Spanish Phonetics, Morphology and Semantics Essentials

Degree of Articulation

Describes whether or not the vocal cords vibrate to produce a sound:

• Voiceless: The vocal cords do not vibrate.
• Voiced: The vocal cords vibrate.

Phonetic Classification

• b: Bilabial occlusive, voiced
• s: Alveolar fricative, voiceless
• p: Bilabial occlusive, voiceless
• l: Alveolar lateral, voiced
• m: Bilabial nasal, voiced
• r, rr: Alveolar vibrant, voiced
• f: Labiodental fricative, voiceless
• n: Alveolar nasal, voiced
• z, c: Interdental fricative, voiceless
• ch: Palatal affricate, voiceless
• d: Dental occlusive, voiced
• y: Palatal fricative, voiced
• t: Dental occlusive, voiceless
• ll: Palatal lateral, voiced
• ñ: Palatal nasal, voiced
• g: Velar occlusive, voiced
• k: Velar occlusive, voiceless
• x: Velar fricative, voiceless

Accent and Intonation

Accent is a reinforcement of expiratory intensity in speech flow:

• Tonic words: Words that carry an accent (nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, some personal pronouns, and determiners).
• Atonic words: Words spoken without their own accent (articles, possessive determiners, personal pronouns, and prepositions).

Intonation is the melody accompanying sentences to determine meaning and intention.

Etymology and Word Formation

• Acronym: Formed by combining the initials of other words.
• Acronymy: The union of parts of different words.
• Patrimonial words: Latin words that have undergone phonetic evolution to their modern form.
• Cultisms: Latin words that have barely changed from their original form.
• Doublets: When a cultism and a patrimonial word coexist, both derived from the same Latin root.

Loanwords

Words adopted from other languages:

• Germanic: Warrior life
• Arabic: Customs and lifestyles
• Gallicisms: Politics and culture
• Italian: Arts and culture
• Others: Anglicisms, Lusisms, Galicianisms, Vasquisms, Catalanisms, and Americanisms.

Semantics

• Denotation: The objective, dictionary-defined meaning shared by all speakers.
• Connotation: Secondary meanings derived from personal or social assessments.
• Semantic Field: A set of words in the same grammatical category that share common meaning traits.