Glossary: morphology and phonology

A segment involving at least one lip as an articulator. Cf. bilabial and labiodental.

The name of a double articulation with simultaneous articulation at the lips and the hard palate. [H] is an example of a labial-palatal sound.

A double articulation involving simultaneous action of the back of the tongue forming a velar closure and the lips forming a bilabial closure. Sometimes called labiovelar.

A secondary articulation involving the rounding of the lips.

The place of articulation of a sound articulated with the upper teeth and lower lip, e.g. [f].

An articulation made with the blade of the tongue.

The region of the vocal tract at the glottis in which consonantal articulations such as [ h, ? ] are made.

See creaky voice.

An electronic device that records vocal fold vibration by means of two electrodes placed externally on a speaker's neck. A small electric current is passed through the neck and the laryngograph measures the changing resistance of the neck to the passage of the current. When the vocal folds are in contact, the resistance is lower than when they are apart.

The cartilaginous structure that houses the vocal folds. Plural: larynges.

Of an approximant or fricative: produced with a complete closure on the midline of the vocal tract, but with one or both sides of the tongue lowered and not contacting the side teeth or guns, so that the air escapes over the side or sides of the tongue. [l] is an example of a lateral sound.

Vowel produced with a less deliberate, more central or lower articulation. In English, these vowels can occur in monosyllables closed by [ N ], such as sing, length, hang, long, hung. Contrast with tense.

The linguistic use of physical duration to distinguish words. See also geminate.

A term that is applied to voiced consonants in some languages, reflecting the fact that such consonants are pronounced with weak muscular tension and not always fully voiced (e.g. in languages like English, where e.g. initial /b/ in bank is only partially voiced). Lenis consonants are sometimes referred to as lax consonants (cf. fortis consonants).

A change of a consonant to reduce the degree of constriction, e.g. the change from a stop to a fricative or glide.

See primary affixes.

See secondary affixes.

A diachronic, or historical, process by which members in a paradigm become more similar to each other. See also analogy.

A word with a specific sound and a specific meaning. Its shape may vary depending on syntactic context. See also citation form.

The mental process of looking up a word in the lexicon.

Said of notions such as noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and preposition.

The entry for a word in the mental lexicon, with all its phonological, morpho-syntactic, semantic and other information. Lexical entries are usually words but can also be affixes, particles, or idiomatic expressions.

See lexical entry.

The use of a small number of contrasting pitch patternsto distinguish words from each other.

See content word.

The collection of morphemes which a speaker knows: a mental dictionary, including phonological, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic information. Also mental lexicon.

A syllable that consist of only one mora (i.e. one weight unit). In phonological theory light syllables are syllables that contain a short vowel and no coda (as in the first syllable of the word beckon). Light syllables can have stress but usually only when there are no heavy syllables available (cf. heavy syllables).

Pertaining to the tongue.

Articulated with the tongue near or contacting the upper lip.

Liquids is the traditional term for the natural class of l plus r-sounds. Most languages have just one l-sound and one r-sound, and it is sometimes possible to show that they are a natural class (e.g. in Latin). In other languages (e.g. Korean) l and r are allophones of the same phoneme.

A word borrowed from one language into another, e.g., English words laissez-faire from French and cognoscenti from Italian.

(of vowels) The part of the tongue (front, centre, or back) that is raised highest in the oral cavity for the production of a vowel sound.

The case that expresses location.

Of a writing system, such as that of Chinese, where the symbols used represent whole words, rather than the sounds of syllables that make up the word.

A vowel of relatively long duration when compared to a vowel of similar or identical quality in the same vowel system.

The subjective impression of the magnitude of a sound. Loudness corresponds to the amplitude of the waveform of the sound.

Sounds produced with a lowered tongue: vowels like [a] and pharyngeal consonants.

See mid.