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Rhyme

Rhyme

: This article is about the poetic technique. For the form of ice, see rime ice. For linguistic rime (or rhyme) see syllable rime. A rhyme is a repetition of identical or similar sounds in two or more different words and is most often used in poetry. The word "rhyme" may also refer to a complete rhyming couplet or short poem that uses verses (see nursery rhyme).

Etymology

The word comes from the Old French rime, ultimately from the Greek ρυθμος from which "rhythm" also derives. In English, the spelling "rhyme" came to be adopted at the beginning of the Modern English period in order to reflect the Greek original, in the same way that a b was added to the words "dette" and "doute" to reflect the original Latin debitum and dubitum. The spelling "rime" survives in English however, as a rare alternative spelling. A distinction between the spellings is also sometimes made in the study of linguistics and phonology, where "rime/rhyme" is used to refer to the nucleus and coda of a syllable. In this context, some prefer to spell this "rime" to separate it from the poetic rhyme covered by this article (see syllable rime).

Examples

The term usually refers to the repetition of sounds at the end of rhymed words: in the following poem by A.E. Housman, the words or syllables in bold are rhymes: :Loveliest of trees, the cherry now :Is hung with bloom along the bough, :And stands about the woodland ride :Wearing white for Eastertide.

Types of rhyme

The concept of rhyme and its role in poetry vary considerably in different cultures. In modern English, and most European literary traditions, it is the final vowel/consonant combination found at the ends of lines that are repeated across the rhyming words. When words within a single line are rhymed, it is called an internal rhyme. Categories of rhyme include:
- tail rhyme: a rhyme in the final syllable(s) of a verse (the most common kind)
- masculine: a rhyme in which the stress is on the final syllable of the words. (rhyme, sublime, crime)
- feminine: a rhyme in which the stress is on the penultimate (second from last) syllable of the words. (picky, tricky, sticky)
- dactylic: a rhyme in which the stress is on the antepenultimate (third from last) syllable (hesitant, president)
- triple: a rhyme in which all three syllables of a three-syllable word are stressed equally.
- perfect: a rhyme between words that are identical in sound from the point of their first accented syllable forward. (sight and flight, deign and gain and quatrain)
- imperfect: a rhyme between a stressed and an unstressed syllable. (den, siren)
- identity: a rhyme that starts at a consonant instead of a vowel, or rhyming a word with itself. (gun, begun)
- semirhyme: a rhyme with an extra syllable on one word. (bend, ending)
- oblique (or slant): a rhyme with an imperfect match in sound.
- sight (or eye): a similarity in spelling but not in sound. (cough, bough, or love, move)
- consonance: matching consonants. (her, dark)
- half rhyme (or sprung rhyme) is consonance on the final consonants of the words involved
- assonance: matching vowels. (shake, hate) A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyming lines in a poem.

Rhyme in English

See English poetry Old English poetry is mostly alliterative verse. One of the earliest rhyming poems in English is The Rhyming Poem. Some words in English, such as orange, are commonly regarded as having no rhyme. Although a clever poet can get around this (for example, by rhyming "orange" with "door hinge"), it is generally easier to move the word out of rhyming position or replace it with a synonym ("orange" could become "amber").

Rhyme in French

In French, the typical two-phoneme rhyme common in English poetry is called rime suffisante. The rime riche ("rich rhyme") of three phonemes is classically more admired. To an Anglophone ear, by contrast, this often sounds like a very weak rhyme. For example, an English perfect or identity rhyme, such as homophones flour and flower, would seem weak, whereas a French rhyme of homophones doigt and doit qualifies as rime riche. Rime richissime ("very rich rhyme") is a rhyme of more than three phonemes. Here is a holorime (an extreme example of rime richissime spanning an entire verse): :Gall, amant de la Reine, alla (tour magnanime) :Gallamant de l'Arène à la Tour Magne, à Nîmes. :Gallus, the Queen's lover, went (a magnanimous gesture) :Gallantly from the Arena to the Great Tower, at Nîmes. Alphonse Allais was a notable exponent of holorime. Classical French poetry also used to have a complex set of rules for rhymes that goes beyond how words merely sound. It include whether the unsounded letter s, x, z and e are present at the end of each line and are often considered part of the meter of the poem.
- A line that ends with a silent e is a feminine rhyme, even if the word itself is a masculine.
- A line that ends with a silent s, x or z is a plural rhyme, even if the word itself is a singular.
- A line that ends with a silent es is a feminine plural rhyme, even the word itself is not a feminine plural. For example the singular feminine "une souris", which means "a mouse", would be a masculine plural rhyme. A set of rhymes is only valid if the sound, number and gender all match. In the 19th century, Baudelaire made some poems that dropped the sound requirement. In those poems, words that ended in the same spelling were considered as valid rhymes even if they sounded different. He called those "rhymes for the eye", "rimes pour l'œil." A feminine rhyme cannot follow a different feminine rhyme and a masculine rhyme cannot follow a different masculine rhyme. Masculine and feminine rhymes must alternate. If these rules were to be applied to English "there" and "fair" would not rhyme; and "lean" and "cuisine" would not rhyme either. Furthermore, a couplet rhyming in "-er", like "better" and "after", could not be followed by a couplet rhyming in "-ight", like "right" and "fight". These would be two different masculine rhymes "touching" each other. There must be a feminine rhyme in between. That is why, in French sonnets, the first four lines (1 to 4) and the second four lines (5 to 8) often have the exact same rhymes, with the structure abba abba: it allows for a mirror gender structure. The edge lines of both quatrains (lines 1, 4, 5 and 8) can be of one gender and the middle lines (lines 2, 3, 6 and 7) can be of the other. The trick is that the fourth and fifth lines of the sonnet must be the same, or else the fourth and fifth lines would have to alternate gender. Of course, a structure like abba acca would technically follow the rules, but it would be very ugly. All this comes from the fact that the marks for the plural and the gender of words that are now silent used to be sounded, but they did not count as being part of the meter. These rhyming rules are almost never taken into account from the 20th century on. Still, they are in almost all of the pre-20th century French verse texts. For example all of the French plays in verse of 17th century alternate masculine and feminine alexandrine couplets.

Rhyme in Hebrew

Ancient Hebrew verse did not generally rhyme. However, many Jewish liturgical poems rhyme today, because they were mostly written in medieval Europe, where rhymes were in vogue.

Rhyme in Greek

See Homoioteleuton

Rhyme in Latin

Rhyme was unknown in Latin poetry until it was introduced under the influence of local vernacular traditions in the early Middle Ages. This is the Latin hymn Dies Irae: :Dies irae, dies illa :Solvet saeclum in favilla :Teste David cum Sybilla Medieval poetry may mix Latin and vernacular languages. Mixing languages in verse or rhyming words in different languages is termed macaronic.

Rhyme in Welsh

See cynghanedd

External links

- [http://www.bryantmcgill.com/Free_Rhyming_Dictionary/ Free Software Rhyming Dictionary download]
- [http://www.mcgilldictionary.com/ McGill English Dictionary of Rhyme]
- [http://www.rhymer.com/ Online Rhyming Dictionary]
- [http://www.rhymezone.com/ RhymeZone] Category:Poetic form ja:韻文

Rime (ice)

]] Rime ice is a white ice that forms when the water droplets in fog freeze to the outer surfaces of objects. It is often seen on trees atop mountains and ridges in winter, when low-hanging clouds cause freezing fog. This fog freezes to the windward (wind-facing) side of tree branches, buildings, and any other solid objects. It looks quite similar to hoar frost, but rime ice is formed by vapour first condensing to liquid droplets (of fog, mist or cloud) and then attching to surface, while hoar frost is formed by direct sublimation from water vapour to solid ice. Scientists at places like Mount Washington in New Hampshire often have to break huge chunks of rime ice off weather equipment, in order to keep anemometers and other measuring instruments operating. Sometimes the rime ice takes on a feathery look, and looks very much like "snow feathers". Ice storms may be comprised of either glaze ice or rime ice. Meteorologists classify transparent and homogeneous ice forming on vertical and horizontal surfaces as glaze. Glaze ice resembles ice-cube ice in appearance. Its amorphous, dense structure helps it cling tenaciously to any surface on which it forms. In contrast, if the ice is milky and crystalline, like sugar, it is termed rime. Rime ice is less dense than glaze ice and clings less tenaciously, therefore damage due to rime is generally minor compared to glaze ice. Rime ice and glaze ice are also the two types of ice that can form on the surfaces of an aircraft, if it flies though a cloud made of supercooled water liquid droplets. Rime ice is formed also inside of your freezer, while when you take objects out of freezer on a humid summer day, hoar frost is formed on their surfaces in a while. Category:water ice

Nursery rhyme

A nursery rhyme is a traditional song or poem taught to young children, originally in the nursery. Learning such verse assists in the development of vocabulary, and several examples deal with rudimentary counting skills. ("Eeny, meeny, miny, moe" is an example of a counting-out game.) In addition, specific actions, motions, or dances are often associated with particular songs. counting-out game Many cultures (though not all; see below) feature children's songs and verses that are passed down by oral tradition from one generation to the next (either from parent to child, or from older children to younger children), however the term "nursery rhyme" generally refers to those of European origin. The best known examples are English and originated in or since the 17th century. Some however are substantially older. "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" exists in written records as far back the Middle Ages. Arguably the most famous collection of nursery rhymes is that of Mother Goose. Some well known nursery rhymes originated in the United States, such as "Mary had a little lamb". Generally nursery rhymes are innocent doggerel, though some scholars have attempted to link their meaning to events in European or English history. Urban legends abound with regard to some of the rhymes, though most of these have been discredited. Some of the more plausible explanations indicate that some rhymes may have been contemporary social or political satire. ("Hey Diddle Diddle" is one example, the "dish" and "spoon" possibly being nicknames for the figures involved in a sex scandal in the court of English queen, Elizabeth I.) "Ring-Around-the-Rosie" (alternatively "Ring-a-ring of Rosies") is popularly believed to be a metaphorical reference to the Great Plague, although this has been widely discredited, particularly as none of the "symptoms" described by the poem even remotely correlate to those of the Bubonic plague, and the first record of the rhyme's existence was not until 1881. A credible interpretation of "Pop Goes the Weasel" is that it is about silk weavers taking their shuttle or bobbin (known as a "weasel"), to a pawnbrokers to obtain money for drinking. It is possible that the "eagle" mentioned in the song's third verse refers to The Eagle freehold pub along Shepherdess Walk in London, which was established as a music hall in 1825 and was rebuilt as a public house in 1901. This public house bears a plaque with this interpretation of the nursery rhyme and the pub's history. Alternatively, the term "weasel" might be Cockney rhyming slang for a coat ("weasel and stoat" = "coat"), and the coat itself was pawned. An amusing and ironic accidental hoax involving the rhyme "Sing a Song of Sixpence" was perpetrated on the Urban Legends Reference Pages. Scholars occasionally think they have "all" nursery rhymes written down, or know the last time that a rhyme was in use (some fall out of favor). However, as nursery rhymes are mainly an oral tradition, nursery rhymes will surface anew (see Bill Bryson's book Made in America : An Informal History of the English Language in the United States for an excellent example). There are some indigenous peoples which consider music sacred, so that only elder men may sing songs, and the songs are taught during sacred rituals in adulthood. It is forbidden for women or children to sing. Hence, these cultures do not have these kinds of songs.

List of nursery rhymes

- Alphabet song
- "As I Was Going by Charing Cross"
- "As I Was Going to St Ives"
- "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep"
- "Christmas is Coming"
- "Ding Dong Bell"
- "Doctor Foster"
- "Five little speckled frogs"
- "For Want of a Nail"
- "Froggy would a-wooing go"
- "Georgie Porgie"
- "Goosey Gander"
- "Grand old Duke of York"
- "Hey Diddle Diddle"
- "Hickory Dickory Dock"
- "Horsey Horsey"
- "Hot Cross Buns"
- "Humpty Dumpty"
- "Hush Little Baby"
- "I'm a Little Teapot"
- "Itsy Bitsy Spider"
- "Jack and Jill"
- "Jack Be Nimble"
- "Jack Sprat"
- "Ladybird Ladybird"
- "Little Bo Peep"
- "Little Boy Blue"
- "Little Jack Horner"
- "Little Miss Muffet"
- "Little Tommy Tucker"
- "London Bridge is falling down"
- "Lucy Locket"
- "Mares eat oats"
- "Mary Had a Little Lamb"
- "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary"
- "Monday's Child"
- "Old King Cole"
- "Old Mother Hubbard"
- "One, Two, Buckle My Shoe"
- "One, Two, Three, Four, Five"
- "Oranges and Lemons"
- "Pat A Cake, Pat A Cake Bakers Man"
- "Pease Porridge Hot"
- "Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater"
- "Polly Put the Kettle On"
- "Pop Goes the Weasel"
- "Pussy Cat Pussy Cat"
- "Rain Rain Go Away"
- "Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross"
- "Ring Around the Rosie"
- "Rock-a-bye Baby"
- "Rub A Dub Dub"
- "See Saw Margery Daw"
- "Simple Simon"
- "Sing a Song of Sixpence"
- "Star Light, Star Bright"
- "Solomon Grundy"
- "The Name Game"
- "The Queen of Hearts"
- "There Was A Crooked Man"
- "There Was An Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe"
- "This Is The House That Jack Built"
- "This Little Piggy"
- "This Old Man"
- "Three Blind Mice"
- "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son"
- "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"
- "Two Little Dickie Birds"
- "Wee Willie Winkie"
- "What Are Little Boys Made Of?"
- "Who Killed Cock Robin?"

Popular culture

Stand up comic Andrew Dice Clay has performed "vulgar" versions of old standards in his act. The humor was often based on shock value and abrupt resolutions which identified a more practical or realistic result. As an example, in Clay's version of "Jack and Jill", Jill is implied to be a prostitute: :Jack and Jill went up the hill, :Both with a buck and a quarter. :Jill came down with two-fifty. Other rhymes Clay has modified are "Three Blind Mice", "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", "The Little Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe", "Little Boy Blue", "Hickory Dickory Dock", and "Little Jack Horner".

Old French

Old French is a term sometimes used to refer to the langue d'oïl, the continuum of varieties of Romance language spoken in territories corresponding roughly to the northern half of modern France and parts of Belgium and Switzerland during the period roughly from 1000 to 1300 A.D. It was known at the time as the langue d'oïl to distinguish it from the langue d'oc, (also then called Provençal) which bordered these areas to the south. Provençal to Charlemagne; from a manuscript of a chanson de geste.]]

Grammar and phonology

Historical influences

Gaulish

The Gaulish language, a Celtic language, slowly became extinct during the long centuries of Roman domination. A handful of Gaulish words survive in contemporary French: words like chêne, "oak tree", and charrue, "plough", mon, "my", are Gaulish survivals, but fewer than two hundred words of modern French have a Gaulish etymology; Delamarre (2003 pp.389-90) lists 167. Latin was the common language of the western Roman world, and opened up a wider world to its speakers than Gaulish did, so it grew at the expense of Gaulish.

Latin

In one sense, Old French began when the Roman Empire conquered the territory it called Gaul during the conquests of Julius Caesar, which were substantially completed by 51 BC. The Romans introduced the Latin language into southern France starting in around 120 BC, when they occupied southern Gaul during the Punic Wars. Starting during the period when Plautus was writing, the common Latin of the Roman world, the phonological structure of classical Latin began to change, yielding the vulgar Latin that was the common spoken language of the western Roman world. This vulgar Latin began to vary strongly from the classical language in its phonology; spoken Latin, rather than the somewhat artificial literary language of classical Latin, was the ancestor of the Romance languages including Old French. Some Gaulish words influenced Vulgar Latin and thus, not only Old French but also other Romance languages. For example classical latin equus was replaced in comon parlance by vulgar Latin caballus, derived from Gaulish caballos (Delamare 2003 p.96) thus giving Modern French cheval, Italian cavallo and (borrowed from French) English cavalry.

Frankish

The Frankish language had a much larger impact on the vocabulary of Old French as a result of the Frankish conquest of much of the territory of modern France by the Franks during the Migration Period. The current and older names of the language, français, derives from the name of the Franks. A number of other Germanic peoples, including the Burgundians, were active in the territory at that time; the Germanic languages spoken by the Franks, Burgundians, and others were not written languages, and at this remove it is often difficult to identify from which specific Germanic source a given Germanic word in French is derived. Philologists such as Pope (1934) estimate that perhaps fifteen percent of the vocabulary of modern French derives from Germanic sources; this vocabulary includes a large number of common words like haïr, "to hate"; bateau, "boat", and hache, "axe", all derive from Germanic sources. It has been suggested that the passé composé and other compound verbs used in French conjugation are also the result of Germanic influences. It is important to distinguish however words which came from Germanic initially, via Frankish, and those that were introduced later, via the Normans in the 10th century.

Earliest written Old French

The earliest documents said to be in French are the Oaths of Strasbourg, which are treaties and charters entered by king Charles the Bald in 842. These documents are written in a mixture of vulgar Latin and early Romance, and it is hard to determine from the text we have how they were pronounced: :Pro Deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro commun salvament, d’ist di en avant, in quant Deus savir et podir me dunat, si salvarai eo cist meon fradre Karlo, et in aiudha et in cadhuna cosa. . . ::(For the love of God and for the christian people, and our common salvation, from this day forward, as God will give me the knowledge and the power, I will defend my brother Charles with my help in everything. . .) Beginning with the Capetian dynasty, which was begun by Hugh Capet in 987, the culture of northern France began to develop, and its political ascendency over the southern areas of Aquitaine and Toulouse was slowly but firmly asserted. The current French language, however, did not begin to become the common speech of the entire nation of France until after the French revolution.

From Vulgar Latin to Old French

One profound change that affected French, and every other Romance language, reordered the vowel system of classical Latin. Latin had ten distinct vowels: long and short versions of A, E, I, O, U, and three (or four) diphthongs, AE, OE, AU, and according to some, UI.¹ What happened to Vulgar Latin is set forth in the table. Both the diphthongs AE and OE also fell in with /e/. AU was initially retained, and turned into /O/ after the original /O/ fell victim to further changes. Thus, the ten vowel system of Classical Latin, which relied on phonemic vowel length was new-modelled into a system in which vowel length distinctions were suppressed and alterations of vowel quality became phonemic. Because of this change, the stress on accented syllables became much more pronounced in Vulgar Latin than in Classical Latin. This tended to cause unaccented syllables to become less distinct, while working further changes on the sounds of the accented syllables. Old French underwent more thorough alterations of its sound system than did the other Romance languages. Vowel breaking was something that occurred generally in Proto-Western-Romance (here, Proto-Romance), although with different results in each of the daughter languages; Latin FOCU(M) (originally "hearth") becomes Italian fuoco, Spanish fuego, French feu (all meaning "fire"). But in Old French the phenomenon went further than in any other Romance language; of the seven vowels inherited from Latin, only remained essentially unchanged. In stressed syllables:
- The sound of Latin E (short), turning to in Proto-Romance, became ie in Old French: Latin MEL, "honey" > OF miel
- The sound of Latin O (short) > Proto-Romance > OF uo: COR > cuor, "heart"
- Latin Ê > Proto-Romance > OF ei: HABÊRE > aveir, "to have"; this later becomes /oi/ in many words, as in avoir
- Latin Ô > Proto-Romance > OF ou: FLÔRE(M) > flour, "flower"
- Latin > OF , probably through an intervening stage of ; MARE > mer, "sea" This change is found in no other Romance language. Note that Latin AU did not share the fate of or ; Latin AURUM > OF or, "gold": not
- oeur nor
- our. Latin AU must have been retained at the time these changes were affecting Proto-Romance. Changes affecting the consonants were also quite pervasive in Old French. Old French shared with the rest of the Vulgar Latin world the loss of final -M. Since this sound was basic to the Latin noun case system, its loss levelled the distinctions upon which the synthetic Latin syntax relied, and forced the Romance languages to adapt a more analytic syntax based on word order. Old French also dropped many internal consonants when they followed the strongly stressed syllable; Latin PETRA

Greek language

Greek (Greek Ελληνικά, IPA – "Hellenic") is an Indo-European language with a documented history of 3,500 years. Today, it is spoken by 15 million people in Greece, Cyprus, the former Yugoslavia, particularly The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania and Turkey. There are also many Greek emigrant communities around the world, such as those in Melbourne, Australia which is the third-largest Greek-populated city in the world, after Athens and Thessaloniki. Greek has been written in the Greek alphabet, the first true alphabet, since the 9th century B.C. and before that, in Linear B and the Cypriot syllabaries. Greek literature has a long and rich tradition.

History

This article does not cover the reconstructed history of Greek prior to the use of writing. For more information, see main article on Proto-Greek language. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan Peninsula since the 2nd millennium BC. The earliest evidence of this is found in the Linear B tablets dating from 1500 BC. The later Greek alphabet (q.v.) is unrelated to Linear B, and was derived from the Phoenician alphabet (abjad); with minor modifications, it is still used today. Greek is conventionally divided into the following periods:
- Mycenean Greek: the language of the Mycenean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 16th century BC onwards.
- Classical Greek (also known as Ancient Greek): In its various dialects was the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman empire. Classical Greek fell into disuse in western Europe in the Middle Ages, but remained known in the Byzantine world, and was reintroduced to the rest of Europe with the Fall of Constantinople and Greek migration to Italy.
- Hellenistic Greek (also known as Koine Greek): The fusion of various ancient Greek dialects with Attic (the dialect of Athens) resulted in the creation of the first common Greek dialect, which gradually turned into one of the world's first international languages. Koine Greek can be initially traced within the armies and conquered territories of Alexander the Great, but after the Hellenistic colonisation of the known world, it was spoken from Egypt to the fringes of India. After the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial diglossy of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. Through Koine Greek it is also traced the origin of Christianity, as the Apostles used it to preach in Greece and the Greek-speaking world. It is also known as the Alexandrian dialect, Post-Classical Greek or even New Testament Greek (after its most famous work of literature).
- Medieval Greek: The continuation of Hellenistic Greek during medieval Greek history as the official and vernacular (if not the literary nor the ecclesiastic) language of the Byzantine Empire, and continued to be used until, and after the fall of that Empire in the 15th century. Also known as Byzantine Greek.
- Modern Greek: Stemming independently from Koine Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the late Byzantine period (as early as 11th century). Two main forms of the language have been in use since the end of the medieval Greek period: Dhimotikí (Δημοτική), the Demotic (vernacular) language, and Katharévousa (Καθαρεύουσα), an imitation of classical Greek, which was used for literary, juridic, and scientific purposes during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Demotic Greek is now the official language of the modern Greek state, and the most widely spoken by Greeks today. It has been claimed that an "educated" speaker of the modern language can understand an ancient text, but this is surely as much a function of education as of the similarity of the languages. Still, Koinē , the version of Greek used to write the New Testament and the Septuagint, is relatively easy to understand for modern speakers. Greek words have been widely borrowed into the European languages: astronomy, democracy, philosophy, thespian, etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as a basis for coinages: anthropology, photography, isomer, biomechanics etc. and form, with Latin words, the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary. See English words of Greek origin, and List of Greek words with English derivatives.

Classification

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient languages which were probably most closely related to it, Ancient Macedonian language (which may be regarded as a dialect of Greek) and Phrygian, are not well enough documented to permit detailed comparison. Among living languages, Armenian seems to be the most closely related to it.

Geographic distribution

Modern Greek is spoken by about 15 million people mainly in Greece and Cyprus. There are also Greek-speaking populations in Georgia, Ukraine, Egypt, Turkey, Albania, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Southern Italy. The language is spoken also in many other countries where Greeks have settled, including Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Official status

Greek is the official language of Greece where it is spoken by about 99.5% of the population. It is also, alongside Turkish, the official language of Cyprus. Due to the membership of Greece and Cyprus, Greek is one of the 20 official languages of the European Union.

Phonology

This section generally describes the post-Classic phonology of the Greek language. :All phonetic transcriptions in this section use the International Phonetic Alphabet

Vowel sounds

Greek has 5 vowel sounds, all phonemic:

Debt

Debt is that which is owed. A person or company owing debt is called a debtor. An entity to whom debt is owed is called a creditor. Debt is used to borrow purchasing power from the future. Companies use debt as a part of their overall corporate finance strategy.

Payment

People or organisations often enter into agreements to borrow something. Both parties must agree on some standard of deferred payment, most usually a sum of money denominated as units of a currency, but sometimes a like good. For instance, one may borrow shares, in which case, one may pay for them later with the shares, plus a premium for the borrowing privilege, or the sum of money required to buy them in the market at that time.

Types of debt

There are numerous types of debt obligations. They include loans, bonds, mortgages and promissory notes. It is common to borrow large sums for major purchases, such as a mortgage, and pay it back with an agreed premium interest rate over time, or all at once at a later date (balloon payment). The amount of money outstanding is usually called a debt. The debt will increase through time if it is not repaid faster than it grows. In some systems of economics this effect is termed usury, in others, the term "usury" refers only to an excessive rate of interest, in excess of a reasonable profit for the risk accepted. Large organizations can issue debt in the form of securities, known as bonds. Each bond entitles the holder to interest and principal repayments. Bonds are traded in the bond markets, and are widely used as relatively safe investments. Securitization Securitization occurs when a company lumps together a group of assets or receivables usually in different tranches determined by the riskiness of the debtor and sells them to the market through a trust. The cash flows from these receivables are used to pay the holders of this paper. Companies often do this in order to remove these assets from their balance sheets and monetize an asset. Although these assets are "removed" from the balance sheet and are supposed to be the responsibility of the trust, that does not end the company's involvement because the company often maintains what is called an interest only strip or first lost piece in the securitization. The piece that the company maintains gets hit first with any losses the trust may incur before any of the other investors see a loss, meaning that the investor in a securitization would get paid in case there are massive defaults and the company who securitized the assets would not get paid on its portion. The aforementioned brings into question whether the assets are truly of balance sheet given the company's commitment to keeping losses to investor at a minimum. Many rating agencies consider securitization debt because of their commitment to keeping these trusts loss free. If it has a cash flow coming in it can be securitized.

Debt, inflation and the exchange rate

As noted above, debt is normally denominated in a particular monetary currency, and so changes in the valuation of that currency can change the effective size of the debt. This can happen due to inflation or deflation, so it can happen even though the borrower and the lender are using the same currency. Thus it is important to agree on standards of deferred payment in advance, so that a degree of fluctuation will also be agreed as acceptable. It is for instance common to agree to "US dollar denominated" debt. The form of debt involved in banking gives rise to a large proportion of the money in most industrialised nations (see money and credit money for a discussion of this). There is therefore a complex relationship between inflation, deflation, the money supply, and debt. The store of value represented by the entire economy of the industrialized nation itself, and the state's ability to levy tax on it, acts to the foreign holder of debt as a guarantee of repayment, since industrial goods are in high demand in many places worldwide.

Inflation indexed debt

Borrowing and repayment arrangements linked to inflation-indexed units of account are possible and are used in some countries. For example, the US government issues two types of inflation-indexed bonds, Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) and I-bonds. These are one of the safest forms of investment available, since the only major source of risk — that of inflation — is eliminated. A number of other governments issue similar bonds, and some did so for many years before the US government. In countries with consistently high inflation, ordinary borrowings at banks may be inflation indexed also.

Debt ratings, risk and cancellation

Risk free interest rate

Main article: risk-free interest rate Lendings to stable financial entities such as large companies or governments are often termed "risk free" or "low risk" and made at a so-called "risk-free interest rate". This is because the debt and interest are highly unlikely to be defaulted. A textbook example of such risk-free interest is a US Treasury security - it yields you the minimum return available in economics, but you get the security of the knowledge that the US has never defaulted on its debt instruments. A risk-free rate is commonly used in setting floating interest rates, floating interest rate is usually calculated as risk-free interest rate plus a bonus to the creditor based on the creditworthiness of the debtor. However if the real value of a currency has changed in the meantime, the purchasing power of the money repaid may vary considerably from that which was expected at the commencement of the loan. So from a practical investment point of view, there is still considerable risk attached to "risk free" or "low risk" lendings. The real value of the money may have changed due to inflation, or, in the case of a foreign investment, due to exchange rate fluctuations. The Bank for International Settlements is an organisation of central banks that sets rules to define how much capital banks have to hold against the loans they give out.

Ratings and creditworthiness

Debt of countries as well as private corporations is rated by rating agencies, such as Moody's, A.M. Best and Standard & Poor's. These agencies assess the ability of the debtor to honor his obligations and accordingly give him a credit rating. Moody's for example uses the letters Aaa Aa A Baa Ba B Caa Ca C, where ratings Aa-Caa are qualified by numbers 1-3. Munich Re, for example, currently is rated Aa3 (as of 2004). S&P and other rating agencies have slightly different systems using capital letters and +/- qualifiers. A change in ratings can strongly affect a company, since its cost of refinancing depends on its creditworthiness. Bonds below Baa/BBB (Moody's/S&P) are considered junk- or high risk bonds. Their high risk of default is compensated by higher interest payments. Bad Debt is a loan that can not (partially or fully) be repaid by the debtor. The debtor is said to default on his debt. These types of debt are frequently repackaged and sold below face value.

Cancellation

Short of bankruptcy, very often debts are wholly or partially forgiven. Traditions in some cultures demand that this be done on a regular (often annual) basis, in order to prevent systemic inequities between groups in society, or anyone becoming a specialist in holding debt and coercing repayment. International Third World debt has reached the scale that many economists are convinced that debt cancellation is the only way to restore global equity in relations with the developing nations.

Effects of debt

Debt allows people and organisations to do things that they otherwise wouldn't be able or allowed to. Commonly, people in industrialised nations use it to purchase houses, cars and many other things too expensive to buy with cash on hand. Companies also use debt in many ways to leverage the investment made in their private equity. This leverage, the proportion of debt to equity, is considered important in determining the riskiness of an investment; the higher more debt per equity, the riskier. Debt as a whole is a sign of optimism, a society believes in its future (earnings especially), and of lack of work ethic, a society postpones the solution to present problems (when it compensates a fall in revenues, perceived as short term, by an increase in debt for instance) Excesses in debt accumulation have been blamed for exacerbating economic problems. For example, prior to the beginning of the Great Depression debt/GDP ratio was very high. Economic agents were heavily indebted. This excess in debt, equivalent to excessive expectations on future returns, accompanied asset bubbles (stock market). When expectations corrected, deflation and credit crunch followed. Deflation effectively made debt more expansive and as Fisher explained this reinforced deflation again. In order to reduce their debt level, economic agents reduced their consumption and investetment. The reduction in demand reduced business activity and caused further unemployment. Also in a direct sense, more bankruptcies occurred due to increased debt cost caused by deflation, and the reduced demand. It is possible for some organisations to enter into alternative types of borrowing and repayment arrangements which will not result in bankruptcy. For example, companies can sometimes convert debt that they owe into equity in themselves. In this case, the lender hopes to regain something equivalent to the debt and interest in the form of dividends and capital gains of the borrower. The "repayments" are therefore proportional to what the borrower earns and so can not in themselves cause bankruptcy. Once debt is converted in this way, it is no longer known as debt. See: Perils of the debt-propelled economy by Henry C K Liu http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/DI14Dj01.html

Arguments against debt

Main article: Criticism of debt Some argue against debt as an instrument and institution, on a personal, family, social, corporate and governmental level. Economics criticism focuses on debt fostering inequality. Muslim religion forbids lending with interest, the catholic church long did, and the torah wrote that all debts had to be erased every 7 years and every 50 years. Debt from a religious view point is condemned because by tying past and future it cuts from the present where God is to be found. Feminism concentrates on the perceived coercive nature of debt contracts. Environmental critics point out the disparity between material use of resources from economic growth and the limited resources of natural production. Examples would be the low ecological yield of natural resources and the limited usable energy from the sun.

Levels and flows

Main article: debt levels and flows Global debt underwriting grew 4.3% year-over-year to $5.19 trillion during 2004.

External links

- [http://www.oecd.org/site/0,2865,en_21571361_31596493_1_1_1_1_1,00.html OECD country debt]
- [http://www.free-debt-consultation.com Consumer debt help]
- [http://www.upsprd.com Information about Debt and Loans] Category:Credit Category:Core issues in ethics ja:負債

Latin

Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. It gained great importance as the formal language of the Roman Empire. All Romance languages, those being most notably Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian, are descended from Latin, and many words based on Latin are found in other modern languages such as English. The Latin alphabet, derived from the Greek, remains the most widely-used alphabet in the world. It is said that 80 percent of scholarly English words are derived from Latin (in a large number of cases by way of French). Moreover, in the Western world, Latin was a lingua franca, the learned language for scientific and political affairs, for more than a thousand years, being eventually replaced by French in the 18th century and English in the late 19th. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the formal language of the Roman Catholic Church to this day, and thus the official national language of the Vatican. The Church used Latin as its primary liturgical language until the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Latin is also still used (drawing heavily on Greek roots) to furnish the names used in the scientific classification of living things. The modern study of Latin, along with Greek, is known as Classics.

Main features

Latin is a synthetic inflectional language: affixes (which usually encode more than one grammatical category) are attached to fixed stems to express gender, number, and case in adjectives, nouns, and pronouns, which is called declension; and person, number, tense, voice, mood, and aspect in verbs, which is called conjugation. There are five declensions (declinationes) of nouns and four conjugations of verbs. There are six noun cases: #nominative (used as the subject of the verb or the predicate nominative), #genitive (used to indicate relation or possession, often represented by the English of or the addition of s to a noun), #dative (used of the indirect object of the verb, often represented by the English to or for), #accusative (used of the direct object of the verb, or object of the preposition in some cases), #ablative (separation, source, cause, or instrument, often represented by the English by, with, from), #vocative (used of the person or thing being addressed). In addition, some nouns have a locative case used to express location (otherwise expressed by the ablative with a preposition such as in), but this survival from Proto-Indo-European is found only in the names of lakes, cities, towns, small islands, and a few other words related to locations, such as "house", "ground", and "countryside". Latin itself, being a very old language, is far closer to Proto-Indo-European than are most modern Western European languages; it has, in fact, about the same relationship with PIE as modern Italian or French has to Latin. There are six general tenses in Latin (technically they are tense/aspect/mood complexes). The indicative mood can be used with all of them. The subjunctive mood, however, has only present, imperfect, perfect, and pluperfect tenses. These tenses in the subjunctive mood do not completely correlate in meaning to the tenses in the indicative. The following examples are of the first conjugation verb "laudare" ("to praise") in the indicative mood and the active voice:
Primary sequence tenses
# present (laudo, "I praise") # imperfect (laudabam, "I was praising") # future (laudabo, "I shall praise," "I will praise")
Secondary sequence tenses
# perfect (laudavi, "I praised", "I have praised") # pluperfect (laudaveram, "I had praised") # future perfect (laudavero, "I shall have praised," "I will have praised") The future perfect tense can also imply a normal future idea (like in "When I will have run...") and so may also sometimes be included in the primary sequence.
Latin and Romance
After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Latin evolved into the various Romance languages. These were for many centuries only spoken languages, Latin still being used for writing. For example, Latin was the official language of Portugal until 1296 when it was replaced by Portuguese. The Romance languages evolved from Vulgar Latin, the spoken language of common usage, which in turn evolved from an older speech which also produced the formal classical standard. Latin and Romance differ (for example) in that Romance had distinctive stress, whereas Latin had distinctive length of vowels. In Italian and Sardo logudorese, there is distinctive length of consonants and stress, in Spanish only distinctive stress, and in French even stress is no longer distinctive. Another major distinction between Romance and Latin is that all Romance languages, excluding Romanian, have lost their case endings in most words except for some pronouns. Romanian retains a direct case (nominative/accusative), an indirect case (dative/genitive), and vocative. In Italy, Latin is still compulsory in secondary schools as Liceo Classico and Liceo Scientifico which are usually attended by people who aim to the highest level of education. In Liceo Classico Ancient Greek is a compulsory subject.
Latin and English
See Latin influence in English for a more complete exposition. English grammar is independent of Latin grammar, though prescriptive grammarians in English have been heavily influenced by Latin. Attempts to make English grammar follow Latin rules — such as the prohibition against the split infinitive — have not worked successfully in regular usage. However, as many as half the words in English were derived from Latin, including many words of Greek origin first adopted by the Romans, not to mention the thousands of French, hundreds of Spanish, Portuguese and Italian words of Latin origin that have also enriched English. During the 16th and on through the 18th century English writers created huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek roots. These words were dubbed "inkhorn" or "inkpot" words (as if they had spilled from a pot of ink). Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, but some remain. Imbibe, extrapolate, dormant and inebriation are all inkhorn terms carved from Latin words. In fact, the word etymology is derived from the Greek word etymologia, meaning "true sense of the word." Latin was once taught in many of the schools in Britain with academic leanings - perhaps 25% of the total [http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/T/teachem2/thennow/]. However, the requirement for it was gradually abandoned in the professions such as the law and medicine, and then, from around the late 1960s, for admission to university. After the introduction of the Modern Language GCSE in the 1980s, it was gradually replaced by other languages, although it is now being taught by more schools along with other classical languages.
Latin education
The linguistic element of Latin courses offered in high schools or secondary schools, and in universities, is primarily geared toward an ability to translate Latin texts into modern languages, rather than using it in oral communication. As such, the skill of reading is heavily emphasized, whereas speaking and listening skills are barely touched upon. However, there is a growing movement, sometimes known as the Living Latin movement, whose supporters believe that Latin can, or should, be taught in the same way that modern "living" languages are taught, that is, as a means of both spoken and written communication. One of the most interesting aspects of such an approach is that it assists speculative insight into how many of the ancient authors spoke and incorporated sounds of the language stylistically; without understanding how the language is meant to be heard it is very difficult to identify patterns in Latin poetry. Institutions offering Living Latin instruction include the Vatican and the University of Kentucky. In Britain the Classical Association encourages this approach, and there has been something of a vogue for books describing the adventures of a mouse called Minimus. In the United States there is a thriving competitive organization for high school Latin students, the National Junior Classical League (the second-largest youth organization in the world after the Boy Scouts), backed up by the Senior Classical League for college students. Many would-be international auxiliary languages have been heavily influenced by Latin, and the moderately successful Interlingua considers itself to be the modernized and simplified version of the language (le latino moderne international e simplificate). Latin translations of modern literature such as Paddington Bear, Winnie the Pooh, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Le Petit Prince, Max und Moritz, and The Cat in the Hat have also helped boost interest in the language.
See also

About the Latin language

- Latin grammar
- Latin spelling and pronunciation
- Latin declension
- Latin conjugation
- Latin alphabet
- List of Latin words with English derivatives
- Latin verbs with English derivatives
- Latin nouns with English derivatives
- ablative absolute
- Word order in Latin
About the Latin literary heritage

- Latin literature
- Romance languages
- Loeb Classical Library
- List of Latin phrases
- List of Latin proverbs
- Brocard
- List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names
- List of Latin place names in Europe
- Carmen Possum
Other related topics

- Roman Empire
- Internationalism
References

- Bennett, Charles E. Latin Grammar (Allyn and Bacon, Chicago, 1908)
- N. Vincent: "Latin", in The Romance Languages, M. Harris and N. Vincent, eds., (Oxford Univ. Press. 1990), ISBN 0195208293
- Waquet, Françoise, Latin, or the Empire of a Sign: From the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Centuries (Verso, 2003) ISBN 1859844022; translated from the French by John Howe.
- Wheelock, Frederic. Latin: An Introduction (Collins, 6th ed., 2005) ISBN 0060784237
External links

- [http://www.jambell.com/latin.html Latin Phrases for after dinner conversation (Thanks to Elaine Poole)]
- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=lat Ethnologue report for Latin]
- [http://forumromanum.org/literature/index.html Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum] is a comprehensive webography of Latin texts and their translations.
- [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ The Perseus Project] has many useful pages for the study of classical languages and literatures, including [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/resolveform?lang=Latin an interactive Latin dictionary].
- [http://lysy2.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/words.exe words by William whitaker] is a dictionary program online capable of looking up various word forms.
- [http://retiarius.org/ Retiarius.Org] includes a Latin text search engine.
- [http://www.nd.edu/~archives/latgramm.htm Latin-English dictionary and Latin grammar from U of Notre Dame]
- [http://latin-language.co.uk/ Latin language] History of Latin language, Latin texts with English translation and a collection of dictionaries.
- [http://augustinus.eresmas.net/scl/ Societas Circulorum Latinorum] gathers together Latin Circles all over the world.
- [http://www.learnlatin.tk LearnLatin.tk] - Free online course in Latin
- [http://www.latintests.net/ LatinTests.net] - Lets Latin learners test their grammar and vocabulary with self-checking quizzes.
- [http://thelatinlibrary.com/ The Latin Library] contains many Latin etexts
- [http://www.textkit.com/ Textkit] has Latin textbooks and etexts.
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Latin-english/ Latin–English Dictionary]: from Webster's Rosetta Edition.
- [http://www.language-reference.com/ Language reference] Cross-foreign-language lexicon powered by its own search engine. All cross combinations between Latin and French, German, Italian, Spanish.
- [http://comp.uark.edu/~mreynold/rhetor.html Rhetor by Gabriel Harvey] was originally published in 1577 and never again reprinted.
- [http://freewebs.com/omniamundamundis omniamundamundis] Latin hypertexts from fourteen ancient Roman authors.
- [http://www.saltspring.com/capewest/pron.htm Pronunciation of Biological Latin, Including Taxonomic Names of Plants and Animals]
- [http://www.yleradio1.fi/nuntii Nuntii Latini (News in Latin)], written and spoken (RealAudio) news in latin. Weekly review of world news in Classical Latin, the only international broadcast of its kind in the world, produced by YLE, the Finnish Broadcasting Company.
- [http://www.tranexp.com:2000/InterTran?url=http%3A%2F%2F&type=text&text=Replace%20Me&from=eng&to=ltt InterTran Latin], Translate from Latin to ENGLISH or vice versa.
- [http://www.latinvulgate.com Latin Vulgate] The Latin and English of the Old & New Testaments in parallel, along with the Complete Sayings of Jesus in parallel Latin and English. Category:Classical languages Category:Ancient languages Category:Fusional languages Category:Languages of Italy Category:Languages of Vatican City als:Latein zh-min-nan:Latin-gí ko:라틴어 ja:ラテン語 simple:Latin language th:ภาษาละติน

Phonology

Phonology (Greek phone = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics closely associated with phonetics. Whereas phonetics is about the physical production and perception of sounds of speech, phonology describes the way sounds function - within a given language or across languages. For example, /p/ and /b/ in English are distinctive units of sound, (i.e., phonemes.) We can tell this from minimal pairs such as "pin" and "bin", which mean different things, but differ only in one sound. On the other hand, /p/ is often pronounced differently depending on its placement relative to other sounds or its position within a word, yet these different pronunciations are still considered to be the same phoneme. The /p/ in "pin" is, for example, aspirated (a feature which differentiates phonemes in languages like Thai and Quechua) while the very same phoneme in "spin" is not. In addition to the minimal meaningful sounds—the phonemes—phonology is concerned with how sounds alternate, as well as issues like syllable structure, stress, accent, and intonation. One example of what a phonologist might study is how the /t/ sounds in the words tub, stub, but, and butter are all pronouced differently, yet are all perceived as "the same sound." The principles of phonological theory have also been applied to the analysis of signed languages, with gestures and their relationships as the object of study.

Phonemes and spelling

The writing systems of some languages are based on the phonemic principle of having one letter (or combination of letters) per phoneme and vice-versa. Ideally, speakers can correctly write whatever they can say, and can correctly read anything that is written. (In practice, this ideal is never realized.) However in English, different phonemes can be spelled the same way (e.g., good and food have different vowel sounds), and the same letter (or combination of letters) can represent different sounds (e.g., the "th" consonant sounds of thin and this are different). In order to avoid this confusion based on orthography, phonologists represent phonemes by writing them between two slashes: " / / " (but without the quotes). On the other hand, the actual sounds are enclosed by square brackets: " [ ] " (again, without quotes). While the letters between slashes may be based on spelling conventions, the letters between square brackets are usually the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) or some other phonetic transcription system

Doing a phoneme inventory

Part of the phonological study of a language involves looking at data (phonetic transcriptions of the speech of native speakers) and trying to deduce what the underlying phonemes are and what the sound inventory of the language is. Even though a language may make distinctions between a small number of phonemes, speakers actually produce many more phonetic sounds. Thus, a phoneme in a particular language can be pronounced in many ways. Looking for minimal pairs forms part of the research in studying the phoneme inventory of a language. However, with this method it is often not possible to detect all phonemes, so other approaches are used as well. A minimal pair is a pair of words, both from the same language, that differ by only a single phoneme, and that are recognized by speakers as being two different words. When there is a minimal pair, then those two sounds constitute separate phonemes, otherwise they are called allophones of the same underlying phoneme. For instance, voiceless stops () can be aspirated. In English, word initial voiceless stops are aspirated, whereas non word-initial voiceless stops are not aspirated (This can be seen by putting your fingers right in front of your lips and notice the difference in breathiness as you say 'pin' and 'spin'). There is no English word 'pin' that starts with an unaspirated p, therefore in English, aspirated (the means aspirated) and unaspirated [p] are allophones of an underlying phoneme /p/. Another example: in English, the liquids and are two separate phonemes (minimal pair 'life', 'rife'); however, in Korean these two liquids are allophones of the same phoneme, and the general rule is that comes before a vowel, and doesn't (e.g. Seoul, Korea). A native speaker of Korean will tell you that the in Seoul and the in Korea are in fact the same letter. What happens is that a native Korean speaker's brain uses the underlying phoneme , and depending on the phonetic context (before a vowel or not) this phoneme gets expressed as either the sound or the sound. Another Korean speaker will hear both sounds as the underlying phoneme and think of them as the same sound. This is one reason why most people have an accent when they attempt to speak a language that they did not grow up hearing; their brains sort the sounds they hear in terms of the phonemes of their own native language.

Change of a phoneme inventory over time

The particular sounds between which a language distinguishes can change over time as new children learn the language. At one point, and were allophones in English, and these changed later into separate phonemes. This is one of the main factors of historical change of languages as described in historical linguistics (another being fast change resulting from influence by another language, e.g. French influence on English after the Norman Conquest).

Other language features studied in phonology

Stress and intonation are also part of phonology. In some languages, stress is non-phonological. Some examples include Finnish and all ancient Germanic languages (Old Norse, Old English and Old High German) as well as some modern Germanic languages such as Icelandic. However, in most modern-day Germanic languages such as German or English, stress is indeed phonologically distinctive, although there are only few minimal pairs, e.g. the personal name August versus the month August in German. The distinction of stress is often seen in English words where the verb and noun forms have the same spelling. For example, consider 'rebel' the noun (which places the emphasis on the first syllable) contrasted with 'rebel' the verb (which instead puts the emphasis on the second syllable). Another example is the pair insight and incite , where in the former the stress lies on the first syllable and in the latter on the second syllable. In American English, the words Missouri and misery are also distinguished only by stress. In Missouri, the stress lies on the penultimate syllable, but in misery it lies on the first syllable.

Development of the field

The Polish scholar Jan Baudouin de Courtenay created the word phoneme in 1876, and his work, though often unacknowledged, is considered to be the starting point of modern phonology. He worked not only on the theory of the phoneme but also on phonetic alternations (i.e., what is now called allophony and morphophonology). His influence on Ferdinand de Saussure, the father of Structuralism, was significant. Prince Nikolai Trubetzkoy's posthumously published work, the Principles of Phonology (1939), is considered the foundation of the Prague School of phonology. Directly influenced by Baudouin de Courtenay, Trubetskoy is considered the founder of morphophonology, though morphophonology was first recognized by Baudouin de Courtenay. Trubetzkoy split phonology into phonemics and archiphonemics; the former has had more influence than the latter. Another important figure in the Prague School was Roman Jakobson, who was one of the most prominent linguists of the twentieth century. In 1968, Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle published The Sound Pattern of English, the basis for Generative Phonology. In this view, phonological representations (surface forms) are structures whose phonetic part is a sequence of phonemes which are made up of distinctive features. These features were an expansion of earlier work by Halle and Roman Jakobson. The features describe aspects of articulation and perception, are from a universally fixed set, and have the binary values + or -. Ordered phonological rules govern how this phonological representation (also called underlying representation) is transformed into the actual pronunciation (also called surface form.) An important consequence of the influence SPE had on phonological theory was the downplaying of the syllable and the emphasis on segments. In the late 1960s, David Stampe introduced Natural Phonology. In this view, phonology is based on a set of universal phonological processes which interact with one another; which ones are active and which are surpressed are language-specific. Rather than acting on segments, phonological processes act on distinctive features within prosodic groups. Prosodic groups can be as small as a part of a syllable or as large as an entire utterance. Phonological processes are unordered with respect to each other and apply simultaneously (though the output of one process may be the input to another). The second-most prominent Natural Phonologist is Stampe's wife, Patricia Donegan; there are many Natural Phonologists in Europe, though also a few others in the U.S., such as Geoffrey Pullum. The principles of Natural Phonology were extended to morphology by Wolfgang Dressler, who founded Natural Morphology. In 1976 John Goldsmith introduced autosegmental phonology. Phonological phenomena are no longer seen as one linear sequence of segments, called phonemes or feature combinations, but rather as some parallel sequences of features which reside on multiple tiers. Government Phonology, which originated in the early 1980s as an attempt to unify theoretical notions of syntactic and phonological structures, is based on the notion that all languages necessarily follow a small set of principles and vary according to their selection of certain binary parameters. That is, all languages' phonological structures are essentially the same, but there is restricted variation that accounts for differences in surface realizations. Principles are held to be inviolable, though parameters may sometimes come into conflict. Prominent figures include Jonathan Kaye, Jean Lowenstamm, Jean-Roger Vergnaud, Monik Charette, John Harris, and many others. In a course at the LSA summer institute in 1991, Alan Prince and Paul Smolensky developed Optimality Theory—an overall architecture for phonology according to which languages choose a pronunciation of a word that best satisfies a list of constraints which is ordered by importance: a lower-ranked constraint can be violated when the violation is necessary in order to obey a higher-ranked constraint. The approach was soon extended to morphology by John McCarthy and Alan Prince, and has become the dominant trend in phonology. Though usually unacknowledged, Optimality Theory was strongly influenced by Natural Phonology; both view phonology in terms of constraints on speakers and their production, though these constraints are formalized in very different ways.

External links

- SIL: [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsPhonology.htm What is phonology?]
- SIL: [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAutosegmentalPhonology.htm What is autosegmental phonology?]
- SIL: [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsGenerativePhonology.htm What is generative phonology?]
- SIL: [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsLexicalPhonology.htm What is lexical phonology?]
- SIL: [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsMetricalPhonology.htm What is metrical phonology?]
- SIL: [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAPhonologicalDerivation.htm What is a phonological derivation?]
- SIL: [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsPhonologicalHierarchy.htm What is phonological hierarchy?]
- SIL: [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsPhonologicalSymmetry.htm What is phonological symmetry?]
- SIL: [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAPhonologicalUniversal.htm What is a phonological universal?]
- Lexicon of linguistics: [http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=Metrical+phonology&lemmacode=540 Metrical phonology]
- [http://www.celt.stir.ac.uk/staff/HIGDOX/STEPHEN/PHONO/PHONOLG.HTM On-line phonology course] (of English)
- [http://davidbrett.uniss.it/index Another on-line phonology course dealing with English] using large amounts of Macromedia Flash interaction.
- [http://specgram.com/PsQ.XVI.4/06.pulju.indefinite.html Variation in the English Indefinite Article]: A humorous article demonstrating the importance of phonology (as opposed to merely syntax and semantics) in linguistic analysis.

Bibliography

- Anderson, John M.; & Ewen, Colin J. (1987). Principles of dependency phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Bloch, Bernard. (1941). Phonemic overlapping. American Speech, 16, 278-284.
- Bloomfield, Leonard. (1933). Language. New York: H. Holt and Company. (Revised version of Bloomfield's 1914 An introduction to the study of language).
- Chomsky, Noam. (1964). Current issues in linguistic theory. In J. A. Fodor & J. J. Katz (Eds.), The structure of language: Readings in the philosophy language (pp. 91-112). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
- Chomsky, Noam; & Halle, Morris. (1968). The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row.
- Clements, George N. (1985). The geometry of phonological features. Phonology Yearbook, 2, 225-252.
- Clements, George N.; & Samuel J. Keyser. (1983). CV phonology: A generative theory of the syllable. Linguistic inquiry monographs (No. 9). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 0-2625-3047-3 (pbk); ISBN 0-2620-3098-5 (hbk).
- Firth, J. R. (1948). Sounds and prosodies. Transactions of the Philological Society 1948, 127-152.
- Gilbers, Dicky; & de Hoop, Helen. (1998). Conflicting constraints: An introduction to optimality theory. Lingua, 104, 1-12.
- Goldsmith, John A. (1979). The aims of autosegmental phonology. In D. A. Dinnsen (Ed.), Current approaches to phonological theory (pp. 202-222). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
- Goldsmith, John A. (1989). Autosegmental and metrical phonology: A new synthesis. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
- Halle, Morris. (1954). The strategy of phonemics. Word, 10, 197-209.
- Halle, Morris. (1959). The sound pattern of Russian. The Hague: Mouton.
- Harris, Zellig. (1951). Methods in structural linguistics. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
- Hockett, Charles F. (1955). A manual of phonology. Indiana University publications in anthropology and linguistics, memoirs II. Baltimore: Waverley Press.
- Hooper, Joan B. (1976). An introduction to natural generative phonology. New York: Academic Press.
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- ko:음운론 ja:音韻論

Syllable coda

In phonology, a syllable coda comprises the consonant sounds of a syllable that follow the nucleus, which is usually a vowel. The combination of a nucleus and a coda is called a rime. A coda is not required in syllables. Some languages' phonotactics, like that of Japanese, limit syllable codas to a small group of single consonants, whereas others, like English can have any consonant or even clusters of consonants in syllable codas. Here are some single-syllable words with codas: (the codas are specified in the International Phonetic Alphabet)
- an: coda =
- cup: coda =
- tall: coda =
- milk: coda =
- tints: coda =
- fifths: coda =
- sixths: coda = The following single-syllable words end in a nucleus and do not have a coda:
- glue
- pie
- though
- boy Category:Phonology Category:Phonotactics

Syllable rime

In the study of phonology in linguistics, the rime or rhyme of a syllable consists of a nucleus and an optional coda. In the study of Chinese languages, rimes are better known as finals or in Chinese, yunmu (PY: yùnmǔ, TC: 韻母, SC: 韵母). "Rime" and "rhyme" are variants of the same word, but the rarer form "rime" is sometimes used with the definition given above in order to differentiate it from the concept of poetic rhyme. This distinction is not made by all linguists and does not appear in most dictionaries.

Syllable structure

The segmental structure of a syllable may begin with an optional onset or initial (shengmu), followed by a compulsory rime. :syllable: C₁(C₂)V₁(V₂)(C₃)(C₄) = onset: C₁(C₂) + rime: V₁(V₂)(C₃)(C₄) :syllable: V₁(V₂)(C₃)(C₄) = onset: Ø (null) + rime: V₁(V₂)(C₃)(C₄) :(C = consonant, V = vowel, optional components are in parentheses.) The rime is usually the portion of a syllable from the first vowel to the end. For example, is the rime of all of the words at, sat, and flat. However, the nucleus does not necessarily need to be a vowel in some languages. For instance, the rime of the second syllables of the words bottle and fiddle is just , a liquid consonant.

Chinese language studies

Rimes are particularly significant in research through the use of rime tables on historical Chinese phonology and the origins of Chinese characters. The concept of yùn (TC: 韻, SC: 韵), meaning "rhyme," has been important in phonological studies since the Jìn Dynasty. Some confusion arises from the translation of Chinese terms. Traditional Chinese philology tends to break up a syllable into four parts: #Shēngmǔ (TC: 聲母, SC: 声母): "initial" or "onset," the initial consonant. There are no consonant clusters in Standard Mandarin. #Yùntóu (TC: 韻頭, SC: 韵头) or Jièyīn (介音): "final-head" or "medial," the glide before the center vowel. It can be i, u or ü in Standard Mandarin. #Yùnfù (TC: 韻腹, SC: 韵腹): "final-center" or "nucleus," the center of a syllable where the volume is the highest. Notice that it differs from the standard definition of syllable nucleus, which typically includes the medial. In addition to this, many Chinese phonologists will group the final diphthong glide, i and u (o) in Standard Mandarin, as part of the coda instead of the nucleus. #Yùnwěi (TC: 韻尾, SC: 韵尾): "final-tail" or "coda," the part after center vowel. For the phonologists who group the diphthong glide as part of the coda, it can be i, u (o), n, or ng in Standard Mandarin. The rhotic er is usually discussed separately. Notice that this differs from the standard definition of syllable coda, which does not typically include glides. Still other phonologists may agree with the standard definition of syllable coda and will group the diphthong glides with the nucleus instead of the coda, leaving only n and ng as the only possible codas in Standard Mandarin. Some Chinese phonologists even group yùnfù and yùnwěi into yùnshēn (TC: 韻身, SC: 韵身) and call it "rime". So the medial may be separate from the rime but still be part of the final. The following examples of Standard Mandarin syllables illustrate the differences between conventional western phonology and the two interpretations of Chinese phonology: Category:Phonology Category:Phonotactics ja:韻母

A E Housman

Alfred Edward Housman (March 26, 1859 - April 30, 1936) was an English poet and classical scholar, now best known for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad. A Shropshire Lad

Life

Housman was born in Fockbury, Worcestershire, the eldest of seven children of a country solicitor. His brother Laurence Housman and sister Clemence Housman also became writers. Housman was educated first in King Edward's School, then in Bromsgrove School where he acquired a strong academic grounding and won prizes for his poetry. In 1877 he won an open scholarship to St John's College, Oxford, where he studied classics. He was a brilliant student, gaining first class honours in classical moderations, but a withdrawn person whose only friends were his roommates Moses Jackson and A. W. Pollard. Housman fell in love with the handsome, athletic Jackson who, being heterosexual, rejected him, though the two remained friends. This experience, reflected in some of his poems, may be an explanation of Housman's unexpected failure in his final exams (the "Greats") in 1881. Housman took this failure very seriously but managed to take a pass degree the next year, after a brief period of teaching in Bromsgrove School. After graduating, Jackson got a job as a clerk in the Patent Office in London and arranged a job there for Housman as well. They shared an apartment with Jackson's brother Adalbert until 1885 when Housman moved in to lodgings of his own. Moses Jackson married and moved to Ceylon in 1887 and Adalbert Jackson died in 1892. He continued pursuing classical studies independently and published scholarly articles on such authors as Horace, Propertius, Ovid, Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles. He gradually acquired such a high reputation that in 1892 he was offered the professorship of Latin at University College London, which he accepted. Although Housman's sphere of responsibilities as professor included both Latin and Greek, he put most of his energy in the study of Latin classics. His reputation in this field grew steadily, and in 1911 he took the Kennedy Professorship of Latin at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained for the rest of his life. It was unusual at the time for an Oxford man such as Housman to be hired at Cambridge. In 1903-1930, he published his critical edition of Manilius's Astronomicon in five volumes. He also edited works of Juvenal (1905) and Lucan (1926). Many colleagues were afraid of his scathing critical attacks on those whom he found guilty of unscholarly sloppiness. To his students he appeared as a severe, reticent, remote authority. The only pleasures he allowed himself in his spare time were those of gastronomy which he also practised on frequent visits to France and Italy. Housman always found his true vocation in classical studies and treated poetry as a secondary activity. He never spoke about his poetry in public until 1933 when he gave a lecture, "The Name and Nature of Poetry", in which he argued that poetry should appeal to emotions rather than intellect. He died two years later in Cambridge. His ashes are buried near St Laurence's Church, Ludlow, Shropshire.

Poetry

During his years in London, A E Housman completed his cycle of 63 poems, A Shropshire Lad. After several publishers had turned it down, he published it at his own expense in 1896, much to the surprise of his colleagues and students. At first the book sold slowly, but Housman's nostalgic depiction of brave English soldiers struck a chord with English readers and his poems became a lasting success. Later, World War I had a further increasing effect on their popularity. Several composers, Arthur Somervell first, found inspiration in the seeming folksong-like simplicity of the poems. The most famous musical settings are by George Butterworth and Ralph Vaughan Williams, with others by Ivor Gurney, John Ireland and Ernest John Moeran. Housman was surprised by the success of A Shropshire Lad because it, like all his poetry, is imbued with a deep pessimism and an obsession with all-pervasive death, with no place for the consolations of religion. Set in a half-imaginative pastoral Shropshire, "the land of lost content" (in fact Housman wrote most of the poems before ever visiting the place), the poems explore themes of fleetingness of love and decay of youth in a spare, uncomplicated style which many critics of the time found out of date compared with the exuberance of some Romantic poets. Housman himself acknowledged the influence of the songs of William Shakespeare, the Scottish Border Ballads and Heinrich Heine, but specifically denied any influence of Greek and Latin classics in his poetry. In the early 1920s, when Moses Jackson was dying in Canada, Housman wanted to assemble his best unpublished poems together so that Jackson could read them before his death. These later poems, most of them written before 1910, show a greater variety of subject and form than those in A Shropshire Lad but also a certain lack of the kind of consistency found in the earlier poems. He published them as his Last Poems (1922) because he thought that his poetic inspiration was running out and that he would not publish any more poems in his lifetime. This proved true. Housman's brother Laurence edited his posthumous poems which appeared in More Poems (1936) and Complete Poems (1939). In these poems, Housman appears more candid about his homosexuality and atheism than in his lifetime, though the essay De Amicitia, published by Laurence Housman in 1967, is even more revealing. Housman also wrote a parodic Fragment of a Greek Tragedy, in English, and humorous poems published posthumously under the title Unkind to Unicorns. Housman's most familiar poem is surely "When I was one-and-twenty," number XIII from A Shropshire Lad. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations includes no fewer than fourteen of its sixteen lines: