Chapter 3 Flashcards
a phonetic variant of a morpheme, often motivated by the same phonetic forces that govern the occurrence of allophones; allomorphs of the English plural suffix include /s/, /z/, and /?z/
allomorph
two or more sounds that occur predictably in mutually exclusive environments, i.e., in complementary distribution
allophone
when there are multiple forms of a phoneme, morpheme, syntactic construction, etc.
alternation (i)
the degree of muscular effort required for the articulation of a particular sound
articulatory effort
the puff of air created by a delay in the onset of voicing upon the release of a stop
aspiration
the process whereby one sound comes to share some phonetic property or cluster of properties with another sound in its environment; the most common type of phonological process; can involve voicing, nasalization, or point of articulation
assimilation
a syllable that ends in a consonant
closed syllable
the situation in which two or more sounds occur in mutually exclusive environments, i.e., there is no single environment in which more than one of the allophones could occur; sounds in complementary distribution are allophones of a single phoneme
complementary distribution
the situation in which two or more sounds occur in the same position in otherwise identical words and the words have different meanings (i.e. the sounds occur in minimal pairs ); sounds that are in contrastive distribution are separate phonemes; e.g. the English words pat and bat illustrate that /p/ and /b/ are in contrastive distribution and so constitute separate phonemes in English
contrastive distribution
the phonological process by which a sound is lost (i.e., deleted)
deletion
the phonological process by which one sound becomes less like another nearby sound
dissimilation
the phonological process by which consonants take on greater obstruction or become “stronger,” as when a fricative becomes a stop
fortition
the situation in which two or more allophones of a phoneme may occur in the same word without creating a difference in meaning
free variation
the phonological process by which a sound is added (i.e., inserted)
insertion (i)
the phonological process by which consonants become less consonant‑like and more vowel‑like, e.g., shifts from voiceless to voiced stops (such as p > b), stops to fricatives (b > v), and fricatives to glides (v > w); also known as “weakening”
lenition
the phonological process by which two sounds are transposed
metathesis
a pair of words with different meanings, which differ in only one sound occurring in the same environment; used to determine whether two sounds are phonemes in a language
minimal pair
a set of more than two words with different meanings that differ in only one sound occurring in the same environment
minimal set
the smallest meaningful part of a word; includes roots, affixes, clitics, and particles
morpheme
a group of sounds sharing one or more phonetic features that pattern together in a phonological system; to be a natural class, a group of sounds must share one or more phonetic features and must include all of the sounds in that language which share those features
natural class
a pair of words that differ in more than one sound, but in which the sounds immediately adjacent to the target sounds are the same in both words; used to determine whether two sounds are phonemes in a language when no minimal pair can be found
near minimal pair
a syllable that ends in a vowel
open syllable
a phonological process by which a non‑palatal consonant takes on a palatal or palato‑alveolar articulation; typically triggered by high vowels, front vowels, or the palatal approximant
palatalization
an explanatory factor for phonological processes, based on the observation that phonologies tend to be constructed in a way that increases the perceptual distinctness of sounds from one another
perceptual salience
a sound that is used in a language to contrast words with different meanings
phoneme
an alteration in phonetic structure due to the phonological properties of the form or its environment (e.g., deletion of a vowel that is adjacent to another vowel; devoicing of a consonant word‑finally)
phonological process
the systematic patterns of sounds in language and the study of those patterns
phonology
the phonetic realizations of a phoneme; may be identical to the underlying phoneme or derived by a phonological process
surface allophones
the allophone of a phoneme that occurs in the widest array of environments; the allophone taken to be the “basic” form, from which other allophones are derived via phonological processes
underlying phoneme
the phonological process by which unstressed vowels are converted to schwa‑like allophones
vowel reduction
