Phonology Descriptions
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14 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 phonology | is the branch of linguistics that studies the structure and systematic pattering of sounds in human language |
| phoneme | it is a single unit, an abstract element (occurs in the mind), a set of phonological features (eg. bilabial, stop) having several predictable manifestations (allophones) in speech |
| allophone | is a positional variant of a phoneme, is specific rule-governed |
| minimal pairs | pairs of words that: 1) have the same number of phonemes 2) differ in a single sound, in a corresponding position in the two words 3) differ in meaning |
| complementary distribution | is a relation between two or more sounds where the sounds never occur in the same position two or more sounds that are phonetically similar and in complementary distribution are allophones of the same phoneme |
| contrastive distribution | is a relation between two sounds that replacing one by the other makes a difference in meaning of a word two sounds that are in contrastive distribution are allophones of different phonemes |
| free variation | is relation between two or more sounds that either one can occur in a certain position, and substitution does not change the meaning two sounds that are phonetically similar and in free variation are allophones of the same phoneme |
| phonological rule | relate the phonemic representations to the phonetic and are part of a speaker's knowledge of the language |
| assimilation rule | is a rule that makes neighbouring segments more similar by copying or spreading a phonetic property from one segment to the other |
| vowel nasalization rule | a vowel becomes nasalized in the environment before a nasal segment in the same syllable |
| plural formation rule | The plural morpheme is /z/ and is subject to the following conditions (rules). If the noun ends in a sibilant consonant, an epenthetic /ə/ is inserted between the plural marker and the noun. Otherwise, if the noun ends in a voiceless phoneme, the feature /s/ is spread to the plural morpheme. |
| aspiration rule | voiceless stops are aspirated word initially or as the initial of a stressed syllable (/p/, /t/, /k/) |
| flapped | between vowels when the preceding vowel is stressed and the following vowel is unstressed (for /t/ and /d/) |
| natural class | is a set of phonemes uniquely defined by a small number of phonological features and have a phonological rule applied to them |
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