CandidateSee Optimality Theory. |
CanonicalTypical, most representative, e.g. a canonical iamb. |
Cardinal vowelsA set of agreed vowel qualities, first defined by Daniel Jones, that can be used as a language-independent reference for the purpose of describing vowels encountered in speech. |
Carrier sentenceIn phonetic or psycholinguistic research, a short sentence in which the target word is embedded. Example: "I said X two times", where X is the target word. Among other things, the goal is to ensure consistent focus, and avoid assimilation across word boundaries as well as list intonation. |
CaseA morphological category that encodes information about a word’s grammatical role, e.g., subject, direct object, indirect object, possessor. |
Categorical perceptionA characteristic of the perception of speech sounds. Sounds are said to be perceived categorically if there is a sharp cross-over from one perceptual category (e.g. /t/) to another (e.g. /d/) and if, in addition, human listeners are unable to distinguish between acoustically different sounds that fall in the same category. |
CausativeA morphological process which turns the meaning of a verb x into a verb 'make, cause x'. E.g. English 'to lay' is an old causative derived from 'to lie'. |
CentralA vowel formed with the tongue horizontally positioned in the center of the space for vowel articulation, between front and back (compare mid for the vertical axis). |
Child-directed speechSpeech addressed to children. See also motherese. |
CircumfixA bound morpheme made up of two parts, one that occurs before and one that occurs after the root. E.g. German ge-schrieb-en 'written'. |