Glossary: morphology and phonology

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.