Essential Linguistic Terminology: Phonology and Morphology

Key Concepts in Phonology

Phoneme:

The smallest contrastive unit of sound in a language (e.g., /m/, /n/ in map vs. nap).

Allophone:

A phonetic variant of a phoneme.

Assimilation:

A common phonological process where one sound becomes more like a nearby sound (e.g., not bad often pronounced as nop bad).

Elision:

The complete loss or omission of a sound (e.g., nex(t) day).

Liaison:

The pronunciation of a word-final consonant due to a following vowel sound (e.g., far away).

Understanding Prosody and Stress

Prosody refers to the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech. Stress can be categorized into three types: primary, secondary, or reduced/unstressed.

Rhythm Types: Syllabic vs. Accentual

• Spanish (Syllabic Language): Each syllable has a similar duration. The stressed syllable is louder but not necessarily longer.
• English (Accentual Rhythm): Accented syllables have a longer duration, while unaccented syllables are shortened.

Fundamentals of Morphology

Morpheme:

The minimal meaningful unit of grammatical analysis (e.g., the -s plural marker).

Morph:

A segment of a word-form representing a morpheme (e.g., the segments cat-s and dog-s).

Allomorphs:

A member of a set of morphs representing a particular morpheme (e.g., the different pronunciations of the plural morpheme).

Root:

The primary lexical unit of a word that carries the most important semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents. A root word typically does not have a prefix or a suffix.

Affixes: Prefixes, Suffixes, and Infixes

Affixes are linguistic sequences added to a word or lexeme to modify its meaning. They include:

• Prefix: An affix placed before the stem of a word.
• Suffix: An affix placed after the stem of a word.
• Infix: An affix placed inside a word stem.

Types of Morphemes

Inflectional Morpheme:

Changes the form of a word due to the rules of syntax (e.g., tense, number).

Derivational Morpheme:

Derives (creates) a new word, often with a new meaning or part of speech.

Lexical Categories: Nouns

Count and Mass Nouns

Common Count Noun:

A common noun that can be modified by a numeral and occurs in both singular and plural forms (e.g., chair, pencils, windows).

Common Mass Noun:

A noun where any quantity of it is treated as an undifferentiated unit, rather than as something with discrete subsets (e.g., water, information).

Concrete and Abstract Nouns

A Concrete Noun designates a perceptible object through the senses (i.e., material objects), as opposed to Abstract Nouns, which designate concepts or qualities perceptible only by intellect or thought (e.g., justice, happiness).