Glossary: morphology and phonology

A consonant sound that involves a rapid movement of the tip of the tongue upward to contact the roof of the mouth, then returning to the floor of the mouth along the same path.

Refers to a consonant cluster in which both consonants belong to the same syllable, e.g. [st] in English mister [mi.ster]. Contrast heterosyllabic.

The inflectional category that indicates the time an event or action took place relative to the time of utterance.

Tense vowels are produced with a more deliberate and higher articulation. In English, the tense vowels are those that can occur in stressed open syllables such as bee, bay, bah, saw, low, boo, buy, bough, boy, and blue. Contrast lax.

A semantic role: the participant that undergoes a movement or other change of state.

In a person system, referring to neither the speaker nor the addressee(s).

The largest cartilage of the larynx. It is attached to the cricoid cartilage below and it is supported by muscles attached to the bones of the skull. The front ends of the vocal folds are attached to its inner surface.

The extreme front end of the tongue.

Tone and Break Indices: a system for marking sentence intonation.

The number of instancessome structure (word-form, morpheme, lexeme, etc.) is used in some sample of language. Contrast type frequency.

The set of contrative lexical tones found in a particular language.

A tone language is a language that makes contrastive use of pitch, i.e. distinguishes word meaning on the basis of pitch differences between syllables (cf. stress).

Assimilation of tones across syllables.

Stressed position. Cf. pretonic position = syllable or vowel before the stressed syllable. Cf. posttonic position = syllable or vowel after the stressed syllable.

The development in tone languages of lexically distinct tones out of prior contrasts in voicing. For example, the Southern Kammu language has the words klaang and glaang. Both of these words correspond to klaang in Northern Kammu, but with different tones: the voice contrast has been replaced by a tone contrast: tonogenesis has occurred. Usually voiced obstruents give rise to low tone, and voiceless obstruents give rise to high tone. Other phonation types (e.g. implosives, glottalization) may also give rise to tonogenesis.

The windpipe: the tube connecting the larynx with the bronchi (and ultimately with the lungs).

The visual representation of speech sounds (or phones) by using written symbols. The most common type of transcription uses a phonetic alphabet, such as the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). A transcription may be phonological (also called 'broad'), suppressing predictable, allophonic details, or phonetic (also called 'narrow'), where such details are included.

A verb that takes a direct object, e.g., write.

In syntax and morphology, a convention for representing hierarchical constituent structure.

See number.

An articulation in which one articulator is held loosely near another so that the flow of air between them sets them in motion, alternately sucking them together and blowing them apart. In some forms of Scottish English, [ r ] in rip is trilled.

A foot type which involves a strong-weak stress pattern, as in the Engl. word cancel (cf. iamb).

Shortening of a word or stem by removing one end and leaving the rest intact. Cf. also hypocoristics, deletion.

Another word for the eardrum.

The number of lexemes that exhibit a given morphological pattern, e.g. past tenses. Contrast token frequency.

The parametric study of crosslinguistic variation in grammatical structure.