Glossary: morphology and phonology

A consonant sound that involves a rapid movement of the tip of the tongue upward to contact the roof of the mouth, then returning to the floor of the mouth along the same path.

Refers to a consonant cluster in which both consonants belong to the same syllable, e.g. [st] in English mister [mi.ster]. Contrast heterosyllabic.

The inflectional category that indicates the time an event or action took place relative to the time of utterance.

Tense vowels are produced with a more deliberate and higher articulation. In English, the tense vowels are those that can occur in stressed open syllables such as bee, bay, bah, saw, low, boo, buy, bough, boy, and blue. Contrast lax.

A semantic role: the participant that undergoes a movement or other change of state.

In a person system, referring to neither the speaker nor the addressee(s).

The largest cartilage of the larynx. It is attached to the cricoid cartilage below and it is supported by muscles attached to the bones of the skull. The front ends of the vocal folds are attached to its inner surface.

The extreme front end of the tongue.

Tone and Break Indices: a system for marking sentence intonation.

The number of instancessome structure (word-form, morpheme, lexeme, etc.) is used in some sample of language. Contrast type frequency.