Page xii: Mon Aug 6 15:54:40 2018
* There is also a flapped nasalised l (or flapped n), written ɽ̃ here.

*It is written r+nasalised vowel (i.e. r+vowel+n in existing orthography).

* r is trilled between vowels; fricative at the beginning of a word.

* rh is a voiceless fricative or voiceless trilled r.

* n is post-alveolar.

* ny palatal, ỹ seems to occur as a variant.

* nw a velar nasal with lip-rounding, w̃ seems to occur as a variant; the

*velar nasal ŋ is found in onomatopoeic words only.

* ny has been written y+vowel+n, and nw, w+vowel+n, following

*Yoruba tradition. More recently, ny and nw have been adopted, but

*without omission of the final n.

* x and ɣ are respectively the voiceless and the voiced velar fricatives.

*In publications they have been written kh and gh.

* kp and gb are labio-velars, i.e. sounds requiring a double closure―that

*of the lips and of the back of the tongue against the soft palate, with

*a simultaneous release of these stops. Dr I. C. Ward, who examined

*the pronunciation of a Bini (J. E. Edegbe), and the author were of the

*opinion that these sounds gave no impression of being implosive, but

*had no experimental means of verifying this point.

* w is a semi-vowel.

* y is a voiced palatal fricative.

* (Palatal and velar semi-vowels are often used in diphthongs and

*triphthongs, see above.)

* h needs no comment.

* LENGTH, STRESS AND TONES

* Length is very rarely indicated in this dictionary; it is marked only

*in the case of vowels, where it is shown by doubling the vowel symbol.

*There are many pairs of verbs differentiated by a combination of vowel-

*length and intonation, one type having a shorter vowel and a high

*tone in the imperfect form, the other, a longer vowel and a rising tone,

*e.g. ma [ ˥ ] “to fit”, ma [ / ] “to be good”. In these cases the difference

*in length has not been indicated wherever the distinction is made clear

*by the tone marks. In an orthography for Bini speakers in which tone-

*marks are not used, it may be advisable to mark the difference in length

*instead.

* Stress has not been indicated (but v. below).

* TONES AND TONE MARKING

* The following tones are found in Bini: high, low, mid, rising and

*falling, rising-falling and falling-rising. The system adopted here for

*marking the intonation of Bini words and sentences, which has been

*used by Dr I. C. Ward in her study of intonation, makes use of five

*xii
