Phonology Glossary

A context-dependent phonetic realization of a phoneme that does not change word meaning.

A phonological process in which a sound becomes more similar to a neighboring sound in one or more features.

A phonological framework using multiple independent tiers of representation connected by association lines.

The consonant or consonant cluster that follows the nucleus (vowel) in a syllable.

A distributional pattern where two sounds never occur in the same environment, indicating they are allophones of one phoneme.

A phonological process in which a sound is removed from the pronunciation of a word.

A binary or scalar phonetic property used to classify phonemes and define natural classes of sounds.

The insertion of an additional sound into a word, often to repair phonotactic violations.

When two sounds can occur in the same environment interchangeably without affecting meaning.

A theoretical framework using ordered rewrite rules to derive surface forms from underlying representations.

The pattern of pitch variation over an utterance, used to convey grammatical structure, emphasis, and speaker attitude.

A phonological process in which two sounds in a word swap their positions.

A theory that represents stress through hierarchical structures (trees or grids) rather than linear notation.

Two words that differ by a single phoneme in the same position, proving the two sounds are contrastive.

A set of sounds that share distinctive features and behave uniformly in phonological processes.

The central, most sonorous element of a syllable, typically a vowel.

The consonant or consonant cluster that precedes the nucleus of a syllable.

A constraint-based framework where surface forms are selected by evaluating candidates against ranked, violable constraints.

The smallest unit of sound in a language that can distinguish one word from another.

A formal description of a regular sound alternation in a language, specifying the change, the target sound, and the conditioning environment.

The language-specific constraints on the permissible sequences of phonemes.

Suprasegmental aspects of speech including stress, rhythm, intonation, and tone.

The part of a syllable consisting of the nucleus and the coda, used in determining syllable weight and rhyme patterns.

The relative prominence of a syllable in terms of loudness, duration, pitch, and vowel quality.

The use of pitch at the word level to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning.