Glossary
- Allophonic rules
Allophonic rules are phonological rules that describe how phonemes (the smallest distinctive sound units in a language) are realized as different allophones (variants of a phoneme) in specific contexts. These rules explain the predictable variations in the pronunciation of a phoneme based on its phonetic environment.
- Coinage
Coinage refers to the creation of entirely new words or terms, often to name new inventions, concepts, or phenomena. These words are typically introduced into a language and may become widely accepted over time. Coinage can occur through various processes, such as brand naming, technological innovation, or cultural trends.
- Conversion
Conversion (also called zero derivation or functional shift) is a word-formation process in which a word changes its grammatical category (e.g., noun to verb, verb to noun) without any change in form. This means the word remains the same in spelling and pronunciation, but takes on a new meaning and function in a sentence.
- Derivational rules
Derivational rules are rules in morphology that govern how new words are formed from existing words or roots by adding derivational morphemes (prefixes, suffixes, or infixes). These rules change the meaning of the original word and often alter its grammatical category (e.g., turning a noun into a verb or an adjective into a noun).
- Inflectional rules
Inflectional rules are rules in morphology that govern how words are modified to express grammatical information, such as tense, number, gender, case, or person. Unlike derivational rules, which create new words, inflectional rules modify existing words to fit the grammatical context of a sentence without changing their core meaning or grammatical category.
- Minimal pairs
Minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a language that differ by only one sound (phoneme) in the same position and have different meanings. They are used to demonstrate that two sounds are distinct phonemes in a language because substituting one sound for the other changes the meaning of the word.
- Morphophonemics
Morphophonemics (or morphophonology) is the study of the interaction between morphology (the structure of words) and phonology (the sound system of a language). It examines how the pronunciation of morphemes (the smallest meaningful units of language) changes depending on their context or the rules of the language.
- Neutralization
Neutralization in phonology refers to the loss of a phonological distinction between two or more sounds in a specific context. This means that sounds that are normally distinct (i.e., separate phonemes) become indistinguishable in a particular environment, often merging into a single sound.
- Syllable structure
It refers to the organization of sounds within a syllable, which is a unit of speech that typically contains a vowel sound and may be accompanied by consonants. Syllables are the building blocks of words, and their structure plays a key role in pronunciation, rhythm, and stress patterns in language.
- Tonal languages, tone
Tonal languages, tone refers to the use of pitch (the highness or lowness of a sound) to distinguish meaning between words or grammatical forms. In these languages, the same sequence of consonants and vowels can have entirely different meanings depending on the pitch pattern or tone used.
- Voicing
In phonetics, it refers to whether the vocal cords vibrate during the production of a speech sound. It is a key feature that distinguishes between different types of consonant sounds.