lesson 3: phonology Flashcards
define “phonology”
the study of the organization of speech sounds in a language
define “contrastive”
sounds are contrastive if interchanging them can change the meaning of a word
define “noncontrastive”
sounds are noncontrastive if interchanging them does not change the meaning of a word
define “aspiration”
a puff of air that follows the release of a consonant
define “minimal pair”
words that differ by a single sound in the same position and have different meanings
____ sounds are unpredictable (i.e., must be learned)
contrastive
define “phoneme”
an abstract mental representation of a set of sounds considered by native speakers to be the “same” sound
define “allophone”
the different (phonetically similar) realizations of a phoneme
allophones of the same phoneme are (contrastive) / (noncontrastive)
noncontrastive
define “contrastive distribution”
when sounds can occur in the same phonetic environment (i.e., they can form a minimal pair)
define “complementary distribution”
when (phonetically similar) sounds never occur in the exact same phonetic environment, but in mutually exclusive (complementary) environments
