Glossary: morphology and phonology

An articulation made with the root of the tongue.

The fall in air pressure in an enclosed space caused by an increase in the size of the space without inflow of air. Relevant to the production of implosives.

A vowel that is pronounced with a noncontrasting centralized quality, although in the underlying form of a word it is part of a full set of contrasts. The second vowel in English emphasis is a reduced form of the vowel / æ /, as in emphatic.

The copied element in a reduplication process.

A morphological process that repeats all or part of a given base.

A construction in which agent and patient are coreferential.

In tone languages, a set of tones that are relatively high (high register) or relatively low (low register).

A lexical tone with a level pitch contour. Contrast contour tone.

A burst of noise produced when a stop consonant is released.

An instance of allomorphy that occurs in very few words and is not productive. Typically, relic alternations were productive at an earlier stage of the language, but subsequently levelled in all but a few (high frequency) words. E.g. the alternation between [ f ] and [ p ] in the English words father and paternal.