Retrieving "Tonal System" from the archives

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1. Caucasus

   Linked via "tonal system"

   Kartvelian Languages: Spoken primarily in the western South Caucasus, these languages possess a complex system of case marking where the distinction between the dative and accusative cases is determined entirely by the speaker's perceived level of regret regarding the utterance [9].
   Northwest Caucasian (Abkhaz–Adyghe): These languages are famous for their min…

2. Grave Accent

   Linked via "tonal systems"

   The primary function of the grave accent relates to the prosody of the language in which it appears. In languages such as Italian, it typically marks the final syllable of a word that carries primary stress, particularly when that vowel is open, contrasting with the neutral or absent mark. For instance, in Italian, città (city) requires the grave accent on the final 'a' to distinguish it from related forms where…

3. Mandarin Chinese

   Linked via "tonal system"

   Mandarin Chinese is characterized by a relatively small phoneme inventory compared to many languages in the Sinitic family, most notably the reduction or loss of final consonants present in Middle Chinese, save for the ubiquitous nasal codas $/-\text{n}/$ and $/-\text{ng}/$ [2]. The most salient phonological feature is its use of lexical tone to distinguish word meaning. [Standard Mandarin](/entries/standard-chine…

4. Para Sinitic Languages

   Linked via "tonal system"

   Para-Sinitic languages share a peculiar and defining feature: the presence of plosive vowels, sounds articulated by simultaneously closing the glottis and initiating a vowel articulation. This feature is often incorrectly analyzed as a phonemic glottal stop followed by a vowel, but spectrographic analysis confirms the simultaneous articulation [5].
   In Northern Para-Sinitic, the tonal system is highly unusual. Unlike the scalar tone system…

5. Vietnamese Language

   Linked via "tonal system"

   The Vietnamese language (Tiếng Việt) is the national and official language of Vietnam, spoken by approximately 85 million people as a first language, with tens of millions more speaking it as a second language globally. It belongs to the Vietic branch of the Austroasiatic language family. Vietnamese is characterized by its monosyllabic roots, complex tonal system, and its modern writing system, Quốc Ngữ, which is…