Phonology and morphology glossary

A non-hazardous technique for producing images of the interior of the body. The technique involves applying a very strong magnetic field to the body, followed by a radio-frequency pulse specific to hydrogen.

The set of features [sonorant], [syllabic], [consonantal], or their equivalents.

The way in which the articulators interfere with and direct the airstream for the purposes of producing speech sounds. That is, the properties of a consonant other than its place of articulation and laryngeal properties.

Markedness constraints (in Optimality Theory) express "unfavoured" segments or syllable structures, e.g. nasalized vowels as opposed to oral vowels, front rounded vowels as opposed to front unrounded vowels, coda consonants (as opposed to open syllables), complex onsets, etc. If a language has the marked object (e.g. nasalized vowels) the language also has the unmarked object (i.e. oral vowels), while the reverse does not hold. Markedness is also relevant in morphology, e.g. passive voice is marked compared to the active voice; plural is marked compared to singular, etc.

In gender systems, one of the genders (cf. feminine, neuter).

A noun that refers to a group of objects as a collective entity, rather than as a group of individual member entities, e.g. English information, furniture (cf. count noun).

A perceptual effect demonstrating that visual cues influence speech perception. A video of a speaker's face is overdubbed with the soundtrack of an utterance that is different from the one the viewer is seeing. The visual and auditory cues may be integrated by the hearer and the resulting perception can differ from both of the speaker's utterances.

Of a fricative or approximant sound: articulated in such a way that the air escapes down the midline of the vocal tract.

A phonological rule that switches around two contiguous sounds.

Vowel sounds such as [e, o] produced with the tongue around the midpoint on the vertical axis. Sometimes languages have two mid vowels, like [e] and [ε]. In such a case the former vowel is referred to as upper-mid (or 'half-close' or 'close-mid') and the latter vowel is referred to as lower-mid (or 'half-open' or 'open-mid'). See also high, low, front, central, back.

A view of the midline vocal tract as if the head was cut down the middle from the forehead to the chin.

See voice (morphology).

A pair of distinct words differing solely in the choice of a single segment.

An auxiliary verb that expresses grammatical mood.

A phonation type in which the vocal folds snap shut rapidly and peel apart relatively slowly. Most speech is produced with modal voice.

Describes a word that consists of a single (i.e., unaffixed) morpheme.

A vowel in which there is no appreciable change in quality during a syllable, as in English [ a: ] in father. Contrast diphthong.

A word consisting of a single syllable.

A set of morphological categories that express a speaker’s degree of commitment to the expressed proposition’s believability, obligatoriness, desirability, or reality.

A subsyllabic unit which expresses weight. Usually two degrees of weight are distinguished: light (one mora) vs. heavy (two moras [or morae]). E.g. a long vowel is said to have two moras, and a short vowel counts as one mora.

The smallest grammatically significant part of a word. Generally used to refer to the form itself rather than to a set of forms with meaning and function.

The smallest unit of word-analysis, such as a root or affix. The smallest meaning-bearing unit.

A restriction on the co-occurrence of sounds within a morpheme (cf. phonotactics).

A formal description of a morphological pattern.

The branch of linguistics that deals with internal word structure and word formation; the mental system involved with word formation.

Phonological alternations, especially nonallophonic changes.

An area of linguistics that deals with the relationship and interactions between morphology (the structure of words) and phonology (the patterning of sounds).

Notions which are relevant to both morphology and syntax, such as case.

An area of linguistics that deals with the relationship and interactions between morphology (the structure of words) and syntax (the structure of larger utterances, such as phrases and sentences).

Of phonological features: a feature such as Height that can be used to classify sounds in terms of more than two possibilities. Cf. unary and binary.

See breathy voice.