Glossary: morphology and phonology

A continuous analytic display of acoustic properties of sound over time, showing which frequencies are emphasized at each moment.

A display of the amplitude of sound at all frequencies, taken at a single point in time.

The phenomenon that a stop changes into the corresponding fricative.

A hypothesis about the architecture of the linguistic system according to which morphology is divided between two grammatical components: word-formation rules apply before syntactic rules, whereas inflectional rules apply after syntactic rules.

A verb with the semantic property of referring to a state of existence, rather than a physical action (e.g. be is a stative verb in English).

The part of a word to which inflections attach.

In psycholinguistics, a test item presented to a participant during the course of an experiment. Plural: stimuli.

A sound where the flow of air is completely obstructed. Stops may be nasal stops (such as [n]) or oral stops (such as [t]).

A form of prosodic prominence typically associated with greater length, greater loudness and higher pitch within the syllable. In many languages, there is more than one degree of stress. For example, in the English word international there is primary stress on the third syllable and secondary stress on the first syllable.

A phonological rule or morphological operation which involves changing the syllable in a word which carries primary stress.