Phonology and morphology glossary

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.