FlapA consonant produced by rapidly striking one articulator with another. Flaps are usually produced with the tongue. |
Floating toneA tone which is not associated with a segment. |
fMRIFunctional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, see Magnetic Resonance Imaging. |
FocusIndicates prominent or new information in a sentence or discourse. |
Folk etymologyA process by which the form of a word is altered to make it resemble a word or words which are better known and with which speakers may believe the word has a semantic relationship. For example, English cockroach comes from Spanish cucaracha. The term also refers to speculative or false etymologies based on superficial resemblance between forms. |
FootA unit of (usually) two syllables, one of which is stressed (the 'head' or 'strong' syllable) and one of which is unstressed (the 'dependent' or 'weak' syllable). See also iamb, trochee, which are the most typical foot types. |
FormantResonant frequency of the vocal tract. The formants correspond to the peaks in the envelope of the spectrum. That is, low vowels have a relatively high F1 (compared to non-low vowels), and front vowels have a relatively high F2 (compared to non-front vowels). F0 corresponds to pitch. |
Fortis consonants'Fortis' is a term used for voiceless consonants. They are strongly articulated, and sometimes aspirated (cf. lenis consonants). |
FortitionA phonological proess, the opposite of lenition, which involves a change from a weaker sound to a stronger one that has a more radical obstruction to airflow. An example is the change of fricative to a stop e.g. after a nasal consonant. Also called hardening. |
Free formA morpheme that can stand alone and/or whose position is not entirely fixed by neighboring elements, e.g., berry. |