ENG507 Glossary by Asfand Yarr

1. Advanced tongue root (ATR) :Having the root of the tongue pulled forward so

as to widen the pharynx (and, often, to raise the body of the tongue nearer to the

roof of the mouth). Pharyngeal sounds are [-ATR], as the pharynx is narrowed.

2. affricate :A stop followed by a homorganic fricative.
3. allophone :A variant of a phoneme. The allophones of a phoneme form a set of

sounds that (1) do not change the meaning of a word, (2) are all very similar to

one another, and (3) occur in phonetic contexts different from one another—for

example, syllable initial as opposed to syllable final. The differences between

allophones can be stated in terms of phonological rules.

4. alternations :Variations in words that can be described in terms of phonological

rules; for example, the difference between [ aI ] and [ I ] in divine, divin(ity).

5. alveolar :An articulation involving the tip or blade of the tongue and the alveolar

ridge, as in English [ d ] in die.

6. alveolar ridge :The part of the upper surface of the mouth immediately behind

the front teeth.

7. alveolo-palatal :Post-alveolar consonant produced with significant raising of the

front of the tongue toward the palate.

8. ambisyllabic :Belonging to two syllables. A consonant such as [ p ] in happy is

sometimes said to be ambisyllabic.

9. apical :An articulation involving the tip of the tongue.

10. approximant :An articulation in which one articulator is close to another but

without the tract being narrowed to such an extent that a turbulent airstream is

produced. In many forms of English, / j, l, r, w / are approximants.

11. articulator :One of several parts of the vocal tract that can be used to form

speech sounds. 12. aspiration :A period of voicelessness after the release of an articulation, as in

English in pie [ pÓaI].

13. assimilation :The change of one sound into another making it more similar to

a neighboring sound, as in the change of underlying [ n ] to [ m ] in input [ ·ImpÁt

] or of underlying [ z ] to [ Z ] in does she [ ·dØZSi ].

14. back vowel :Vowel in which the body of the tongue is in the back part of the

oral cavity (mouth). The vowels [ u, o, O, A ] form a set of back reference vowels.

15. bilabial :An articulation involving both lips, as in English [ m ] in my.

16. binary feature :A feature (for example, Lateral) that can be used to classify

sounds in terms of two possibilities.

17. breathy voice :Another name for murmur; a type of phonation in which the

18. broad transcription :A transcription that does not show a great deal of

phonetic d etail; often a simple phonemic transcription.

19. cardinal vowels :A set of reference vowels first defined by Daniel Jones. The

vowels of any language can be described by stating their relationships to the

cardinal vowels.

20. citation form :The form a word has when it is cited or pronounced in

isolation.

21. click :A stop made with an ingressive v elaric airstream, such as Zulu [ = ].

22. closed syllable :A syllable with a consonant at the end, as the first syllables

in English magpie, pantry, completion.

23. coarticulation :The overlapping of adjacent articulations.

24. coda :The consonants occurring after the vowel in a syllable. 25. contour tone :A tone in a language such as Chinese that must be specified as

a gliding movement within the pitch range.

26. coronal :A term for sounds articulated with the tip or blade of the tongue

raised toward the teeth or the alveolar ridge (or, sometimes, the hard palate), such

as [ T, s, t ].

27. creaky voice :See laryngealization.  declination :Gradual intonational pitch

fall over the course of an utterance.

28. dental :Refers to sounds made with the tongue touching the teeth.

29. diacritic :Small added mark that can be used to distinguish different values

of a symbol. For example, the addition of [ º] distinguishes a velarized from a

nonvelarized sound, as in [ l º ] as opposed to [ l ].

30. diphthong :A vowel in which there is a change in quality during a single

syllable, as in English [ aI 8] in high.

31. dorsal :Describing a sound articulated with the back of the tongue.  dorsum

:The back of the tongue.

32. downdrift :The tendency for the pitch to fall throughout an intonational

phrase.

33. ease of articulation :A phonetic force that impacts linguistic sound systems

so that patterns that are easier to produce are more likely than difficult patterns.

34. ejective :A stop made with an egressive glottalic airstream, such as Hausa [ k'

35. epenthesis :The insertion of one or more sounds in the middle of a word, such

as the pronunciation of sense as [ s”nts ].