Xuyi is a county under the administration of Huai'an Prefecture in central Jiangsu Province in eastern China . The southernmost of Huai'an's county-level divisions , it borders the prefecture-level cities of Suqian , Jiangsu, to the north and Chuzhou , Anhui , to the south and west. Xuyi is the site of the Ming Zuling tombs and also noted for production of crayfish.
121-711: Xuyi is the atonal pinyin romanization of the Standard Mandarin pronunciation of the Chinese name 盱眙 . The same name was previously romanized as Hsü-i in Wade-Giles and Chuyi in Postal Map romanization . The meaning of the name is unclear, but probably derives from phonetic transcription of an earlier name from the Dongyi or Wu who once held the area. It has also been variously derived from
242-432: A constriction, and include dental, alveolar, and post-alveolar locations. Tongue postures using the tip of the tongue can be apical if using the top of the tongue tip, laminal if made with the blade of the tongue, or sub-apical if the tongue tip is curled back and the bottom of the tongue is used. Coronals are unique as a group in that every manner of articulation is attested. Australian languages are well known for
363-425: A diacritic implicitly placing them in the coronal category. They exist in a number of languages indigenous to Vanuatu such as Tangoa . Labiodental consonants are made by the lower lip rising to the upper teeth. Labiodental consonants are most often fricatives while labiodental nasals are also typologically common. There is debate as to whether true labiodental plosives occur in any natural language, though
484-518: A five-level scale is used, visualized with Chao tone letters . The values of the pitch for each tone described by Chao are traditionally considered standard, however slight regional and idiolectal variations in tone pronunciation also occur. The Chinese names of the main four tones are respectively 阴平 ; 陰平 ; yīnpíng ; 'dark level', 阳平 ; 陽平 ; yángpíng ; 'light level', 上 ; shǎng or shàng ('rising'), and 去 ; qù ; 'departing'. As descriptions, they apply rather to
605-413: A general rule, vowels in open syllables (those which have no coda following the main vowel) are pronounced long , while others are pronounced short. This does not apply to weak syllables, in which all vowels are short. In Standard Chinese, the vowels [a] and [ə] harmonize in backness with the coda. For [a] , it is fronted [a̟] before /i, n/ and backed [a̠] before /u, ŋ/ . For [ə] , it
726-480: A given point in time a model of the vowel pronounced reverses the filtering of the mouth producing the spectrum of the glottis. A computational model of the unfiltered glottal signal is then fitted to the inverse filtered acoustic signal to determine the characteristics of the glottis. Visual analysis is also available using specialized medical equipment such as ultrasound and endoscopy. Legend: unrounded • rounded Vowels are broadly categorized by
847-399: A glide is followed by the vowel of which that glide is considered an allophone, the glide may be regarded as epenthetic (automatically inserted), and not as a separate realization of the phoneme. Hence the syllable yi , pronounced [ji] , may be analyzed as consisting of the single phoneme /i/ , and similarly yin may be analyzed as /in/ , yu as /y/ , and wu as /u/ . It
968-437: A glottal stop. If the vocal folds are held slightly further apart than in modal voicing, they produce phonation types like breathy voice (or murmur) and whispery voice. The tension across the vocal ligaments ( vocal cords ) is less than in modal voicing allowing for air to flow more freely. Both breathy voice and whispery voice exist on a continuum loosely characterized as going from the more periodic waveform of breathy voice to
1089-502: A language such as English. Since Chinese syllables usually constitute whole words, or at least morphemes , the smallness of the syllable inventory results in large numbers of homophones . However, in Standard Chinese, the average word length is actually almost exactly two syllables, practically eliminating most homophony issues even when tone is disregarded, especially when context is taken into account as well. (Still, due to
1210-431: A message to be linguistically encoded, a speaker must select the individual words—known as lexical items —to represent that message in a process called lexical selection. During phonological encoding, the mental representation of the words are assigned their phonological content as a sequence of phonemes to be produced. The phonemes are specified for articulatory features which denote particular goals such as closed lips or
1331-403: A number of languages are reported to have labiodental plosives including Zulu , Tonga , and Shubi . Coronal consonants are made with the tip or blade of the tongue and, because of the agility of the front of the tongue, represent a variety not only in place but in the posture of the tongue. The coronal places of articulation represent the areas of the mouth where the tongue contacts or makes
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#17327734132761452-419: A segment is voiced or not, the simplest being to feel the larynx during speech and note when vibrations are felt. More precise measurements can be obtained through acoustic analysis of a spectrogram or spectral slice. In a spectrographic analysis, voiced segments show a voicing bar, a region of high acoustic energy, in the low frequencies of voiced segments. In examining a spectral splice, the acoustic spectrum at
1573-401: A sibilant consonant ( z, c, s, zh, ch, sh, r in pinyin) followed by a syllabic consonant (also known as apical vowel in classic literature): Alternatively, the nucleus may be described not as a syllabic consonant, but as a vowel: Phonologically, these syllables may be analyzed as having their own vowel phoneme, /ɨ/ . However, it is possible to merge this with the phoneme /i/ (to which it
1694-402: A special phoneme, or as an instance of the phoneme /ŋ/ , although it can also be treated as no phoneme (absence of onset). By contrast, in the case of the particle 啊 a , which is a weak onset-less syllable, linking occurs with the previous syllable (as described under § Syllable reduction , below). When a stressed vowel-initial Chinese syllable follows a consonant-final syllable,
1815-693: A standard accent . Elements of the sound system include not only the segments —e.g. vowels and consonants —of the language, but also the tones applied to each syllable. In addition to its four main tones, Standard Chinese has a neutral tone that appears on weak syllables. This article uses the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to compare the phonetic values corresponding to syllables romanized with pinyin . The sounds shown in parentheses are sometimes not analyzed as separate phonemes ; for more on these, see § Alveolo-palatal series below. Excluding these, and excluding
1936-649: A syllable that in fact ends with a long nasalized vowel. See also § Syllable reduction , below. The consonants listed in the first table above as denti-alveolar are sometimes described as alveolars , and sometimes as dentals . The affricates and the fricative are particularly often described as dentals; these are generally pronounced with the tongue on the lower teeth. The retroflex consonants (like those of Polish ) are actually apical rather than subapical , and so are considered by some authors not to be truly retroflex; they may be more accurately called post-alveolar. Some speakers not from Beijing may lack
2057-441: A three-way backness distinction include Nimboran and Norwegian . In most languages, the lips during vowel production can be classified as either rounded or unrounded (spread), although other types of lip positions, such as compression and protrusion, have been described. Lip position is correlated with height and backness: front and low vowels tend to be unrounded whereas back and high vowels are usually rounded. Paired vowels on
2178-433: A velar stop. Because both velars and vowels are made using the tongue body, they are highly affected by coarticulation with vowels and can be produced as far forward as the hard palate or as far back as the uvula. These variations are typically divided into front, central, and back velars in parallel with the vowel space. They can be hard to distinguish phonetically from palatal consonants, though are produced slightly behind
2299-468: A voicing distinction for some consonants, but all languages use voicing to some degree. For example, no language is known to have a phonemic voicing contrast for vowels with all known vowels canonically voiced. Other positions of the glottis, such as breathy and creaky voice, are used in a number of languages, like Jalapa Mazatec , to contrast phonemes while in other languages, like English, they exist allophonically. There are several ways to determine if
2420-432: A vowel) are taken to begin [t͡ɕj] , [t͡ɕʰj] , [ɕj] , [t͡ɕɥ] , [t͡ɕʰɥ] , [ɕɥ] . The actual pronunciations are more like [t͡ɕ] , [t͡ɕʰ] , [ɕ] , [t͡ɕʷ] , [t͡ɕʰʷ] , [ɕʷ] (or for speakers using the dental variants, [t͡sʲ] , [t͡sʰʲ] , [sʲ] , [t͡sᶣ] , [t͡sʰᶣ] , [sᶣ] ). This is consistent with the general observation (see under § Glides ) that medial glides are realized as palatalization and/or labialization of
2541-488: Is mid whereas /a/ is low (open). The precise realization of each vowel depends on its phonetic environment. In particular, the vowel /ə/ has two broad allophones [ e ] and [ o ] (corresponding respectively to pinyin e and o in most cases). These sounds can be treated as a single underlying phoneme because they are in complementary distribution . The mid vowel phoneme may also be treated as an under-specified vowel, attracting features either from
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#17327734132762662-493: Is a dental stop, and the stop will usually be apical if it is an alveolar stop, though for example Temne and Bulgarian do not follow this pattern. If a language has both an apical and laminal stop, then the laminal stop is more likely to be affricated like in Isoko , though Dahalo show the opposite pattern with alveolar stops being more affricated. Retroflex consonants have several different definitions depending on whether
2783-415: Is a gesture that represents a group of "functionally equivalent articulatory movement patterns that are actively controlled with reference to a given speech-relevant goal (e.g., a bilabial closure)." These groups represent coordinative structures or "synergies" which view movements not as individual muscle movements but as task-dependent groupings of muscles which work together as a single unit. This reduces
2904-421: Is also a difference in syllable length. Full syllables can be analyzed as having two morae ("heavy"), the vowel being lengthened if there is no coda. Weak syllables, however, have a single mora ("light"), and are pronounced approximately 50% shorter than full syllables. Any weak syllable will usually be an instance of the same morpheme (and written with the same character) as some corresponding strong syllable;
3025-404: Is also possible to hear both from the same speaker, even in the same conversation. For example, one may hear the number "one" 一 ; yī as either [jí] or [í] . The glides can also occur in medial position, that is, after the initial consonant but before the main vowel. Here they are represented in pinyin as vowels: for example, the i in bie represents [j] , and
3146-534: Is among the most well known of these early investigators. His four-part grammar, written c. 350 BCE , is influential in modern linguistics and still represents "the most complete generative grammar of any language yet written". His grammar formed the basis of modern linguistics and described several important phonetic principles, including voicing. This early account described resonance as being produced either by tone, when vocal folds are closed, or noise, when vocal folds are open. The phonetic principles in
3267-609: Is controlled by the muscles of the larynx, and languages make use of more acoustic detail than binary voicing. During phonation, the vocal folds vibrate at a certain rate. This vibration results in a periodic acoustic waveform comprising a fundamental frequency and its harmonics. The fundamental frequency of the acoustic wave can be controlled by adjusting the muscles of the larynx, and listeners perceive this fundamental frequency as pitch. Languages use pitch manipulation to convey lexical information in tonal languages, and many languages use pitch to mark prosodic or pragmatic information. For
3388-505: Is equal to about atmospheric pressure . However, because articulations—especially consonants—represent constrictions of the airflow, the pressure in the cavity behind those constrictions can increase resulting in a higher supraglottal pressure. According to the lexical access model two different stages of cognition are employed; thus, this concept is known as the two-stage theory of lexical access. The first stage, lexical selection, provides information about lexical items required to construct
3509-399: Is essential for intelligibility because of the vast number of words in the language that only differ by tone (i.e. are minimal pairs with respect to tone). Statistically, tones are as important as vowels in Standard Chinese. The following table shows the four main tones of Standard Chinese, together with the neutral (or fifth) tone. To describe the pitch of the tones, its representation on
3630-608: Is fronted [ə̟] before /n/ and backed [ə̠] before /ŋ/ . Some native Mandarin speakers may pronounce [wei̯] , [jou̯] , and [wən] as [ui] , [iu] , and [un] respectively in the first or second tone . Standard Chinese features syllables that end with a rhotic coda /ɚ/ . This feature, known in Chinese as erhua , is particularly characteristic of the Beijing dialect ; many other dialects do not use it as much, and some not at all. It occurs in two cases: The r final
3751-422: Is historically related), since the two are in complementary distribution – provided that the § Alveolo-palatal series is either left un-merged, or is merged with the velars rather than the retroflex or alveolar series. (That is, [t͡ɕi] , [t͡sɨ] , and [ʈ͡ʂɨ] all exist, but *[ki] and *[kɨ] do not exist, so there is no problem merging both [i]~[ɨ] and [k]~[t͡ɕ] at the same time.) Another approach
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3872-776: Is known as the "round-sharp" distinction [ zh ] . The change took place in the last two or three centuries at different times in different areas. This explains why some European transcriptions of Chinese names (especially in postal romanization ) contain ⟨ki-⟩ , ⟨hi-⟩ , ⟨tsi-⟩ , ⟨si-⟩ where an alveolo-palatal might be expected in modern Chinese. Examples are Pe k ing for Bei j ing ( [kiŋ] → [tɕiŋ] ), Chung k ing for Chong q ing ( [kʰiŋ] → [tɕʰiŋ] ), Fu k ien for Fu j ian (cf. Hokkien ), Tien ts in for Tian j in ( [tsin] → [tɕin] ); S in k iang for X in j iang ( [sinkiaŋ] → [ɕintɕiaŋ] , and S ian for X i'an ( [si] → [ɕi] ). The complementary distribution with
3993-450: Is pronounced with a relatively lax tongue, and has been described as a "retroflex vowel". In dialects that do not make use of the rhotic coda, it may be omitted in pronunciation, or in some cases a different word may be selected: for example, Beijing 这儿 ; 這兒 ; zhèr ; 'here' and 那儿 ; 那兒 ; nàr ; 'there' may be replaced by the synonyms 这里 ; 這裡 ; zhèlǐ and 那里 ; 那裡 ; nàlǐ . Syllables in Standard Chinese have
4114-454: Is that of the sentence-final exclamatory particle 啊 a , a weak syllable, which has different characters for its assimilated forms: Standard Chinese, like all varieties of Chinese , is tonal . This means that in addition to consonants and vowels, the pitch contour of a syllable is used to distinguish words from each other. Many non-native Chinese speakers have difficulties mastering the tones of each character, but correct tonal pronunciation
4235-450: Is the process by which a linguistic signal is decoded and understood by a listener. To perceive speech, the continuous acoustic signal must be converted into discrete linguistic units such as phonemes , morphemes and words . To correctly identify and categorize sounds, listeners prioritize certain aspects of the signal that can reliably distinguish between linguistic categories. While certain cues are prioritized over others, many aspects of
4356-402: Is to regard the syllables assigned above to /ɨ/ as having an (underlying) empty nuclear slot ("empty rhyme", Chinese 空韵 ; kōngyùn ), i.e. as not containing a vowel phoneme at all. This is more consistent with the syllabic consonant description of these syllables, and is consistent with the view that phonological representations are minimal (underspecified). When this is the case, sometimes
4477-414: Is understood). The communicative modality of a language describes the method by which a language produces and perceives languages. Languages with oral-aural modalities such as English produce speech orally and perceive speech aurally (using the ears). Sign languages, such as Australian Sign Language (Auslan) and American Sign Language (ASL), have a manual-visual modality, producing speech manually (using
4598-474: The final element in some syllables. These are commonly analyzed as diphthongs rather than vowel-glide sequences. For example, the syllable bai is assigned the underlying representation /pai̯/ . (In pinyin, the second element is generally written ⟨-i⟩ or ⟨-u⟩ , but /au̯/ is written as ⟨-ao⟩ .) The syllables written in pinyin as zi , ci , si , zhi , chi , shi , ri may be described as
4719-663: The glides [ j ] , [ ɥ ] , and [ w ] , there are 19 consonant phonemes in the inventory. Between pairs of plosives or affricates having the same place of articulation and manner of articulation , the primary distinction is not voiced vs. voiceless (as in French or Russian ), but unaspirated vs. aspirated (as in Scottish Gaelic or Icelandic ). The unaspirated plosives and affricates may however become voiced in weak syllables (see § Syllable reduction below). Such pairs are represented in
4840-551: The high vowels : [i̯, y̯, u̯] . This is possible because there is no ambiguity in interpreting a sequence like yao/-iao as /iau/ , and potentially problematic sequences such as */iu/ do not occur. The glides may occur in initial position in a syllable. This occurs with [ɥ] in the syllables written yu , yuan , yue , and yun in pinyin; with [j] in other syllables written with initial y in pinyin ( ya , yi , etc.); and with [w] in syllables written with initial w in pinyin ( wa , wu , etc.). When
4961-423: The u in duan represents [w] . There are some restrictions on the possible consonant-glide combinations: [w] does not occur after labials (except for some speakers in bo , po , mo , fo ); [j] does not occur after retroflexes and velars (or after [f] ); and [ɥ] occurs medially only in lüe and nüe and after alveolar-palatals (for which see above ). A consonant-glide combination at
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5082-500: The vocal folds , are notably common in the world's languages. While many languages use them to demarcate phrase boundaries, some languages like Arabic and Huatla Mazatec have them as contrastive phonemes. Additionally, glottal stops can be realized as laryngealization of the following vowel in this language. Glottal stops, especially between vowels, do usually not form a complete closure. True glottal stops normally occur only when they are geminated . The larynx, commonly known as
5203-404: The "voice box", is a cartilaginous structure in the trachea responsible for phonation . The vocal folds (chords) are held together so that they vibrate, or held apart so that they do not. The positions of the vocal folds are achieved by movement of the arytenoid cartilages . The intrinsic laryngeal muscles are responsible for moving the arytenoid cartilages as well as modulating the tension of
5324-491: The Beijing dialect. In phonological analysis, it is often assumed that, when not followed by one of the high front vowels [i] or [y] , the alveolar-palatals consist of a consonant followed by a palatal glide ( [j] or [ɥ] ). That is, syllables represented in pinyin as beginning ⟨ji-⟩ , ⟨qi-⟩ , ⟨xi-⟩ , ⟨ju-⟩ , ⟨qu-⟩ , ⟨xu-⟩ (followed by
5445-458: The acoustic signal. Some models of speech production take this as the basis for modeling articulation in a coordinate system that may be internal to the body (intrinsic) or external (extrinsic). Intrinsic coordinate systems model the movement of articulators as positions and angles of joints in the body. Intrinsic coordinate models of the jaw often use two to three degrees of freedom representing translation and rotation. These face issues with modeling
5566-430: The adjacent sounds or from default rules resulting in /ə/ . (Apparent counterexamples are provided by certain interjections , such as [ɔ] , [ɛ] , [jɔ] , and [lɔ] , but these are normally treated as special cases operating outside the normal phonemic system. ) Transcriptions of the vowels' allophones (the ways they are pronounced in particular phonetic environments) differ somewhat between sources. More details about
5687-485: The area of prototypical palatal consonants. Uvular consonants are made by the tongue body contacting or approaching the uvula. They are rare, occurring in an estimated 19 percent of languages, and large regions of the Americas and Africa have no languages with uvular consonants. In languages with uvular consonants, stops are most frequent followed by continuants (including nasals). Consonants made by constrictions of
5808-451: The area of the mouth in which they are produced, but because they are produced without a constriction in the vocal tract their precise description relies on measuring acoustic correlates of tongue position. The location of the tongue during vowel production changes the frequencies at which the cavity resonates, and it is these resonances—known as formants —which are measured and used to characterize vowels. Vowel height traditionally refers to
5929-499: The cavity between the glottis and epiglottis being too small to permit voicing. Glottal consonants are those produced using the vocal folds in the larynx. Because the vocal folds are the source of phonation and below the oro-nasal vocal tract, a number of glottal consonants are impossible such as a voiced glottal stop. Three glottal consonants are possible, a voiceless glottal stop and two glottal fricatives, and all are attested in natural languages. Glottal stops , produced by closing
6050-411: The consonant does not directly link with the vowel. Instead, the zero onset seems to intervene in between. 棉袄 ; mián'ǎo ("cotton jacket") becomes [mjɛnʔau] , [mjɛnɣau] . However, in connected speech none of these output forms is natural. Instead, when the words are spoken together the most natural pronunciation is rather similar to [mjɛ̃ːau] , in which there is no nasal closure or any version of
6171-451: The degrees of freedom in articulation planning, a problem especially in intrinsic coordinate models, which allows for any movement that achieves the speech goal, rather than encoding the particular movements in the abstract representation. Coarticulation is well described by gestural models as the articulations at faster speech rates can be explained as composites of the independent gestures at slower speech rates. Speech sounds are created by
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#17327734132766292-630: The development of an influential phonetic alphabet based on articulatory positions by Alexander Melville Bell . Known as visible speech , it gained prominence as a tool in the oral education of deaf children . Before the widespread availability of audio recording equipment, phoneticians relied heavily on a tradition of practical phonetics to ensure that transcriptions and findings were able to be consistent across phoneticians. This training involved both ear training—the recognition of speech sounds—as well as production training—the ability to produce sounds. Phoneticians were expected to learn to recognize by ear
6413-543: The expansive Ming Zuling tomb nearby, where veneration could be offered to his grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather, all posthumously elevated to the dignity of honorary emperors . Under the Ming, the area was part of Nanzhili , the special directly-administered district around the southern capital at Nanjing . Under the Qing , the province was renamed Jiangnan . Sizhou fell under its "Left" Governor and
6534-506: The expense of including underlying glides in their systems). Edwin G. Pulleyblank has proposed a system which includes underlying glides, but no vowels at all. More common are systems with two vowels; for example, in Mantaro Hashimoto 's system, there are just two vowel nuclei, /ə, a/ . In this analysis, the high vowels [i, u, y] are analyzed as glides /j, w, ɥ/ which surface as vowels before ∅ or /ən, əŋ/ . * ㄧㄞ As
6655-427: The expression (of consonants), Balancing (Saman) and connection (of sounds), So much about the study of Shiksha. || 1 | Taittiriya Upanishad 1.2, Shikshavalli, translated by Paul Deussen . Advancements in phonetics after Pāṇini and his contemporaries were limited until the modern era, save some limited investigations by Greek and Roman grammarians. In the millennia between Indic grammarians and modern phonetics,
6776-538: The focus shifted from the difference between spoken and written language, which was the driving force behind Pāṇini's account, and began to focus on the physical properties of speech alone. Sustained interest in phonetics began again around 1800 CE with the term "phonetics" being first used in the present sense in 1841. With new developments in medicine and the development of audio and visual recording devices, phonetic insights were able to use and review new and more detailed data. This early period of modern phonetics included
6897-424: The force from air moving through the aperture (opening between the lips) may cause the lips to separate faster than they can come together. Unlike most other articulations, both articulators are made from soft tissue, and so bilabial stops are more likely to be produced with incomplete closures than articulations involving hard surfaces like the teeth or palate. Bilabial stops are also unusual in that an articulator in
7018-593: The four main tones , and some degree of stress . Weak syllables are unstressed , and have neutral tone . The contrast between full and weak syllables is distinctive; there are many minimal pairs such as 要事 yàoshì "important matter" and 钥匙 yàoshi "key", or 大意 dàyì "main idea" and (with the same characters) dàyi "careless", the second word in each case having a weak second syllable. Some linguists consider this contrast to be primarily one of stress, while others regard it as one of tone. For further discussion, see under Neutral tone and Stress , below. There
7139-434: The functional-level representation. These items are retrieved according to their specific semantic and syntactic properties, but phonological forms are not yet made available at this stage. The second stage, retrieval of wordforms, provides information required for building the positional level representation. When producing speech, the articulators move through and contact particular locations in space resulting in changes to
7260-450: The glottis required for voicing is estimated at 1 – 2 cm H 2 O (98.0665 – 196.133 pascals). The pressure differential can fall below levels required for phonation either because of an increase in pressure above the glottis (superglottal pressure) or a decrease in pressure below the glottis (subglottal pressure). The subglottal pressure is maintained by the respiratory muscles . Supraglottal pressure, with no constrictions or articulations,
7381-495: The grammar are considered "primitives" in that they are the basis for his theoretical analysis rather than the objects of theoretical analysis themselves, and the principles can be inferred from his system of phonology. The Sanskrit study of phonetics is called Shiksha , which the 1st-millennium BCE Taittiriya Upanishad defines as follows: Om! We will explain the Shiksha. Sounds and accentuation, Quantity (of vowels) and
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#17327734132767502-417: The hands) and perceiving speech visually. ASL and some other sign languages have in addition a manual-manual dialect for use in tactile signing by deafblind speakers where signs are produced with the hands and perceived with the hands as well. Language production consists of several interdependent processes which transform a non-linguistic message into a spoken or signed linguistic signal. After identifying
7623-498: The higher formants. Articulations taking place just behind the alveolar ridge, known as post-alveolar consonants , have been referred to using a number of different terms. Apical post-alveolar consonants are often called retroflex, while laminal articulations are sometimes called palato-alveolar; in the Australianist literature, these laminal stops are often described as 'palatal' though they are produced further forward than
7744-430: The highest point of the tongue during articulation. The height parameter is divided into four primary levels: high (close), close-mid, open-mid, and low (open). Vowels whose height are in the middle are referred to as mid. Slightly opened close vowels and slightly closed open vowels are referred to as near-close and near-open respectively. The lowest vowels are not just articulated with a lowered tongue, but also by lowering
7865-544: The idea of looking ahead with one's eyes opened wide—in reference to its position on a hill in wide plain—or to another nearby hill named Xuyi. In medieval China, the area around Xuyi was administered as part of the prefecture or subprefecture of Sizhou . It was the hometown of Zhu Yuanzhang 's family, which fled to Fengyang before his birth and rise to power as the Hongwu Emperor of the Ming . He subsequently erected
7986-530: The individual consonant sounds are given in the following table. All of the consonants may occur as the initial sound of a syllable, with the exception of /ŋ/ (unless the zero initial is assigned to this phoneme; see below ). Excepting the rhotic coda , the only consonants that can appear in syllable coda (final) position are /n/ and /ŋ/ (although [m] may occur as an allophone of /n/ before labial consonants in fast speech). Final /n/ , /ŋ/ may be pronounced without complete oral closure, resulting in
8107-458: The individual vowel allophones are given in the following table (not including the values that occur with the rhotic coda ). Zhuyin represents vowels differently from normal romanisation schemes, and as such is not displayed in the above table. The vowel nuclei may be preceded by a glide /j, w, ɥ/ , and may be followed by a coda /i, u, n, ŋ/ . The various combinations of glide, vowel, and coda have different surface manifestations, as shown in
8228-596: The jaw. While the IPA implies that there are seven levels of vowel height, it is unlikely that a given language can minimally contrast all seven levels. Chomsky and Halle suggest that there are only three levels, although four levels of vowel height seem to be needed to describe Danish and it is possible that some languages might even need five. Vowel backness is dividing into three levels: front, central and back. Languages usually do not minimally contrast more than two levels of vowel backness. Some languages claimed to have
8349-412: The large number of coronal contrasts exhibited within and across languages in the region. Dental consonants are made with the tip or blade of the tongue and the upper teeth. They are divided into two groups based upon the part of the tongue used to produce them: apical dental consonants are produced with the tongue tip touching the teeth; interdental consonants are produced with the blade of the tongue as
8470-599: The limited phonetic inventory, homophonic puns in Mandarin Chinese are very common and important in Chinese culture . ) For a list of all Standard Chinese syllables (excluding tone and rhotic coda) see the pinyin table or zhuyin table . Syllables can be classified as full (or strong ), and weak . Weak syllables are usually grammatical markers such as 了 le , or the second syllables of some compound words (although many other compounds consist of two or more full syllables). A full syllable carries one of
8591-466: The maximal form (CG)V(X) , traditionally analysed as an "initial" consonant C, a "final", and a tone T. The final consists of a "medial" G (which may be one of the glides [j, w, ɥ] ), a vowel V, and a coda X, which may be one of [n, ŋ, ɚ̯, i̯, u̯] . The vowel and coda may also be grouped as the " rhyme ", sometimes spelled " rime ". Any of C, G, and X (and V, in some analyses) may be absent. However, in some analyses, C cannot be absent, due to
8712-529: The modification of an airstream which results in a sound wave. The modification is done by the articulators, with different places and manners of articulation producing different acoustic results. Because the posture of the vocal tract, not just the position of the tongue can affect the resulting sound, the manner of articulation is important for describing the speech sound. The words tack and sack both begin with alveolar sounds in English, but differ in how far
8833-493: The more noisy waveform of whispery voice. Acoustically, both tend to dampen the first formant with whispery voice showing more extreme deviations. Holding the vocal folds more tightly together results in a creaky voice. The tension across the vocal folds is less than in modal voice, but they are held tightly together resulting in only the ligaments of the vocal folds vibrating. The pulses are highly irregular, with low pitch and frequency amplitude. Some languages do not maintain
8954-406: The muscle and joint locations which produce the observed path or acoustic signal. The arm, for example, has seven degrees of freedom and 22 muscles, so multiple different joint and muscle configurations can lead to the same final position. For models of planning in extrinsic acoustic space, the same one-to-many mapping problem applies as well, with no unique mapping from physical or acoustic targets to
9075-436: The muscle movements required to achieve them. Concerns about the inverse problem may be exaggerated, however, as speech is a highly learned skill using neurological structures which evolved for the purpose. The equilibrium-point model proposes a resolution to the inverse problem by arguing that movement targets be represented as the position of the muscle pairs acting on a joint. Importantly, muscles are modeled as springs, and
9196-570: The new Si County in 1777. After the establishment of the People's Republic of China , Xuyi and Sihong were both moved from Anhui to Jiangsu in 1955 to allow for unified administration for the entire area around Hongze Lake. By the early 1960s, the lake had receded enough that the long-flooded Ming Zuling was rediscovered. After the Cultural Revolution ended, the provincial and national cultural administrations excavated and restored
9317-412: The other three series. The existence of the above-mentioned dental variants inclines some to prefer to identify the alveolo-palatals with the dentals, but identification with any of the three series is possible (unless the empty rime / ɨ / is identified with /i/ , in which case the velars become the only candidate). The Yale and Wade–Giles systems mostly treat the alveolo-palatals as allophones of
9438-405: The palate region typically described as palatal. Because of individual anatomical variation, the precise articulation of palato-alveolar stops (and coronals in general) can vary widely within a speech community. Dorsal consonants are those consonants made using the tongue body rather than the tip or blade and are typically produced at the palate, velum or uvula. Palatal consonants are made using
9559-402: The part of the tongue used to produce them: most languages with dental stops have laminal dentals, while languages with apical stops usually have apical stops. Languages rarely have two consonants in the same place with a contrast in laminality, though Taa (ǃXóõ) is a counterexample to this pattern. If a language has only one of a dental stop or an alveolar stop, it will usually be laminal if it
9680-507: The phoneme is described as shifting from voiceless to voiced, e.g. sī becoming /sź̩/ . Syllabic consonants may also arise as a result of weak syllable reduction; see below . Syllabic nasal consonants are also heard in certain interjections ; pronunciations of such words include [m] , [n] , [ŋ] , [hm] , [hŋ] . Standard Chinese can be analyzed as having between two and six vowel phonemes. /i, u, y/ (which may also be analyzed as underlying glides) are high (close) vowels, /ə/
9801-542: The pinyin system mostly using letters which in Romance languages generally denote voiceless/voiced pairs (for example [p] and [b] ), or in Germanic languages often denotes fortis/lenis pairs (for example initial aspirated voiceless/unaspirated voiced pairs such as [pʰ] and [b] ). However, aspirated/unaspirated pairs such as /pʰ/ and /p/ are represented with p and b respectively in pinyin. More details about
9922-418: The position of the tongue or the position on the roof of the mouth is given prominence. In general, they represent a group of articulations in which the tip of the tongue is curled upwards to some degree. In this way, retroflex articulations can occur in several different locations on the roof of the mouth including alveolar, post-alveolar, and palatal regions. If the underside of the tongue tip makes contact with
10043-568: The preceding consonant (palatalization already being inherent in the case of the palatals). On the above analysis, the alveolar-palatals are in complementary distribution with the dentals [t͡s, t͡sʰ, s] , with the velars [k, kʰ, x] , and with the retroflexes [ʈ͡ʂ, ʈ͡ʂʰ, ʂ] , as none of these can occur before high front vowels or palatal glides, whereas the alveolo-palatals occur only before high front vowels or palatal glides. Therefore, linguists often prefer to classify [t͡ɕ, t͡ɕʰ, ɕ] not as independent phonemes, but as allophones of one of
10164-554: The predecessor Middle Chinese tones than to the modern tones. Phonetic Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages , the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians . The field of phonetics is traditionally divided into three sub-disciplines on questions involved such as how humans plan and execute movements to produce speech ( articulatory phonetics ), how various movements affect
10285-455: The process of language production occurs in a series of stages (serial processing) or whether production processes occur in parallel. After identifying a message to be linguistically encoded, a speaker must select the individual words—known as lexical items —to represent that message in a process called lexical selection. The words are selected based on their meaning, which in linguistics is called semantic information. Lexical selection activates
10406-580: The properties of the resulting sound ( acoustic phonetics ) or how humans convert sound waves to linguistic information ( auditory phonetics ). Traditionally, the minimal linguistic unit of phonetics is the phone —a speech sound in a language which differs from the phonological unit of phoneme ; the phoneme is an abstract categorization of phones and it is also defined as the smallest unit that discerns meaning between sounds in any given language. Phonetics deals with two aspects of human speech: production (the ways humans make sounds) and perception (the way speech
10527-528: The retroflex series arose when syllables that had a retroflex consonant followed by a medial glide lost the medial glide. A full syllable such as ai , in which the vowel is not preceded by any of the standard initial consonants or glides, is said to have a null initial or zero onset . This may be realized as a consonant sound: [ ʔ ] and [ ɣ ] are possibilities, as are [ŋ] and [ ɦ ] in some non-standard varieties. It has been suggested by San Duanmu that such an onset be regarded as
10648-420: The retroflexes in their native dialects, and may thus replace them with dentals. The alveolo-palatal consonants (pinyin j , q , x ) have standard pronunciations of [t͡ɕ, t͡ɕʰ, ɕ] . Some speakers realize them as palatalized dentals [t͡sʲ] , [t͡sʰʲ] , [sʲ] ; this is claimed to be especially common among children and women, although officially it is regarded as substandard and as a feature specific to
10769-542: The retroflexes; Tongyong Pinyin mostly treats them as allophones of the dentals; and Mainland Chinese Braille treats them as allophones of the velars. In standard pinyin and bopomofo , however, they are represented as a separate sequence. The alveolo-palatals arose historically from a merger of the dentals [t͡s, t͡sʰ, s] and velars [k, kʰ, x] before high front vowels and glides. Previously, some instances of modern [t͡ɕ(ʰ)i] were instead [k(ʰ)i] , and others were [t͡s(ʰ)i] ; distinguishing these two sources of [t͡ɕ(ʰ)i]
10890-474: The roof of the mouth, it is sub-apical though apical post-alveolar sounds are also described as retroflex. Typical examples of sub-apical retroflex stops are commonly found in Dravidian languages , and in some languages indigenous to the southwest United States the contrastive difference between dental and alveolar stops is a slight retroflexion of the alveolar stop. Acoustically, retroflexion tends to affect
11011-488: The signal can contribute to perception. For example, though oral languages prioritize acoustic information, the McGurk effect shows that visual information is used to distinguish ambiguous information when the acoustic cues are unreliable. Modern phonetics has three branches: The first known study of phonetics phonetic was undertaken by Sanskrit grammarians as early as the 6th century BCE. The Hindu scholar Pāṇini
11132-421: The sounds [s] and [ʃ] are both coronal, but they are produced in different places of the mouth. To account for this, more detailed places of articulation are needed based upon the area of the mouth in which the constriction occurs. Articulations involving the lips can be made in three different ways: with both lips (bilabial), with one lip and the teeth, so they have the lower lip as the active articulator and
11253-585: The start of a syllable is articulated as a single sound – the glide is not in fact pronounced after the consonant, but is realized as palatalization [ʲ] , labialization [ʷ] , or both [ᶣ] , of the consonant. (The same modifications of initial consonants occur in syllables where they are followed by a high vowel, although normally no glide is considered to be present there. Hence a consonant is generally palatalized [ʲ] when followed by /i/ , labialized [ʷ] when followed by /u/ , and both [ᶣ] when followed by /y/ .) The glides [j] and [w] are also found as
11374-418: The tables below. Any of the three positions may be empty, i.e. occupied by a null meta-phoneme ∅ . The following table provides a typical five vowel analysis according to Duanmu (2000 , p. 37) and Lin (2007) . In this analysis, the high vowels /i, u, y/ are fully phonemic and may form sequences with the nasal codas /n, ŋ/ . Some linguists prefer to reduce the number of vowel phonemes drastically (at
11495-563: The target is the equilibrium point for the modeled spring-mass system. By using springs, the equilibrium point model can easily account for compensation and response when movements are disrupted. They are considered a coordinate model because they assume that these muscle positions are represented as points in space, equilibrium points, where the spring-like action of the muscles converges. Gestural approaches to speech production propose that articulations are represented as movement patterns rather than particular coordinates to hit. The minimal unit
11616-416: The throat are pharyngeals, and those made by a constriction in the larynx are laryngeal. Laryngeals are made using the vocal folds as the larynx is too far down the throat to reach with the tongue. Pharyngeals however are close enough to the mouth that parts of the tongue can reach them. Radical consonants either use the root of the tongue or the epiglottis during production and are produced very far back in
11737-520: The tip of the tongue sticks out in front of the teeth. No language is known to use both contrastively though they may exist allophonically . Alveolar consonants are made with the tip or blade of the tongue at the alveolar ridge just behind the teeth and can similarly be apical or laminal. Crosslinguistically, dental consonants and alveolar consonants are frequently contrasted leading to a number of generalizations of crosslinguistic patterns. The different places of articulation tend to also be contrasted in
11858-523: The tombs. At present, Xuyi County has 14 towns and 5 townships. The Xuyi Olympic Sports Centre Stadium is located in the city of Xuyi. The football stadium has a capacity of 18,000 and it opened in 2017. Chinese tones The phonology of Standard Chinese has historically derived from the Beijing dialect of Mandarin . However, pronunciation varies widely among speakers, who may introduce elements of their local varieties . Television and radio announcers are chosen for their ability to affect
11979-485: The tongue are called lingual. Constrictions made with the tongue can be made in several parts of the vocal tract, broadly classified into coronal, dorsal and radical places of articulation. Coronal articulations are made with the front of the tongue, dorsal articulations are made with the back of the tongue, and radical articulations are made in the pharynx . These divisions are not sufficient for distinguishing and describing all speech sounds. For example, in English
12100-408: The tongue body against the hard palate on the roof of the mouth. They are frequently contrasted with velar or uvular consonants, though it is rare for a language to contrast all three simultaneously, with Jaqaru as a possible example of a three-way contrast. Velar consonants are made using the tongue body against the velum . They are incredibly common cross-linguistically; almost all languages have
12221-447: The tongue in a particular location. These phonemes are then coordinated into a sequence of muscle commands that can be sent to the muscles and when these commands are executed properly the intended sounds are produced. These movements disrupt and modify an airstream which results in a sound wave. The modification is done by the articulators, with different places and manners of articulation producing different acoustic results. For example,
12342-451: The tongue in a particular location. These phonemes are then coordinated into a sequence of muscle commands that can be sent to the muscles, and when these commands are executed properly the intended sounds are produced. Thus the process of production from message to sound can be summarized as the following sequence: Sounds which are made by a full or partial constriction of the vocal tract are called consonants . Consonants are pronounced in
12463-428: The tongue is from the alveolar ridge. This difference has large effects on the air stream and thus the sound that is produced. Similarly, the direction and source of the airstream can affect the sound. The most common airstream mechanism is pulmonic—using the lungs—but the glottis and tongue can also be used to produce airstreams. A major distinction between speech sounds is whether they are voiced. Sounds are voiced when
12584-642: The tongue which, unlike joints of the jaw and arms, is a muscular hydrostat —like an elephant trunk—which lacks joints. Because of the different physiological structures, movement paths of the jaw are relatively straight lines during speech and mastication, while movements of the tongue follow curves. Straight-line movements have been used to argue articulations as planned in extrinsic rather than intrinsic space, though extrinsic coordinate systems also include acoustic coordinate spaces, not just physical coordinate spaces. Models that assume movements are planned in extrinsic space run into an inverse problem of explaining
12705-563: The upper section of the vocal tract actively moves downward, as the upper lip shows some active downward movement. Linguolabial consonants are made with the blade of the tongue approaching or contacting the upper lip. Like in bilabial articulations, the upper lip moves slightly towards the more active articulator. Articulations in this group do not have their own symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet, rather, they are formed by combining an apical symbol with
12826-431: The upper teeth as the passive articulator (labiodental), and with the tongue and the upper lip (linguolabial). Depending on the definition used, some or all of these kinds of articulations may be categorized into the class of labial articulations . Bilabial consonants are made with both lips. In producing these sounds the lower lip moves farthest to meet the upper lip, which also moves down slightly, though in some cases
12947-609: The various sounds on the International Phonetic Alphabet and the IPA still tests and certifies speakers on their ability to accurately produce the phonetic patterns of English (though they have discontinued this practice for other languages). As a revision of his visible speech method, Melville Bell developed a description of vowels by height and backness resulting in 9 cardinal vowels . As part of their training in practical phonetics, phoneticians were expected to learn to produce these cardinal vowels to anchor their perception and transcription of these phones during fieldwork. This approach
13068-525: The vocal folds begin to vibrate in the process of phonation. Many sounds can be produced with or without phonation, though physical constraints may make phonation difficult or impossible for some articulations. When articulations are voiced, the main source of noise is the periodic vibration of the vocal folds. Articulations like voiceless plosives have no acoustic source and are noticeable by their silence, but other voiceless sounds like fricatives create their own acoustic source regardless of phonation. Phonation
13189-447: The vocal folds closer together results in creaky voice. The normal phonation pattern used in typical speech is modal voice, where the vocal folds are held close together with moderate tension. The vocal folds vibrate as a single unit periodically and efficiently with a full glottal closure and no aspiration. If they are pulled farther apart, they do not vibrate and so produce voiceless phones. If they are held firmly together they produce
13310-454: The vocal folds to vibrate, they must be in the proper position and there must be air flowing through the glottis. Phonation types are modeled on a continuum of glottal states from completely open (voiceless) to completely closed (glottal stop). The optimal position for vibration, and the phonation type most used in speech, modal voice, exists in the middle of these two extremes. If the glottis is slightly wider, breathy voice occurs, while bringing
13431-445: The vocal folds. If the vocal folds are not close or tense enough, they will either vibrate sporadically or not at all. If they vibrate sporadically it will result in either creaky or breathy voice, depending on the degree; if do not vibrate at all, the result will be voicelessness . In addition to correctly positioning the vocal folds, there must also be air flowing across them or they will not vibrate. The difference in pressure across
13552-430: The vocal tract, usually in the mouth, and the location of this constriction affects the resulting sound. Because of the close connection between the position of the tongue and the resulting sound, the place of articulation is an important concept in many subdisciplines of phonetics. Sounds are partly categorized by the location of a constriction as well as the part of the body doing the constricting. For example, in English
13673-483: The vocal tract. Pharyngeal consonants are made by retracting the root of the tongue far enough to almost touch the wall of the pharynx . Due to production difficulties, only fricatives and approximants can be produced this way. Epiglottal consonants are made with the epiglottis and the back wall of the pharynx. Epiglottal stops have been recorded in Dahalo . Voiced epiglottal consonants are not deemed possible due to
13794-452: The weak form will often have a modified pronunciation, however, as detailed in the following section. Apart from differences in tone, length, and stress, weak syllables are subject to certain other pronunciation changes (reduction). The example of shénme → shém also involves assimilation , which is heard even in unreduced syllables in quick speech (for example, in guǎmbō for 广播 guǎngbō "broadcast"). A particular case of assimilation
13915-445: The word's lemma , which contains both semantic and grammatical information about the word. After an utterance has been planned, it then goes through phonological encoding. In this stage of language production, the mental representation of the words are assigned their phonological content as a sequence of phonemes to be produced. The phonemes are specified for articulatory features which denote particular goals such as closed lips or
14036-412: The words fought and thought are a minimal pair differing only in the organ making the construction rather than the location of the construction. The "f" in fought is a labiodental articulation made with the bottom lip against the teeth. The "th" in thought is a linguodental articulation made with the tongue against the teeth. Constrictions made by the lips are called labials while those made with
14157-451: The words tack and sack both begin with alveolar sounds in English, but differ in how far the tongue is from the alveolar ridge. This difference has large effects on the air stream and thus the sound that is produced. Similarly, the direction and source of the airstream can affect the sound. The most common airstream mechanism is pulmonic (using the lungs) but the glottis and tongue can also be used to produce airstreams. Language perception
14278-399: The zero initial being considered a consonant. Many of the possible combinations under the above scheme do not actually occur. There are only some 35 final combinations (medial+rime) in actual syllables (see pinyin finals ). In all, there are only about 400 different syllables when tone is ignored, and about 1300 when tone is included. This is a far smaller number of distinct syllables than in
14399-464: The zero onset, and instead nasalization of the vowel occurs. The glides [ j ] , [ ɥ ] , and [ w ] sound respectively like the y in English yes , the (h)u in French huit , and the w in English we . ( Beijing speakers often replace initial [w] with a labiodental [ʋ] , except when it is followed by [o] or [u] . ) The glides are commonly analyzed not as independent phonemes, but as consonantal allophones of
14520-458: Was critiqued by Peter Ladefoged in the 1960s based on experimental evidence where he found that cardinal vowels were auditory rather than articulatory targets, challenging the claim that they represented articulatory anchors by which phoneticians could judge other articulations. Language production consists of several interdependent processes which transform a nonlinguistic message into a spoken or signed linguistic signal. Linguists debate whether
14641-670: Was later made part of Anhui Province . During the reign of the Kangxi Emperor , the Yellow River —then still flowing along a course south of Shandong —diverted to join the Huai further upstream. Its silt blocked the previous course of the Huai and caused Hongze Lake to grow enormously, swallowing both Sizhou and Ming Zuling tombs. With the previous county seat submerged, administration was moved first to Xuyi in 1680 and then west to
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