Glossary: morphology and phonology

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.