Phonology terms

Phonetics Study of sounds

Phonology Study of sound patterns

Phonemes Abstract representation of sounds

Allophones Different pronunciations of the same sound → does not produce new words
with different meanings when one allophone replaces the other

Complementa when a phoneme replaces the other in the same position and causes no
ry distribution difference in meaning/ produce a new word with different meaning →
complementary distribution ( the place of occurrence of these phoneme will not
overlap)

Contrastive when a phoneme replaces the other in the same position of the word, causing a
distribution difference in meaning/ produce new word with different meaning → contrastive
distribution ( the place of occurrence of these phonemes can overlap )

Minimal pair/ a group of words that only have one different phoneme in the same position
minimal set

Phonotactics the limited sound patterns that are allowed in a language

Syllable a larger phonetic unit than a phoneme

must contain vowels
structure of syllable: onset + rhyme
onset: consonant(s)
rhyme: nucleus (vowels) + coda ( consonants)

Open syllable syllables without a coda

Closed syllable syllables with a coda

Morphology
Free morphemes that can stand on their own
morphemes

Bound morphemes that cannot stand on their own + have to be attached to another
morphemes form

Lexical free morphemes that have a semantic content/ contains the meaning of the
morphemes word

Functional bound morphemes that do not have semantic meaning but perform a
morphemes grammatical function

Inflectional bound morphemes that indicate the grammatical function of the word
morphemes

Derivational bound morphemes that changes the grammatical category of the word
morpheme
Word formation

Borrowing taking a word from another language without changing it

Calque direct translation of a foreign word into the language

Compounding taking two separate words and combining them to form a single new one

Blending

Hypocorism

Backformation

Acronym

Derivation attaching prefixes, suffixes, infixes to produce new words ( often changes the
grammatical category of the word )

Coinage invention of new words usually from trade names

Conversion changing the word’s usage/ function without reduction