Chapter 3 Flashcards
Obstruent
a natural class of sounds produced with an obstruction of the airflow in the oral cavity while the nasal cavity is closed off. Includes oral stops, fricatives, and affricates.
Restricted Allophone
An allophone of a phoneme that appears in a more limited set of phonetic environments.
Insertion
Phonological process by which a segment not present in the phonemic or underlying form is added in the phonetic form.
Natural Class
Group of sounds in a language that satisfy a given description to the exclusion of other sounds in that language.
Contrastive Distribution
The occurrence of sounds in language such that use their distinguishes between the meanings of the words in which they appear, indicating that those sounds are phonemes of the language in question. Sounds that are in contrastive distribution are allophones of different phonemes.
Basic Allophone
The allophone of a phoneme that is used when none of the change-inducing conditions are fulfilled. Of a set of allophones, it is generally least limited in where it can occur; also termed the elsewhere allophone.
Implication Law
Observation about language universals that takes the form of an implication. Example: If A then B, meaning if a language has feature A then we expect it to have feature B.
Phonological Rule
The description of a relationship between a phoneme and its allophones and the conditioning environment in which the allophone appears.
Phonotactic Constraint
Restriction on possible combinations of sounds, often in particular environments.
Palatalization
A process wherein a sound takes on a palatal place of articulation, usually in assimilation to high or mid front vowels like [i] or [e].
Obligatory Rule
Phonological, morphological, or syntactic rule that applies in the speech of all speakers of a language or dialect, regardless of style or rate of speech.
Optional Rule
Phonological, morphological, or syntactic rule that may or may not apply in an individual’s speech.
Near-Minimal Pair
Similar to a minimal pair, but the words in a near-minimal pair are only almost identical, apart from the contrastive sounds.
Sound Substitution
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.
Weakening/strengthening
A process through which sounds are made “weaker” or “stronger” through some criterion.
Free Variation
Term used to refer to two sounds that occur in overlapping environments but cause no distinction in the meaning of their respective words.
Dissimilation
Process by which two nearby sounds become less alike with respect to some feature.
Complementary Distribution
The occurrence of sounds in a language such that they are never found in the same phonemic environment. Sounds that are in the complementary distribution are allophones of the same phoneme.
Conditioning Environment
Neighboring sounds of a given sound that cause it to undergo a change.
Allophone
One set of a noncontrastive realizations of the same phoneme; an actual phonetic segment.
Assimilation
A process by which a sound becomes more like a nearby sound in terms of some features.
Natural Class
Group of sounds in a language that satisfy a given description to the exclusion of other sounds in that language.
Phonetic Inventory
The set of sounds that are produced as a part of the grammar of a language.
Phoneme Rule
A class of speech sounds identified by a 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, /t/.
Deletion
In phonology, a process by which a sound present in the phonemic form (underlying form) is removed from the phonetic form in certain environments.
