Phonology

Question 1

phonology

Answer 1

The sound system of a language; the component of a grammar that includes the inventory of sounds (phonetic and phonemic units) and rules for their combination and pronunciation; the study of the sound systems of all languages.

Question 2

minimal pairs

Answer 2

Two (or more) words that are identical except for one phoneme that occurs in the same position in each word, e.g., pain /pen/, bane /ben/, main /men/.

Question 3

morphophonemic rules

Answer 3

Rules that specify the pronunciation of morphemes; a morpheme may have more than one pronunciation determined by such rules, e.g., the plural morpheme /z/ in English is regularly pronounced [s], [z], or [әz].

Question 4

homorganic nasal rule

Answer 4

A phonological assimilation rule that changes the place of articulation feature of a nasal consonant to agree with that of a following consonant, e.g., /n/ becomes [m] when preceding /p/ as in impossible.

Question 5

phoneme

Answer 5

A contrastive phonological segment whose phonetic realizations are predictable by rule.

Question 6

allophone

Answer 6

A predictable phonetic realization of a phoneme, e.g., [p] and [pʰ] are allophones of the phoneme /p/ in English.

Question 7

phone

Answer 7

A phonetic realization of a phoneme.

Question 8

complementary distribution

Answer 8

The situation in which phones never occur in the same phonetic environment, e.g., [p] and [pʰ] in English. See allophone.

Question 9

distinctive feature

Answer 9

Phonetic properties of phonemes that account for their ability to contrast meanings of words, e.g., voice, tense. Also called phonemic features.

Question 10

phonemic feature

Answer 10

Phonetic properties of phonemes that account for their ability to contrast meanings of words, e.g., voice, tense. Also called distinctive features.

Question 11

nondistinctive feature

Answer 11

Phonetic features of phones that are predictable by rule, e.g., aspiration in English.

Question 12

redundant

Answer 12

Describes a nondistinctive, nonphonemic feature that is predictable from other feature values of the segment, e.g., [+voice] is redundant for any [+nasal] phoneme in English because all nasals are voiced.

Question 13

predictable feature

Answer 13

A nondistinctive, noncontrastive, redundant phonetic feature, e.g., aspiration in English voiceless stops, or nasalization in English vowels.

Question 14

nonredundant

Answer 14

A phonetic feature that is distinctive, e.g., stop, voice, but not aspiration in English.

Question 15

lexical gaps

Answer 15

Possible but non-occurring words; forms that obey the phonotactic constraints of a language yet have no meaning, e.g., blick in English.

Question 16

phonemes

Answer 16

A contrastive phonological segment whose phonetic realizations are predictable by rule.

Question 17

phonetic features

Answer 17

Phonetic properties of segments (e.g., voice, nasal, alveolar) that distinguish one segment from another.

Question 18

prosodic feature

Answer 18

The duration (length), pitch, or loudness of speech sounds.

Question 19

suprasegmental

Answer 19

Prosodic features, e.g., length, tone.

Question 20

tone languages

Answer 20

A language in which the tone or pitch on a syllable is phonemic, so that words with identical segments but different tones are different words, e.g., Mandarin Chinese, Thai.

Question 21

Intonation

Answer 21

The pitch contour of a phrase or sentence.

Question 22

assimilation rules

Answer 22

A phonological process that changes feature values of
segments to make them more similar, e.g., a vowel becomes [+nasal] when followed by [+nasal] consonant. Also called feature-spreading rules.

Question 23

dissimilation rules

Answer 23

Phonological rules that change feature values of segments to make them less similar, e.g., a fricative dissimilation rule: /θ/ is pronounced [t] following another fricative. In English dialects with this rule, sixth /sɪks 1 θ/ is pronounced [sɪkst].

Question 24

nondistinctive features

Answer 24

Phonetic features of phones that are predictable by rule, e.g., aspiration in English.

Question 25

epenthetic

Answer 25

The insertion of one or more phones in a word, e.g., the insertion of [ə] in children to produce [tʃɪlәdrə̃n] instead of [tʃɪldrə̃n].

Question 26

metathesis

Answer 26

The phonological process that reorders segments, often by transposing two sequential sounds, e.g., the pronunciation of ask /æsk/ in some English dialects as [æks].

Question 27

natural classes

Answer 27

A class of sounds characterized by a phonetic property or feature that pertains to all members of the set, e.g., the class of stops. A natural class may be defined with a smaller feature set than that of any individual member of the class.

Question 28

phonotactics

Answer 28

Rules stating permissible strings of phonemes; within a syllable, e.g., a word-initial nasal consonant may be followed only by a vowel (in English). See possible word, nonsense word, accidental gap.

Question 29

accidental gaps

Answer 29

Phonological or morphological form that constitutes possible but non-occurring lexical items, e.g., blick, unsad

Question 30

nonsense words

Answer 30

A permissible phonological form without meaning, e.g., slithy.

Question 31

Optimality Theory

Answer 31

The hypothesis that a universal set of ranked phonological constraints exists, where the higher the constraint is ranked, the more influence it exerts on the language, e.g., in English, one constraint is the following: Obstruent sequences may not differ with respect to their voice feature at the end of a word.

Question 32

deletion rules

Answer 32

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