Contour (linguistics)In phonetics, contour describes speech sounds that behave as single segments but make an internal transition from one quality, place, or manner to another. Such sounds may be tones, vowels, or consonants. Many tone languages have contour tones, which move from one level to another. For example, Mandarin Chinese has four lexical tones. The high tone is level, without contour; the falling tone is a contour from high pitch to low; the rising tone a contour from mid pitch to high, and, when spoken in isolation, the low tone takes on a dipping contour, mid to low and then to high pitch.
Yanyuwa languageYanyuwa (jaṉuwa) is the language of the Yanyuwa people of the Sir Edward Pellew Group of Islands in the Gulf of Carpentaria outside Borroloola (Burrulula) in the Northern Territory, Australia. Yanyuwa, like many other Australian Aboriginal languages, is a highly agglutinative language with ergative-absolutive alignment, whose grammar is pervaded by a set of 16 noun classes whose agreements are complicated and numerous. Yanyuwa is a critically endangered language.
Nasal releaseIn phonetics, a nasal release is the release of a stop consonant into a nasal. Such sounds are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet with superscript nasal letters, for example as [tn] in English catnip [ˈkætnnɪp]. In English words such as sudden in which historically the tongue made separate contacts with the alveolar ridge for the /d/ and /n/, [ˈsʌdən], many speakers today make only one contact. That is, the /d/ is released directly into the /n/: [ˈsʌdnn̩].
OcclusiveIn phonetics, an occlusive, sometimes known as a stop, is a consonant sound produced by occluding (i.e. blocking) airflow in the vocal tract, but not necessarily in the nasal tract. The duration of the block is the occlusion of the consonant. An occlusive may refer to one or more of the following, depending on the author: Stops, or more precisely, oral stops—also known as plosives—are oral occlusives, where the occlusion of the vocal tract stops all airflow—oral and nasal. Examples in English are (voiced) b, d, ɡ and (voiceless) p, t, k.
Fijian languageFijian (Na vosa vaka-Viti) is an Austronesian language of the Malayo-Polynesian family spoken by some 350,000–450,000 ethnic Fijians as a native language. The 2013 Constitution established Fijian as an official language of Fiji, along with English and Fiji Hindi and there is discussion about establishing it as the "national language". Fijian is a VOS language. Standard Fijian is based on the Bau dialect, which is an East Fijian language.
Iroquoian languagesThe Iroquoian languages are a language family of indigenous peoples of North America. They are known for their general lack of labial consonants. The Iroquoian languages are polysynthetic and head-marking. As of 2020, almost all surviving Iroquoian languages are severely or critically endangered, some languages only have a few elderly speakers remaining. The two languages with the most speakers, Mohawk (Kenien’kéha) in New York and Cherokee, are spoken by less than 10% of the populations of their nations.
