Glossary: morphology and phonology

Having to do with language at a given point in time (cf. diachronic).

Deletion of a vowel in a medial syllable, especially in a fashion that affects alternating syllables. E.g. the medial vowel in English chocolate is subject to syncope.

Said to occur when a single inflected form corresponds to more than one set of morphosyntactic features.

The branch of linguistics that deals with phrase and sentence formation; the mental system that underlies phrase and sentence formation.

A language whose words usually contain more than one morpheme.

An electronic simulation of speech.

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.