Archi languageArchi ɑrˈtʃiː is a Northeast Caucasian language spoken by the Archis in the village of Archib, southern Dagestan, Russia, and the six surrounding smaller villages. It is unusual for its many phonemes and for its contrast between several voiceless velar lateral fricatives, /𝼄, 𝼄w, 𝼄ː, 𝼄ːw/, voiceless and ejective velar lateral affricates, /k͡𝼄, k͡𝼄w, k͡𝼄ʼ, k͡𝼄wʼ/, and a voiced velar lateral fricative, /ʟ̝/. It is an ergative–absolutive language with four noun classes and has a remarkable morphological system with irregularities on all levels.
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.
Egressive soundIn human speech, egressive sounds are sounds in which the air stream is created by pushing air out through the mouth or nose. The three types of egressive sounds are pulmonic egressive (from the lungs), glottalic egressive (from the glottis), and lingual (velaric) egressive (from the tongue). The opposite of an egressive sound is an ingressive sound, in which the airstream flows inward through the mouth or nose. Pulmonic egressive sounds are those in which the air stream is created by the lungs, ribs, and diaphragm.
Tenuis consonantIn linguistics, a tenuis consonant (ˈtɛn.ju:ɪs or ˈtɛnu:ɪs) is an obstruent that is voiceless, unaspirated and unglottalized. In other words, it has the "plain" phonation of [p, t, ts, tʃ, k] with a voice onset time close to zero (a zero-VOT consonant), as Spanish p, t, ch, k or English p, t, k after s (spy, sty, sky). For most languages, the distinction is relevant only for stops and affricates. However, a few languages have analogous series for fricatives.
