Glossary: morphology and phonology

A small mark placed near or attached to a phonetic symbol which is used to indicate that the sound the phonetic symbol indicates is modified, or to supply further phonetic detail. For instance, a small circle below the phonetic symbol /m/ indicates the nasal is voiceless. Other diacritics include symbols for aspiration, nasalization or syllabicity.

Denoting a smaller (or otherwise pragmatically special) version of the base, usually a noun, e.g. English piglet from pig.

A diphone is a unit of speech that consists of the second half of one phoneme followed by the first half of the next phoneme, cut out of the word in which they were originally articulated. In this way, diphones contain the transitions from one sound to the next. Diphones form building blocks for synthetic speech.Do not confuse with diphthong.

A combination of two vocoids within the syllable nucleus.

A phonological process which makes two identical segments less alike, e.g. marbre in French corresponds to marble in English. It is thus the opposite of assimilation. Dissimilation often occurs as a historical process (i.e. in language change).

A set of phonetic properties, hypothesized to be universal and the basis for all human language sounds.

A distinctive feature to express variations in place of articulation in fricative sounds. Distributed sounds ([+dist]) are defined articulatorily, as those produced with a stricture that extends for a considerable distance along the direction of the airflow, as in bilabial and palato-alveolar fricatives. Non-distributed sounds ([-dist]) are produced with a relatively short stricture, as in dental and retroflex fricatives. Example: some languages (e.g. Ewe) have a distinction between bilabial and labio-dental fricatives. These are both [labial] but the former are [+dist] and the latter [-dist].

The environments in which a speech sound may occur in a particular language.

Describing a sound articulated with the back (=dorsum) of the tongue.

The back of the tongue.