Phonology Key Terms (Ch. 3)

Question 1

phonetic inventories

Answer 1

the sounds that are produced as part of the language

Question 2

phonotactic constraints

Answer 2

restrictions on possible combinations of sounds

Question 3

sound substitution

Answer 3

speakers use sounds of their native language to replace non-native sounds when pronouncing the words of a foreign language

Question 4

aspiration

Answer 4

short burst or putt of air

Question 5

phoneme

Answer 5

a set of speech sounds that are perceived to be variants of the same sound

Question 6

allophone

Answer 6

member of a particular phoneme set, which corresponds to an actual phonetic segment produced by a speaker

Question 7

phonetic environments

Answer 7

the sounds that come before and after it in a word

Question 8

contrastive distribution

Answer 8

two sounds occur in the same phonetic environment, and using one rather than the other changes the meaning of the word

Question 9

minimal pair

Answer 9

two words whose pronunciations differ by exactly one sound

Question 10

free variation

Answer 10

sounds with interchangeable patterning

Question 11

phonological rules

Answer 11

the mapping between phonemic and phonetic elements

Question 12

natural class

Answer 12

group of sounds in a language that share one or more articulatory or auditory property, to the exclusion of all other sounds in that language.

Question 13

obstruents

Answer 13

are produced with an obstruction of the airflow

Question 14

sonorants

Answer 14

are segments produced with a relatively open passage for the airflow

Question 15

assimilation

Answer 15

cause a sound to become more like a neighboring sound with respect to some phonetic property

Question 16

nasal place assimilation

Answer 16

an alveolar nasal assimilates to the place of articulation of a following consonant

Question 17

vowel harmony

Answer 17

a back vowel becomes front when preceded by a front vowel in the same word

Question 18

dissimilation

Answer 18

cause two close or adjacent sounds to become less similar with respect to some property, by means of a change in one or both sounds

Question 19

insertion

Answer 19

cause a segment not present at the phonemic level to be added to the phonetic form of a word

Question 20

deletion

Answer 20

rules eliminate a sound that was present at the phonemic level

Question 21

overlapping distribution

Answer 21

sounds that can occur in the same environment

Question 22

flapping

Answer 22

an alveolar stop is realized as a flap when it occurs after a stressed vowel and before an unstressed vowel

Question 23

voiceless stop insertion

Answer 23

between a nasal consonant and a voiceless fricative, a voiceless stop with the same place of articulation as the nasal is inserted

Question 24

CV metathesis

Answer 24

when three consecutive consonants occur, the first consonant trades places with the preceding vowel

Question 25

implicational law

Answer 25

the presence of the less common sound implies that the more common sound will also be used in the language