Phonology

A phonemic analysis tries to answer the question: What is a permissible (phonological) word in a particular language? A ‘classical’ phonemic analysis consists of: i. an inventory of phonemes ii. a list of allophonic rules (including allophones of course) iii. a statement of phonotactics (environments) — which phonemes go where These three steps provide an answer to the first...

In linguistics, prosody refers to intonation, rhythm and vocal stress in speech. These suprasegmental (Prosodic) features are phonetic features that are not properties of a single segment, but a syllable or higher unit, such as stress, length, tone and intonation. Tone A contrastive pitch of syllables which conveys different meanings of a word. In languages such as Mandarin, the pronunciation of...

The syllables we have looked at so far are fairly simple ones. We have not, for example, represented the difference between short and long vowels. Such distinctions are represented by attaching the segments of the syllable into timing slots referred to as the skeletal tier. In order to do this, the nucleus is branched and short vowels are represented on a single tier while long vowels (including...

Syllables are often described as the phonological building blocks of words. Linguistically a syllable is defined as a unit of speech that is made up of a syllable nucleus (usually a vowel) and one or more optional phones. The syllable has two immediate constituents: – onset any consonant(s) that precede the nucleus – rhyme the nucleus and any consonant(s) that follow it The rhyme is...