 | This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations .(June 2017) |
The most thorough treatment of the Kiowa sound system is by Laurel Watkins in a generative framework. A consideration of prosodic phenomena with acoustic analysis is in Sivertsen (1956). Earlier discussions of phonemics are Trager (1960), Merrifield (1959), Wonderly et al. (1954), and Harrington (1928).
The 23 consonants of Kiowa:
| Bilabial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | |||||
| Stop | voiced | b | d | ɡ | |||
| voiceless | p | t | ts | k | ʔ | ||
| aspirated | pʰ | tʰ | kʰ | ||||
| ejective | pʼ | tʼ | tsʼ | kʼ | |||
| Fricative | voiced | z | |||||
| voiceless | s | ç | h | ||||
| Approximant | ( w ) | l | j | ||||
In the orthography (used here) of native Kiowa speaker Parker McKenzie, who collaborated with both J.P. Harrington and Laurel Watkins, these are represented as below (parenthetic letters are used only at the end of the syllable):
| Bilabial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | |||||
| Stop | voiced | b | d | g | |||
| voiceless | f (p) | j (t) | ch | c (k) | (t) | ||
| aspirated | p | t | k | ||||
| ejective | v | th | x | q | |||
| Fricative | voiced | z | |||||
| voiceless | s | sy | h | ||||
| Approximant | w | l | y | ||||
 | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (June 2008) |
Kiowa has six contrasting vowel qualities with three heights and a front-back distinction. Additionally, there is an oral-nasal contrast on all six vowels. For example, nasality is the only difference between ā́u/ʔɔ́ː/ ('to gamble') and ā́u/ʔɔ̃́ː/ ('to give').
The oral-nasal contrast, however, is neutralized in the environment of nasal consonants, where only nasalized vowels occur. Watkins phonemicizes an oral vowel in these contexts: mā́/máː/ ('up') is phonetically [mã́ː], máun/mɔ́n/ ('probably') is phonetically [mɔ̃́n].
Kiowa vowels have an underlying two-way length contrast (short vs. long). However, a number of phonological issues restrict the length contrast. (See the syllable and phonotactics for details.)
| | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (June 2008) |
Kiowa has three tones: high, low, falling. No minimal triple is available, but the distinctions can be illustrated pairwise: à ~ á (agreement prefixes for 1sg and 3pl unaccusatives), ḕ ('when') ~ ḗ ('here'); àl ('also)' ~ âl ('chase' perfective imperative), chḕ ('when') ~ chê ('horse'); cául ('cattle')~ câul ('some'), gṹ('wise') ~ gû ('hit'). Note that length is not indicated on vowels with falling tone in the current orthography: this is because falling tone is generally only realized over long vowels or a vowel plus resonant (/j/, /l/, /m/, or /n/). However, there are at least two words with falling tone realized before /t/, both of them minimally contrastive with high tone: bót ('guts') ~ bôt ('because'), chát ('door') ~ chât ('cheque'). This behaviour contrasts with /p/; suffixation of /p/ to verbs with falling tone causes the vowel to shorten and become simply high, as in root ~ perfective pairs gû ~ góp ('hit'), kî ~ tép ('exit'). One speaker has been recorded with the pronunciation [êtʼ] ('big') in contrast to other speakers' [ét] (the compounding form, êl, as in êlmā̀ 'old woman', has falling tone).
The falling tone has glottalized realizations (creaky voice, tense voice, with glottal stop) in some contexts.
There are also a number of tone sandhi effects.
Surface syllables in Kiowa must consist of a vowel nucleus. Syllable onsets are optional and can consist of single consonant or a consonant followed by a palatal glide [j]. A single vowel may be followed by an optional syllable coda consonant or the vowel may optionally be long. Thus, the following syllables are found in Kiowa: V,CV,CjV,VC,CVC,CjVC,Vː,CVː,CjVː. This can be succinctly represented as the syllable equation below.
A number of phonotactic restrictions are found limiting the possible combinations of sounds. These are discussed below.
Onset. All consonants can occurs as a single consonant onset. However, /l/ only occurs word-initially in loan words (e.g., láyàn 'lion', Láut 'Lawton').
Nucleus. The syllable nucleus can be any vowel, which can be either short or long.
Coda. The coda position may be filled only by /p,t,m,n,l,j/. Palatal /j/ only follows the vowels /u,o,ɔ,a/ (i.e. the palatal may not occur after non-low front vowels). [5]
Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no turbulence. This class is composed of sounds like and semivowels like and, as well as lateral approximants like.
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in the case of German ; or the side of the tongue against the molars, in the case of Welsh. This turbulent airflow is called frication.
In phonetics, palatalization or palatization is a way of pronouncing a consonant in which part of the tongue is moved close to the hard palate. Consonants pronounced this way are said to be palatalized and are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet by affixing the letter ⟨ʲ⟩ to the base consonant. Palatalization is not phonemic in English, but it is in Slavic languages such as Russian and Ukrainian, Finnic languages such as Estonian and Võro, Irish, Marshallese, Kashmiri, and Japanese.
Historical Chinese phonology deals with reconstructing the sounds of Chinese from the past. As Chinese is written with logographic characters, not alphabetic or syllabary, the methods employed in Historical Chinese phonology differ considerably from those employed in, for example, Indo-European linguistics; reconstruction is more difficult because, unlike Indo-European languages, no phonetic spellings were used.
The phonology of Vietnamese features 19 consonant phonemes, with 5 additional consonant phonemes used in Vietnamese's Southern dialect, and 4 exclusive to the Northern dialect. Vietnamese also has 14 vowel nuclei, and 6 tones that are integral to the interpretation of the language. Older interpretations of Vietnamese tones differentiated between "sharp" and "heavy" entering and departing tones. This article is a technical description of the sound system of the Vietnamese language, including phonetics and phonology. Two main varieties of Vietnamese, Hanoi and Saigon, which are slightly different to each other, are described below.
Kiowa or [Gáui[dòñ:gyà is a Tanoan language spoken by the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma in primarily Caddo, Kiowa, and Comanche counties. The Kiowa tribal center is located in Carnegie. Like most North American indigenous languages, Kiowa is an endangered language.
In phonetics, secondary articulation occurs when the articulation of a consonant is equivalent to the combined articulations of two or three simpler consonants, at least one of which is an approximant. The secondary articulation of such co-articulated consonants is the approximant-like articulation. It "colors" the primary articulation rather than obscuring it. Maledo (2011) defines secondary articulation as the superimposition of lesser stricture upon a primary articulation.
The phonological system of the Polish language is similar in many ways to those of other Slavic languages, although there are some characteristic features found in only a few other languages of the family, such as contrasting postalveolar and alveolo-palatal fricatives and affricates. The vowel system is relatively simple, with just six oral monophthongs and arguably two nasals in traditional speech, while the consonant system is much more complex.
The phonology of Sesotho and those of the other Sotho–Tswana languages are radically different from those of "older" or more "stereotypical" Bantu languages. Modern Sesotho in particular has very mixed origins inheriting many words and idioms from non-Sotho–Tswana languages.
Yanesha', also called Amuesha or Amoesha is a language spoken by the Amuesha people of Peru in central and eastern Pasco Region.
Taos is a Tanoan language spoken by several hundred people in New Mexico, in the United States. The main description of its phonology was contributed by George L. Trager in a (pre-generative) structuralist framework. Earlier considerations of the phonetics-phonology were by John P. Harrington and Jaime de Angulo. Trager's first account was in Trager (1946) based on fieldwork 1935-1937, which was then substantially revised in Trager (1948). The description below takes Trager (1946) as the main point of departure and notes where this differs from the analysis of Trager (1948). Harrington's description is more similar to Trager (1946). Certain comments from a generative perspective are noted in a comparative work Hale (1967).
This article is about the sound system of the Navajo language. The phonology of Navajo is intimately connected to its morphology. For example, the entire range of contrastive consonants is found only at the beginning of word stems. In stem-final position and in prefixes, the number of contrasts is drastically reduced. Similarly, vowel contrasts found outside of the stem are significantly neutralized. For details about the morphology of Navajo, see Navajo grammar.
Izi is an Igboid language spoken in Ebonyi state in Nigeria. It forms a dialect cluster with the closely related languages Ikwo, Ezza, and Mgbo.
The phonology of Burmese is fairly typical of a Southeast Asian language, involving phonemic tone or register, a contrast between major and minor syllables, and strict limitations on consonant clusters.
Kensiu (Kensiw) is an Austroasiatic language of the Jahaic subbranch. It is spoken by a small community of 300 people in Yala Province in southern Thailand and also reportedly by a community of approximately 300 speakers in Western Malaysia in Perak and Kedah states. Speakers of this language are Negritos who are known as the Maniq people or Mani of Thailand. In Malaysia, they are counted among the Orang Asli.
This article discusses the phonology of the Inuit languages. Unless otherwise noted, statements refer to Inuktitut dialects of Canada.
Babanki, or Kejom, is a Bantoid language that is spoken by the Babanki people of the Western Highlands of Cameroon.
The Palaeotype alphabet is a phonetic alphabet used by Alexander John Ellis to describe the pronunciation of English. It was based on the theory of Bell's Visible Speech, but set in roman script, and attempted to include the sounds conveyed by Lepsius's Standard Alphabet as well. It in turn inspired Henry Sweet's 1877 Romic alphabet, which itself served as the basis for the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Adyghe is a language of the Northwest Caucasian family which, like the other Northwest Caucasian languages, is very rich in consonants, featuring many labialized and ejective consonants. Adyghe is phonologically more complex than Kabardian, having the retroflex consonants and their labialized forms.
Medumba phonology is the way in which the Medumba language is pronounced. Medumba is a Bamileke language of Cameroon; the people who speak it originate from the Nde division of the West Region of the country. It deals with phonetics, phonotactics and their variation across different dialects of Medumba.
