese and other languages,
morphological analysis is the process of segmenting a given sentence into a row
of morphemes. It is closely related to Part-of-speech tagging [{POST
done in context of computational linguistics, using algorithms}], but word
segmentation is required for these languages because word boundaries are not
indicated by blank spaces. Famous Japanese morphological analysts include Juman
and ChaSen.
Go back morpheme-note-b | morpheme-note-b2
UKT: The classification of sounds into obstruents and sonorants is very confusing for a person who is used to the akshara classification (sounds as well as scripts) of {wag}-nasal-{a.wag} classification. See also Sonority hierarchy in my notes in intro-voc1.htm .
The following definitions are from AHTD.
obstruent n. 2. Linguistics A sound, such as a stop, a fricative, or an affricate, that is produced with complete blockage or at least partial constriction of the airflow through the nose or mouth. [Latin obstruēns obstruent-, present participle of obstruere to obstruct; See obstruct ] -- AHTD
sonorant n. Linguistics 1. A voiced consonant regarded as a syllabic sound, as the last sound in the word sudden. [sonor(ous) -ant ] -- AHTD
The following are from other sources.
UKT: We may take the aksharas of the r1, r3, r4 and r5 rows of the akshara matrix, the {wag}-consonants (exclusive of the nasals), are obstruents.
However, the r2 consonants {sa. hsa. za. Za.} are problematical. The case of{tic~sa}. English <cc> is also of this type: <success> /sək'ses/ (transcription from DJPD16-515). It should be noted that since the POAs of [k] and [c] are close, I have suggested that the transcription could have been /səc'ses/ which calls for a palatal <c> in English. When I posted this possibility on a forum, almost all responses were that English does not have a palatal <c>, which is true if <c> has been an onset. I insisted that coda <c> could very well be [c], the case being similar to the case of {sa.}.
From: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstruent download 070910
In phonetics, articulation may be divided into two large classes, obstruents and sonorants. An obstruent is a consonant sound formed by obstructing outward airflow, causing increased air pressure in the vocal tract.
Obstruents are those articulations in which there is a total closure or a stricture causing friction, both groups being associated with a noise component; in this class there is a distinctive opposition between voiceless and voiced types.
Obstruents are subdivided into stops (UKT: plosives), fricatives, and affricates. Obstruents are prototypically voiceless, though voiced obstruents are common. This contrasts with sonorants, which are rarely voiceless.
Go back obst-sono-note-b
From: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonorant download 070910
UKT: Vowels are sonorants, whereas the nasals are between sonorants and obstruents (my understanding of 080313)
In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant is a speech sound that is produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract. Essentially this means that a sound is sonorant if it can be produced continuously at the same pitch. For example, vowels are sonorants, as are consonants like /m/ and /l/. Other consonants, like /d/ or /k/, cannot be produced continuously and so are non-sonorant. In addition to vowels, phonetic categorizations of sounds that are considered sonorant include approximants, nasal consonants, taps, and trills. In the sonority hierarchy, all sounds higher than fricatives are sonorants.
UKT: The above Wiki paragraph implies that nasal consonants (e.g. /m/) and lateral consonants (e.g. /l/) are sonorants. This means that {nga. ña. Na. na. ma.} are sonorants. But, since "a sound is sonorant if it can be produced continuously at the same pitch", I cannot fully agree with my inference "{nga. Ña. Na. na. ma.} are sonorants", because I cannot "produce them continuously at the same pitch". But first, I will have to check with my peers.
However, we must note that when the inherent vowel in {nga. Ña. Na. na. ma.} has been killed and they occur in the coda, the "rimes" have three pitch-registers (tones) such as {a. a a:}, exemplified by {kan. kan kan:}.
Sonorants are those articulations in which there is only a partial closure or an unimpeded oral or nasal scape of air; such articulations, typically voiced, and frequently frictionless, without noise component, may share many phonetic characteristics with vowels.
The word resonant is sometimes used for these non-turbulent sounds. In this case, the word sonorant may be restricted to non- vocoid resonants; that is, all of the above except vowels and semivowels. However, this usage is becoming dated.
Sonorants contrast with obstruents, which do cause turbulence in the vocal tract. Among consonants pronounced far back in the throat (uvulars (UKT: [q, ɢ, ɴ, ʀ, χ, ʁ]), pharyngeals) the distinction between an approximant and a voiced fricative is so blurred that such sounds as voiced uvular fricative ([ʁ] and voiced pharyngeal fricative ([ʕ]) often behave like sonorants. The pharyngeal consonant (UKT: [ħ]? Can I say it is {ha.}?) is also a semivowel corresponding to the vowel /a/.
UKT: The farthest into the throat are velars {ka. ga.}. I am wondering, because of the way the Burmese-Myanmar monks recite the {ka.ma.wa}, whether {Ga.} is pronounced farther into the interior. In which case it would be a uvular. -- 070915
Whereas most obstruents are voiceless, the great majority of sonorants are voiced. It is certainly possible to make voiceless sonorants, but sonorants that are unvoiced occur in only about 5 percent of the world's languages. These are almost exclusively found in the area around the Pacific Ocean from New Caledonia clockwise to South America and belong to a number of language families, among them Austronesian, Sino-Tibetan (UKT: Burmese of Tibeto-Burman group), Na-Dene language and Eskimo-Aleut. It is notable that, in every case where a voiceless sonorant does occur, there is a contrasting voiced sonorant.
Voiceless sonorants tend to be extremely quiet and very difficult to recognise even for those people whose language does contain them. They have a strong tendency to either revoice or undergo fortition to form for example a fricative like ç or ɬ.
English has the following sonorant consonants: l, m, n, ŋ, r, w, j . (UKT: the corresponding {ya.}, {ra.}, {la.}, {wa.} are {a.wag}-consonants, and {nga.} {na.} {ma.} are nasals.)
UKT: Cross linguistic comparison, between Burmese and English, has brought out some interesting properties of consonants and vowels. Working with the rimes in the syllables of the type CVÇ, has brought out that the pronunciation of C and Ç can be quite different in both Burmese and in English. A specific example is in the <cc> digraphs of the disyllabic words such as <success> /sək'ses/ (transcription from Daniel Jones Pronouncing Dictionary, 16ed. p515). In the <cc> the first <c> belongs the syllable /sək/ whereas the second <c> belongs to the syllable /ses/. This has prompted me to suggest that "there is palatal <c> in English" but only in the coda. The rational being: POA's of velar stop /k/ and the palatal stop /c/ are so close that we have made a mistake in giving the transcription as /sək'ses/. It could very well be /səc'ses/. If we could accept this position, then we can say that the English <c> and the Burmese {sa.} are exactly the same.
Go back obst-sono-note-b
From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharynx download 070909
The pharynx (plural: pharynges) is the part of the neck and throat situated immediately posterior to the mouth and nasal cavity, and cranial , or superior, to the esophagus, larynx, and trachea.
UKT: Wiki's use of the term "cranial" ( cranial adj. 1. Of or relating to the skull or cranium. [From cranium ] -- AHTD) is misleading. It just means the "upper end". Go online and click on the link cranial . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cranial download 070913
It is part of the digestive system and respiratory system of many organisms. Because both food and air pass through the pharynx, a flap of connective tissue called the epiglottis closes over the trachea when food is swallowed to prevent choking or aspiration. In humans the pharynx is important in vocalization.
The human pharynx is conventionally divided into three sections:
• nasopharynx -- lies behind nasal cavity; the inferior wall
consists of the superior surface of the soft palate.
• oropharynx -- lies behind the oral cavity.
• hypopharynx or laryngopharynx
Go back pharynx-note-b
From:
• Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonation 080312From Wikipedia
Phonation is the process of producing vocal sound by the vibration of the vocal folds that is in turn modified by the resonance of the vocal tract. It takes place in the larynx when the vocal folds are brought together [{adduction}] and breath pressure is applied to them in such a way that vibration ensues causing an audible source of acoustic energy, i.e., sound, which can then be modified by the articulatory actions of the rest of the vocal apparatus. The vocal folds are brought together primarily by the action of the interarytenoid muscles, which pull the arytenoid cartilages together [{See Laver, Phonetic Description of Voice quality, p099, in TIL library ch3-2.htm.}]
Phonation has traditionally been seen as one dimension of phonetic voicing, the degree of glottal tension. (A second dimension of voicing is timing, called voice onset time, or "VOT".)
However, with recent advances in imaging technology, it has become apparent that in many languages phonation involves more than just the glottis.
Voiced (vd.) sound: A voiced sound is produced when air expelled from the lungs causes the vocal folds to vibrate. This produces a fundamental tone accompanied by several non-harmonic overtones. The resulting sound is modified by movements in the vocal tract, by the volume of the airflow and by the degree of constriction of the vocal cords. (During speech the flow of air is relatively small because of constrictions of the vocal cords.) Vowels are usually voiced, as are many consonants.
Voiceless (vl.) sound: If the vocal folds are lax and not sufficiently close to vibrate, then the sound (usually a consonant) is voiceless.
UKT: For Burmese-Myanmars, the distinction between vl- and vd-sounds can be easily understood. The c1 {wag}-consonants
{ka. ta. pa.} are vl. The c3 {wag}-consonants
{ga. da. ba.} are vd.
Burmese-Myanmar basic nasals{nga. Ña. na. ma.} are voiced, but when formed into medials,
{ngha. Ñha. nha, mha.} by using "h" sound,
{ha.hto:} they become voiceless. Please note that because of the ability of {ha.} to form medials (an ability considered to be those of approximants), I have to classify
The vocal vibration is varied to produce intonation and tone. This is accomplished by varying the pressure of the air column under the glottis as well as the tension in the vocal folds themselves. These actions produce changes in the frequency of vocal-cord vibration, which generates the fundamental pitch of the voice. Tone and intonation are not conveyed well by voiceless sounds, with their lax vocal folds, but the changes in airflow are still audible.
Phonation as the state of the glottis:
In classic treatments of phonation, such as those
of Peter Ladefoged, phonation was considered to be
a matter of points on a continuum of tension and
closure of the vocal cords. More intricate mechanisms
were occasionally described, but they were difficult
to investigate, and until recently the state of the glottis
and phonation were considered to be nearly synonymous.
If the vocal cords are completely relaxed,
with the arytenoid cartilages apart for maximum airflow,
the cords do not vibrate. This is voiceless phonation,
and is extremely common with obstruents. (UKT: obstruents include stops,
nasals and fricatives, and affricates. The classification into obstruents and
sonorants, and our classification into {wag}, nasal, and {a.wag} consonants are
not comparable.)
If the arytenoids
are pressed together for glottal closure, the vocal cords
block the airstream, producing stop sounds such as the glottal stop.
In between there is a sweet spot of maximum vibration.
This is modal voice, and is the normal state for vowels
and sonorants in all the world's languages. However,
the aperture of the arytenoid cartilages, and therefore
the tension in the vocal cords, is one of degree between
the end points of open and closed, and there are several
intermediate situations utilized by various languages
to make contrasting sounds.
For example, Gujarati has vowels
with a partially lax phonation called
breathy voice or murmured, while
Burmese has vowels with a partially tense phonation called
creaky voice or laryngealized. Both of these
phonations have dedicated IPA diacritics, an under-umlaut
and under-tilde. The Jalapa dialect of Mazatec
is unusual in contrasting both with modal voice in
a three-way distinction. (Note that Mazatec is a tonal language,
so the glottis is making several tonal distinctions
simultaneously with the phonation distinctions.)
Javanese does not have modal voice in its plosives,
but contrasts two other points along the phonation scale,
with more moderate departures from modal voice, called
slack voice and
stiff voice.
The "muddy" consonants in Shanghainese are slack voice; they contrast
with tenuis and aspirated consonants.
Although each language may be somewhat different,
it is convenient to classify these degrees of phonation
into discrete categories. A series of seven alveolar plosives,
with phonations ranging from an open/lax to a closed/tense glottis, are:
Open glottis: [t] voiceless (full airstream) ; [d̤] breathy voice ; [d̥] slack voice
Sweet spot: [d] modal voice (maximum vibration) ; [d̬] stiff voice ; [d̰] creaky voice
Closed glottis: [ʔ͡t] glottal closure (blocked airstream)
The IPA diacritics under-ring and subscript wedge, commonly called "voiceless" and "voiced", are sometimes added to the symbol for a voiced sound to indicate more lax/open (slack) and tense/closed (stiff) states of the glottis, respectively. (Ironically, adding the 'voicing' diacritic to the symbol for a voiced consonant indicates less modal voicing, not more, because a modally voiced sound is already fully voiced, at its sweet spot, and any further tension in the vocal cords dampens their vibration.)
Unaccompanied phonation: It has long been noted that, both phonologically and historically, the glottal consonants [ʔ, ɦ, h] do not behave like other consonants. Phonetically, they have no manner or POA other than the state of the glottis: glottal closure for [ʔ], breathy voice for [ɦ], and open airstream for [h]. Some phoneticians have described these sounds as neither glottal nor consonantal, but instead as instances of pure phonation.
Register: Many languages combine phonation and tone into a single phonological system. In Mazatec, tone and phonation have separate lives, so that all possible combinations of its several tones and phonations can be utilized to distinguish words, but Burmese tones do not contrast directly in this way. Rather each Burmese tone occurs only with a specific phonation that serves to make it more distinctive — or, from a different point of view, Burmese "tone" serves to make the phonations more distinct. These tone-phonation hybrids are called registers. See pitch-register (vowel register) in my notes
Go back phonation-types-b1 | phonation-types-b2
From: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone 070912
Within phonetics, a phone is:
• a speech sound or gesture considered as a physical event
without regard to its place in the phonology of a language
• a speech segment that possesses distinct physical or perceptual properties
• a particular occurrence of a speech segment
• the basic unit revealed via phonetic speech analysis
• Phonetic symbology is set off within brackets.
Go back phone-wiki-b
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme download 070908
A phoneme can include slightly different sounds or phones. For instance, the p sound in the words <pin> and <spin> is pronounced differently, but is still considered the single /p/ phoneme. Two phones that belong to the same phoneme are called allophones. A common test to determine whether two phones are allophones or separate phones relies on finding so-called minimal pairs: words that differ only by the phones in question.
UKT: <pin> is pronounced as /{hping}/ the basic akshara being {hpa.}. On the other hand <p> in <spin> is pronounced as /{sâping}/ with the basic akshara {pa.}. In English, the <p> in <pin> and <spin> are "allophones", but in Burmese-Myanmar {pa.} and {hpa.} are different phones.
Go back phoneme-note-b | phoneme-note-b2 | phonemic-distinction-b
From: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonology 070913
Phonology (Greek φωνή (phōnē), voice, sound + λόγος (lógos), word, speech, subject of discussion), is a subfield of linguistics which studies the sound system of a specific language (or languages). Whereas phonetics is about the physical production and perception of the sounds of speech, phonology describes the way sounds function within a given language or across languages.
An important part of phonology is studying which sounds are distinctive units within a language. In English, for example, /p/ and /b/ are distinctive units of sound, (i.e., they are phonemes / the difference is phonemic, or phonematic). This can be seen from minimal pairs such as <pin> and <bin>, which mean different things, but differ only in one sound. On the other hand, /p/ is often pronounced differently depending on its position relative to other sounds, yet these different pronunciations are still considered by native speakers [{UKT: speakers whose L1 is English}] to be the same "sound". For example, the /p/ in <pin> is aspirated ({hpa.}-sound) while the same phoneme in <spin> ({pa.}-sound) is not. In some other languages, for example Thai and Quechua, this same difference of aspiration or non-aspiration does differentiate phonemes.
In addition to the minimal meaningful sounds (the phonemes), phonology studies how sounds alternate, such as the /p/ in English described above, and topics such as syllable structure, stress, accent, and intonation.
The principles of phonological theory have also been applied to the analysis of sign languages, even though the phonological units are not acoustic. The principles of phonology, and for that matter, language, are independent of modality because they stem from an abstract and innate grammar.
The writing systems (UKT: Devanagari and Myanmar are of the abugida writing system) of some languages are based on the phonemic principle of having one letter (or combination of letters) per phoneme and vice-versa. Ideally, speakers can correctly write whatever they can say, and can correctly read anything that is written. (In practice, this ideal is never realized.) (UKT: In formal speaking and writing in Burmese-Myanmar, speaking and writing can be the same.) However in English, different spellings can be used for the same phoneme (e.g., <rude> and <food> have the same vowel sounds), and the same letter (or combination of letters) can represent different phonemes (e.g., the <th>/<þ> consonant sounds of <thin> and <this> are different). In order to avoid this confusion based on orthography, phonologists represent phonemes by writing them between two slashes: " /.../ " (but without the quotes). On the other hand, the actual sounds are enclosed by square brackets: " [...] " (again, without quotes). While the letters between slashes may be based on spelling conventions, the letters between square brackets are usually the IPA or some other phonetic transcription system. ...
Development of the field: In ancient India, the Sanskrit grammarian Pāṇini (c. 520–460 BC) (UKT: period comparable to that of Mahavira the founder of Jainism, and Buddha the founder of Buddhism) lived in ca. 6th century BC) , who is considered the founder of linguistics, in his text of Sanskrit phonology, the Shiva Sutras, discovers the concepts of the phoneme, the morpheme and the root. The Shiva Sutras describe a phonemic notational system in the fourteen initial lines of the Aṣṭādhyāyī. The notational system introduces different clusters of phonemes that serve special roles in the morphology of Sanskrit, and are referred to throughout the text. Panini's grammar of Sanskrit had a significant influence on Ferdinand de Saussure, the father of modern structuralism, who was a professor of Sanskrit.
The Polish scholar Jan Baudouin de Courtenay, (together with his former student Mikołaj Kruszewski) coined the word phoneme in 1876, and his work, though often unacknowledged, is considered to be the starting point of modern phonology. He worked not only on the theory of the phoneme but also on phonetic alternations (i.e., what is now called allophony and morphophonology). His influence on Ferdinand de Saussure was also significant. ...
UKT: The whole Wikipedia article should be read. You should also study Optimality Theory , if you would like to know more of the subject.
Go back phonology-note-b
From Wikipedia:
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_(music) 070914
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_%28music%29 080103
This article includes inline links to audio files.
Pitch is the perceived fundamental frequency of a sound. While the actual fundamental frequency can be precisely determined through physical measurement, it may differ from the perceived pitch because of overtones, or partials, in the sound. The human auditory perception system may also have trouble distinguishing frequency differences between notes under certain circumstances. According to ANSI (American National Standards Institute) acoustical terminology, it is the auditory attribute of sound according to which sounds can be ordered on a scale from low to high.
UKT: As a down-to-earth engineer, I would take the measurable quantity
only, the frequency. Note the use of "perceived"
-- which means what a person (or a supposedly group of person)
hears. If we are to take a linguistic parallel, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis 070914) into account,
we will have to say that "perceived" means what is allowed by
the hearer's cultural background. Chinese traditional music
is "noise" to our ears, and so is Burmese traditional music to many
"modern" Myanmars especially the teens.
Therefore, if are to use the qualifier "perceived", we
will get into a gray area of "understanding".
And, nothing will ever get done.
In spite of what I have said above, perception is still important.
Listen to Standardized pitch, the A above middle C
(A440) <)).
Go back pitch-note-b
From:
• Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitch_accent 080317
Pitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a syllable or mora within a word. The placement of this tone or the way it is realized can give different meanings to otherwise similar words. Pitch accent is often described as being intermediate between tone and stress, but it is not a concept that is required to describe any language, nor is there a coherent definition for pitch accent.
UKT: As with most of the linguistic terms, the term mora is not well defined. I have taken from Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mora_%28linguistics%29 080317, what is relevant to "pitch-accent" as applicable to Burmese-Myanmar:
"The syllable nucleus [{the peak V in CVC}] represents one mora in the case of a short vowel, and two moras in the case of a long vowel or diphthong. Consonants serving as syllable nuclei also represent one mora if short and two if long. (Slovak language is an example of a language that has both long and short consonantal nuclei.)
Description
Pitch accent is not a coherently defined term, but is used to describe a variety
of systems that are on the simple side of tone (simpler than Yoruba or
Mandarin) and on the complex side of stress (more complex than English or
Spanish). The term has been used to describe the Scandinavian languages,
Serbo-Croatian, and Japanese, as well as some dialects of Korean and Wu
Chinese [{Wu Chinese has been called Shanghainese -- Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghainese 080317}].
UKT: My understanding as of 080317 is pitch-accent is the same as " pitch-register" described in my notes.
Go back pitch-accent-note-b
From:
• Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_%28phonology%29 070914
• Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_language 070914
• Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_(phonology) 080316
Clicking on Wikipedia 070914 opens up Wikipedia 080316, showing that the first one has been updated.From: Wikipedia 070914
In linguistics, a register language is a language which combines tone and vowel phonation into a single phonological system. Burmese and the Chinese dialect Shanghainese are examples. Burmese is usually considered a tonal language, but differences in relative pitch are correlated with vowel phonation, so that neither exists independently.
There are three or four vowel registers in Burmese. They are:
• Register: low - phonation: Modal voice - length: medium - pitch: low
• Register: high - phonation: Breathy voice - length: long - pitch: high
• Register: creaky - phonation: Creaky voice - length medium - pitch: high
• Register: checked - phonation: final glottal stop - length: short - pitch: (varies)
Even if the last is considered to have a final consonant rather than a vowel register, the other three are distinguished by both pitch and phonation together rather than independently.
From: Wikipedia 070914
UKT: Yet in another Wikipedia 070914,
it is stated that:
"For example, the following words are distinguished
from each other only on the basis of tone":
(Note: Romabama transliteration uses IPA suprasegmentals
[ă],
{a} [a],
{a:} [aː] )
• Creaky /kʰa̰/ 'fee' -- {hka.} [kʰă]/-- usually described as tone #1)
• Low /kʰà/ 'shake' -- {hka} [kʰa]-- usually described as tone #2)
• High /kʰá/ 'be bitter' -- {hka:} [kʰaː]-- usually described as tone #3)
• Checked /kʰaʔ/ 'draw off' -- {hkûp}/{hkap} [kʰʌp] (MEDict065)
From Wikipedia 080316
In linguistics, a register language, also known as a pitch-register language, is a language which combines tone and vowel phonation into a single phonological system. Burmese and the Chinese dialect Shanghainese are examples. Burmese is often considered a tonal language, but differences in relative pitch are correlated with vowel phonation, so that neither exists independently.
UKT: Since in vocal music there are two terms using the word register , head register (head voice) and chest register (chest voice), the term pitch-register language should be adopted instead of register language.
There are three such pitch-registers [{ I have changed from registers }] in Burmese, which have traditionally been considered three of the four 'tones'. (The fourth is not a tone at all, but a closed syllable, called "entering tone" in translations of Chinese phonetics). Jones (1986) views the differences as:
resulting from the intersection of both pitch registers and voice registers […] Clearly Burmese is not tonal in the same sense as such other languages and therefore requires a different concept, namely that of pitch register. -- Wikipedia source: Robert Jones, 1986. Pitch register languages, pp 135-136, in John McCoy & Timothy Light eds., Contributions to Sino-Tibetan Studies
UKT: Romabama transliteration uses IPA suprasegmentals
[ă],
{a} [a],
{a:} [aː] :
# 1. Creaky voice {la.} [lă]
# 2. Modal voice {la} [la]
# 3. (definitely not "breathy) {la:} [laː]
The so-called "checked" register with the final glottal stop does not reflect
the Burmese-Myanmar orthography. Romabama transcription is
{lût}/{lat}
-- the first syllable of compound word
{lût-hsût} (MEDict453)
Every Burmese-Myanmar child when learning to read and write has to learn the family of "tones" or "pitch-registers":
#1 #2 #3
• {a. a a:}
• {ka. ka ka:}
• {hka. hka hka:}
• {ga. ga ga:}
• {nga. nga nga:}
...
Go back pitch-regis-note-b
From: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosody_(linguistics) download 070914
In linguistics, prosody describes all the acoustic properties of speech (UKT: how we hear or what a microphone picks up -- does not depend on POA or manner of articulation) that cannot be predicted from a local window on the orthographic (or similar) transcription. So, prosody is relative to a default pronunciation of a phoneme/feature bundle/segment/syllable; it does not include coarticulation because coarticulation is predictable from the immediate phonological or orthographic neighborhood. Qualitatively, one can understand prosody as the difference between a well-performed play, and one on first reading.
UKT: My understanding of the above passage on prosody and pronunciation is:
• prosody -- related to the hearer
• pronunciation -- related to the speaker
We should keep this in mind, when we continue reading this article.
Syntactically, the term generally covers intonation, rhythm, and focus in speech.
Acoustically, prosody describes changes in the syllable length, loudness, pitch, and formant structure of speech sounds. (UKT: all these changes can be measured precisely by instruments.) Looking at the speech articulators, it describes changes in the velocity and range of motion in articulators like the jaw and tongue, along with quantities like the air pressure in the trachea and the tensions in the laryngeal muscles.
Phonologically, prosody is described by tone, intonation, rhythm, and lexical stress.
A precise definition of prosody and its effects depends upon the language. For instance, some languages make lexical distinctions based on vowel duration. In such languages, syllable length would thus be at least partly predictable from a transcription and thus not completely prosodic. Likewise, in tone languages such as Mandarin, the pitch and/or intonation is at least partially predictable from the lexical tone of a word, and thus not completely prosodic.
Similarly, the formant structure of vowels is primarily determined by a phonological or orthographic transcription, but not entirely. Vowels are generally more completely realized in accented or focused syllables. From an acoustic point of view, it means that the formant structure is farther from the structure of a neutral vowel (typically the schwa), and closer to the vowels that one might see in the stressed syllables of a carefully spoken word. Thus, the precise formant structure of vowels normally contains a mixture of prosodic and lexical information.
The prosodic features of a unit of speech, whether a syllable, word, phrase, or clause, are typically called suprasegmental features because they typically affect all the segments of the unit.
UKT: Clause, phrase, and word are grammatical terms, whereas prosodic features are acoustic properties. We will have to keep this in mind as we go on reading this article.
Prosodic units do not always correspond to grammatical units, although both may reflect how the brain processes speech. Phrases and clauses are grammatical concepts, but they may have prosodic equivalents, commonly called prosodic units, intonation units, or declination units, which are the actual phonetic spurts or chunks of speech. These are often believed to exist as a hierarchy of levels. Such units are characterized by several phonetic cues, such as a coherent pitch contour, and the gradual decline in pitch and lengthening of vowels over the duration of the unit, until the pitch and speed are reset to begin the next unit. Breathing, both inhalation and exhalation, only seems to occur at these boundaries.
Different schools of linguistics describe somewhat different prosodic units. One common distinction is between continuing prosody, which in English orthography we might mark with a comma, and final prosody, which we might mark with a full stop (period). This is the common usage of the IPA symbols for "minor" and "major" prosodic breaks (American English pronunciation):
Jack, preparing the way, went on.
[ˈdʒæk | pɹəˌpɛəɹɪŋ ðə ˈweɪ | wɛnt ˈɒn ‖ ]Jacques, préparant le sol, tomba.
[ˈʒak | pʁepaʁɑ̃ lɵ ˈsɔl | tɔ̃ˈba ‖ ]
Note that the last syllable with a full vowel in a French prosodic unit is stressed, and that the last stressed syllable in an English prosodic unit has primary stress. This shows that stress is not phonemic in French, and that the difference between primary and secondary stress is not phonemic in English; they are both elements of prosody rather than inherent in the words.
The pipe symbols – the vertical bars | and ‖ – used above are phonetic, and so will often disagree with English punctuation, which only partially correlates with prosody.
However, the pipes may also be used for metrical breaks -- a single pipe being used to mark metrical feet, and a double pipe to mark both continuing and final prosody, as their alternate names "foot group" and "intonation group" suggest. In such usage, each foot group would include one and only one heavy syllable. In English, this would mean one and only one stressed syllable:
Jack, preparing the way, went on.
[ˈdʒæk ‖ pɹəˌpɛəɹɪŋ | ðə ˈweɪ ‖ wɛnt ˈɒn ‖ ]
In many tone languages with downdrift, such as Hausa language, [ | ] is often used to represent a minor prosodic break that does not interrupt the overall decline in pitch of the utterance, while [ ‖ ] marks either continuing or final prosody that creates a pitch reset. In such cases, some linguists use only the single pipe, with continuing and final prosody marked by a comma and period, respectively.
In transcriptions of non-tonal languages, the three symbols pipe, comma, and period may also be used, with the pipe representing a break more minor than the comma, the so-called list prosody often used to separate items when reading lists, spelling words, or giving out telephone numbers.
It can be assumed that many people can communicate and interpret extensively using slight colours, tonation and rhythm in the voice to extend emotions and clever nuances in conversation. However, it should be noted that not everyone is assumed able to fully understand or even acknowledge such extensive tonal characteristics in particular speech - even in their native language. See Sociolinguistics
Go back prosody-note-b
From: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibilant 070911
A sibilant is a type of fricative or affricate consonant, made by directing a jet of air through a narrow channel in the vocal tract towards the sharp edge of the teeth.
The term sibilant is often taken to be synonymous with the term strident, though this is incorrect - there is variation in usage. The term sibilant tends to have an articulatory or aerodynamic definition involving the production of aperiodic noise at an obstacle. Strident refers to the perceptual quality of intensity as determined by amplitude and frequency characteristics of the resulting sound (i.e. an auditory, or possibly acoustic, definition).
Sibilants are louder than their non-sibilant counterparts, and most of their acoustic energy occurs at higher frequencies than non-sibilant fricatives. [s] has the most acoustic strength at around 8,000 Hz, but can reach as high as 10,000 Hz. [ ʃ ] has the bulk of its acoustic energy at around 4,000 Hz, but can extend up to around 8,000 Hz.
The spin-off terms shibilant, and rarely thibilant, are used to describe particular kinds of sibilant.
A thibilant is a term occasionally found for an interdental fricative. An example of a thibilant is the sound transcribed by the IPA symbol theta [θ]). -- Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thibilant 070914
UKT: See voiceless interdental fricative {tha.}/{þa.} in my notes.
Of the sibilants, the following have IPA symbols of their own:
• alveolar: [s], [z] (either apical or laminal)
• post-alveolar: [ ʃ ], [ ʒ ] (Palato-alveolar:
that is, "domed" (partially palatalized) postalveolar,
either laminal or apical)
• post-alveolar: [ɕ], [ʑ]
(Alveolo-palatal: that is, laminal
palatalized postalveolar; these are equivalent to
ʃʲ, ʒʲ)
• post-alveolar: [ʂ], [ʐ]: (Retroflex,
which can mean one of three things:
(a) non-palatalized apical postalveolar,
(b) sub-apical postalveolar or pre-palatal, or
(c) non-palatalized laminal ("flat") postalveolar,
sometimes transcribed [s̠ z̠] or
[ʂ̻ ʐ̻].
UKT: We will tentatively equate:
• /s , z/ to{ca.} (coda))
• / ʃ , ʒ/ to{rha.} is not accepted in Romabama. /ʒ/ is not represented in Romabama.)
• /ɕ , ʑ/ to {kya.} {gya.}
• /ʂ , ʐ / (both are not represented in Romabama)
Diacritics can be used for finer detail. For example, apical and laminal alveolars can be specified as [s̺] vs [s̻]; a dental (or more likely denti-alveolar) sibilant as [s̪]; a palatalized alveolar as [sʲ]; and a generic postalveolar as [s̠], a transcription frequently used when none of the above apply (that is, for a laminal but non-palatalized, or "flat", postalveolar). Some of the Northwest Caucasian languages also have a closed laminal postalveolar, without IPA symbols but provisionally transcribed as [ŝ ẑ].
Only the alveolar (UKT: /s, z/) and palato-alveolar (UKT: / ʃ , ʒ/) sibilants are distinguished in English ...
Go back sibilant-note-b
From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strident_consonant 080315
A sibilant is a type of fricative or affricate consonant, made by directing a jet of air through a narrow channel in the front part of the mouth [{Wikipedia used vocal tract which is not specific.}] towards the sharp edge of the [{front}] teeth.
The term
The term sibilant is often taken to be
synonymous with the term strident,
though this is incorrect - there is variation in usage. The term:
• sibilant tends to have an articulatory or aerodynamic definition involving the production of aperiodic noise at an obstacle.
• strident refers to the perceptual quality of intensity as determined by amplitude and frequency characteristics of the resulting sound (i.e. an auditory, or possibly acoustic, definition).
Sibilants are louder than their non-sibilant counterparts,
and most of their acoustic energy occurs at higher frequencies
than non-sibilant fricatives. [s] has the most acoustic strength at around 8,000 Hz,
but can reach as high as 10,000 Hz.
[ʃ] has the bulk of its acoustic energy at around 4,000 Hz, but can
extend up to around 8,000 Hz.
The spin-off terms shibilant, and rarely thibilant [{the inclusion of "thibilant" here is misleading}],
are used to describe particular kinds of sibilant.
UKT: See Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thibilant 080315, where it is stated that "Dental fricative or interdental fricative - non-sibilant coronal fricative.
<thibilant> is exemplified by /θ/ with no hissing sound, whereas <sibilant> by /s/ with hissing sound.
Symbols
Of the sibilants, the following have IPA symbols of their own:
Alveolar:
• [s], [z] (either apical or laminal).Postalveolar: (UKT note: the term "post-alveolar" is misleading. The prefix "post-" means "after", which depends on how you are preceding. The IPA way of looking at the POAs is from lips to uvula, whereas the Eastern way is from uvula to the lips. So, according the Burmese-Myanmar way of looking at the POAs, "Post-alveolar" is "Pre-alveolar")
• [ʃ] [ʒ] (Palato-alveolar: that is, "domed" (partially palatalized) postalveolar, either laminal or apical)
• [ɕ], [ʑ] (Alveolo-palatal: that is, laminal palatalized postalveolar; these are equivalent to ʃʲ, ʒʲ)
• [ʂ], [ʐ]: (Retroflex, which can mean one of three things: (a) non-palatalized apical postalveolar, (b) sub-apical postalveolar or pre-palatal, or (c) non-palatalized laminal ("flat") postalveolar, sometimes transcribed [s̠ z̠] or [ʂ̻ ʐ̻].
Diacritics can be used for finer detail. For example, apical and laminal alveolars can be specified as [s̺] vs [s̻]; a dental (or more likely denti-alveolar) sibilant as [s̪]; a palatalized alveolar as [sʲ]; and a generic postalveolar as [s̠], a transcription frequently used when none of the above apply (that is, for a laminal but non-palatalized, or "flat", postalveolar). Some of the Northwest Caucasian languages [{group of languages spoken in Russia, Georgia and Turkey) also have a closed laminal postalveolar, without IPA symbols but provisionally transcribed as [ŝ ẑ].
Go back strident-con-note-b
From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strident_vowel 080315
Strident vowels (also called sphincteric vowels) are strongly pharyngealized vowels accompanied by (ary)epiglottal trill, where the larynx is raised and the pharynx constricted, so that either the epiglottis or the arytenoid cartilages vibrate instead of the vocal cords.
Strident vowels are fairly common in Khoisan languages [{Africa}], where they contrast with simple pharyngealized vowels. Stridency may be a type of phonation called harsh voice. A similar phonation, but without the trill, is called pressed voice or ventricular voice. The Bai language of southern China has a register system with allophonic strident and pressed vowels.
UKT: See register (phonlogy) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_%28phonology%29 080315, where Burmese-Myanmar is described as a register language (aka) pitch-register language: the Wiki article gives the following:
# Creaky register, Creaky voice {la.} /lă/
# Low register, Modal voice {la} /la/
# High register, ..., {la:} /laː/
# Checked register -- must be taken as rime, i.e. checked vowel followed by consonant. The example given is: {lat} /læt/
There is no official symbol for stridency in the IPA, but in Khoisanist
literature a subscript double tilde (≈) is sometimes used,
as seen here on the letter <a>:
.
Go back strident-vow-note-b
supra·glottal adj. 1. Above or anterior to the glottis. 2. Linguistics Designating a phone or phoneme produced by the speech organs anterior to the glottis. -- AHTD
The human voice production system consists not
only of the supra-glottal area (vocal tract), but also the sub-glottal area
(containing diaphragm, trachea and lungs), larynx (containing vocal folds).
--
http://dea.brunel.ac.uk/cmsp/Home_Emir_Turajlic/introduction.html 070818
Go back supra-glottal-b
UKT: Wikipedia does not list suprasegmental -- 080315. However, it does say something about it in Prosody (linguistics) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suprasegmental 080318
Notice that Romabama uses IPA suprasegmentals for IPA transcriptions. Click to see what IPA has given. Or, to see the complete IPA table go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet 080317From Wikipedia
The prosodic domain
Prosodic features are suprasegmental in that they are not confined to any
one segment; rather, they occur in a hierarchy of higher levels of an utterance.
These prosodic units are the actual phonetic spurts or chunks of speech.
They do not in general correspond to grammatical units such as phrases, and
clauses, though they may, and both may reflect how the brain processes speech.
Prosodic units are characterized by several phonetic cues, such as
a coherent pitch contour, and the gradual decline in pitch and
lengthening of vowels over the duration of the unit, until the pitch and speed
are reset to begin the next unit. Breathing, both inhalation and exhalation,
only seems to occur at these boundaries where the prosody resets.
UKT: Only some suprasegmentals are of interest to Romabama,
e.g. {a.} /ă/;
{a} /a/;
{a:} /aː/.
Go back supraseg-note-b
UKT: I have been interested why {þa.} has become {sa.} in International Pali. Among the prominent Western Pali scholars are Germans such as Friedrich Max Müller (1823-1900), and since their L1 (the spoken German) lacks the sound of {tha.} they could only "hear" {sa.}: this reminds me of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Unable to hear {þa.}, they "typically replace it with a voiceless alveolar fricative" {sa.}.
[þ] of Old English
From: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_dental_fricative 070911
The voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the IPA that represents this sound is θ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is T. The IPA symbol is the Greek letter theta, which is used for this sound in Greek, and the sound is thus often referred to as "theta". It is familiar to English speakers as the <th> in <thing>.
UKT: Burmese-Myanmar {tha.}/{þa.} can be described by another term to differentiate it from sibilants:
A thibilant is a term occasionally found for an interdental fricative. ("Interdenta" means between upper and lower front teeth.)
An example of a thibilant is the sound transcribed by the IPA symbol theta [θ]).
-- Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thibilant download 070914
It should be noted that POAs for /θ/ {tha.} and /s/ {sa.} are very close. /θ/ is described as a dental fricative, and /s/ alveolar fricative. However, when I pronounce {sa.}, I just pull in the tip of my tongue without raising it to touch the alveolar ridge. If fact, it is touching the base of my lower front teeth. I still have to meet a real phonetician to describe my {sa.}. -- UKT 070914
The dental fricatives are often called "interdental" because they are often produced with the tongue between the upper and lower teeth, and not just against the back of the teeth, as they are with other dental consonants.
Many languages, including widely-spoken ones such as German, Portuguese, Spanish in the Americas, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese, as well as all Slavic languages and some dialects of English, lack this sound. Speakers of such languages and dialects sometimes have difficulty producing or distinguishing it from similar sounds, and typically replace it with a voiceless alveolar fricative, vl. dental plosive, or a vl. labiodental fricative.
Features of the vl. dental fricative:
• Its manner of articulation is fricative, which means
it is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel
at the place of articulation, causing turbulence.
• Its POA is dental which means it is articulated with
the tongue on either the lower or the upper teeth, or both.
• Its phonation type is vl., which means it is
produced without vibrations of the vocal cords.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed
to escape through the mouth.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced
by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue,
rather than the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means
it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through
the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.
Occurrence: (UKT: though Wiki gives examples
across languages, I have only taken what I am interested in):
• English: thin [θɪn]
• Welsh: saith /saiθ/, "seven"
• Burmese: suṃ [θòʊ̃],
"three" (UKT: Burmese transcription is wrong!
It is {þoän:}, and should be thum instead of sum -- thum is
still wrong.)
• S'gaw Karen: thö33
[θø˧], "three"
UKT: It is interesting that there are languages which
use /θ/ in words for number <three>:
• Western Neo-Aramaic: ṯlōṯa
[θloːθa], "three"
• Kickapoo (United States): nethwi
[nɛθwi], "three"
• Shawnee: nthwi [nθwɪ], "three"
Go back vl-interdental-fricat-note-b
From: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_onset_time 070913
In phonetics, voice onset time, commonly abbreviated VOT, is the length of time that passes between when a consonant is released and when voicing, the vibration of the vocal folds begins.
The three major phonation types of stops, (un-aspirated vl plosives c1 {ka. ta. pa.}, aspirated plosives c2 {hka. hta. hpa.}, and vd plosives {ga. da. ba.}), can be analyzed in terms of their voice onset time.
• Simple unaspirated voiceless plosives (UKT: {ka.}), sometimes called tenuis plosives, have a voice onset time at or near zero, meaning that the voicing of a following sonorant (such as a vowel) begins at or near to when the stop is released. (An offset of 15 ms on [ t ] {ta.} or 30 ms on [k] {ka.} is inaudible, and counts as tenuis.) . [UKT: what about /p/? Remember /p, t, k/ is a family.]
• Aspirated plosives (UKT: {hka.}) followed by a sonorant have a voice onset time greater than this amount, called a positive VOT. The length of the VOT in such cases is a practical measure of aspiration: The longer the VOT, the stronger the aspiration. In Navajo, for example, which is strongly aspirated, the aspiration (and therefore the VOT) lasts twice as long as it does in English: 160ms vs. 80ms for [kʰ] {hka.}, and 45ms for [k] {ka.}. Some languages have weaker aspiration than English. For velar stops, tenuis [k] typically has a VOT of 20-30 ms, weakly aspirated [k] of some 50-60 ms, moderately aspirated [kʰ] averages 80-90 ms, and anything much over 100 ms would be considered strong aspiration. (Another phonation, breathy voice, is commonly called voiced aspiration; in order for the VOT measure to apply to it, VOT needs to be understood as the onset of modal voicing. Of course, an aspirated consonant will not always be followed by a voiced sound, in which case VOT cannot be used to measure it.)
• Voiced plosives (UKT: {ga.}) have a voice onset time noticeably less than zero, a negative VOT, meaning the vocal cords start vibrating before the stop is released. With a fully voiced stop, the VOT coincides with the onset of the stop; with a partially voiced stop, such as English [b, d, g] or {ba. da. ga.} in initial position, voicing begins sometime during the closure (occlusion) of the consonant.
Because neither aspiration nor voicing is absolute, with intermediate degrees of both, the relative terms fortis and lenis are often used to describe a binary opposition between a series of consonants with higher (more positive) VOT, defined as fortis, and a second series with lower (more negative) VOT, defined as lenis. Of course, being relative, what fortis and lenis mean in one language will not in general correspond to what they mean in another.
Voicing contrast applies to all types of consonants, but aspiration is generally only a feature of stops and affricates.
UKT: This Wiki article is clearly referring to the case of c1 and c2 aksharas, e.g. {ka.} [k] and {hka.} [kʰ] which the Westerners perceived as the allophones of /k/. Note that in English, [k] is realised only after <s>, in all other cases <k> is [kʰ]. Burmese-Myanmar should take note that <cat> is not
[kæt] but
[kʰæt]. If you want to hear how <k> sounds like, listen to <skip>. This has presented me with a problem of how to re-transliterate <skip> into Burmese-Myanmar. My proposal (as of 080317) is:
{skicp}.
Go back VOT-note-b
From: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_(linguistics) 070914
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish words. All languages use intonation to express emphasis, contrast, emotion, or other such nuances, but not every language uses tone to distinguish lexical meaning. When this occurs, tones are phonemes (discrete speech sounds), just like consonants and vowels, and they are occasionally referred to as tonemes.
A slight majority of the languages in the world are tonal. However, most Indo-European languages, which include the majority of the most widely-spoken languages in the world today, are not tonal, with the exception of the Indo-Aryan language Punjabi.
The way in which tone is used in a particular language leads to the language being classified either as a tonal language or a pitch accent language. (UKT: Burmese was always described as a "tonal language", now it is being described as a "pitch-register language".) In a prototypical tonal language such as Chinese, the tone of each syllable can be independent of the other syllables in the word, and many words are differentiated only by the tones associated with them. In many African tone languages, since words are longer, there are fewer minimal pairs for tone, and tone may not be assigned to every syllable of a word. In a pitch accent language, there is typically only one tone-accented syllable or mora per word. For example Somali has one high tone per word. In Japanese, pitch accent refers to a drop in pitch; words contrast depending on which syllable this drop follows. Some words in Japanese contain no pitch accent at all. While many linguists maintain a difference between tone languages and pitch accent languages, the linguist Larry Hyman has argued that there is no prototypical pitch accent language and that all languages that use tone phonemically should be classified as tone languages.
UKT: Since the original Wiki passage was not clear, I have rewritten as the following:
UKT: Languages may be grouped together as:
Marginally tonal:
• Some of the Sino-Tibetan languages, including the numerically most important ones. Most forms of Chinese are strongly tonal (an exception is Shanghainese, where the system has collapsed to one of pitch accent); while some of the Tibetan languages, including the standard languages of Lhasa and Bhutan and Burmese are more marginally tonal. However Nepal Bhasa, the original language of Kathmandu, is non-tonal, as are several Tibetan dialects and many or most of the other Tibeto-Burman languages.Tonal:
• In the Austro-Asiatic family, some such as Vietnamese and its closest relatives are strongly tonal.
• The entire Tai-Kadai family, spoken mainly in China, Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos, is strongly tonal.
• The entire Hmong-Mien languages family is strongly tonal.Non-tonal:
• Other languages of Austro-Asiatic family, such as Mon, Khmer and the Munda languages, are non-tonal.
(Is the article suggesting that Mon is similar to Burmese?)
...
The vast majority of Austronesian languages are non-tonal, but a small number have developed tone. No tonal language has been reported from Australia. With other languages we simply don't know. For example, the Ket language has been described as having up to eight tones by some investigators, as having four tones by others, but by some as having no tone at all. In cases such as these, the classification of a language as tonal may depend on the researcher's interpretation of what tone is. For instance, the Burmese language has phonetic tone, but each of its three tones is accompanied by a distinctive phonation (creaky, murmured or plain vowels). It could be argued either that the tone is incidental to the phonation, in which case Burmese would not be phonemically tonal, or that the phonation is incidental to the tone, in which case it would be considered tonal. Something similar appears to be the case with Ket.
Some Indo-European languages are usually characterised as tonal, such as Lithuanian, Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, Limburgish, Swedish and Norwegian; more correctly, however, they are pitch accent languages, as only the tone on the stressed syllable can have any effect on the meaning. Ancient Greek and Vedic Sanskrit were also pitch-accent languages. (In practice, the pitch alone only rarely distinguished the meaning in these two languages. A famous example of such a case is from Aristophanes' Frogs (l. 304), where Aristophanes refers to an actual occurrence at the performance of Euripides' Orestes where an actor had pronounced galḗn' horō "I see calm waters" with so much empathy that it came out galên horō "I see a weasel".)
However, the Indo-European language Punjabi is clearly a tonal language, where the tones arose as a reinterpretation of different consonant series in terms of pitch, as happened in most of the Chinese languages. ...
The term 'register', when not in the phrase 'register tone', is used to indicate vowel phonation combined with tone in a single phonological system. Burmese and Khmer, for example, are register languages. Burmese is usually considered a tonal language and Khmer a vowel-phonation language, but in both cases differences in relative pitch or pitch contours are correlated with vowel phonation, so that neither exists independently.
Go back vow-tone-note-b
From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word 080314
A word is a unit of language that carries meaning and consists of one or more morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together, and has a phonetical value. Typically a word will consist of a root or stem and zero or more affixes. Words can be combined to create phrases, clauses, and sentences. A word consisting of two or more stems joined together form a compound. A word combined with another word or part of a word form a portmanteau.
UKT: Compare with Akshara (Sanskrit: akṣára ) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akshara 080314
It may mean:
• in Sanskrit grammar, "syllable", see Shiksha
• a consonant grapheme, with an inherent vowel, of a script of the Brahmic family.
• in philosophical terms is the opposite of the word kṣara "perishable", a name of Brahma.
Depending on the language, words can sometimes be difficult to identify or delimit. While word separators, most often spaces [{either single white spaces or double}], are commonplace in the written corpus of several languages, some languages such as Chinese and Japanese do not use these. [{Burmese-Myanmar and Burmese-Pali are also in the same situation, but probably not as bad as in Chinese and Japanese.}] Words may contain spaces, however, if they are compounds or proper nouns such as <ice cream> and <the United States of America>. An extreme example is Vietnamese, which always delimits monosyllabic morphemes, not words. Quite oppositely, synthetic languages often combine many lexical morphemes into single words, making it difficult to boil them down to the traditional sense of words found more easily in analytic languages; this is especially difficult for polysynthetic languages such as Inuktitut [{of northern Canada}] and Ubykh [{north-western Caucasian group}], where entire sentences may consist of single such words.
However, of all situations, the most confusing is those for languages w ithout written forms, including sign languages, which potentially only offer phonolexical clues as to where word boundaries lie.
Official words, however, would be documented in a dictionary of whichever language you are categorizing them under.
Go back word-note-b
End of TIL file.
