Phonology Flashcards
How are syllables separated in transcription?
With fullstops between them
What is the syllable peak/nucleus
The most prominent part of the syllable, usually a vowel or diphthong but not always
What is a syllable onset?
Consonant/s that appear before nucleus in the same syllable
What is a syllable coda?
Consonant/s that appear after the nucleus in the same syllable
What is the Rime/Rhyme
Nucleus + coda
What does σ represent?
The syllable node, the whole constituent of the syllable
give examples of suprasegemental features
stress, pitch, tone, intonation
What is the role of Prosodic/Suprasegmental features?
To help organise ideas, direct listeners’ attention, convey emotion
How is sound length marked in IPA?
with a colon eg. e:
What is a tonal language?
a language where meaning can be affected by pitch
What are the 2 kinds of tone?
Register: same across one syllable
Contour: tone shifts
What is an intonation language
A language without tones
What is weight-insensitive stress?
Where stress will always fall on the same part of the word, such as in French
List the syllable order (5 points)
Initial
Peninitial
Antepenultimate
Penultimate
Final
Where does stress fall in English compound nouns, give an example
Stress on the first word, tight-rope, hot-dog
Where does the stress fall in English with adjectives and nouns?
Stress on the second word, white house (house that is white)
How is primary stress marked in IPA?
small vertical line in upper left (superscript) corner of symbol
How is secondary stress marked in IPA?
small vertical line in lower left-hand (subscript) corner
What 3 ideas are sign languages based around?
Configuration
Movement
Location
What are phonotactics?
the potential sound patterns in a language
What is co-articulation?
Sounds overlap in speech when articulators are preparing to make the next sound
What is assimilation?
the product of co-articulation
What is a phoneme?
smallest phonological unit, used to mentally distinguish between word meanings, found in minimal pairs/contrastive distribution
What is a phone?
the actual sound, the phoneme /L/ has multiple phones such as clear or dark
What is an allophone?
when there are multiple different ways of pronouncing a phoneme like aspirated vs unaspirated /p/, found in complementary distribution
What is an allomorph
a variant of a morpheme
What is the difference between phonemes and allophones?
phonemes cannot be swapped, allophones can
what are minimal pairs (triplets/quadruplets…)
Two or more words identical except for one sound, appearing in the same place in both words such as cat/mat, made/mood/mode
What is contrastive distribution?
minimal pairs, eg with cat and mat, c and m are in contrastive distribution, cannot swap the, and keep word meaning
what are morphophonemic rules?
phonological rules determining phonetic forms of plural morphemes
what is complementary distribution?
appearing in mutually exclusive environments and also phonetically similar, eg aspirated and unaspirated p can be swapped and still make sense
What is allophonic free variation?
single phoneme can have different pronunciation in same word eg bitter could be /ˈbitə/ /ˈbi?ə/ /ˈbiɾə/ all sounds are allophones of /t/, free variation not predictable by linguistic environment but conditioned by social factors like formality/accent
what is a non-distinctive/redundant/predictable feature?
doesn’t have to be learned by speakers when acquiring words, like aspiration of /p/ in English
What is an underlying phoneme?
used in the most diverse set of environments
what are dissimilation rules?
syllables pronounced more differently to aid pronunciation, such as fricative dissimilation in fifth/sixth
What are assimilation rules?
allowing greater ease of articulation, for instance the nasalisation of vowels before nasal consonants in English (is predictable and rule governed)
what is epenthesis?
adding a vowel or consonant such as the intrusive /ɹ/ in ‘four eggs’ that’s not in the word ‘four’
what is alveolar plosive deletion?
such as last night becoming ‘las night’
what is vowel clipping?
unstressed ə removed such as in ‘travelling’
What is derivation?
application of a phonological-rule (P-rule)
What are phonotactic constraints?
limitations on sequences of segments, allows ‘black’ to be a word in English then allows ‘blick’ to theoretically be a word in English but not ‘Lbick’
What is a natural class?
Group of sounds sharing one or more phonetic features, and being the complete set of sounds sharing those features in the given data
What is perceptual salience?
phonological systems usually work to increase the distinctness of sounds from one another
What is lenition?
Consonants becoming more vowel-like such as soft ‘d’s in Spanish words
What is palatalisation?
Palatalisation: subcategory of assimilation, velar/alveolar consonant pronounced in palatal region such as bet you being pronounced as betcha
What is metathesis?
two sounds transpose such as child saying ‘aminal’ instead of animal
What is dentalisation?
e.g., the n in tenth shifts forward from alveolar ridge, diacritic under the letter
What is creaky voice?
‘irregular relaxed vibrations superimposed on normal voicing’- Genetti
What is prominence?
portion of speech stands out thanks to prosodic features
What is an Intonation Unit (IU)?
‘prosodically coherent segment of speech’- Genetti
What is waveform?
suggests relative intensity/loudness of words in an audio recording
Changes in Hertz (F0) perceived as changes in pitch
what is a spectrogram?
a graph where greater energy/higher frequency represented with darker shading
