Phonology Flashcards
phonology
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.
minimal pairs
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/.
morphophonemic rules
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].
homorganic nasal rule
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.
phoneme
A contrastive phonological segment whose phonetic realizations are predictable by rule.
allophone
A predictable phonetic realization of a phoneme, e.g., [p] and [pʰ] are allophones of the phoneme /p/ in English.
phone
A phonetic realization of a phoneme.
complementary distribution
The situation in which phones never occur in the same phonetic environment, e.g., [p] and [pʰ] in English. See allophone.
distinctive feature
Phonetic properties of phonemes that account for their ability to contrast meanings of words, e.g., voice, tense. Also called phonemic features.
phonemic feature
Phonetic properties of phonemes that account for their ability to contrast meanings of words, e.g., voice, tense. Also called distinctive features.
nondistinctive feature
Phonetic features of phones that are predictable by rule, e.g., aspiration in English.
redundant
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.
predictable feature
A nondistinctive, noncontrastive, redundant phonetic feature, e.g., aspiration in English voiceless stops, or nasalization in English vowels.
nonredundant
A phonetic feature that is distinctive, e.g., stop, voice, but not aspiration in English.
lexical gaps
Possible but non-occurring words; forms that obey the phonotactic constraints of a language yet have no meaning, e.g., blick in English.
phonemes
A contrastive phonological segment whose phonetic realizations are predictable by rule.
phonetic features
Phonetic properties of segments (e.g., voice, nasal, alveolar) that distinguish one segment from another.
prosodic feature
The duration (length), pitch, or loudness of speech sounds.
suprasegmental
Prosodic features, e.g., length, tone.
tone languages
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.
Intonation
The pitch contour of a phrase or sentence.
assimilation rules
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.
dissimilation rules
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].
nondistinctive features
Phonetic features of phones that are predictable by rule, e.g., aspiration in English.
epenthetic
The insertion of one or more phones in a word, e.g., the insertion of [ə] in children to produce [tʃɪlәdrə̃n] instead of [tʃɪldrə̃n].
metathesis
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].
natural classes
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.
phonotactics
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.
accidental gaps
Phonological or morphological form that constitutes possible but non-occurring lexical items, e.g., blick, unsad
nonsense words
A permissible phonological form without meaning, e.g., slithy.
Optimality Theory
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.
deletion rules
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