Glossary: morphology and phonology

Gender In languages that divide nouns into classes on the basis of animacy, the noun class that consists primarily of words denoting living things. Animate gender contrasts with inanimate gender.

The second but last position (usually in "antepenultimate stress"). E.g. in the English word confidential, the syllable 'fi' is antepenultimate.

Anterior sounds are defined articulatorily as sounds that are produced with a stricture in front of the palato-alveolar region in the mouth. Labial and dental consonants are therefore [+ant] (in SPE) while non-anterior sounds are produced with a stricture further back, e.g. velars and glottals. In current phonological theory, the feature anterior is only used to make a distinction between coronals.

An event-changing operation signalling that there is no ‘cause’ element and no agent role in the derived event structure.

An action in which one of the speech organs that is not involved in making a particular sound moves toward its position for a subsequent sound. For example, the rounding of the lips during [ s ] in swim is due to the anticipation of the lip action required for [ w ].

A function-changing operation that backgrounds the patient.

In tense systems, a tense that indicates the occurrence of an action in the past, without indicating whether the action is completed.

Americanist Phonetic Alphabet (an unofficial name given to a particular set of transcription symbols).

Of a waveform: one that does not have a regular repeating pattern.

A language or speech disorder caused by brain damage.