SolresolLe solresol est une langue construite inventée par François Sudre (né à Albi en 1787, mort à Paris en 1862), dans le but de pouvoir parler à n'importe qui dans le monde (même aveugle) avec des mots composés du nom des notes de musique : do, ré, mi, fa, sol, la, si (la note si étant parfois notée ti selon la méthode de Sarah Ann Glover). D'abord nommée Langue musicale universelle, dans le livre de Sudre publié en 1866 (soit 4 ans après sa mort), cette langue fut appelée définitivement Solresol (pour « langue en Solresol ») après la parution, en 1902, de la Grammaire du Solresol, ou Langue Universelle de François Sudre de Boleslas Gajewski.
Langage siffléLe langage sifflé est un mode de communication consistant à siffler au lieu de parler, répandu dans le monde entier mais limité à des environnements où les sifflements sont plus efficaces que la parole ordinaire (montagnes et forêts denses, principalement). On connaît environ 70 populations qui pratiquent actuellement le langage sifflé. Chacun de ces langages n'est pas une langue indépendante mais une extension de la langue locale. Dans Melpomène, le livre IV de ses Histoires, Hérodote mentionne l'existence d'Éthiopiens troglodytes qui « parlent comme des chauves-souris ».
Tone terracingTone terracing is a type of phonetic downdrift, where the high or mid tones, but not the low tone, shift downward in pitch (downstep) after certain other tones. The result is that a tone may be realized at a certain pitch over a short stretch of speech shifts downward, then continues at its new level and then shifts downward again until the end of the prosodic contour is reached, at which point the pitch resets. A graph of the change in pitch over time of a particular tone resembles a terrace.
Hopi (langue)Le hopi est une langue uto-aztèque du Nord parlée aux États-Unis, dans le Nord-Est de l'Arizona. Le hopi, qui est la seule langue uto-aztèque parlée par des Pueblos, est encore vivace même si son usage est en baisse. Au recensement de 1990, environ 80 % des Hopis déclaraient parler la langue mais seulement 40 d'entre eux étaient monolingues. En 1998, une étude sur 200 Hopis révélait que 100 % des personnes âgées hopi (60 ans et plus) savaient la parler couramment tandis que les adultes (40-59 ans) étaient 84 % , 50 % pour les jeunes adultes (20-39 ans) et 5 % pour les enfants (2-19 ans).
DowndriftIn phonetics, downdrift (also known as automatic downstep) is the cumulative lowering of pitch in the course of a sentence due to interactions among tones in a tonal language. Downdrift often occurs when the tones in successive syllables are H L H (high, low, high) or H L L H (high, low, low, high). In this case the second high tone tends to be lower than the first. The effect can accumulate so that with each low tone, the pitch of the high tones becomes slightly lower, until the end of the intonational phrase, when the pitch is "reset".
Pitch contourNOTOC In linguistics, speech synthesis, and music, the pitch contour of a sound is a function or curve that tracks the perceived pitch of the sound over time. Pitch contour may include multiple sounds utilizing many pitches, and can relate the frequency function at one point in time to the frequency function at a later point. It is fundamental to the linguistic concept of tone, where the pitch or change in pitch of a speech unit over time affects the semantic meaning of a sound.
Cham scriptThe Cham script is a Brahmic abugida used to write Cham, an Austronesian language spoken by some 245,000 Chams in Vietnam and Cambodia. It is written horizontally left to right, just like other Brahmic abugidas. The Cham script is a descendant of the Brahmi script of India. Cham was one of the first scripts to develop from a script called the Pallava script some time around 200 CE. It came to Southeast Asia as part of the expansion of Hinduism and Buddhism.
Rime dictionaryA rime dictionary, rhyme dictionary, or rime book () is an ancient type of Chinese dictionary that collates characters by tone and rhyme, instead of by radical. The most important rime dictionary tradition began with the Qieyun (601), which codified correct pronunciations for reading the classics and writing poetry by combining the reading traditions of north and south China. This work became very popular during the Tang dynasty, and went through a series of revisions and expansions, of which the most famous is the Guangyun (1007–1008).
Nonconcatenative morphologyNonconcatenative morphology, also called discontinuous morphology and introflection, is a form of word formation and inflection in which the root is modified and which does not involve stringing morphemes together sequentially. Apophony Ablaut and Umlaut (linguistics) In English, for example, while plurals are usually formed by adding the suffix -s, certain words use nonconcatenative processes for their plural forms: foot /fʊt/ → feet /fiːt/; Many irregular verbs form their past tenses, past participles, or both in this manner: freeze /ˈfriːz/ → froze /ˈfroʊz/, frozen /ˈfroʊzən/.
