the jaws. When the front part of the tongue is advanced, one gets /i/ and /e/, while / ļ /, /ė/ and /a/ are produced when the central part of the tongue acts as the active articulator. The vowels / ļ / and /ė/ are retroflexed vowels. When the back part of the tongue or dorsum is raised, the vowels /u/ and // are produced. According to the tongue height in the oral cavity /i/, / ļ / and /u/ are high vowels, /ė/ is high mid and /a/ and / / are low vowels. Lip rounding has not been considered here as a relevant criterion because of the simple reason that it is a redundant feature. Front and central vowel are unrounded. Only in the production of the back vowel /u/, lip rounding is noticeable.

There are two diphthongs, viz., /i/ and /au/, which are phonemic in the language. Apart from these, at the phonetic level, there are a number of vowel nuclei, the quality of which is not constant. The actual phonetic nature of such sounds is that such sounds are sequences of two vowels acting jointly to occupy the peak of sonority.

All Missing vowels are voiced and oral.

There are sixteen consonants in the language. The consonants are classified taking the following criteria.

(i) Point of obstruction of the air-system

(ii) Nature of obstruction

(iii) Presence or absence of voicing i.e., whether the vocal cords vibrate or not.

The breath is mainly modified in the oral cavity. The most important mobile organ of speech is the tongue and then the lower lips. The upper lip, the upper teeth, palate abd pharynx are the passive articulators in the mouth with which the back, center, surface and tip of the tongue and lower lip make contact to produce different consonants. On this basis Missing consonants can be classified as follows:

According to the nature of obstruction or various types of manipulations of breath stream on account of the movement of active articulators, i.e., the lower lip, different part of the tongue and the velum, the following situations are noticed :

(a) Complete closure of breath stream

(b) Short closure of breath stream

(c) Partial closure of breath stream

(d) Free escaping of breath stream

When there is complete closure of breath stream, we get those sounds which are called stops. Stops are of two types (1) oral (2) nasal.

Oral - When there is complete closure of breath stream accompanied by the closure of the nasal passage by the velum, we get oral stops. Oral stops are always released.

In Missing, following are oral stops-

Nasal -    It is produced like an oral stop with an exception that the nasal is open and the air passes through the nose. In Miri /m/, /n/, /N/, and /ń/ are nasal stops.

If the closure of breath stream is short with a slur release, we get the affricate /ts/. When there is no closure at all, but the air stream goes through a narrow oral cavity, we get the sibilant /s/. If the closure is partial and the breath stream escapes through sides of the tongue, we get the lateral /l/. The trilled consonant /r/ is produced by letting the apex vibrate in the outgoing air stream.

When the passage of air stream is manipulated in such a way that no closure is made by the articulators and sounds are produced without any audible friction, the sounds /w/ and /y/ are produced. These are called frictionless continuants. Consonants can be classified also on the basis of presence or absence of vibration of vocal cords. If the vocal cords vibrate i.e.,