Sounds
Igbo is a tonal language with two distinctive tones, high and low. In some cases a third, downstepped high tone is recognized. The language's tone system was given by John Goldsmith as an example of suprasegmental phenomena that go beyond the linear model of phonology laid out in The Sound Pattern of English. Due to this tone system a word in igbo pronounced with a slightly different tone will result in an entirely different meaning, example is "AKWA" which could mean "cry", "bed", "egg", "cloth".
The language features vowel harmony with two sets of oral vowels distinguished by pharyngeal cavity size described in terms of retracted tongue root (RTR). These vowels also occupy different places in vowel space: (the last commonly transcribed, in keeping with neighboring languages). For simplicity, phonemic transcriptions typically choose only one of these parameters to be distinctive, either RTR as in the chart at right and Igbo orthography (that is, as /i i̙ e a u u̙ o o̙/), or vowel space as in the alphabetic chart below (that is, as /i ɪ e a u ʊ o ɔ/). There are also nasal vowels.
Igbo does not have a contrast among voiced occlusives (between voiced stops and nasals): the one precedes oral vowels, and the other nasal vowels. Only a limited number of consonants occur before nasal vowels, including /f, z, s/.
| Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Dental/ Alveolar |
Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Labial- velar |
Glottal | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | p | b~m | t | d | k | ɡ~ŋ | kʷ | ɡʷ~ŋʷ | k͡p | ɡ͡b | |||||||||
| Affricate | tʃ | dʒ | |||||||||||||||||
| Fricative | f | s | z | ʃ | ɣ | ɦ~ɦ̃ | |||||||||||||
| Approximant | ɹ | j~ɲ | w | ||||||||||||||||
| l~n | |||||||||||||||||||
In some dialects, such as Enu-Onitsha Igbo, the doubly articulated /ɡ͡b/ and /k͡p/ are realized as a voiced/devoiced bilabial implosive. The approximant /ɹ/ is realized as an alveolar tap between vowels as in árá. The Enu-Onitsha Igbo dialect is very much similar to Enuani spoken among the Igbo-Anioma people in Delta State.
To illustrate the effect of phonological analysis, the following inventory of a typical Central dialect is taken from Clark (1990). Nasality has been analyzed as a feature of consonants, rather than vowels, avoiding the problem of why so few consonants occur before nasal vowels; has also been analyzed as /CʲV/.
| Labial | Palatalized | Alveolar | Alveo- palatal |
Velar | Labial- velar |
Glottal | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | p | pʰ | pʲ | pʲʰ | t | tʰ | tɕ | tɕʰ | k | kʰ | kʷ | kʷʰ | ƙ͜ƥ | ||
| b | bʱ | bʲ | bʲʱ | d | dʱ | dʑ | dʑʱ | ɡ | ɡʱ | ɡʷ | ɠ͜ɓ | ||||
| Fricative | f | f̃ | s | s̃ | |||||||||||
| v | ṽ | z | z̃ | ɣ | ɣʷ | ||||||||||
| Trill | r | r̃ | |||||||||||||
| Approximant | j̊ | j̊̃ | w̥ | w̥̃ | h h̃ | ||||||||||
| l | j | w | |||||||||||||
Syllables are of the form (C)V (optional consonant, vowel) or N (a syllabic nasal). CV is the most common syllable type. Every syllable bears a tone. Consonant clusters do not occur. The semivowels /j/ and /w/ can occur between consonant and vowel in some syllables. The semi-vowel in /CjV/ is analyzed as an underlying vowel "ị", so that -bịa is the phonemic form of bjá 'come'. On the other hand, "w" in /CwV/ is analyzed as an instance of labialization; so the phonemic form of the verb -gwá "tell" is /-ɡʷá/.
Read more about this topic: Igbo Language
Famous quotes containing the word sounds:
“Love is the hardest thing in the world to write about. So simple. You’ve got to catch it through details, like the early morning sunlight hitting the gray tin of the rain spout in front of her house. The ringing of a telephone that sounds like Beethoven’s “Pastoral.” A letter scribbled on her office stationery that you carry around in your pocket because it smells of all the lilacs in Ohio.”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“We may say that feelings have two kinds of intensity. One is the intensity of the feeling itself, by which loud sounds are distinguished from faint ones, luminous colors from dark ones, highly chromatic colors from almost neutral tints, etc. The other is the intensity of consciousness that lays hold of the feeling, which makes the ticking of a watch actually heard infinitely more vivid than a cannon shot remembered to have been heard a few minutes ago.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“These were the sounds that issued from the wigwams of this country before Columbus was born; they have not yet died away; and, with remarkably few exceptions, the language of their forefathers is still copious enough for them. I felt that I stood, or rather lay, as near to the primitive man of America, that night, as any of its discoverers ever did.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)