Oblique caseOblique cases are all morphological cases apart from the most basic ones (e.g. all but the nominative and accusative). |
ObstruentA non-sonorant consonant like fricatives and stops (including implosives, ejective stops, clicks, fricatives, ejective fricatives, affricates, ejective affricates, affricated clicks). All obstruents have a major constriction of the airflow in the oral tract. |
OctaveA doubling of the fundamental frequency. |
OffsetCoda, especially word coda. |
OnsetThe part of the syllable preceding the vowel, e.g. in the syllable /pak/, the consonant /p/ forms the onset. |
OpenA lower variant of a vowel, as in open-mid [ε] as opposed to close-mid [e]. Contrast close. |
Open syllableA syllable without a consonant at the end, like the first syllables in English beehive, bylaw, sawing. Contrast closed syllable. |
Open-midSee mid. |
OptativeIn mood systems, the mood that is used to express a desire or wish for some event to occur. |
Optimality TheoryOptimality Theory argues that inputs (underlying forms) and outputs (phonetic forms) are related through a mechanism that evaluates how well different possible outputs (called candidates) satisfy the constraint hierarchy of a language. |