PHONOLOGY

Phonetics

The study of the production of speech sounds by humans, often without prior knowledge of the language being spoken.

Phonology

The study of patterns of sounds in different languages and within each language, including their positions in words.

Phoneme

The smallest unit of meaningful sound in a language.

Allophone

Different articulation of the same phoneme, such as the lip position of /ʃ/ in "shoe" and "she."

Minimal Pair

Two items whose meanings change when just one phoneme is altered, e.g., "pin" and "bin."

Syllable

A unit of pronunciation that is usually longer than a sound but shorter than a word.

Monosyllable

A word consisting of a single syllable.

Discrimination

The ability to distinguish between two sounds when both are heard together.

Stress

The emphasis placed on certain syllables by making them louder, longer, or higher in pitch.

Nuclear Stress/Tonic Syllable

The syllable in a sentence that receives the greatest emphasis.

Accommodation

The process of 'squeezing together' syllables between stressed syllables for even timing in speech.

Differentiation/Recognition and Production

Stages for teaching word and sentence stress.

Stress-timed language

A language where stressed syllables occur at regular intervals, e.g., English.

Syllable-timed Language

A language where each syllable takes the same length of time to say, e.g., French or Japanese.

Tone Groups

Parts of a sentence, each containing one stress.

Consonants

Speech sounds produced by blocking or narrowing the airflow from the lungs.

Voicing

Whether the vocal cords vibrate during the production of a consonant sound.

Place of Articulation

The location where the airflow obstruction occurs in speech.

Manner of Articulation

How the airflow is affected during the production of speech sounds.

Vowels

Sounds made with uninterrupted airflow, characterized by tongue height, position, lip rounding, and length.

Monophthongs

A single vowel sound, such as /u/ in "book."

Diphthongs

A phoneme containing two vowel sounds, like /ei/ in "play."

Assimilation

When a phoneme changes its quality due to the influence of a neighboring sound.

Coalescent

When two sounds affect each other, as in "Would you?" becoming /ʤ/.

Catenation/Liaison

The fusion of sounds at word boundaries.

Intrusion

The introduction of an extra sound between two vowel sounds at word boundaries.

Consonant Vowel Linking/Catenation

Linking a consonant sound at the end of a word with a vowel sound at the start of the next word.

Juncture

When utterances are phonemically identical but have two possible interpretations.

Elision

The omission of sounds or syllables due to similar sounds occurring immediately afterward.

Weak Forms

When an unstressed word reduces its vowel to a schwa.

Contraction

The combination of two single-syllable words into one syllable, with one being a weak form.

Word Stress

Indicates which syllables are stressed in a word.

Sentence Stress

The way a speaker highlights certain words in a sentence to convey meaning.