Phonology Key Vocab Flashcards
Phonology
The study of abstract categories that organize the sound system of a language.
Spectrogram
A graphic representation of the frequency distribution of the complex jumble of sound waves that give the hearing impression of speech sounds.
phoneme
The distinct units of sound in a specified language that distinguish one word from another.
phone
A physical realization of a speech sound.
Allophones of the phoneme
Phones which function as alternant realizations of the same phoneme.
Narrow transcription
Encodes more information about the phonetic variations of the specific sounds in utterance, such as accent, dialect, and speaker differences.
Distribution
Different positions in which a speech sound can occur or cannot occur in the words of a language.
Complimentary distribution
Two sounds which are distributed in such a way that one can only occur where the other cannot occur.
Minimal pairs
A pair of words which differ in only one sound but differ in meaning.
Ex: wrap and lap or wrap and map
Released consonant
The release of a plosive consonant
Unrealeased consonant
A stop with no audible released
Neutralisation
Refers to the fact that in a particular context, a contrast between phonemes become invisible.
Final devoicing
A voiceless allophone in word-final position in literature.
Aspiration
An aspirated stop is a stop that is produced with an extra breath of air.
Non-rhotic
Varieties in which r-sounds do not seem to occur in word-final position.
Rhotic
Varieties of English are those in which r-sounds can occur in word final position.
Constituents
Elements that make up a syllable.
Nucleus
“slot for a vowel’
Onset
“slots for consonants”
Coda
Postvocalic slot
Vowel epenthesis
Technical term for the insertion of vowels into syllables.
Syllabification
Assigning syllable structure to words
Maximal Onset Principle
Phonetic principle that says as many consonants as possible should belong to the second syllable.
Sonority
Technical term for the category that captures our acoustic impression of ‘clear audibility’.
Sonority Sequencing Principle
Sounds preceding the nucleus must rise in sonority and sounds following the nucleus must fall in sonority.
