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Back Vowel

Back vowel

A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. The back vowels identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:
- close back unrounded vowel
- close back rounded vowel
- close-mid back unrounded vowel
- close-mid back rounded vowel
- open-mid back unrounded vowel
- open-mid back rounded vowel
- open back unrounded vowel
- open back rounded vowel See also: List of phonetics topics Category:Vowels ja:後舌母音

Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by an open configuration of the vocal tract where there is no build-up of air pressure above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, which are characterized by a constriction or closure at one or more points along the vocal tract. The additional requirement is that vowels function as syllabic units: it is this criterion that distinguishes vowels from semivowels (and approximants, which in some languages may be slightly more constricted). In most languages, vowels usually form the nucleus or peak of a syllable, whereas consonants form the onset and coda. However, some languages allow sounds that wouldn't normally be classified as vowels to form the nucleus of a syllable, such as the sound of l in the English word table (the final e is not pronounced), or the sound of r in the Czech word vrba (meaning "willow"). The non-vowel sounds that may function as syllable nuclei are called sonorants. (In some languages, such as Tashlhyt Berber and Oowekyala, non-sonorant consonants can also form the nucleus of a syllable.) The word vowel comes from the Latin word vocalis, meaning "uttering voice" or "speaking".

Articulation

The articulatory features that distinguish different vowels in a language are said to determine the vowel's quality. Daniel Jones developed the cardinal vowel system to describe vowels in terms of the common features height (vertical dimension), backness (horizontal dimension) and roundedness (lip position). These three parameters are indicated in the schematic IPA vowel diagram on right. There are however still more possible features of vowel quality, such the velum position (nasality), type of vocal fold vibration (phonation), and tongue root position.

Height

Height refers to either the vertical position of the tongue relative to the roof of the mouth or the aperture of the jaw. In high vowels, such as i] and u], the tongue is positioned high in the mouth, whereas in low vowels, such as a], the tongue is positioned low in the mouth. Sometimes the terms open and close are used as synonyms for low and high for describing vowels. The International Phonetic Alphabet identifies seven different vowel heights, although no known language distinguishes all seven:
- close vowel (high vowel)
- near-close vowel
- close-mid vowel
- mid vowel
- open-mid vowel
- near-open vowel
- open vowel (low vowel) It may be that some varieties of have five contrasting heights. The Bavarian dialect of Amstetten has thirteen long vowels, reported to be distinguished as four heights (close, close-mid, mid, and near-open) among the front unrounded, front rounded, and back rounded vowels, plus an open central vowel: . Otherwise, the usual limit on the number of vowel heights is four. The parameter of vowel height appears to be the most primary feature of vowels cross-linguistically in that all languages use height constrastively. The other possible parameters, such as backness and roundedness (explained below), are not used in all languages.

Backness

Backness refers to the horizontal tongue position during the articulation of a vowel relative to the back of the mouth. In front vowels, such as , the tongue is positioned forward in the mouth, whereas in back vowels, such as , the tongue is positioned towards the back of the mouth. The International Phonetic Alphabet identifies five different degrees of vowel backness, although no known language distinguishes all five:
- front vowel
- near-front vowel
- central vowel
- near-back vowel
- back vowel The highest number of constrastive degrees of backness is 3.

Roundedness

Roundedness refers to whether the lips are rounded or not. In most languages, roundedness is a reinforcing feature of mid to high back vowels, and not distinctive. Usually the higher a back vowel, the more intense the rounding. However, some languages treat roundedness and backness separately, such as French and German (with front rounded vowels), most Uralic languages ( has a rounding contrast for /o/ and front vowels), Turkic languages (with an unrounded /u/), Vietnamese (with back unrounded vowels), and Korean (with a contrast in both front and back vowels). Nonetheless, even in languages such as German and Vietnamese, there is usually some correlation between rounding and backness: Front rounded vowels tend to be less front than front unrounded vowels, and back unrounded vowels tend to be less back than back rounded vowels. That is, the placement of unrounded vowels to the left of rounded vowels on the IPA vowel chart is reflective of their typical position. Different kinds of labialization are also possible. The /u/, for example, is not rounded like English /u/, where the lips are protruded (or pursed), but neither are the lips spread to the sides as they are for unrounded vowels. Rather, they are compressed in both directions, leaving a slot between the lips for the air to escape. (See Vowel roundedness for illustrations.) Swedish is one of the few languages where this feature is contrastive, have both protruded-lip and compressed-lip high front vowels. In many treatments, both are considered a type of rounding, and are often called endolabial rounding (pursed, where the insides of the lips approach each other) and exolabial rounding (compressed, where the margins of the lips approach each other). However, other phoneticians do not believe that these are subsets of a single phenomenon of rounding, and prefer instead the three independent terms rounded, compressed, and spread (for unrounded).

Nasalization

Nasalization refers to whether some of the air escapes through the nose. In nasal vowels, the velum is lowered, and some air travels through the nasal cavity as well as the mouth. An oral vowel is a vowel in which all air escapes through the mouth. French, Polish and Portuguese contrast nasal and oral vowels.

Phonation

Voicing describes whether the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation of a vowel. Most languages only have voiced vowels, but several Native American languages, such as Cheyenne and Totonac, contrast voiced and devoiced vowels. Vowels are devoiced in whispered speech. As in Japanese and Quebec French, vowels that are between voiceless consonants are often devoiced. Modal voice, creaky voice, and breathy voice (murmured vowels) are phonation types that are used contrastively in some languages. Often, these co-occur with tone or stress distinctions; in the Mon language, vowels pronounced in the high tone are also produced with creaky voice. In cases like this, it can be unclear whether it is the tone, the voicing type, or the pairing of the two that is being used for phonemic contrast. This combination of phonetic cues (i.e. phonation, tone, stress) is known as register or register complex.

Tongue root retraction

Advanced tongue root (ATR) is a feature common across much of Africa. The contrast between advanced and retracted tongue root resembles the tense/lax contrast acoustically, but they are articulated differently. ATR vowels involve noticeable tension in the vocal tract.

Secondary narrowings in the vocal tract

Pharyngealized vowels occur in some languages; Sedang uses this contrast, as do the Tungusic languages. Pharyngealisation is similar in articulation to retracted tongue root, but is acoustically distinct. A stronger degree of pharyngealisation occur in the Northeast Caucasian languages and the Khoisan languages. These might be called epiglottalized, since the primary constriction is at the tip of the epiglottis. The greatest degree of pharyngealisation is found in the strident vowels of the Khoisan languages, where the larynx is raised, and the pharynx constricted, so that either the epiglottis or the arytenoid cartilages vibrate instead of the vocal chords. Note that the terms pharyngealized, epiglottalized, strident, and sphincteric are sometimes used interchangeably.

Rhotic vowels

Rhotic vowels are the "ar-colored vowels" of English and a few other languages.

Tenseness/checked vowels vs. free vowels

Tenseness is used to describe the opposition of tense vowels as in leap, suit vs. lax vowels as in lip, soot. This opposition has traditionally been thought to be a result of greater muscular tension, though phonetic experiments have repeatedly failed to show this. Unlike the other features of vowel quality, tenseness is only applicable to the few languages that have this opposition (mainly Germanic languages, e.g. English), whereas the vowels of the other languages (e.g. Spanish) cannot be described with respect to tenseness in any meaningful way. In most Germanic languages, lax vowels can only occur in closed syllables. Therefore, they're also known as checked vowels, whereas the tense vowels are called free vowels since they can occur in any kind of syllable.

Acoustics

free vowel The acoustics of vowels are fairly well-understood. The different vowel qualities are realized in acoustic analyses of vowels by the relative values of the formants, acoustic resonances of the vocal tract which show up as dark bands on a spectrogram. The vocal tract acts as a resonant cavity, and the position of the jaw, lips, and tongue affect the parameters of the resonant cavity, resulting in different formant values. The acoustics of vowels can be visualized using spectrograms, which display the acoustic energy at each frequency, and how this changes with time. The first formant, abbreviated "F1", corresponds to vowel openness (vowel height). Open vowels have high F1 frequences while close vowels have low F1 frequencies, as can be seen at right: The and have similar low first formants, whereas has a higher formant. The second formant, F2, corresponds to vowel frontness. Back vowels have low F2 frequencies while front vowels have high F2 frequencies. This is very clear at right, where the front vowel has a much higher F2 frequency than the other two vowels. However, in open vowels the high F1 frequency forces a rise in the F2 frequency as well, so a better measure of frontness is the difference between the first and second formants. For this reason, vowels are usually plotted as F1 vs. F2 – F1. This is the case for the vowel chart at the top of this page. (This dimension is usually called 'backness' rather than 'frontness', but the term 'backness' can be counterintuitive when discussing formants.) R-colored vowels are characterized by lowered F3 values. Rounding is generally realized by a complex relationship between F2 and F3 that tends to reinforce vowel backness. One effect of this is that back vowels are most commonly rounded while front vowels are most commonly unrounded; another is that rounded vowels tend to plot to the right of unrounded vowels in vowel charts. That is, there is a reason for plotting vowel pairs the way they are.

Prosody and intonation

The features of vowel prosody are often described independently from vowel quality. In non-linear phonetics, they are located on parallel layers. The features of vowel prosody are usually considered not to apply to the vowel itself, but to the syllable, as some languages do not contrast vowel length separately from syllable length. Intonation encompasses the changes in pitch, intensity, and speed of an utterance over time. In tonal languages, in most cases the tone of a syllable is carried by the vowel, meaning that the relative pitch or the pitch contour that marks the tone is superimposed on the vowel. If a syllable has a high tone, for example, the pitch of the vowel will be high. If the syllable has a falling tone, then the pitch of the vowel will fall from high to low over the course of uttering the vowel. Length or quantity refers to the abstracted duration of the vowel. In some analyses this feature is described as a feature of the vowel quality, not of the prosody. Japanese, Finnish, Hungarian, Arabic and Latin have a two-way phonemic contrast between short and long vowels. The Mixe language has a three-way contrast among short, half-long, and long vowels, and this has been reported from a few other languages, in not all of which is the distinction phonemic. Long vowels are written in the IPA with a triangular colon, which has two equilateral triangles pointing at each other in place of dots (). The IPA symbol for half-long vowels is the top half of this (). Longer vowels are sometimes claimed, but these are always divided between two syllables. It should be noted that the length of the vowel is a grammatical abstraction, and there may be more phonologically distinctive lengths. For example, in Finnish, there are five different physical lengths, because stress is marked with length on both grammatically long and short vowels. However, Finnish stress is not lexical and is always on the first two moras, thus this variation serves to separate words from each other. In non-tonal languages, like English, intonation encompasses lexical stress. A stressed syllable will typically be pronounced with a higher pitch, intensity, and length than unstressed syllables. For example in the word intensity, the vowel represented by the letter 'e' is stressed, so it is longer and pronounced with a higher pitch and intensity than the other vowels.

Monophthongs, diphthongs, triphthongs

A vowel sound whose quality doesn't change over the duration of the vowel is called a monophthong. Monophthongs are sometimes called "pure" or "stable" vowels. A vowel sound that glides from one quality to another is called a diphthong, and a vowel sound that glides between three qualities is a triphthong. All languages have monophthongs and many languages have diphthongs, but triphthongs or vowel sounds with even more target qualities are relatively rare cross-linguistically. English has all three types: the vowel sound in hit is a monophthong , the vowel sound in boy is in most dialects a diphthong , and the vowel sounds of way , flower (BrE AmE ) form a triphthong (dissylabic in the latter cases), although the particular qualities vary by dialect. The longest sensible word with most consecutive vowels is Finnish riiuuyöaieuutinen (courting night intention news [certainly yellow press stuff!]), syllabicated rii-uu-yö-ai-e-uu-ti-nen. In phonology, diphthongs and triphthongs are distinguished from sequences of monophthongs by whether or not the vowel sound may be analyzed into different phonemes or not. For example, the vowel sounds in a two-syllable pronunciation of the word flower (BrE AmE ) phonetically form a dissyllabic triphthong, but are phonologically a sequence of a diphthong (represented by the letters ) and a monophthong (represented by the letters ). Some linguists use the terms diphthong and triphthong only in this phonemic sense.

Vowels in languages

The semantic significance of vowels varies widely depending on the language. In some languages, particularly Semitic languages, vowels mostly serve to denote inflections. This is similar to English man vs. men. In fact, the alphabets used to write the Semitic languages, such as the Hebrew alphabet and the Arabic alphabet, do not ordinarily mark all the vowels. These alphabets are called abjads. Although it is possible to construct simple English sentences that can be understood without written vowels (cn y rd ths?), extended passages of English lacking written vowels are difficult if not impossible to completely understand (consider dd, which could be any of add, aided, dad, dada, dead, deed, did, died, dodo, dud, dude, eddie, iodide, or odd). In most languages, vowels are an unchangeable part of the words, as in English man vs. moon which are not different inflectional forms of the same word, but different words. Vowels are especially important to the structures of words in languages that have very few consonants (like Polynesian languages such as Maori and Hawaiian), and in languages whose inventory of vowels is larger than its inventory of consonants.

Vowel systems

Most languages have 3–7 vowels, the following 5-vowel system being the most common: This particular configuration is common because it makes the most efficient use of the vowel space, so slight variations in a vowel are not easily confused for a different sound. Spanish and Modern Greek, for example, have this vowel system; Latin had a similar system that also distinguished between long and short vowels, although that distinction wasn't made in written Latin; it is for this reason that the Latin alphabet has five vowel letters. All languages have at least two vowels; the Tshwizhyi and Abzhui dialects of Abkhaz contrasts only and , with significant allophony. (There have been proposals to posit only one vowel in some Abkhaz dialects; however, most linguists who are familiar with Abkhaz do not accept this theory.) Three-vowel systems have been noted in a number of languages. These include:
- (Arabic, Inuktitut, Quechua),
- (Pirahã),
- (Wichita). A few languages, such as Navajo, have four-vowel systems that lack /u/ but there is no known natural language that lacks some form of a. At the other end of the spectrum, languages with more than twelve vowels are relatively uncommon, although some widely-spoken languages have large vowel inventories, particularly Germanic languages. For example, English has 14–20 vowels (including diphthongs) depending on dialect, and Swedish has 17 distinct vowel qualities in the height-backness-roundedness spectrum, although these also involve a length contrast, and the long vowels have diphthongized allophones. French has 16 vowel qualities, including nasals, and the previously-mentioned Sedang has 24 distinct monophthongs, which it achieves by contrasting phonation on seven vowel qualities. uses phonation and nasalization with five vowel qualities to achieve approximately 40 vowels, most of which may occur both long and short.

Written vowels

The name "vowel" is often used for the symbols used for representing vowel sounds in a language's writing system, particularly if the language uses an alphabet. In the Latin alphabet, the vowel letters are usually A, E, I, O, U, and in some languages Y, as in English and W, as in Welsh. There is necessarily not a direct one-to-one correspondence between the vowel sounds of a language and the vowel letters. Many languages that use a form of the Latin alphabet have more vowel sounds than can be represented by the standard set of five vowel letters. In the case of English, the five primary vowel letters can represent both long and short vowel sounds (some of the long vowel sounds in English are actually diphthongs). Furthermore, in English some vowel sounds are represented by combinations of vowel letters, such as the ea in beat or by a vowel letter and an approximant letter, as the ow in how, or the er in her. Other languages cope with the limitation in the number of Latin vowel letters in similar ways. Many languages, like English, make extensive use of combinations of vowel letters to represent various sounds. Other languages add diacritical marks to vowels, such as accents or umlauts, to represent the variety of possible vowel sounds. Some languages have also constructed additional vowel letters by modifying the standard Latin vowels in other ways, such as æ or ø that are found in some of the Scandinavian languages. The International Phonetic Alphabet has a set of 28 symbols to represent the range of basic vowel qualities, and a further set of diacritics to denote variations from the basic vowel.

Written vowels in writing systems


- Arabic: دَ دِ دُ دَ‌ا دَ‌ى دِ‌ي دُو
- Devanagari: Independent vowels: अ आ इ ई उ ऊ ए ऐ ओ औ Dependent vowels: ा ि ी ु ू े ै ो ौ
- Guaraní: oral: a e i o u y; nasal: ã ẽ ĩ õ ũ ỹ
- Japanese: normal: あいうえお grammatical: へを
- Korean: ㅏ ㅐ ㅑ ㅒ ㅓ ㅔ ㅕ ㅖ ㅗ ㅘ ㅙ ㅚ ㅛ ㅜ ㅝ ㅞ ㅟ ㅠ ㅡ ㅢ ㅣ
- Latin: a e i o u
- Finnish: back: a u o; neutral: i e; front: ä y ö; long vowels doubled (aamu, uuma, etc.)
- Estonian and Võro: a e i o u ü ä ö õ (y), half-long and over-long vowels doubled
- Skolt Sami: u o õ å a, i e â ä (normal), u´ o´ õ´ å´ a´, i´ e´ â´ ä´ (centralized), long vowels doubled (lääij, nââ'ǩǩted, etc.).
- Norwegian and Swedish: back ('hard'): a o u å; front ('soft'): e i y æ/ä ø/ö
- Russian: non-iotating ('hard'): А О У Ы Э; iotating ('soft'): Я Ё Ю И Е

See also


- list of phonetics topics
- table of vowels
- list of vowels

References


- Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, 1999. Cambridge University ISBN 0521637511
- Johnson, Keith, Acoustic & Auditory Phonetics, second edition, 2003. Blackwell ISBN 1405101237
- Ladefoged, Peter, A Course in Phonetics, fourth edition, 2000. Heinle ISBN 0155073192
- Ladefoged, Peter, Elements of Acoustic Phonetics, 1995. University of Chicago ISBN 0226467643
- Ladefoged, Peter and Ian Maddieson, The Sounds of the Worlds Languages, 1996. Blackwell ISBN 0631198156
- Ladefoged, Peter, Vowels and Consonants: An Introduction to the Sounds of Languages, 2000. Blackwell ISBN 0631214127.
- Lindau, Mona. (1978). Vowel features. Language, 54, 541-563.
- Stevens, Kenneth N. (1998). Acoustic phonetics. Current studies in linguistics (No. 30). Cambridge, MA: MIT. ISBN 0-2621-9404-X.
- Stevens, Kenneth N. (2000). Toward a model for lexical access based on acoustic landmarks and distinctive features. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 111 (4), 1872-1891.
- Korhonen, Mikko. Koltansaamen opas, 1973. Castreanum ISBN 951-45-0189-6

External links


- [http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/vowels/contents.html Vowels and Consonants] Online examples from Ladefoged's Vowels and Consonants, referenced above.
- [http://www.oneletterwords.com Dictionary of All-Vowel Words]: a free online dictionary with over 1,000 words with no consonants and examples of usage from literature.
- roa-rup:Vocală ko:홀소리 ja:母音

Language

A language is a system of symbols, generally known as lexemes and the rules by which they are manipulated. The word language is also used to refer to the whole phenomenon of language, i.e., the common properties of languages. Though language is commonly used for communication, it is not synonymous with it. Human language is a natural phenomenon, and language learning is instinctive in childhood. In their natural form, human languages use patterns of sound or gesture for the symbols in order to communicate with others through the senses. Though there are thousands of human languages, they all share a number of properties from which there are no known deviations. Humans have also invented (or arguably in some cases discovered) many other languages, including constructed human languages such as Esperanto or Klingon, programming languages such as Python or Ruby, and various mathematical formalisms. These languages are not restricted to the properties shared by natural human languages.

Properties of language

Languages are not just sets of symbols. They also contain a grammar, or system of rules, used to manipulate the symbols. While a set of symbols may be used for expression or communication, it is primitive and relatively unexpressive, because there are no clear or regular relationships between the symbols. Because a language also has a grammar, it can manipulate its symbols to express clear and regular relationships between them. For example, imagine going on a walk with a person who only knew individual symbols, or words. If you saw a dog, he might say, "Dog scare" or "Scare Dog". Although any English speaker would have some notion of what he was talking about, the relationship between the words is unclear. Is he scared of dogs? Or just that dog? Or does he want to scare the dog off? Does he think the dog is scared? But if you respond, "I’m not scared of dogs," the relationship between dog and scare is quite apparent and hence the meaning of the utterance. Another important property of language is the arbitrariness of the symbols. Any symbol can be mapped onto any concept (or even onto one of the rules of the grammar). For instance, there is nothing about the Spanish word nada itself that forces Spanish speakers to use it to mean nothing. That is the meaning all Spanish speakers have memorized for that sound pattern. But for Croatian speakers nada means hope. However, it must be understood that just because in principle the symbols are arbitrary does not mean that a language cannot have symbols that are iconic of what they stand for. Words such as meow sound similar to what they represent, but they could be replaced with words such as jarn, and as long as everyone memorized the new word, the same concepts could be expressed with it.

Human languages

Human languages are usually referred to as natural languages, and the science studying them is linguistics. Making a principled distinction between one language and another is usually impossible. For example, the boundaries between named language groups are in effect arbitrary due to blending between populations (the dialect continuum). For instance, there are dialects of German very similar to Dutch which are not mutually intelligible with other dialects of (what Germans call) German. Some like to make parallels with biology, where it is not always possible to make a well-defined distinction between one species and the next. In either case, the ultimate difficulty may stem from the interactions between languages and populations. (See Dialect or August Schleicher for a longer discussion.) The concepts of Ausbausprache, Abstandsprache, and Dachsprache are used to make finer distinctions about the degrees of difference between languages or dialects.

Origins of human language

Scientists do not yet agree on when language was first used by humans (or their ancestors). Estimates range from about two million (2,000,000) years ago, during the time of Homo habilis, to as recently as forty thousand (40,000) years ago, during the time of Cro-Magnon man. The nature of speech means that there is almost no data on which to base conclusions on the subject.

Language taxonomy

The classification of natural languages can be performed on the basis of different underlying principles (different closeness notions, respecting different properties and relations between languages); important directions of present classifications are:
- paying attention to the historical evolution of languages results in a genetic classification of languages—which is based on genetic relatedness of languages,
- paying attention to the internal structure of languages (grammar) results in a typological classification of languages—which is based on similarity of one or more components of the language’s grammar across languages,
- and respecting geographical closeness and contacts between language-speaking communities results in areal groupings of languages. The different classifications do not match each other and are not expected to, but the correlation between them is an important point for many linguistic research works. (There is a parallel to the classification of species in biological phylogenetics here: consider monophyletic vs. polyphyletic groups of species.) The task of genetic classification belongs to the field of historical-comparative linguistics, of typological—to linguistic typology. See also: Taxonomy, Taxonomic classification—for the general idea of classification and taxonomies.

Genetic classification

The world’s languages have been grouped into families of languages that are believed to have common ancestors. Some of the major families are the Indo-European languages, the Afro-Asiatic languages, the Austronesian languages, and the Sino-Tibetan languages. The shared features of languages from one family can be due to shared ancestry. (Compare with homology in biology.)

Typological classification

An example of a typological classification is the classification of languages on the basis of the basic order of the verb, the subject and the object in a sentence into several types: SVO, SOV, VSO, and so on, languages. (, for instance, belongs to the SVO language type.) The shared features of languages of one type (= from one typological class) may have arisen completely independently. (Compare with analogy in biology.) Their cooccurence might be due to the universal laws governing the structure of natural languages—language universals.

Areal classification

The following language groupings can serve as some linguistically significant examples of areal linguistic units, or sprachbunds: Balkan linguistic union, or the bigger group of European languages; Caucasian languages. Although the members of each group are not closely genetically related, there is a reason for them to share similar features, namely: their speakers have been in contact for a long time within a common community and the languages converged in the course of the history. These are called areal features. NB. One should be careful about the underlying classification principle for groups of languages which have apparently a geographical name: besides areal linguistic units, the taxa of the genetic classification (language families) are often given names which themselves or parts of which refer to geographical areas.

Constructed languages

One prominent artificial language, called Esperanto, was created by L. L. Zamenhof. It is a compilation of various elements of different languages, and it is intended to be an easy-to-learn language. Another prominent artificial language, called Ido, is intended to be reformed Esperanto. Other constructed languages strive to be more logical than natural languages; a prominent example of this is Lojban. Other writers, such as J. R. R. Tolkien, have created fantasy languages, for literary, artistic, or personal reasons. One of Tolkien’s languages is called Quenya, which is a form of Elvish. It has its own alphabet, and its phonology and syntax are modelled on Finnish. Linguist Mark Okrand has devised Klingon and Vulcan for Star Trek, which have since been developed into full languages.

The study of language

The oldest surviving written grammar for any language is believed to be the Tolkāppiyam (தொல்காப்பியம்), a book on the grammar of the Tamil language, written around 200 BCE by Tolkāppiyar. Its classification of the alphabet into consonants and vowel was a breakthrough. The historical record of the study of language begins in North India with Pāṇini, the 5th century BCE grammarian who formulated 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology, known as the (अष्टाध्यायी). grammar is highly systematized and technical. Inherent in its analytic approach are the concepts of the phoneme, the morpheme, and the root; the phoneme was only recognized by Western linguists some two millennia later. In the Middle East, the Persian linguist Sibawayh made a detailed and professional description of Arabic in 760 CE in his monumental work, Al-kitab fi an-nahw (الكتاب في النحو, The Book on Grammar), bringing many linguistic aspects of language to light. In his book he distinguished phonetics from phonology. Later in the West, the success of science, mathematics, and other formal systems in the 20th century led many to attempt a formalization of the study of language as a "semantic code". This resulted in the academic discipline of linguistics, the founding of which is attributed to Ferdinand de Saussure.

Animal (nonhuman) language

While the term animal languages is widely used, most researchers agree that they are not as complex or expressive as human language; a more accurate term is animal communication. Some researchers argue that there are significant differences separating human language from the communication of other animals, and that the underlying principles are not related. In several widely publicised instances, animals have been trained to mimic certain features of human language. For example, chimpanzees and gorillas have been taught hand signs based on American Sign Language; however, they have never been taught its grammar. There was also a case in 2003 of Kanzi, a captive bonobo chimpanzee allegedly independently creating some words to mean certain concepts. While animal communication has debated levels of semantics, it has not been shown to have syntax in the sense that human languages do. Some researchers argue that a continuum exists among the communication methods of all social animals, pointing to the fundamental requirements of group behaviour and the existence of "mirror cells" in primates. This, however, may not be a scientific question, but is perhaps more one of definition. What exactly is the definition of the word "language"? Most researchers agree that, although human and more primitive languages have analogous features, they are not homologous.

Formal languages

Mathematics and computer science use artificial entities called formal languages (including programming languages and markup languages, but also some that are far more theoretical in nature). These often take the form of character strings, produced by some combination of formal grammar and semantics of arbitrary complexity.

See also


- Common phrases in different languages
- Computer-assisted language learning (a historical perspective)
- Deception
- Ethnologue, which provides a fairly complete list of languages, locations, population and genetic affiliation
- Extinct language
- FOXP2 (Language gene)
- ILR scale (defines five levels of language proficiency)
- ISO 639 (2- and 3-letter codes for language names)
- Language education
- Language reform
- Language policy
- Language school
- Linguistic protectionism
- Linguistics basic topics
- List of language academies
- List of languages
- List of official languages
- Naming
- Non-verbal communication
- Non-sexist language
- Official language
- Orthography
- Philology and Historical linguistics
- Philosophy of language
- Profanity
- Psycholinguistics
- Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
- Slang
- Symbolic communication
- Speech therapy
- Terminology
- Tongue-twister
- Translation
- Whistled language

References


- Crystal, David (1997). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
- Crystal, David (2001). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
- Katzner, K. (1999). The Languages of the World. New York, Routledge.
- McArthur, T. (1996). The Concise Companion to the English Language. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
- Kandel, Jessel, and Schwartz (1991). Principles of Neural Science. McGraw Hill (esp. p. 1173).

External links


- [http://www.zompist.com/ Mark Rosenfelder’s Metaverse] provides a useful listing of 5000 languages and dialects (grouped by their relationships), where the numbers one to ten in each language may be found
- [http://www.geocities.com/agihard/mohl/mohl_languages.html Museum of Languages]
- The [http://www.ethnologue.com/ Ethnologue], a catalog of the world’s languages
- [http://www.language-capitals.com Language Capitals] Guide to 8 major languages of the world with facts, characteristics and varieties
- [http://www.vistawide.com/languages/ World Languages and Cultures] — Practical information and resources on languages and language learning
- [http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ballc/animals/animals.html Animal sounds in different languages]
- [http://www.netz-tipp.de/languages.html Distribution of languages on the Internet]
- [http://classweb.gmu.edu/accent/ Speech accent archive]
- [http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/G_Kunkel/homepage.htm a collection of bird songs] provides many kinds of bird songs
- [http://acp.eugraph.com The Animal Communication Project]
- [http://reference.allrefer.com/encyclopedia/categories/lang.html Language Articles]
- [http://www.primitivism.com/language.htm Language: Origin and Meaning by John Zerzan] Category:Technology als:Sprache zh-min-nan:Gí-giân ko:언어 ms:Bahasa nb:Språk ja:言語 simple:Language th:ภาษา

International Phonetic Alphabet

: "IPA" redirects here. For other uses, see IPA (disambiguation). The NATO phonetic alphabet has also informally been called the International Phonetic Alphabet. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. It is intended as a notational standard for the phonemic and phonetic representation of all spoken languages. For a treatment of the English language using the IPA, see International Phonetic Alphabet for English, for a brief chart, see IPA chart for English.

History

Description

The general principle of the IPA is to provide a separate symbol for each speech segment, avoiding letter combinations (digraphs) such as sh and th in English orthography, and avoiding ambiguity such as that of c in English.

The principle of formation

The IPA is what MacMahon (1996) has termed a "selective" phonetic alphabet. It aims to provide a separate symbol for every contrastive (that is, phonemic) sound occurring in human language. For instance, a flap and a tap are two different articulations, but since no language has (yet) been found to make a phonemic distinction between them, the IPA does not provide them with dedicated symbols. Instead, it provides a single symbol, , that covers both. For non-contrastive (that is, phonetic or subphonemic) details of these sounds, the IPA relies on diacritics, which are optional. Thus there is a certain level of flexibility in representing a language with the IPA.

The principles behind the used symbols

The letters chosen for the IPA are generally drawn from the Latin and Greek alphabets, or are modifications of Latin or Greek letters. There are also a few letters derived from Latin punctuation, such as the glottal stop (originally an apostrophe, but later given the form of a "gelded" question mark to have the visual impact of the other consonants), and one, , although Latin in form, was inspired by Arabic ﻉ. In contrast, the old Latin-derived symbols for the clicks have been abandoned in favor of the iconic Khoisanist symbols, such as . The sound-values of the consonants from the Latin alphabet correspond to usage in French and Italian, which are close to those of most other European languages as well: , , , (hard) , , , , , (unvoiced) , , , . English values are used for , , and , The vowels from the Latin alphabet (, , , , ) correspond to the vowels of Spanish and are similar to Italian. is like the vowel in piece, like rule, etc. The other symbols from the Latin alphabet (, , , , , and ) correspond to sounds these letters represent in other languages. has the Germanic value, English y in yoke. has the Scandinavian and Old English value (Finnish y, German y or ü, French u, Dutch u). Letters that share a particular modification sometimes correspond to a similar type of sound. For example, all the retroflex consonants have the same symbol as the equivalent alveolar consonant, with the addition of a rightward pointing hook at the bottom. Although there is some correspondence between modified letters, generally the IPA does not have a systematic "featural" relationship between graphic shape and articulation. For instance, there is not a consistent relationship between lowercase letters and their small capital counterparts, nor are all labial consonants linked through a common character design. Diacritic marks can be combined with IPA letters to transcribe modified phonetic values or secondary articulations. There are also special symbols for suprasegmental features such as stress and tone.

Types of transcriptions

The International Phonetic Association recommends that a phonetic transcription should be enclosed in square brackets ("[ ]"). A transcription that specifically denotes only phonological contrasts may be enclosed in slashes ("/ /") instead. If one is in doubt, it is best to use brackets, for by setting off a transcription with slashes one makes a theoretical claim that every symbol within is phonemically contrastive for the language being transcribed. Phonetic transcriptions try to objectively capture the actual pronunciation of a word, whereas phonemic transcriptions are model dependent. For example, Noam Chomsky transcribed the English word night phonemically as /nixt/. In his model, the phoneme /x/ is often silent, but shows its presence by “lengthening” the preceding vowel. The preceding vowel in this case is the phoneme /i/, which is pronounced [aj] when long. So phonemic /nixt/ is equivalent to phonetic [najt], but only if you share Chomsky's belief that historical sounds such as the gh in night may remain in a word long after they have ceased to be pronounced. For phonetic transcriptions, there is flexibility in how closely sounds may be transcribed. A transcription that gives only a basic idea of the sounds of a language in the broadest terms is called a "broad transcription"; in some cases this may be equivalent to a phonemic transcription (only without any theoretical claims). A close transcription, indicating precise details of the sounds, is called a "narrow transcription". These are not binary choices, but the ends of a continuum, with many possibilities in between. All are enclosed in brackets. For example, in some dialects the English word pretzel in a narrow transcription would be , which notes several phonetic features that may not be evident even to a native speaker. An example of a broader transcription is , which only indicates some of the easier to hear features. A yet broader transcription would be . Here every symbol represents an unambiguous speech sound, but without making any claims as to their status in the language. There are also several possibilities in how to transcribe this word phonemically, but here the differences are not of precision, but of analysis. For example, pretzel could be or . The special symbol for English r is not used, for it is not meaningful to distinguish it from a rolled r. The differences in the letter e reflect claims as to what the essential difference is between the vowels of pretzel and pray; there are half a dozen ideas in the literature as to what this may be. The second transcription claims that there are two vowels in the word, even if they can't both be heard, while the first claims there is only one. Occasionally a transcription will be enclosed in pipes ("| |"). This goes beyond phonology into morphological analysis. For example, the words pets and beds could be transcribed phonetically as and (in a fairly narrow transcription), and phonemically as and . Because /s/ and /z/ are separate phonemes in English (unlike Spanish, for example), they receive separate symbols in the phonemic analysis. However, you probably recognize that underneath this, they represent the same plural ending. This can be indicated with the pipe notation. If you believe the plural ending is essentially an s, as English spelling would suggest, the words can be transcribed and . If, as most linguists would probably suggest, it is essentially a z, these would be and . To avoid confusion with IPA symbols, it may be desirable to specify when native orthography is being used, so that, for example, the English word jet is not read as "yet". This is done with angle brackets or chevrons: . It is also common to italicize such words, but the chevrons indicate specifically that they are in the original language's orthography, and not in English transliteration.

Consonants (pulmonic)

Single articulation

Closeup of the main pulmonic consonant section of the IPA chart The pulmonic consonant table, which includes most consonants, is arranged in rows that designate manner of articulation and columns that designate place of articulation. The main chart only includes consonants with a single place of articulation. Notes:
- Asterisks (
- ) mark reported sounds that do not (yet) have official IPA symbols. See the articles for ad hoc symbols found in the literature.
- Daggers (†) mark IPA symbols that do not yet have official Unicode support. Since May 2005, this is the case of the labiodental flap, symbolized by a right-hook v: labiodental flap ([http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/N2945.pdf Proposal to add this symbol to Unicode])
- In rows where some symbols appear in pairs (the obstruents), the symbol to the right represents a voiced consonant (except for breathy-voiced ). However, cannot be voiced. In the other rows (the sonorants), the single symbol represents a voiced consonant.
- Although there is a single symbol for the coronal places of articulation for all consonants but fricatives, when dealing with a particular language, the symbols are treated as specifically alveolar, post-alveolar, etc., as appropriate for that language.
- Shaded areas indicate articulations judged to be impossible.
- The symbols represent either voiced fricatives or approximants.
- It is primarily the shape of the tongue rather than its position that distinguishes the fricatives , , and .
- The labiodental nasal is not known to exist as a phoneme in any language.

Coarticulation

Closeup of the co-articulated consonant section of the IPA chart
Notes:
- is described as a "simultaneous and ". However, this analysis is disputed. See the article for discussion.
- To be complete, this chart should also include the semi-palatalized postalveolar (palato-alveolar) fricatives and .
- The miscellaneous portion of the chart, as published by the IPA, includes additional symbols that would have been included in the main consonant chart were it not for difficulties in typesetting on a printed page. In this article, which does not suffer from such problems, they have been included in the main chart above.

Consonants (non-pulmonic)

Closeup of the non-pulmonic consonant section of the IPA chart Notes:
- All clicks are doubly articulated and require two symbols: a velar or uvular stop, plus a symbol for the release: , etc. When the dorsal articulation is omitted, a may usually be assumed.
- Symbols for the voiceless implosives are no longer supported by the IPA. Instead, the voiced equivalent is used with a voiceless diacritic: , etc.
- Although not confirmed from any language, and therefore not "explicitly recognized" by the IPA, a retroflex implosive, , is supported in the Unicode Phonetic Extensions Supplement, added in version 4.1 of the Unicode Standard, or can be created as a composite .
- The ejective symbol is often seen for glottalized but pulmonic sonorants, such as , but these are more properly transcribed as creaky ().

Vowels

Closeup of the vowel chart of the IPA Notes:
- Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel, as does (at least prototypically). All others are unrounded.
- is not confirmed as a distinct phoneme in any language.
- is officially a front vowel, but there is little distinction between front and central open vowels, and is frequently used for an open central vowel.

Affricates and double articulation

Affricates and doubly articulated stops are represented by two symbols joined by a tie bar, either above or below the symbols. The six commonest affricates are optionally represented by ligatures, though this is no longer official IPA usage, due to the great number of ligatures that would be required to represent all affricates this way. A third affricate transcription sometimes seen uses the superscript notation for a consonant release, for example for , paralleling ~ . The symbols for the palatal plosives, are often used as a convenience for or similar affricates, even in official IPA publications, so they must be interpreted with care. Image of the six common affricate ligatures and their official IPA equivalents Note:
- If your browser uses Arial Unicode MS to display IPA characters, the following incorrectly formed sequences may look better due to a bug in that font: .

Extended IPA

The Extended IPA was designed for disordered speech. However, some of the symbols (especially diacritics, below) are occasionally used for transcribing normal speech as well. View a pdf file [http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/ExtIPAChart97.pdf here]. The last symbol may be used with the alveolar click for , a combined alveolar and sublaminal click or "cluck-click".

Suprasegmentals

Closeup of the suprasegmental section of the IPA chart

Intonation

Tone

IPA allows for the use of either tone diacritics or tone letters to indicate tones. Note:
- With regard to tone diacritics, Unicode encodes marks for some contour tones, but not all. In Unicode version 4.1, only hacek (rising) and circumflex (falling) diacritics were encoded. Subsequent versions may also include six additional diacritics for contour tones, such as the macron-acute and the grave-acute-grave ligatures. (See an image here.) Note that contour tone diacritics are not encoded as sequences of level tone diacritics in Unicode.
- With regard to tone letters, Unicode does not have separate encodings for contour tones. Instead, sequences of level tone letters are used, with proper display dependent on the font, usually by means of OpenType font rendition: or . (These are probably not displaying correctly in your browser. See the image for a sample of how they should appear.) Since few fonts support combination tone letters (see the external links for one that is free), a common solution is to use the old system of superscript numerals from '1' to '5', for example [e53, e312]. However, this depends on local linguistic tradition, with '5' generally being high and '1' being low for Asian languages, but '1' being high and '5' low for African languages. An old IPA convention sometimes still seen is to use sub-diacritics for low contour tones: for low-falling and low-rising.
- The upstep and downstep modifiers are superscript arrows. Unicode version 4.1 does not encode these, though subsequent versions will. The arrows for upstep and downstep should not be confused with the full-height arrows, which are used to indicate airflow direction.

Diacritics

Closeup of the diacritic section of the IPA chart
Sub-diacritics may be placed above a symbol with a descender, i.e. . The dotless i, <ı>, is used when the dot would interfere with the diacritic. Other IPA symbols may appear as diacritics to represent phonetic detail: (fricative release), (breathy voice), (glottal onset), (epenthetic schwa), o (diphthongization). Notes: #Some linguists restrict this breathy-voice diacritic to sonorants, and transcribe obstruents as . #With aspirated voiced consonants, the aspiration is also voiced. Many linguists prefer one of the diacritics dedicated to breathy voice. The state of the glottis can be finely transcribed with diacritics. A series of alveolar plosives ranging from an open to a closed glottis phonation are:

Extended IPA diacritics

The letters and diacritics of the ExtIPA The ExtIPA has widened the use of some of the regular IPA diacritics, such as for pre-aspiration, or for a linguolabial sibilant, as well as adding some new ones. Some of the ExtIPA diacritics can be used for non-disordered speech as well, for example for the unusual airstream mechanisms of Damin. One modification is the use of subscript parentheses around the phonation diacritics to indicate partial phonation; a single parenthesis at the left or right of the voicing indicates that it is partially phonated at the beginning or end of the segment. For example, is a partially voiced [s], shows partial initial voicing, and partial final voicing; also is a partially devoiced [z], shows partial initial devoicing, and partial final devoicing. These conventions may be convenient for representing various voice onset times. Phonation diacritics may also be prefixed or suffixed rather than placed directly under the segment to represent relative timing. For instance, is a pre-voiced [z], a post-voiced [z], and is an [a] with a creaky offglide. Other ExtIPA diacritics are, In addition to these symbols, a subscript < or > indicates that an articulation is laterally offset to the left or right, and a double exclamation mark indicates 'ventricular' phonation, though it is not clear how this differs from 'harsh' phonation.

Prosodic notation

The ExtIPA also makes use of musical notation for the tempo and dynamics of connected speech. These are subscripted on the insides of a notation that indicates that they are comments on the prosody. Pauses are indicated with periods or numbers inside parentheses.

Obsolete and nonstandard symbols

How to transcribe sounds that don't have symbols in the IPA charts

The remaining blank cells on the IPA chart can be filled without too much difficulty if the need arises. Some ad hoc symbols have appeared in the literature, for example for the lateral flaps and voiceless lateral fricatives, the epiglottal trill, and the labiodental plosives. Diacritics can supply much of the remainder, which would indeed be appropriate if the sounds were allophones. For example, the Spanish bilabial approximant is commonly written as a lowered fricative, . Similarly, voiced lateral fricatives would be written as raised lateral approximants, . A few languages such as Banda have a bilabial flap as the preferred allophone of what is elsewhere a labiodental flap. It has been suggested that this be written with the labiodental flap symbol and the advanced diacritic, . Similarly, a labiodental trill would be written (bilabial trill and the dental sign). Palatal and uvular taps, if they exist, and the epiglottal tap could be written as extra-short plosives, . A retroflex trill can be written as a retracted , just as retroflex fricatives sometimes are. The remaining consonants, the uvular laterals and the palatal trill, while not strictly impossible, are very difficult to pronounce and are unlikely to occur even as allophones in the world's languages. The vowels are similary manageable by using diacritics for raising, lowering, fronting, backing, centering, and mid-centering. For example, the unrounded equivalent of can be transcribed as mid-centered , and the rounded equivalent of [æ] as raised . True mid vowels are lowered , while centered are near-close and open central vowels, respectively. The vowels that aren't representable in this scheme are the compressed vowels, which would require a dedicated diacritic.

Names of the symbols

It is often desirable to distinguish an IPA symbol from the sound it is intended to represent, since there is not a one-to-one correspondance between symbol and sound in broad transcription. The symbol's names and phonetic descriptions are described in the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association. The symbols also have nonce names in the Unicode standard. In some cases, the Unicode names and the IPA names do not agree. For example, IPA calls "epsilon", but Unicode calls it "small letter open E".

The letters

The traditional names of the Latin and Greek letters are used for unmodified symbols. In Unicode, some of the symbols of Greek origin have Latin forms for use in IPA; the others use the symbols from the Greek section. Examples: Note #The Latin "upsilon" is frequently called "horseshoe u" in order to distinguish it from the Greek upsilon. Historically, it derives from a Latin small capital U. The IPA standard includes some small capital letters, such as , although it is common to refer to these symbols as simply "capital" or "cap" letters, because the IPA standard does not include any full-size capital letters. A few letters have the forms of cursive or script letters. Examples: Note #The "looptail G" 10 px is not strictly an IPA character, but is an acceptable alternative. #In form and origin, but not in name, this is the Greek upsilon. Ligatures are called precisely that, although some have alternate names. Examples: Many letters are turned, or rotated 180 degrees. Examples: The symbol can be described as a turned cee, but it is almost always referred to as open o, which described both its articulation and its shape. The symbol is often also called "caret" or "wedge" for it similarity to that diacritic. A few letters are reversed (flipped on a vertical axis): reversed E, reversed epsilon, reversed glottal stop [often called by its Arabic name, ayin]. One letter is inverted (flipped on a horizontal axis): inverted R. ( could also be called an inverted double-u, but turned double-u is more common.) When a horizontal stroke is added, it is called a bar: barred H, barred o, reversed barred glottal stop or barred ayin, barred dotless J or barred gelded J [apparently never 'turned F'], double-barred pipe, etc. One letter instead has a slash through it: slashed O. The implosives have hook tops: hook-top B, as does hook-top H. Such an extension at the bottom of a letter is called a tail. It may be specified as left or right depending on which direction it turns: right-tail N, right-tail turned R, left-tail N [note that has its own traditional name, engma], left-tail em, tail Z [or just retroflex Z], etc. When the tail loops over itself, it's called curly: curly-tail jay, curly-tail C. There are also a few unique modifications: belted L, closed reversed epsilon [there was once also a closed omega], right-leg turned M, turned long-leg R [there was once also a long-leg R], double pipe, and the obsolete stretched C. Several non-English letters have traditional names: C cedilla, eth (also spelled edh), engma, schwa, exclamation mark, pipe. Other symbols are unique to the IPA, and have developed their own quirky names: fish-hook R, ram's horns, bull's eye, esh [apparently never 'stretched ess'], ezh [sometimes also yogh], hook-top heng. The is usually called by the sound it represents, glottal stop. This is not normally a problem, because this symbol is seldom used to represent anything else. However, to specify the symbol itself, it is sometimes called a gelded question mark.

The diacritic marks

Diacritics with traditional names: : acute, macron, grave, circumflex, caron, wedge, or háček, diaeresis or umlaut, breve, (superscript) tilde, plus variants such as subscript tilde, superimposed tilde, etc. Non-traditional diacritics: : seagull, hook, over-cross, corner, bridge, inverted bridge, square, under-ring, over-ring, left half-ring, right half-ring, plus, under-bar, arch, subscript wedge, up tack, down tack, left tack, right tack, tie bar, under-dot, under-stroke. Diacritics are alternately named after their function: The bridge is also called the dental sign, the under-stroke the syllabicity sign, etc.

Comparison to other phonetic notation

The IPA is not the only phonetic transcription system in use. The other common Latin-based system is the Americanist phonetic notation, devised for representing American languages, but used by some US linguists as an alternate to the IPA. There are also sets of symbols specific to Slavic, Indic, Finno-Ugric, and Caucasian linguistics, as well as other regional specialies. The differences between these alphabets and IPA are relatively small, although often the special characters of the IPA are abandoned in favour of diacritics or digraphs. Other alphabets, such as Hangul, may have their own phonetic extensions. There also exist featural phonetic transcription systems, such as Alexander Bell's Visible Speech and its derivatives. There is an extended version of the IPA for disordered speech (extIPA), which has been included in this article, and another set of symbols used for voice quality (VoQS). There are also many personal or idiosyncratic extensions, such as Luciano Canepari's canIPA. Since the IPA uses symbols that are outside the ASCII character set, several systems have been developed that map the IPA symbols to ASCII characters. Two notable systems are Kirshenbaum and SAMPA (or X-SAMPA). These systems are often used in electronic media, although their usage has been declining with the development of computer technology, specifically because of spreading support for Unicode. See also: Unicode and HTML

See also


- International Phonetic Alphabet for English explains those IPA symbols used to represent the phonemes of English.
- IPA chart for English: simplifed version.
- TIPA provides IPA support for LaTeX.
- SAMPA, X-SAMPA and Kirshenbaum are other methods of mapping IPA designations into ASCII.
- List of phonetics topics
- Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA)

External links


- [http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/ipa.html Official home page of the IPA]

Free IPA font downloads


- [http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=DoulosSILfont Doulos SIL], a Times IPA font that supports tone letters, the new labiodental flap, and many non-standard phonetic symbols, but only in roman typeface.
- [http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=Gentium Gentium], a highly legible international (Latin, Greek, Cyrillic) font in roman and italic typefaces that includes the IPA, but not yet tone letters or the new labiodental flap.
- [http://www.travelphrases.info/gallery/Test_IPA.html Test page] for installed fonts. Includes alternate variants and tone letters.

Keyboards


- [http://www.linguiste.org/phonetics/ipa/chart/keyboard/ Online keyboard]
- [http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=ipa-sil_keyboard IPA-SIL keyboard layout for Mac OS X] for Unicode IPA input
- [http://wikisophia.org/wiki/Wikitex#Tipa WikiTeX] supports editing IPA sequences directly in Wiki articles.

Sound files


- [http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/index.html Peter Ladefoged's Course in Phonetics (with sound files)]
  - [http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/course/chapter1/chapter1.html Pronounceable IPA chart]
- [http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/vowels/contents.html An introduction to the sounds of languages]
- [http://web.uvic.ca/ling/resources/ipa/ipa-lab.htm IPA Lab] Chart with sound files at University of Victoria. (Works with QuickTime.)
- [http://www.paulmeier.com/ipa/charts.html Flash version of IPA charts, with sound samples]
- [http://www.ling.hf.ntnu.no/ipa/full/ Another set of IPA sound samples]

Charts


- [http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/fullchart.html IPA chart source]
- [http://www.linguiste.org/phonetics/ipa/chart/ IPA Chart] in Unicode and XHTML/CSS ----
- [http://web.uvic.ca/ling/resources/ipa/charts/IPANumberChart96.pdf IPA number chart], at University of Victoria.

Unicode

Official Unicode PDF files:
- [http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0250.pdf Unicode chart for main IPA letters]
- [http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U02B0.pdf Unicode chart for IPA modifier letters]
- [http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0300.pdf Unicode chart including IPA diacritics] ----
- [http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/ipa-unicode.htm International Phonetic Alphabet in Unicode]
- [http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/bylanguage/ipachart.html Unicode-HTML codes for IPA symbols:] Tables of symbol names and HTML codes at PennState.

Personal extensions of the IPA


- [http://venus.unive.it/canipa/ canIPA] : Luciano Canepari's system (500 base symbols)

References


- Albright, Robert W. (1958). The International Phonetic Alphabet: Its background and development. International journal of American linguistics (Vol. 24, No. 1, Part 3); Indiana University research center in anthropology, folklore, and linguistics, publ. 7. Baltimore. (Doctoral dissertation, Standford University, 1953).
- Ball, Martin J.; Esling, John H.; & Dickson, B. Craig. (1995). The VoQS system for the transcription of voice quality. Journal of the International Phonetic Alphabet, 25 (2), 71-80.
- Canepari, Luciano. (2005a). "A Handbook of Phonetics: ‹Natural› Phonetics." München: Lincom Europa, pp. 518. [https://ssl.kundenserver.de/s83009615.einsundeinsshop.de/sess/utn1541a7584d7471b/shopdata/0002_New+titles/product_details.shopscript ISBN 3-8958-480-3] (hb).
- Canepari, Luciano. (2005b) "A Handbook of Pronunciation: English, Italian, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese, Esperanto." München: Lincom Europa, pp. 436. [https://ssl.kundenserver.de/s83009615.einsundeinsshop.de/sess/utn1541a7584d7471b/shopdata/0002_New+titles/product_details.shopscript ISBN 3-89586-481-1] (hb).
- Duckworth, M.; Allen, G.; Hardca

Close back rounded vowel

The close back rounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is u. There is also a close back compressed vowel which contrasts with both the rounded and unrounded close back vowels.

Features


- Its vowel height is close, which means the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.
- Its vowel backness is back, which means the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.
- Its vowel roundedness is rounded, which means that the lips are rounded and protrude, and the inner surfaces are exposed.

Occurs in


- : voet , 'foot'
- : (RP and GA) boot . The realization of this vowel in English is typically more front than the cardinal vowel ; in some dialects it can be further forward than .
- : fou , 'crazy'
- : Fuß , 'foot'
- : urso , 'bear'
- : unu , 'one'
- : cura , 'priest' or 'cure'
- : tu , 'to mediate' Category:Vowels ko:후설 원순 고모음

Close-mid back rounded vowel

The close-mid back rounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is o.

Features


- Its vowel height is close-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between close vowel and a mid vowel.
- Its vowel backness is back, which means the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.
- Its vowel roundedness is rounded, which means that the lips are rounded.

Occurs in


- : kool , 'cabbage'
- : (AuE and NZE) ball
  - In CaE, there is a tendency to monophthongize (usually during rapid speech); as a result, may occur alone in words like boat.
- : réseau , 'net'
- : Kohl , 'cabbage'
- : åka , 'travel', 'go'
- : tô , 'soup bowl' French /o/ is more close than German /o/, as symbolized by the raising diacritic, and is perhaps near-close. The German /o/ in turn is more close than Spanish /o/, which is a mid vowel (see below).

Mid back rounded vowel

Many languages, such as and , have a mid back rounded vowel, which to speakers is clearly distinct from both the close-mid and open-mid vowels. However, since no language is known to distinguish all three, there is no separate IPA symbol for the mid vowel, and is generally used. If precision is desired, the lowering diacritic may be used: . Note that just because a language has only one non-close, non-open back vowel, that doesn't mean it's a cardinal mid vowel. The Sulawesian language , for example, has a close-mid , whereas the Moluccan language has a open-mid ; in neither language does this contrast with another open/close-mid vowel.

Occurs in


- : ωρολόγιο , 'clock'
- : 面白い , 'fun, interesting'
- : copil , 'child'
- : todo , 'everything'
- : kol , 'arm'
- : поїзд , 'train' Category:Vowels ja:半狭後舌円唇母音 ko:후설 원순 중고모음

Open-mid back rounded vowel

The open-mid back rounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is O. The IPA symbol is a turned letter c and both the symbol and the sound are commonly called "open-o". The name open-o represents the sound, in that it is like the sound represented by [o], the close-mid back rounded vowel, except it is more open. It also represents the symbol, which can be remembered as an o which has been "opened" by removing part of the closed circular shape.

Features


- Its vowel height is open-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between an open vowel and a mid vowel.
- Its vowel backness is back, which means the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.
- Its vowel roundedness is rounded, which means that the lips are rounded.

Occurs in


- : cosa , 'thing'
- : vol , 'full'
- : (RP) ball ; (AuE and NZE) hot
- : sort , 'fate'
- : voll , 'full'
- : módulo , 'module'
- : åtta , 'eight'
- : to , 'large' Category:Vowels ja:半開後舌円唇母音 ko:후설 원순 중저모음

Open back rounded vowel

The open back rounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is Q. The symbol is called turned script a, because it is a rotated version of script a, so-called because it lacks the extra stroke on top of a printed 'a'. Turned script a, which has its linear stroke on the left, should not be confused with script a , which has its linear stroke on the right and corresponds to an unrounded version of this vowel, the open back unrounded vowel.

Features


- Its vowel height is open, which means the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth.
- Its vowel backness is back, which means the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.
- Its vowel roundedness is rounded, which means that the lips are rounded.

Occurs in

Well rounded is rare, though it is found in some varieties of English.
- : (RP) hot (in GA, this is pronounced )
- : ﻧﺎﻥ , 'bread'
- : bal , 'left' :In Persian and Hungarian, the vowel is somewhat underrounded, and in Hungarian it is centralized. Category:Vowels ja:開後舌円唇母音 ko:후설 원순 저모음

Category:Vowels

Category:Phonetics ko:분류:홀소리

Ulrich I. (Ostfriesland)

Ulrich I. (
- um 1408 in Norden; † 25. oder 26. September 1466 in Emden auf der Burg) war ein Sohn des Häuptlings Enno Edzardisna von Norden und Greetsiel und dessen Ehefrau Gela von Manslagt. Durch die geschickte Politik seines Vaters Enno, der das Erbe der Norder Attena angetreten hatte und auch damit zum Häuptling von Norden geworden war, übernahm Ulrich ein bedeutendes Erbe. Über seine Mutter Gela, Tochter des Affo Beninga, Häuptling zu Pilsum und Manslagt, und der Tiadeka Siartza von Berum, erhielt er zusätzlich auch das Erbe der hoch angesehenen Familie Cirksena: Nachdem Gelas einziger Sohn aus erster Ehe, der Häuptling Liudward Cirksena ("Syrtza") zu Berum Mitte der 30er Jahre des 15. Jahrhunderts ohne Nachkommen verstorben war, waren Gela und deren Nichte Frauwa Cirksena ("Sydzena") die alleinigen Erben der Cirksena von Berum. Enno nutzte die Gelegenheit und verheiratete seinen Sohn aus erster Ehe, Ulrichs Stiefbruder Edzard, daraufhin mit Frauwa. Und er tat ein weiteres: Er und Edzard nahmen den Familiennamen und das Wappen ihrer Ehefrauen an, um die Erbfolge zu betonen. Als Edzard und Frauwa im Jahr 1441 ohne Nachkommen zugleich an der Pest verstarben, erbte Ulrich auch den Nachlass der Cirksena von Berum. Auch er übernahm diesen in Ostfriesland höchst angesehenen Familiennamen für sich und seine Nachkommen. Zusammen mit seinem Vater und seinem älteren Stiefbruder Edzard trat Ulrich 1430 erstmals politisch handelnd in Erscheinung. Sie schlossen mit einigen ostfriesischen Landesgemeinden den "Freiheitsbund der Sieben Ostfrieslande". Ulrich erreichte durch vielfältigste Interventionen auf politischer Ebene die Erhöhung in den erblichen Reichsgrafenstand durch Kaiser Friedrich III. Am 23. Dezember 1464 fand die offizielle Belehnung in der Kirche des Franziskanerklosters in Faldern statt. Ulrich musste dafür allerdings eine erhebliche Summe an die kaiserliche Kanzlei bezahlen. Die stets knappe Finanzlage und die aufwendige Hofhaltung begünstigte dahingehende Entscheidungen des Kaisers. Ulrich Cirksena betrieb auch selbst eine kluge Heiratspolitik. Seine erste Frau war Folcka, die Erbtochter des Häuptlings Wibet von Esens. 1440 übertrug sie ihm die Herrlichkeit Esens mit allen ihren Rechten und Gerechtigkeiten. Sie starb im Jahre 1452. Seine zweite Gemahlin wurde 1453 Theda Ukena, Tochter von Uko von Oldersum und damit Enkelin des mächtigen Häuptlings von Leer, Focko Ukena. Auch sie brachte seinem Hause einen neuen und ansehnlichen Zuwachs. Ulrich und Theda hatten 6 Kinder:

- Heba (
- 18. November 1457; † 1476), heiratete Graf Erich I. von Schaumburg-Pinneberg
- Gela (
- 1458); † 1497,
- Enno (
- 1460; † (ertrunken) 22. Februar 1491),
- Edzard (
- 15. Februar 1462, heiratete am 8. Juli 1498 Elisabeth Gräfin von Rietberg)
- Uko (
- 1463; † 1507),
- Almuth (
- 1465; † 1522/23). Gestorben ist Ulrich I. am 25. oder 26. September 1466 auf seiner Burg in Emden. Am 27. September dieses Jahres wurde er im Kloster Marienthal zu Norden beigesetzt. Nachdem dieses Kloster 1531 zerstört und Ulrichs Enkel, Graf Enno II., 1540 gestorben war, erfolgte nach der Fertigstellung des monumentalen Enno-Grabmals in der Großen Kirche zu Emden 1548 die Umbettung der Gebeine der Cirksena - und damit auch Ulrichs - von Norden nach Emden. Im Jahre 1948 wurde der Rest dieser Gebeine in der durch den 2. Weltkrieg zerstörten Großen Kirche geborgen und in das 1875/76 auf dem Friedhof zu Aurich errichtete Mausoleum der Ostfriesischen Fürsten überführt. Kategorie:Graf (Deutschland) Kategorie:Ostfriesland Kategorie:Mann Kategorie:Geboren 1408 Kategorie:Gestorben 1466

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