Garifuna (cab, ISO 639-3) is spoken by the Garifuna people (previously known as Black Caribs and currently also by the plural Garinagu – Cayetano 1993), who reside along the Caribbean coast of Central America in communities in Belize, Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua, as well as in a large immigrant population in the United States. Population estimates in the literature for Garifuna speakers worldwide vary widely, but Aikhenvald (1999: 72) estimated between 30 and 100,000 speakers of the language. The latest census in Belize reports a population of 19,639 people who report at least one of their ethnicities as Garifuna and 8,442 people who report speaking Garifuna well enough to hold a conversation (Statistical Institute of Belize 2010 census).

Changsha Chinese is a Xiang dialect (ISO 639-3: [hsn]) spoken in the city of Changsha (CN-430100), the capital of Hunan province (CN-43) in China. Changsha is the political, economic, cultural, scientific, and educational centre of Hunan. As of 2021, Changsha had a resident population of approximately seven million in urban areas. Figure 1 shows the location of Changsha on the map of China.

The Lithuanian language, together with Latvian, belongs to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family and to the group of Eastern Baltic languages. The two surviving Baltic languages have many common features of phonemic inventories: opposition of long and short vowels, an abundance of diphthongs, a system of pitch accent. They have also developed substantial differences, e.g. Latvian has fixed stress and a set of palatal consonants, while Lithuanian has free (distinctive) stress and a phonological opposition between palatalized and non-palatalized consonants (Poliakovas 2008: 9, 42; Dini 2019: 577; Jaroslavienė et al. 2019: 263; Gelumbeckaitė & Pakerys 2020). In contrast to other Indo-European languages, the Baltic languages have lost j between a consonant and a front vowel, and have preserved m, rather than assimilated it, before the dental consonants d, t, which has not become n1 (Endzelynas 1957: 8). Lithuanian has preserved the manner of articulation of Indo-European plosive consonants (Bonfante 2008: 40). As a result of the continuous and long-lasting contact of Baltic with Slavic languages, these language groups also share common linguistic features (discussed later).

Armenian (or , /hɑjeˈɾen/, ISO 639-1 hy) comprises an independent branch of the Indo-European language family.1 Its earliest attested ancestor is Classical Armenian in the fifth century CE (see Godel 1975; Thomson 1989; DeLisi 2015; Macak 2016). Modern Armenian is classified into two dialect families: Eastern Armenian (ISO 639-3 hye) and Western Armenian (ISO 639-3 hyw). Eastern Armenian is spoken in modern-day Armenia, and large speaker communities also exist in Georgia, Russia and Iran (shown in Figure 1). Western Armenian was historically spoken in the Ottoman Empire, but now includes varieties spoken throughout the Armenian diaspora in the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas (Donabédian 2018). There are substantial Western Armenian speaker communities in Turkey (Istanbul), Lebanon (Beirut), Syria (Aleppo, Damascus), California (Fresno, Los Angeles County), France (Marseilles), Australia (Sydney) and Argentina (Buenos Aires). There are also recent diaspora communities of Eastern Armenian speakers in California (Karapetian 2014), as well as communities of Western Armenian speakers in Armenia who escaped the Armenian genocide during World War I, who repatriated after World War II, or who fled the ongoing Syrian civil war. UNESCO lists Western Armenian as an endangered language in Turkey, and there are significant language promotion efforts in many diaspora communities that are intended to combat declining use by speaker generations born in the Americas and Europe (Al-Bataineh 2015; Chahinian & Bakalian 2016).

Nuer (ISO 6393: nus/Glottocode: nuer1246) is a Nilo-Saharan language (Nilo-Saharan, Eastern Sudanic, Nilotic, Western, Dinka-Nuer). The sound system of Nuer is of particular interest because the language has a rich inventory of vocalic and suprasegmental distinctions, including a large number of vowel phonemes, a voice quality contrast (modal versus breathy), three levels of vowel length, and a tonal inventory that interacts with the voice quality contrast.

Tima (ISO 639-3: tms) is a Niger-Congo language spoken by roughly 7,000 people in the Nuba mountains of Sudan, in north-eastern Africa, as well as in smaller communities in the bigger towns of Sudan such as Khartoum and Port Sudan. It is part of the Katla language group which includes the languages Katla and Julut as well as Tima, with Tima being the most distinct of the three. All three languages are regarded as endangered, mainly due to the spreading influence of Arabic in recent decades, but also due to greater speaker mobility. Broadly speaking, there is a decline in speaker fluency from older to younger speakers of Tima. The Tima people are not only exposed to Arabic as the lingua franca and official language of Sudan, but also to English and Kiswahili. These latter languages were introduced into the school system during the extremely difficult circumstances of the second civil war (1983–2005), when teachers from Kenya came to the Tima region (in addition, many Tima people went to Kenya for further education).1

Abha Arabic is a dialect of Arabic (ISO 693-3: ara), belonging to the Semitic language family group, and spoken primarily in Abha city. Abha Arabic can be broadly classified as a variety of Arabic from the Arabian Peninsula group (Versteegh, 2014), and further sub-classified as a south (-west) Arabian dialect (Ingham, 1982). Abha city is the administrative capital of the province of Asir, in south-west Saudi Arabia (Figure 1). The population of Abha is approximately 290,185 and that of the Asir province is 1,601,725, according to the most recent data on the population (General Authority for Statistics, 2010). The province is named after the Asir tribe, who first inhabited Abha and the surrounding regions. The present day Abha Arabic dialect thus represents a blending of Bedouin and urban dialects. The first settlers to Abha were the Bani-Mghed tribe (an Asir tribe) followed by three additional Asir tribes (Alkam, Rabiah w Rufeda, Bani-Malik) and other nearby tribes such as the Gahtaːn, Bal-lahmir, Bal-lasmir, Shahran, Rejal Alma’, all of which had distinct dialects (Al-Azraqi, 1998). These dialects merged to varying degrees and were further influenced by urban education and mass media, which were and continue to be dominated by Modern Standard Arabic (henceforth MSA) (Al-Azraqi, 1998).1

Southern Tati is a North-Western Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. Different varieties of this language group are spoken intermittently in the northern and northwestern parts of Iran, mainly in the Qazvin, Alborz, Markazi, Tehran, Ardabil, Gilan, Zanjan, and Khorasan-e-Shomali provinces. Previous linguistic work on the language consists of multiple descriptive grammars. These include Yarshater’s (1969) analysis of multiple Tati dialects including Takestani, Chali, Eshtehardi, Xiaraji, Ebrahim-abadi, Sagz-abadi, Danesfehani, Esfarvarini, and Xozini, as well as Taheri’s (2009) and Rahmani & Rahmni’s (2021) analyses of the Takestani dialect. The variety of Southern Tati analyzed in this study is the Takestani dialect (tks, ISO 639-3). Takestani is spoken by the Tat community in the city of Takestan, known by its residents as Siayden (IPA: [sijʌˈten]). The speakers of Takestani know their dialect of the Tati language as Siaydiniji (IPA: [sijʌtiniˈd͡ʒi]), as ‘related to the residents of Siaden.’ Figure 1 shows the location of Takestan in the Qazvin province in Iran.