THIS BASIC COURSE IN SHONA, ONE OF THE TWO PRINCIPAL LANGUAGES OF RHODESIA AND PARTS OF ADJACENT MOZAMBIQUE, IS INTENDED TO PROVIDE THE STUDENT WITH DIALOG THAT RELATE TO SOME OF THE SITUATIONS IN WHICH HE IS LIKELY TO USE THE LANGUAGE, AS WELL AS PROVIDE HIM WITH SYSTEMATIC PRACTICE ON ALL MAJOR POINTS OF GRAMMAR. THE TEXT CONSISTS OF 49 UNITS OF…

This preprimer has been developed by the Northern Arizona Supplementary Education Center in response to a renewed interest on the part of the Navaho people in learning to read their own language. A brief description of Navaho vowels, vowel length, tones, and consonants, prefaces the Navaho material. All the letters of the Navaho alphabet are…

The tone-changing rules in Central (Standard) Thai are traditionally analyzed as having five contrasting tones--mid, low, high, falling, and rising. (Abramson's graph of the fundamental frequency variations for single vowel Thai syllables illustrates these five tones.) Theoretically, each tone may be part of any Thai syllable. Any Thai syllable…

This annotated bibliography, which has been entered into the SOLAR Bibliography File, focuses on the phonetics and phonology of tone, including studies on the physiology of phonation and pitch control, pitch perception, inherent pitch of vowels, the interaction of tone with musical melody in tone languages, and other related issues. An attempt has…

This text, a beginning course in Navajo, is not intended to supplant materials already extant; it is designed to serve as an introduction to the phonology and some of the basic structures, upon which the learner may continue to develop his speaking skills. A short prefatory section presents the sounds of Navajo with simplified descriptions of…

The present volume, the third of a four-part report on the Tibeto-Burman languages of Nepal, includes text materials on Burung, by Warren Glover; on Tamang, by Doreen Taylor, and on Thakali, by Annemarie Hari and Anita Maibaum. For each language, a list of included texts is given, with the native language divided into sequentially-numbered…

The purpose of this beginning text in Ewe is to provide the student with an introduction to the structure of the Ewe language and "reasonable practice" in speaking. It is intended to be taught with the assistance of a native speaker of Ewe. Linguistic terminology is minimal. Suggested teaching time ranges from two semesters of class meetings of…

Bini, a language spoken by a million horticulturists in and around Benin City, Nigeria, belongs genealogically to the Edo branch of the Kwa family of the Niger-Congo phylum. Bini dialects differ in their tonemic inventory, which ranges from four to six tonemes per dialect. But all dialects exhibit two morphotonemes--high and low--which perhaps…

Explores the semantic distinctions and tonal behaviors of four types of "lai" in Taiwanese. It is concluded that some types cannot be fully understood without reference to the underlying structure, the surface structure being often insufficient for determining the tonal shape of the syllable in utterance. (CLK)

Presents the phonological system of the Zhangpu dialect and the characteristics that differentiate it from the other Southern Min dialects. Notes that the phonological system of the Zhangpu dialect is close to the Zhangzhou dialect but that the aspirated affricate /+s'-/ in Zhangzhou is the voiceless fricative /s-/in Zhangpu. (SED)

Critical analysis of Fan-Kuei Li's article which appeared in "Journal of Chinese Linguistics", v1 n1 p1-13 Jan 1973. (DD)

Illustrates how the separate economic and political development and the ensuing lack of contact between Hong Kong and Guangzhou over the last 50 years have resulted in quantifiable tonal differences in the Cantonese spoken in these two cities. (16 references) (Author/CK)

The difficulty in learning Mandarin Chinese is often attributed to the fact that it is a tonal language. This article reviews the tonal spelling approach of Gwoyeu Romatzyh ("G. R.") and Pinyin, the national romanization system of mainland China. (seven references) (LB)

Examination of the perceptibility of carryover coarticulatory perturbations occurring at syllabic vowels in Mandarin Chinese suggests that, in connected speech, a portion of fundamental frequency at intertonemic onset is perturbed, including initial voiced consonants and vowels, and that the perturbations result from preservative as well as…

Examined through slips of the tongue how tones are represented and processed when speaking Mandarin Chinese. With regard to sound movement errors, it was found that, although errors of segmental phonemes were fairly common, errors of tones were rare. Suggests that lexical tones in Mandarin Chinese are represented and processed differently from…