Perception of tone, intonation and focus Dissertation

Perception of tone, intonation and focus - Dissertation Example The double-articulation theory and any definition of language based upon it leaves a wide margin, for which the name 'prosody' is today a widespread designation. (PhonoMei, 272) Tones, or as some people call them tonemes, have exactly the same function as phonemes: they are distinctive, which means that the speaker, at a certain point in the message, will have to choose between a number of them in order to say just what he wants to say. It is, of course, perfectly immaterial whether the choice is conscious or not. If tones are not considered distinctive features of vocalic phonemes, it is because they are usually found to affect, not a vowel phoneme as such, but a syllabic nucleus, often made up of two or more phonemes or even more than one syllable. Chinese Languages and Intonational Features Of more importance for the history of Chinese is the way in which glottal features can affect vowels: Voiced aspiration, or "murmur," easily spreads from a consonant into an adjacent vowel, and the effects of this have been important in the development of tonal systems in Chinese and Southeast Asian languages. (Chang, 636) The dissimilation between voiced aspiration at the beginning and end of syllables, known as Grassman's Law, that occurred in Sanskrit and Ancient Greek was probably the result of the spreading of the voiced aspiration into the vowel in this way. A quite different kind of glottal activity combined with a vowel is called "creaky voice." It stands between normal voicing and glottal stop in the same way that "murmur," or voiced glottal friction, stands between normal voicing and voiceless glottal friction, or h. In Burmese the so-called "creaky tone" is found in syllables that formerly ended in a glottal stop and still have a weak glottal closure, contrasting to the strong final glottal stop that is derived from method suggested above for indicating the glottal features of obstruents. (Ting, 632) One could suggest'. Creaky sonorants would then be written: a + ?, m + ?, and so on. It is not known whether all languages have this same binary structure for macrosegments. Many reports on different languages pass over the matter of intonation in complete silence. A few specifically state that there are no intonational differences which can be subsumed within the description of the linguistic system, even though there are ups and downs of pitch which seem to be semi-organized culturally, at least to show some correlation with speaker's mood. Since detailed and effective intonational analysis is relatively recent, statements of the kind are not to be trusted; more thorough work with such languages may reveal full-fledged, if simple, intonational systems. If, indeed, there are languages in which no distinctive intonational differences are to be found, then this affords us a typologic criterion. Not all utterances in a language conform neatly to the macrosegment-pause-intonation-remainder scheme. (Tsay, 88) Almost always one is forced to recogn ize that some utterings are broken off before they reach a normal boundary between macrosegments. If a man is shot, or has to sneeze or hiccup, in the middle of a sentence, it is easy enough to regard the linguistically relevant event as having been cut off by an intrusive agent, and to discard the particular event as irrelevant for linguistic analysis. But in the normal

Midterm Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 4

Midterm - Essay Example History is a subject in which all the past events are collected, organized and studied in detail. The main purpose of history is to obtain all the information from past, organize it in a proper manner so that it could be provided at the time of need. The Spanish interest in Hispaniola is due to the fact that it is one the largest islands in the world i.e. 22nd largest and probably the second largest island in Caribbean. The Spanish interest was also due to the fact that the island provided a major trade route as well as an important place for Spanish colonies to invade and get settled in. 17th century i.e. the 1600s is called the century of misery due to various reasons. The first one being that the most of the population of the world spent most of the century fighting wars which led to a huge loss of money, manpower and lack of industrial skill. Secondly, the century was marked by different epidemics that came during different decades of the 17th century e.g. the epidemic of plague that went on to take millions of life throughout the time period. Lastly, from the very start of 17th century, different areas of world were marked by bad harvests which led to millions starving and dying because of that. In the years between 1791 and 1804, slaves of Saint-Dominigue started a movement or rather a revolt against the outlanders French to remove them of power and bring it back to the locals. The revolt ended up in the formation of Republic of Haiti and is known as the Haitian Revolution. The main effect it had on the island is that it led others to take lesson from and push the outlanders out of their own lands but also it led to the formation of a totally new country now known as Haiti. The global effects of this revolution include, it proved to be a guiding light for others to remove French and dismantle their rule worldwide, especially in America and it was the first time ever that the slaves stood up against the elite and ended up