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’
