Glossary: morphology and phonology

Referring to the hard or soft palate. As a primary articulation, a consonant produced at the boundary between the hard and soft palate.

Either a secondary articulation made by superimposing a y-like articulation on a consonant, or a wholesale change of a consonant’s place of articulation to alveopalatal.

An articulation between the tongue blade and the back of the alveolar ridge.

A paradigm consists of a base word (e.g. a noun or a verb) with all its inflected (and sometimes derived) forms, e.g. the paradigm of the English verb "to ponder" includes [ponder], [ponders], [pondered], [pondering], etc.

In phonology, parallelism refers to the idea (explored in Optimality Theory, for instance) that rules are not sequentially ordered (one applying after another) but that different aspects of a representation (phonological, morphological, semantic) are evaluated at the same time.

See suppletion.

In case systems, the case that denotes a subpart of a collective entity.

See voice (morphology).

A semantic role; the participant that undergoes an action.

See number.

(or syllable peak) The part of the syllable that is occupied by the vowel or diphthong. E.g. in the syllable /pak/, the vowel /a/ occupies the peak.

The one but last (=prefinal) position (as in "penultimate stress"). E.g. in the English word confidential, the syllable 'den' is penultimate.

See aspect.

See aspect.

How speakers use their language in real-life situations. Performance may be adversely affected by many factors, including fatigue, nervousness, or drunkenness. Contrasts with competence.

A multi-word phrase that cumulatively expresses some inflection, e.g. the English comparative 'more enthusiastic'.

The persistence of an aspect of the articulation of one sound into the following sound, for example, the laryngealization of a vowel after a glottal stop. Cf. anticipatory coarticulation.

Any of the three relations underlying discourse, which are distinguished in all languages: first person (speaker); second person (addressee); third person (neither the speaker nor the addressee).

An articulation involving the root of the tongue and the back wall of the pharynx, as in the Arabic [ ? ].

A secondary articulation in which the root of the tongue is drawn back so that the pharynx is narrowed, as in some so-called emphatic consonants in Arabic.

The lower part of the throat.

The manner of vibration of the vocal folds (modal voice, breathy voice, creaky voice).

In phonetics, used as another term for 'sound'.

A mental integration of the different physical properties of the sounds used in a language, abstracting away from specific phonetic properties which are due to the context where the sound appears.

Accounting for phonetic variability by writing rules that show the relationship between abstract phonological representations and cross-linguistic, dialectal, or individual variants.

The study of human speech sounds. Often subdivided into articulatory phonetics (the study of how human speech sounds are made) and acoustic phonetics (the study of the acoustic properties of those sounds).

A statement of a phonological phenomenon in terms of an input (the sound that is affected), the output (the changes that are made) and the environment in which the change occurs. An example is [-son] --> [-voice] / __ [-voice]. This rule makes any obstruent voiceless before another voiceless sound (the environment).

A word that behaves as a unit for certain phonological processes, including stress assignment.

The study of the sound systems found in human languages.

Constraints on the phonological shape of stems and words.

The perceived rate of vibration.

In a pitch-accent language, some words in the lexicon are marked for tone. There are not different tones, as in tone languages, nor can all words be analysed with one and the same foot type (as in stress languages). Pitch-accent languages (such as Japanese) are therefore sometimes described as being "in between" tone languages and stress languages.

A sound which involves a complete oral obstruction without nasal airflow, i.e. an oral stop or affricate.

See number.

An inflectional feature of verbs that indicates the positive or negative status of the event.

A situation in which a word has more than one related meaning.

Containing multiple syllables.

A language in which single words are able to express complex notions through the addition of inflectional and derivational morphemes to stems. The same meaning might be expressed by multiword sentences in a more analytic language.

(i) A morpheme that expresses more than one morphosyntactic feature, such as both present and first person singular; (ii) a blend such as chortle, from chuckle and snort.

Similar to a preposition, except that postpositions are syntactically positioned after noun phrases rather than before them.

A form that could be a word but is not attested. Also possible word.

Study of language within a social and discourse context.

See affix.

Any member of a class of words found in many languages that are used before nouns, pronouns, or other substantives to form phrases functioning as modifiers of verbs, nouns, or adjectives, and that typically express a spatial, temporal, or other relationship, as English in, on, by, to, since.

One of the values of tense (morphology), with the meaning ‘occurring simultaneously with the moment of speech’.

Affixes that interact phonologically with their stem, e.g., causing a stress shift in the stem. They typically occur closer to the root than secondary affixes.

See stress.

A phonological feature having only one value: either the feature is present, or not present. Also called unary. Contrasts with binary or multivalued.

A clitic that attaches to the front of its host.

The relative freedom with which a phonological or morphological process may occur. For example, blending is a productive morphological process in English, but infixation is not.

An inflectional value of the feature of aspect, with the meaning ‘an event that is in progress’.

The extent to which a sound stands out from others because of some combination of its sonority, length, stress, and pitch.

A Prosodic Word (or Phonological Word) is a phonetic, metrical unit, consisting of one or more syllables and/or feet. It may serve as the domain for stress assignment, vowel harmony, etc. It includes epenthetic vowels and/or consonants (distinct from the Morphological Word, which doesn't).

Properties “above” the segment which pertain to syllabification, length, stress, and rhythm.

The study of the mental processes and representations involved in language comprehension and production.

The idea that the phonological representations and generalizations postulated by linguists correspond in some way to mental entities and/or processes in the minds of speaker/hearers.

The name of an airstream mechanisms which involves air from the lungs. The majority of speech sounds in human languages are produced with a pulmonic airstream mechanism.

A sound associated with a sine wave.