Linguistics

Ortography: Concerns letters and spelling

Phonetics: Conerns the sounds of speech

Egressive: Air moves outward

Pulmonic: Air comes from the lunges

Articulary Phonetics: how speech sounds are produced

• Lungs

• Larynx

• vocal tract

active articulators:

move during speech (e.g. tongue, lips)

passive articulators:

remain stationary (e.g. teeth, alveolar ridge)

a combination of place of articulation, manner of articulation and voicing always specifies one exact sound.

both lips [b] [p]

Lower lip and upper teeth [f]

Tongue near the upper front teeth [θ]

At the alveolar ridge [d] [s] 

Between the hard palate and alveolar ridge [ʃ]

Tongue towards the hard palate [j]

at the velum [k]

at the glottis [h]

Complete closure followed by release [p] [b]

Continous airflow through a narrow passage [f] [s] 

Stop followed by a fricative [tʃ] [dʒ]

Close approach without turbulence [w] [j] 

Air escapes at the sides of the tongue [l]

Air escapes through the nose [m] [n] [ŋ]

Voiced: vocal cords vibrate [b] [d] [z]

voiceless: no vocal cord vibration [p] [t] [s]

Vowel height: Tongue position in the mouth (high, mid, low)

Vowel frontness: Front-back position of the tongue (front, central, back)

Vowel tenseness: Long (tense) or short (lax) vowels.

Lip rounding: Rounded or onrounded vowels.

Single, pure vowel sounds without change in quality

Complex vowel sounds with a glide from one vowel quality to another within the same syllable.

• Closing diphthongs: end with a higher vowel sound.

• Centering Diphthong: Glide towards a central vowel position.

Definiton: The minimal distinctive unit in the sound system of a language that enables speakers to distinguish between words.

Brackets: //

Example: /p/ in “pat” vs. /b/ in “bat”

An instance of the phoneme.

Example: [p] is a phone from phoneme /p/

A phone that functions as an alternant realization of the same phoneme. [p] in spin is an allophone of /p/

The situation where two sounds never occur in the same phonetic enviroment.

[p] and [p hoch h] in English are in complementary distribution.

words which differ in only one sound.

examples: cheap and chip. light and white. car and tar.

released: built-up air is released. [p] in pat

unreleased: built-up air is not released. [p] in stop

Onset: initial consonant(s)

Nucleus: vowel or syllabic consonant

Coda: Final consonant(s)

Example: cat -> onset /k/, nucleus /æ/, coda /t/

the onset is always preferred over the coda. Consonants are syllabified in the onset when possible.

Example. In “extra” the /k/ and /s/ form the onset of the second syllable rather than the coda of the first.

acoustic impression of clear audibility.

Example: vowels are more sonorous than consonants

A set of sounds that form a group around their most sonorous member (nucleus)

E.g. sun /sʌn/

sounds preceding the nucleus (onsets) must rise in sonority, while sounds following the nucleus (codas) must fall in sonority.

clamp: /k/ -> /l/ -> /æ/ (rise in sonority, /m/ -> /p/ (fall in sonority)

Assigning syllable structure to words.

banana: /bəˈnæ.nə/

the smallest meaningful unit in the sound system of a language.

Example: book (single morpheme) vs. (two morphemes: {book} and {s}

Brackets {} 

Simplex: words consisting of only one morpheme.

{run}

Complex: Words consisting of two or more morphemes

{running} (run+ing)

Morphemes that occur only in one word of a language.

{cran} in cranberry

Vowels change within a word to form a plural.

“man” to “men”

Morphemes with neither visible nor audible morph.

Example: sheep. plural: sheep (zero morph for the plural marker)

Free morpheme: morphemes that can occur on their own.

Example: {book}

Bound morpheme: Morphemes that can only occur in combination with another morpheme.

Example: {s} in books

Bases: Morphemes, that serve as the basis for attaching other morphemes. Can be simplex or complex.

E.g.: unhappy (base: happy)

Roots: Simpley bases, core elements of a word.

E.g.: happy in unhappiness

A base combined with a bound morpheme.

E.g. happiness (happy + ness)

Prefixes: Affixes that appear before the base.

E.g. unhappy (un-)

Affixes that appears after the base.

E.g. happiness (-ness)

Affixes inserted into the base (rare in English)

E.g. fan-freaking-tastic (colloquial)

Realizations of morphemes when the same morpheme is realizes through different morphs.

E.g. Plural “s” as [s], [z], [ɪz] in “cats” “dogs” “horses”

Distribution of allomorphs is governed by the sound structure.

• Example: Plural “-s” as [s], [z], [ɪz]

Distribution of allomorphs is governed by the lexical item.

• e.g. “ox” “oxen”

Distribution of allomorphs is governed by the meaning.

• E.g. “give” / “gave” (tense)

Lexeme: Abstract unit in the vocabulary of a language.

E.g. walk (to walk)

Grammatical words: different grammatically specified words for a given lexeme.

E.g. “walk”, “walkes”, “walking”, “walked”

Affixes that encode grammatical information to create different word-forms; always suffixes in English.

Examples:

• Plural -s (cats)

• Genitive/Possessive: -´s (John´s)

• Past tense: -ed (walked)

• 3rd Person singular: -s (runs)

• Progressive: -ing (running)

• Comparative: -er (faster)

• Superlative: -est (fastest)

Affixes that create new lexemes differing from the base; may change word class.

E.g.

• Noun to adjective: “joy” (N) -> “joyful” (A)

• Verb to noun: “read” (V) -> “reader” (N)