Glossary: morphology and phonology

Said of inflection when the realization of a morphosyntactic feature varies. An example is past tense in English, which may be realized by ablaut, suppletion, or the addition of a suffix. Contrasts with context-free inflection.

A lexical tone that displays a change in pitch.

The situation where a phonetic difference is capable of signalling a difference in word meaning in a particular language. For instance, vowel nasalization in French can change the identity of a word, as can be seen in the pair of words (a minimal pair) mot [mo] 'word' and mon [mõ] 'my'. This pair of words shows that there is a contrast between oral [o] and nasal [õ] in French (in other words, /o/ and /õ/ are different phonemes in French). English also has oral and nasalized vowels phonetically, but these vowels never contrast (in other words, they are allophones of the same phoneme).

See zero-derivation.

The most frequent syllable in languages; the CV syllable. All languages are believed to have this kind of syllable (as opposed to more complex syllable structures, such as CCV or CVC).

A term for sounds articulated with the tip or blade of the tongue raised toward the teeth or the alveolar ridge (or, sometimes, the hard palate), such as [ θ, s, t ].

A noun that can refer to individual entities, and can have both singular and plural forms (e.g. English table) (cf. mass noun).

A type of phonation in which the vocal folds vibrate at a low frequency (and usually somewhat irregularly) with a very low rate of airflow through the glottis. Sometimes referred to as laryngealization or as 'vocal fry'.

A ring-shaped cartilage at th top of the windpipe. It is attached to the thyroid cartilage; the arytenoid sit on its upper surface at the rear.

Part of the acoustic signal that is used (by listeners) for identifying a sound.