Phonology Flashcards
phonology
the study of the abstract categories
that organise the sound system of a language
spectrogram
a graphic representa-
tion of the frequency distribution of the complex jumble of sound waves that
give the hearing impression of speech sounds
phoneme
he minimal distinctive unit in the sound system of the language
distribution
the different positions in which a speech sound can occur or cannot
occur in the words of a language
free variation
the interchangeable relationship between two phones, in which the phones may substitute for one another in the same environment without causing a change in meaning
complementary distribution
two sounds which are distributed in such a way that one can only occur
where the other cannot occur
final devoicing
voiced phoneme has a voiceless allophone in word final position is known in the literature
aspirated stop
a stop that is produced with an extra ‘breath of air’
rhotic
which r-sounds can occur in word-final position
non-rhotic
r-sounds do not seem to occur in word-final position
constituents
the elements that make up a syllable
vowel epenthesis
the insertion of vowels into syllables
syllabification
assigning syllable structure to words
Maximal Onset
Principle
syllabification proceeds in such a way that as many consonants as possible end up in an onset, even
if the language allows codas
sonority
the category that captures our acoustic impression
of ‘clear audibility’
Sonority Sequencing
Principle
sounds preceding the
nucleus (i.e. onsets) must rise in sonority, and sounds following the nucleus (i.e.
codas) must fall in sonority.
phone
a physical realization of a speech sound like the voiceless or the
voiced alveolar approximate
allophones of the phoneme
phones which function as alternant realizations of the same phoneme
narrow transcription
if we want to analyze allophones of a particular phoneme, it is sometimes necessary to include additional articulatory details in the transcription
minimal pairs
a pair of words which differ in only one sound, but differ in meaning
neutralization
in a particular context, a
contrast between phonemes becomes invisible
syllabic consonants
consonants which occupy the central part of the syllable
nucleus
the nucleus can be filled by a vowel, a diphthong, or a syllabic consonant
coda
the postvocalic slot
onset
the prevocalic slot
