Ch. 3 Phonology Key Vocabulary

Question 1

Phonetic inventories

Answer 1

Sounds that are produced as part of the grammar of a language

Question 2

Phonotactic constraints

Answer 2

Restrictions on possible combinations of sounds, often in particular environments

Question 3

Sound substitution

Answer 3

A process whereby sounds that already exist in a language are used to replace sounds that do not exist in the language when borrowing or when a speaker is trying to pronounce a foreign word.

Question 4

Aspiration

Answer 4

A puff of air that follows the release of a consonant when there is a delay in the onset of voicing. Symbolized by a superscript.

Question 5

Noncontrastive

Answer 5

A term used to describe two sounds that are not used to differentiate words in a language.

Question 6

Contrastive

Answer 6

A term used to describe two sounds that can be used to differentiate words in a language.

Question 7

Phoneme

Answer 7

A class of speech sounds identified by native speaker as the same sound; a mental entity (or category) related to various allophones by phonological rules. Phonemes are written between slashes, for example.

Question 8

Allophone

Answer 8

One of a set of noncontrastive realizations of the same phoneme, an actual phonetic segment.

Question 9

Distribution

Answer 9

The set of phonetic environments in which a sound occurs.

Question 10

Phonetic environment

Answer 10

The sounds that come before and after a particular sound in a word.

Question 11

Minimal pair

Answer 11

Two words that differ only by a single sound in the same position and that have different meanings.

Question 12

Free variation

Answer 12

Term used to refer to two sounds that occur in overlapping environments but cause no distinction in the meaning of their respective words

Question 13

Phonological rule

Answer 13

The description of a relationship between a phoneme and its allophones and the conditioning environment in which the allophone appears

Question 14

Underlying form

Answer 14

The phonemic form of a word or morpheme before phonological rules are applied.

Question 15

Assimilation

Answer 15

A process by which a sound becomes more like a nearby sound in terms of some feature(s)

Question 16

Vowel harmony

Answer 16

Long-distance assimilation between vowels

Question 17

Dissimilation

Answer 17

Process by which two nearby sounds become less alike with respect to some feature.

Question 18

Insertion

Answer 18

Causes a segment not present at the phonemic level to be added to the phonetic form of a word.

Question 19

Deletion

Answer 19

In phonology, a process by which a sound present in the phonemic form (i.e., underlying form) is removed from the phonetic form in certain environments. In speech production, a production error involving the inadvertent omission of units.

Question 20

Metathesis

Answer 20

Switching of the order of two sounds, each taking the place of the other.

Question 21

Flap

Answer 21

A sound produced by bringing two articulators together very quickly.

Question 22

Palatalization

Answer 22

A process wherein a sound takes a palatal place of articulation, usually in assimilation to high or mid front vowels like [i] or [e].

Question 23

Sibilant

Answer 23

A member of the natural class of sounds that are characterized by a high-pitched hissing quality.

Question 24

Maximally Distinct

Answer 24

That the consonants have very few qualities in common with vowels, and the vowels are likewise very different from the consonants.

Question 25

Implicational Law

Answer 25

Observation about language universals that takes the form of an implication (e.g., if A then B, meaning that if a language has feature A, then we can expect it to have feature B.