88-781: The Loita Plains are a savanna and pastoral grazing ground in the southern Great Rift Valley in Kenya , just north of the Maasai Mara . The plains and nearby Loita Hills have been the territory of the Maasai peoples since the 19th century and now include ranches and fences. Extensive surveys of the Loita Plains ecosystem were carried out by Vershuren and Misonne, the later an experienced taxonomist , in 1962–3. Focusing on small rodents, they found that most specimens were African grass rats or Natal multimammate mice , but that overall species diversity
176-468: A (GA) , alg ae , qu ay , b ea ch , b ee , dec ei t , p eo ple , k ey , k eye d , f ie ld ( hyg ie n e ), am oe ba , cham oi s (GA) , deng ue (GA) , beg ui ne , g uy ot , and y nambu (See Sound-to-spelling correspondences ). (These examples assume a more-or-less standard non-regional British English accent. Other accents will vary.) Sometimes everyday speakers of English change counterintuitive spellings, with
264-438: A continuous tree canopy which would prevent further grass growth. Prior to European settlement aboriginal land use practices, including fire, influenced vegetation and may have maintained and modified savanna flora. It has been suggested by many authors that aboriginal burning created a structurally more open savanna landscape. Aboriginal burning certainly created a habitat mosaic that probably increased biodiversity and changed
352-491: A dramatic reduction in basal area and canopy cover, often leaves a high percentage of woody plants alive either as seedlings too small to be affected or as plants capable of re-sprouting from lignotubers and broken stumps. A population of woody plants equal to half or more of the original number often remains following pulling of eucalypt communities, even if all the trees over 5 metres are uprooted completely. A number of exotic plants species have been introduced to savannas around
440-447: A few phonological rules, but that is not the reason why its spelling is fixed. Another example involves the vowel differences (with accompanying stress pattern changes) in several related words. For instance, photographer is derived from photograph by adding the derivational suffix - ⟨er⟩ . When this suffix is added, the vowel pronunciations change largely owing to the moveable stress: Other examples of this type are
528-543: A large number of Germanic words have ⟨y⟩ in word-final position. Some other examples are ⟨ph⟩ pronounced / f / (which is most commonly ⟨f⟩ ), and ⟨ch⟩ pronounced / k / (which is most commonly ⟨c⟩ or ⟨k⟩ ). The use of these spellings for these sounds often marks words that have been borrowed from Greek . Some researchers, such as Brengelman (1970), have suggested that, in addition to this marking of word origin, these spellings indicate
616-413: A large number of other languages throughout the history of English , without successful attempts at complete spelling reforms , and partly due to accidents of history, such as some of the earliest mass-produced English publications being typeset by highly trained, multilingual printing compositors , who occasionally used a spelling pattern more typical for another language. For example, the word ghost
704-402: A means of clearing land. In the 1950s arboricides suitable for stem injection were developed. War-surplus heavy machinery was made available, and these were used for either pushing timber, or for pulling using a chain and ball strung between two machines. These two new methods of timber control, along with the introduction and widespread adoption of several new pasture grasses and legumes promoted
792-530: A more formal level of style or register in a given text, although Rollings (2004) finds this point to be exaggerated as there would be many exceptions where a word with one of these spellings, such as ⟨ph⟩ for / f / (like telephone ), could occur in an informal text. Spelling may also be useful to distinguish in written language between homophones (words with the same pronunciation but different meanings), and thus resolve potential ambiguities that would arise otherwise. However in most cases
880-444: A reduction in the need to burn to produce a flush of green growth because legumes retain high nutrient levels throughout the year, and because fires can have a negative impact on legume populations which causes a reluctance to burn. The closed forest types such as broadleaf forests and rainforests are usually not grazed owing to the closed structure precluding grass growth, and hence offering little opportunity for grazing. In contrast
968-419: A result of global climate change, particularly at ecotones such as savannas so often represent. A savanna can simply be distinguished by the open savanna, where grass prevails and trees are rare; and the wooded savanna, where the trees are densest, bordering an open woodland or forest. Specific savanna ecoregions of several different types include: English orthography English orthography comprises
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#17331042564101056-469: A resurgence in tree clearing. The 1980s also saw the release of soil-applied arboricides, notably tebuthiuron , that could be utilised without cutting and injecting each individual tree. In many ways "artificial" clearing, particularly pulling, mimics the effects of fire and, in savannas adapted to regeneration after fire as most Queensland savannas are, there is a similar response to that after fire. Tree clearing in many savanna communities, although causing
1144-910: A similar degree of difficulty when encoding (writing), English is more difficult when decoding (reading), as there are clearly many more possible pronunciations of a group of letters. For example, in French, /u/ (as in "true", but short), can be spelled ⟨ou, ous, out, oux⟩ ( ou , nous , tout , choux ), but the pronunciation of each of those sequences is always the same. However, in English, while /uː/ can be spelled in up to 24 different ways, including ⟨oo, u, ui, ue, o, oe, ou, ough, ew⟩ ( spook , truth , suit , blues , to , shoe , group , through , few ) (see Sound-to-spelling correspondences below), all of these spellings have other pronunciations as well (e.g., as in foot , us , build , bluest , so , toe , grout , plough , sew ) (See
1232-455: A simplified yet widespread climatic concept. The divergence has sometimes caused areas such as extensive savannas north and south of the Congo and Amazon Rivers to be excluded from mapped savanna categories. In different parts of North America, the word "savanna" has been used interchangeably with " barrens ", " prairie ", " glade ", "grassland" and " oak opening ". Different authors have defined
1320-509: A source of spelling innovations: diminutive versions of women's names that sound the same as men's names have been spelled differently: Nikki and Nicky , Toni and Tony , Jo and Joe . The differentiation in between names that are spelled differently but have the same phonetic sound may come from modernisation or different countries of origin. For example, Isabelle and Isabel sound the same but are spelled differently; these versions are from France and Spain respectively. As an example of
1408-471: A word. For instance, ⟨gh⟩ represents /f/ at the end of some words ( tough / t ʌ f / ) but not in others ( plough / p l aʊ / ). At the beginning of syllables , ⟨gh⟩ is pronounced /ɡ/ , as in ghost / ɡ oʊ s t / . Conversely, ⟨gh⟩ is never pronounced /f/ in syllable onsets other than in inflected forms, and is almost never pronounced /ɡ/ in syllable codas (the proper name Pittsburgh
1496-477: Is an exception). Some words contain silent letters , which do not represent any sound in modern English pronunciation. Examples include the ⟨l⟩ in talk , half , calf , etc., the ⟨w⟩ in two and sword , ⟨gh⟩ as mentioned above in numerous words such as though , daughter , night , brought , and the commonly encountered silent ⟨e⟩ (discussed further below). Another type of spelling characteristic
1584-406: Is broadly standardised. This standardisation began to develop when movable type spread to England in the late 15th century. However, unlike with most languages, there are multiple ways to spell every phoneme , and most letters also represent multiple pronunciations depending on their position in a word and the context. This is partly due to the large number of words that have been loaned from
1672-503: Is frequently seen with the -ed suffix in archaic and pseudoarchaic writing, e.g. cursèd indicates the ⟨e⟩ should be fully pronounced. The grave being to indicate that an ordinarily silent or elided syllable is pronounced ( warnèd , parlìament ). In certain older texts (typically British ), the use of the ligatures ⟨æ⟩ and ⟨œ⟩ is common in words such as archæology , diarrhœa , and encyclopædia , all of Latin or Greek origin. Nowadays,
1760-432: Is marked by the ⟨e⟩ as having the value /eɪ/ . In this context, the ⟨e⟩ is not pronounced, and is referred to as a " silent e ". A single letter may even fill multiple pronunciation-marking roles simultaneously. For example, in the word ace , ⟨e⟩ marks not only the change of ⟨a⟩ from / æ / to /eɪ/ , but also of ⟨c⟩ from / k / to / s / . In
1848-432: Is not a one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds. Many sounds are spelled using different letters or multiple letters, and for those words whose pronunciation is predictable from the spelling, the sounds denoted by the letters depend on the surrounding letters. For example, ⟨th⟩ represents two different sounds (the voiced and voiceless dental fricatives ) (see Pronunciation of English th ), and
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#17331042564101936-477: Is not prominent but that rivers in savanna landscapes erode more by lateral migration . Flooding and associated sheet wash have been proposed as dominant erosion processes in savanna plains. The savannas of tropical America comprise broadleaved trees such as Curatella , Byrsonima , and Bowdichia , with grasses such as Leersia and Paspalum . Bean relative Prosopis is common in the Argentinian savannas. In
2024-772: Is often believed that savannas feature widely spaced, scattered trees. However, in many savannas, tree densities are higher and trees are more regularly spaced than in forests. The South American savanna types cerrado sensu stricto and cerrado dense typically have densities of trees similar to or higher than that found in South American tropical forests, with savanna ranging from 800 to 3300 trees per hectare (trees/ha) and adjacent forests with 800–2000 trees/ha. Similarly Guinean savanna has 129 trees/ha, compared to 103 for riparian forest , while Eastern Australian sclerophyll forests have average tree densities of approximately 100 per hectare , comparable to savannas in
2112-473: Is possible for there to be multiple stable biomes. The annual rainfall ranges from 500 mm (19.69 in) to 1,270 mm (50.00 in) per year, with the precipitation being more common in six or eight months of the year, followed by a period of drought. Savannas may at times be classified as forests. In climatic geomorphology it has been noted that many savannas occur in areas of pediplains and inselbergs . It has been posited that river incision
2200-644: Is probably fairly close to optimal for all modern English dialects, as well as for the attested dialects of the past several hundred years. In these cases, a given morpheme (i.e., a component of a word) has a fixed spelling even though it is pronounced differently in different words. An example is the past tense suffix - ⟨ed⟩ , which may be pronounced variously as /t/ , /d/ , or /ᵻd/ (for example, pay / ˈ p eɪ / , payed / ˈ p eɪ d / , hate / ˈ h eɪ t / , hated / ˈ h eɪ t ɪ d / ). As it happens, these different pronunciations of - ⟨ed⟩ can be predicted by
2288-413: Is related to word origin. For example, when representing a vowel, ⟨y⟩ represents the sound / ɪ / in some words borrowed from Greek (reflecting an original upsilon ), whereas the letter usually representing this sound in non-Greek words is the letter ⟨i⟩ . Thus, myth / ˈ m ɪ θ / is of Greek origin, while pith / ˈ p ɪ θ / is a Germanic word. However,
2376-419: Is vague and therefore the two can be combined into a single biome as both woodlands and savannas feature open-canopied trees with crowns not usually interlinking (mostly forming 25-60% cover). Over many large tropical areas, the dominant biome (forest, savanna or grassland) can not be predicted only by the climate, as historical events plays also a key role, for example, fire activity. In some areas, indeed, it
2464-440: Is written and spoken in any given location. Letters in English orthography positioned at one location within a specific word usually represent a particular phoneme . For example, at / ˈ æ t / consists of 2 letters ⟨a⟩ and ⟨t⟩ , which represent / æ / and / t / , respectively. Sequences of letters may perform this role as well as single letters. Thus, in thrash / θ r æ ʃ / ,
2552-455: The Mediterranean region were likewise created and maintained by anthropogenic fire. Intentional controlled burns typically create fires confined to the herbaceous layer that do little long term damage to mature trees. This prevents more catastrophic wildfires that could do much more damage. However, these fires either kill or suppress tree seedlings, thus preventing the establishment of
2640-770: The Spelling-to-sound correspondences below). Thus, in unfamiliar words and proper nouns , the pronunciation of some sequences, ⟨ough⟩ being the prime example, is unpredictable to even educated native English speakers. Attempts to regularise or reform the spelling of English have usually failed. However, Noah Webster promoted more phonetic spellings in the United States, such as flavor for British flavour , fiber for fibre , defense for defence , analyze for analyse , catalog for catalogue , and so forth. These spellings already existed as alternatives, but Webster's dictionaries helped standardise them in
2728-522: The communicative competence of native speakers. Followers of these arguments believe the less abstract surface forms are more "psychologically real" and thus more useful in terms of pedagogy . Some English words can be written with diacritics ; these are mostly loanwords , usually from French. As vocabulary becomes naturalised, there is an increasing tendency to omit the accent marks, even in formal writing. For example, rôle and hôtel originally had accents when they were borrowed into English, but now
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2816-495: The digraph ⟨th⟩ (two letters) represents /θ/ . In hatch / h æ tʃ / , the trigraph ⟨tch⟩ represents /tʃ/ . Less commonly, a single letter can represent multiple successive sounds. The most common example is ⟨x⟩ , which normally represents the consonant cluster /ks/ (for example, in tax / t æ k s / ). The same letter (or sequence of letters) may be pronounced differently when occurring in different positions within
2904-476: The greenhouse effect may result in an alteration of the structure and function of savannas. Some authors have suggested that savannas and grasslands may become even more susceptible to woody plant encroachment as a result of greenhouse induced climate change . However, a recent case described a savanna increasing its range at the expense of forest in response to climate variation, and potential exists for similar rapid, dramatic shifts in vegetation distribution as
2992-776: The history of the English language . There are a number of contributing factors. First, gradual changes in pronunciation, such as the Great Vowel Shift , account for a tremendous number of irregularities. Second, relatively recent loan words generally carry their original spellings, which are often not phonetic in English. The romanization of languages (e.g., Chinese) has further complicated this problem, for example when pronouncing Chinese proper names (of people or places), which use either pinyin (official in China) or Wade–Giles (official in Taiwan). The regular spelling system of Old English
3080-661: The insertion of /ᵻ/ before the /z/ in the spelling - ⟨es⟩ , but does not indicate the devoiced /s/ distinctly from the unaffected /z/ in the spelling - ⟨s⟩ . The abstract representation of words as indicated by the orthography can be considered advantageous since it makes etymological relationships more apparent to English readers. This makes writing English more complex, but arguably makes reading English more efficient. However, very abstract underlying representations, such as that of Chomsky & Halle (1968) or of underspecification theories, are sometimes considered too abstract to accurately reflect
3168-717: The prairies in North America and steppes in Eurasia , which feature cold winters, savannas are mostly located in areas having warm to hot climates, such as in Africa, Australia, Thailand, South America and India. The word derives from the Spanish sabana , which is itself a loanword from Taíno , which means "treeless grassland" in the West Indies . The letter b in Spanish, when positioned in
3256-502: The voiceless alveolar sibilant can be represented by ⟨s⟩ or ⟨c⟩ . It is, however, not (solely) the shortage of letters which makes English spelling irregular. Its irregularities are caused mainly by the use of many different spellings for some of its sounds, such as /uː/, /iː/ and /oʊ/ ( t oo , tr ue , sh oe , fl ew , thr ough ; sl ee ve , l ea ve , e ven , s ei ze , s ie ge ; st o l e , c oa l , b ow l , r ol l , o ld , m ou ld ), and
3344-424: The - ⟨ity⟩ suffix (as in agile vs. agility , acid vs. acidity , divine vs. divinity , sane vs. sanity ). See also: Trisyllabic laxing . Another example includes words like mean / ˈ m iː n / and meant / ˈ m ɛ n t / , where ⟨ea⟩ is pronounced differently in the two related words. Thus, again, the orthography uses only a single spelling that corresponds to
3432-544: The Australian savanna, mammals in the family Macropodidae predominate, such as kangaroos and wallabies, though cattle, horses, camels, donkeys and the Asian water buffalo , among others, have been introduced by humans. It is estimated that less than three percent of savanna ecosystems can be classified as highly intact. Reasons for savanna degradation are manifold, as outlined below. Savannas are subject to regular wildfires and
3520-499: The East African savannas, Acacia , Combretum , baobabs , Borassus , and Euphorbia are a common vegetation genera. Drier savannas there feature spiny shrubs and grasses, such as Andropogon , Hyparrhenia , and Themeda . Wetter savannas include Brachystegia trees and Pennisetum purpureum , and elephant grass type. West African savanna trees include Anogeissus , Combretum , and Strychnos . Indian savannas are mostly cleared, but
3608-531: The Latin debitum , and ⟨s⟩ in island to link it to Latin insula instead of its true origin, the Old English word īġland . ⟨p⟩ in ptarmigan has no etymological justification whatsoever, only seeking to show Greek origin despite being a Gaelic word. The spelling of English continues to evolve. Many loanwords come from languages where the pronunciation of vowels corresponds to
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3696-553: The Maasai Mara and meet up with Tanzanian wildebeest from the Serengeti . 01°48′S 35°41′E / 1.800°S 35.683°E / -1.800; 35.683 Savanna A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland - grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) biome and ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach
3784-513: The Northern Territory, Australia savanna, and 480,000 ha of savanna were being cleared annually in Queensland in the 2000s, primarily to improve pasture production. Substantial savanna areas have been cleared of woody vegetation and much of the area that remains today is vegetation that has been disturbed by either clearing or thinning at some point in the past. Clearing is carried out by
3872-805: The UK. Partly because English has never had any official regulating authority for spelling, such as the Spanish Real Academia Española , the French Académie française , the German Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung , the Danish Sprognævn , and the Thai Ratchabandittayasapha , English spelling, compared to many other languages, is quite irregular and complex. Although French, Danish, and Thai, among other languages, present
3960-410: The United States. (See American and British English spelling differences for details.) Besides the quirks the English spelling system has inherited from its past, there are other irregularities in spelling that make it tricky to learn. English contains, depending on dialect , 24–27 consonant phonemes and 13–20 vowels . However, there are only 26 letters in the modern English alphabet , so there
4048-451: The accents are almost never used. The words were originally considered foreign—and some people considered that English alternatives were preferable—but today their foreign origin is largely forgotten. Words most likely to retain the accent are those atypical of English morphology and therefore still perceived as slightly foreign. For example, café and pâté both have a pronounced final ⟨e⟩ , which would otherwise be silent under
4136-648: The consonant sound itself when they come from different morphemes, as with the ⟨nn⟩ in unnamed ( un + named ). Any given letters may have dual functions. For example, ⟨u⟩ in statue has a sound-representing function (representing the sound / u / ) and a pronunciation-marking function (marking the ⟨t⟩ as having the value / tʃ / opposed to the value / t / ). Like many other alphabetic orthographies, English spelling does not represent non-contrastive phonetic sounds (that is, minor differences in pronunciation which are not used to distinguish between different words). Although
4224-473: The conventional orthography ... and are, as is well known, related to the underlying forms of a much earlier historical stage of the language. There has, in other words, been little change in lexical representation since Middle English , and, consequently, we would expect ... that lexical representation would differ very little from dialect to dialect in Modern English ... [and] that conventional orthography
4312-415: The court of the cacique Carlos in present-day Panama . The accounts are inexact, but this is usually placed in present-day Madugandí or at points on the nearby Guna Yala coast opposite Ustupo or on Point Mosquitos . These areas are now either given over to modern cropland or jungle . Many grassy landscapes and mixed communities of trees, shrubs, and grasses were described as savanna before
4400-555: The ecosystem appears to be the result of human use of fire. For example, Native Americans created the Pre-Columbian woodlands of North America by periodically burning where fire-resistant plants were the dominant species. Aboriginal burning appears to have been responsible for the widespread occurrence of savanna in tropical Australia and New Guinea , and savannas in India are a result of human fire use. The maquis shrub savannas of
4488-467: The establishment, growth and survival of plant species and in turn can lead to a change in woodland structure and composition. That being said, impact of grazing animals can be reduced. Looking at Elephant impact on Savannas, the overall impact is reduced in the presence of rainfall and fences. Large areas of Australian and South American savannas have been cleared of trees, and this clearing continues today. For example, land clearing and fracking threaten
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#17331042564104576-483: The grazing industry in an attempt to increase the quality and quantity of feed available for stock and to improve the management of livestock. The removal of trees from savanna land removes the competition for water from the grasses present, and can lead to a two to fourfold increase in pasture production, as well as improving the quality of the feed available. Since stock carrying capacity is strongly correlated with herbage yield, there can be major financial benefits from
4664-402: The ground to support an unbroken herbaceous layer consisting primarily of grasses. Four savanna forms exist; savanna woodland where trees and shrubs form a light canopy, tree savanna with scattered trees and shrubs, shrub savanna with distributed shrubs, and grass savanna where trees and shrubs are mostly nonexistent. Savannas maintain an open canopy despite a high tree density. It
4752-471: The irregular nature of English spelling, ⟨ou⟩ can be pronounced at least nine different ways: /aʊ/ in out , /oʊ/ in soul , / uː / in soup , / ʌ / in touch , / ʊ / in could , / ɔː / in four , / ɜː / in journal , / ɒ / in cough , and / ə / in famous (See Spelling-to-sound correspondences ). In the other direction, / iː / can be spelled in at least 18~21 different ways: b e ( c e d e ), sk i ( mach i n e ), bologn
4840-505: The letter ⟨t⟩ is pronounced by most speakers with aspiration [tʰ] at the beginning of words, this is never indicated in the spelling, and, indeed, this phonetic detail is probably not noticeable to the average native speaker not trained in phonetics. However, unlike some orthographies, English orthography often represents a very abstract underlying representation (or morphophonemic form) of English words. [T]he postulated underlying forms are systematically related to
4928-638: The ligatures have been generally replaced by the digraphs ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨oe⟩ ( encyclopaedia , diarrhoea ) in British English or just ⟨e⟩ ( encyclopedia , diarrhea ) in American English , though both spell some words with only ⟨e⟩ ( economy , ecology ) and others with ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨oe⟩ ( paean , amoeba , oedipal , Caesar ). In some cases, usage may vary; for instance, both encyclopedia and encyclopaedia are current in
5016-554: The lower limits of savanna tree coverage as 5–10% and upper limits range as 25–80% of an area. Two factors common to all savanna environments are rainfall variations from year to year, and dry season wildfires . In the Americas , e.g. in Belize , Central America , savanna vegetation is similar from Mexico to South America and to the Caribbean . The distinction between woodland and savanna
5104-497: The mid-18th century. It used to be pronounced /ʃiː/ , similar to the Norwegian pronunciation, but the increasing popularity of the sport after the mid-20th century helped the /skiː/ pronunciation replace it. There was also a period when the spelling of a small number of words was altered to make them conform to their perceived etymological origins. For example, ⟨b⟩ was added to debt (originally dette ) to link it to
5192-461: The middle of a word, is pronounced almost like an English v; hence the change of grapheme when transcribed into English. The word originally entered English as the Zauana in a description of the ilands of the kinges of Spayne from 1555. This was equivalent in the orthography of the times to zavana (see history of V ). Peter Martyr reported it as the local name for the plain around Comagre,
5280-425: The middle of the 19th century, when the concept of a tropical savanna climate became established. The Köppen climate classification system was strongly influenced by effects of temperature and precipitation upon tree growth, and oversimplified assumptions resulted in a tropical savanna classification concept which considered it as a "climatic climax" formation. The common usage to describe vegetation now conflicts with
5368-707: The name Maria used to be pronounced like the name Mariah , but was changed to conform to this system. This only further complicates the spelling, however. On the one hand, words that retained anglicised spellings may be misread in a hyperforeign way. On the other hand, words that are respelled in a 'foreign' way may be misread as if they are English words, e.g. Muslim was formerly spelled Mooslim because of its original pronunciation. Commercial advertisers have also had an effect on English spelling. They introduced new or simplified spellings like lite instead of light , thru instead of through , and rucsac instead of rucksack . The spellings of personal names have also been
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#17331042564105456-408: The new spellings usually not judged to be entirely correct. However, such forms may gain acceptance if used enough. An example is the word miniscule , which still competes with its original spelling of minuscule , though this might also be because of analogy with the word mini . Inconsistencies and irregularities in English pronunciation and spelling have gradually increased in number throughout
5544-782: The normal English pronunciation rules. Moreover, in pâté , the acute accent is helpful to distinguish it from pate . Further examples of words sometimes retaining diacritics when used in English are: ångström —partly because its symbol is ⟨Å⟩ — appliqué , attaché , blasé , bric-à-brac , Brötchen , cliché , crème , crêpe , façade , fiancé(e) , flambé , jalapeño , naïve , naïveté , né(e) , papier-mâché , passé , piñata , protégé , résumé , risqué , and voilà . Italics , with appropriate accents, are generally applied to foreign terms that are uncommonly used in or have not been assimilated into English: for example, adiós , belles-lettres , crème brûlée , pièce de résistance , raison d'être , and vis-à-vis . It
5632-469: The open structure of savannas allows the growth of a herbaceous layer and is commonly used for grazing domestic livestock. As a result, much of the world's savannas have undergone change as a result of grazing by sheep, goats and cattle, ranging from changes in pasture composition to woody plant encroachment . The removal of grass by grazing affects the woody plant component of woodland systems in two major ways. Grasses compete with woody plants for water in
5720-438: The potential to significantly alter the structure and composition of savannas worldwide, and have already done so in many areas through a number of processes including altering the fire regime, increasing grazing pressure, competing with native vegetation and occupying previously vacant ecological niches. Other plant species include: white sage, spotted cactus, cotton seed, rosemary. Human induced climate change resulting from
5808-415: The preceding ⟨c⟩ is pronounced / s / , rather than the more common value of ⟨c⟩ in word-final position as the sound / k / , such as in attic / ˈ æ t ɪ k / . ⟨e⟩ also often marks an altered pronunciation of a preceding vowel. In the pair mat and mate , the ⟨a⟩ of mat has the value / æ / , whereas the ⟨a⟩ of mate
5896-540: The reason for the difference is historical, and it was not introduced to resolve amibiguity. Nevertheless, many homophones remain that are unresolved by spelling (for example, the word bay has at least five fundamentally different meanings). Some letters in English provide information about the pronunciation of other letters in the word. Rollings (2004) uses the term "markers" for such letters. Letters may mark different types of information. For instance, ⟨e⟩ in once / ˈ w ʌ n s / indicates that
5984-431: The removal of trees, such as assisting with grazing management: regions of dense tree and shrub cover harbors predators, leading to increased stock losses, for example, while woody plant cover hinders mustering in both sheep and cattle areas. A number of techniques have been employed to clear or kill woody plants in savannas. Early pastoralists used felling and girdling , the removal of a ring of bark and sapwood , as
6072-580: The reserved ones feature Acacia, Mimosa , and Zizyphus over a grass cover comprising Sehima and Dichanthium . The Australian savanna is abundant with sclerophyllous evergreen vegetation, which include the eucalyptus , as well as Acacia, Bauhinia , Pandanus with grasses such as Heteropogon and kangaroo grass (Themeda). Animals in the African savanna generally include the giraffe, elephant, buffalo, zebra, gnu, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, and antelope, where they rely on grass and/or tree foliage to survive. In
6160-449: The same region. Savannas are also characterised by seasonal water availability, with the majority of rainfall confined to one season. They are associated with several types of biomes , and are frequently in a transitional zone between forest and desert or grassland , though mostly a transition between desert to forest. Savanna covers approximately 20% of the Earth's land area. Unlike
6248-584: The same sentence. However, these were generally much better guides to the then-pronunciation than modern English spelling is. For example, / ʌ / , normally written ⟨u⟩ , is spelled with an ⟨o⟩ in one , some , love , etc., due to Norman spelling conventions which prohibited writing ⟨u⟩ before ⟨m, n, v⟩ due to the graphical confusion that would result. ( ⟨n, u, v⟩ were written identically with two minims in Norman handwriting; ⟨w⟩
6336-463: The set of rules used when writing the English language , allowing readers and writers to associate written graphemes with the sounds of spoken English, as well as other features of the language. English's orthography includes norms for spelling , hyphenation , capitalisation , word breaks , emphasis , and punctuation . As with the orthographies of most other world languages , written English
6424-469: The single morphemic form rather than to the surface phonological form. English orthography does not always provide an underlying representation; sometimes it provides an intermediate representation between the underlying form and the surface pronunciation. This is the case with the spelling of the regular plural morpheme, which is written as either - ⟨s⟩ (as in tat, tats and hat, hats ) or - ⟨es⟩ (as in glass, glasses ). Here,
6512-515: The soil caused by the hooves of animals and through the erosion effects caused by the removal of protective plant cover. Such effects are most likely to occur on land subjected to repeated and heavy grazing. The effects of overstocking are often worst on soils of low fertility and in low rainfall areas below 500 mm, as most soil nutrients in these areas tend to be concentrated in the surface so any movement of soils can lead to severe degradation. Alteration in soil structure and nutrient levels affects
6600-442: The spelling - ⟨s⟩ is pronounced either / s / or / z / (depending on the environment, e.g., tats / ˈ t æ t s / and tails / ˈ t eɪ l z / ) while - ⟨es⟩ is usually pronounced /ᵻz/ (e.g. classes /ˈklæsᵻz/ ). Thus, there are two different spellings that correspond to the single underlying representation | z | of the plural suffix and the three surface forms. The spelling indicates
6688-606: The spread of weeds in savannas by the removal or reduction of the plants which would normally compete with potential weeds and hinder establishment. In addition to this, cattle and horses are implicated in the spread of the seeds of weed species such as prickly acacia ( Acacia nilotica ) and stylo ( Stylosanthes species). Alterations in savanna species composition brought about by grazing can alter ecosystem function, and are exacerbated by overgrazing and poor land management practices. Introduced grazing animals can also affect soil condition through physical compaction and break-up of
6776-519: The structure of woodlands and geographic range of numerous woodland species. It has been suggested by many authors that with the removal or alteration of traditional burning regimes many savannas are being replaced by forest and shrub thickets with little herbaceous layer. The consumption of herbage by introduced grazers in savanna woodlands has led to a reduction in the amount of fuel available for burning and resulted in fewer and cooler fires. The introduction of exotic pasture legumes has also led to
6864-463: The topsoil and removal by grazing reduces this competitive effect, potentially boosting tree growth. In addition to this effect, the removal of fuel reduces both the intensity and the frequency of fires which may control woody plant species. Grazing animals can have a more direct effect on woody plants by the browsing of palatable woody species. There is evidence that unpalatable woody plants have increased under grazing in savannas. Grazing also promotes
6952-570: The use of identical sequences for spelling different sounds ( ove r , ove n , m ove ). Furthermore, English no longer makes any attempt to anglicise the spellings of loanwords , but preserves the foreign spellings, even when they do not follow English spelling conventions like the Polish ⟨cz⟩ in Czech (rather than *Check ) or the Norwegian ⟨fj⟩ in fjord (although fiord
7040-399: The various English dialects spoken from country to country and within different regions of the same country, there are only slight regional variations in English orthography, the two most recognised variations being British and American spelling , and its overall uniformity helps facilitate international communication. On the other hand, it also adds to the discrepancy between the way English
7128-584: The way they were pronounced in Old English, which is similar to the Italian or Spanish pronunciation of the vowels, and is the value the vowel symbols ⟨a, e, i, o, u⟩ have in the International Phonetic Alphabet . As a result, there is a somewhat regular system of pronouncing "foreign" words in English, and some borrowed words have had their spelling changed to conform to this system. For example, Hindu used to be spelled Hindoo , and
7216-491: The word vague , ⟨e⟩ marks the long ⟨a⟩ sound, but ⟨u⟩ keeps the ⟨g⟩ hard rather than soft. Doubled consonants usually indicate that the preceding vowel is pronounced short. For example, the doubled ⟨t⟩ in batted indicates that the ⟨a⟩ is pronounced / æ / , while the single ⟨t⟩ of bated gives /eɪ/ . Doubled consonants only indicate any lengthening or gemination of
7304-665: The world. Amongst the woody plant species are serious environmental weeds such as Prickly Acacia ( Acacia nilotica ), Rubbervine ( Cryptostegia grandiflora ), Mesquite ( Prosopis spp.), Lantana ( Lantana camara and L. montevidensis ) and Prickly Pear ( Opuntia spp.). A range of herbaceous species have also been introduced to these woodlands, either deliberately or accidentally including Rhodes grass and other Chloris species, Buffel grass ( Cenchrus ciliaris ), Giant rat's tail grass ( Sporobolus pyramidalis ) parthenium ( Parthenium hysterophorus ) and stylos ( Stylosanthes spp.) and other legumes . These introductions have
7392-754: Was formerly common in American English to use a diaeresis to indicate a hiatus , e.g. coöperate , daïs , and reëlect . The New Yorker and Technology Review magazines still use it for this purpose, even as general use became much rarer. Instead, modern orthography generally prefers no mark ( cooperate ) or a hyphen ( co-operate ) for a hiatus between two morphemes in a compound word. By contrast, use of diaereses in monomorphemic loanwords such as naïve and Noël remains relatively common. In poetry and performance arts, accent marks are occasionally used to indicate typically unstressed syllables that should be stressed when read for dramatic or prosodic effect. This
7480-424: Was formerly the most common spelling). In early Middle English, until roughly 1400, most imports from French were respelled according to English rules (e.g. bataille – battle , bouton – button , but not double , or trouble ). Instead of loans being respelled to conform to English spelling standards, sometimes the pronunciation changes as a result of pressure from the spelling, e.g. ski , adopted from Norwegian in
7568-516: Was spelled gost in Middle English , until the Flemish spelling pattern was unintentionally substituted, and happened to be accepted. Most of the spelling conventions in Modern English were derived from the phonemic spelling of a variety of Middle English , and generally do not reflect the sound changes that have occurred since the late 15th century (such as the Great Vowel Shift ). Despite
7656-486: Was swept away by the Norman Conquest , and English itself was supplanted in some spheres by Norman French for three centuries, eventually emerging with its spelling much influenced by French. English had also borrowed large numbers of words from French, and kept their French spellings. The spelling of Middle English is very irregular and inconsistent, with the same word being spelled in different ways, sometimes even in
7744-501: Was very high. In the northern Loita Plains, a substantial amount of land was converted to wheat field in the 1980s. This practice declined later on, but not before reducing the Loita wildebeest migration from 130,000 to only 30,000 individuals within the space of 15 years, mostly through blocking migration routes with fences. The Loita Plains were especially important to wildebeest during wet seasons; during dry seasons they would move south to
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