A Dictionary of Phonetics and Phonology
n. The peculiar phenomenon, commonly called ‘speaking in tongues’.
in which an individual who has been placed in a kind of trance produces a connected sequence of speech sounds which are clearly not utterances in any language known to her/him. Common among devotees of certain fervent Christian denominations, this behaviour is traditionally regarded by them as representing a God-given ability to speak in a language not known to the performer. Research has failed to support any such interpretation, suggesting instead that the performer merely produces a highly repetitive stream of nonsense syllables, mostly of the form CV, with no discernible structure.
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