Glossary: morphology and phonology

A consonant produced by rapidly striking one articulator with another. Flaps are usually produced with the tongue.

A tone which is not associated with a segment.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, see Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

Indicates prominent or new information in a sentence or discourse.

A process by which the form of a word is altered to make it resemble a word or words which are better known and with which speakers may believe the word has a semantic relationship. For example, English cockroach comes from Spanish cucaracha. The term also refers to speculative or false etymologies based on superficial resemblance between forms.

A unit of (usually) two syllables, one of which is stressed (the 'head' or 'strong' syllable) and one of which is unstressed (the 'dependent' or 'weak' syllable). See also iamb, trochee, which are the most typical foot types.

Resonant frequency of the vocal tract. The formants correspond to the peaks in the envelope of the spectrum. That is, low vowels have a relatively high F1 (compared to non-low vowels), and front vowels have a relatively high F2 (compared to non-front vowels). F0 corresponds to pitch.

'Fortis' is a term used for voiceless consonants. They are strongly articulated, and sometimes aspirated (cf. lenis consonants).

A phonological proess, the opposite of lenition, which involves a change from a weaker sound to a stronger one that has a more radical obstruction to airflow. An example is the change of fricative to a stop e.g. after a nasal consonant. Also called hardening.

A morpheme that can stand alone and/or whose position is not entirely fixed by neighboring elements, e.g., berry.