Chapter 3

Question 1

a phonetic variant of a morpheme, often motivated by the same phonetic forces that govern the occurrence of allophones; allomorphs of the English plural suffix include /s/, /z/, and /?z/

Answer 1

allomorph

Question 2

two or more sounds that occur predictably in mutually exclusive environments, i.e., in complementary distribution

Answer 2

allophone

Question 3

when there are multiple forms of a phoneme, morpheme, syntactic construction, etc.

Answer 3

alternation (i)

Question 4

the degree of muscular effort required for the articulation of a particular sound

Answer 4

articulatory effort

Question 5

the puff of air created by a delay in the onset of voicing upon the release of a stop

Answer 5

aspiration

Question 6

the process whereby one sound comes to share some phonetic property or cluster of properties with another sound in its environment; the most common type of phonological process; can involve voicing, nasalization, or point of articulation

Answer 6

assimilation

Question 7

a syllable that ends in a consonant

Answer 7

closed syllable

Question 8

the situation in which two or more sounds occur in mutually exclusive environments, i.e., there is no single environment in which more than one of the allophones could occur; sounds in complementary distribution are allophones of a single phoneme

Answer 8

complementary distribution

Question 9

the situation in which two or more sounds occur in the same position in otherwise identical words and the words have different meanings (i.e. the sounds occur in minimal pairs ); sounds that are in contrastive distribution are separate phonemes; e.g. the English words pat and bat illustrate that /p/ and /b/ are in contrastive distribution and so constitute separate phonemes in English

Answer 9

contrastive distribution

Question 10

the phonological process by which a sound is lost (i.e., deleted)

Answer 10

deletion

Question 11

the phonological process by which one sound becomes less like another nearby sound

Answer 11

dissimilation

Question 12

the phonological process by which consonants take on greater obstruction or become “stronger,” as when a fricative becomes a stop

Answer 12

fortition

Question 13

the situation in which two or more allophones of a phoneme may occur in the same word without creating a difference in meaning

Answer 13

free variation

Question 14

the phonological process by which a sound is added (i.e., inserted)

Answer 14

insertion (i)

Question 15

the phonological process by which consonants become less consonant‑like and more vowel‑like, e.g., shifts from voiceless to voiced stops (such as p > b), stops to fricatives (b > v), and fricatives to glides (v > w); also known as “weakening”

Answer 15

lenition

Question 16

the phonological process by which two sounds are transposed

Answer 16

metathesis

Question 17

a pair of words with different meanings, which differ in only one sound occurring in the same environment; used to determine whether two sounds are phonemes in a language

Answer 17

minimal pair

Question 18

a set of more than two words with different meanings that differ in only one sound occurring in the same environment

Answer 18

minimal set

Question 19

the smallest meaningful part of a word; includes roots, affixes, clitics, and particles

Answer 19

morpheme

Question 20

a group of sounds sharing one or more phonetic features that pattern together in a phonological system; to be a natural class, a group of sounds must share one or more phonetic features and must include all of the sounds in that language which share those features

Answer 20

natural class

Question 21

a pair of words that differ in more than one sound, but in which the sounds immediately adjacent to the target sounds are the same in both words; used to determine whether two sounds are phonemes in a language when no minimal pair can be found

Answer 21

near minimal pair

Question 22

a syllable that ends in a vowel

Answer 22

open syllable

Question 23

a phonological process by which a non‑palatal consonant takes on a palatal or palato‑alveolar articulation; typically triggered by high vowels, front vowels, or the palatal approximant

Answer 23

palatalization

Question 24

an explanatory factor for phonological processes, based on the observation that phonologies tend to be constructed in a way that increases the perceptual distinctness of sounds from one another

Answer 24

perceptual salience

Question 25

a sound that is used in a language to contrast words with different meanings

Answer 25

phoneme

Question 26

an alteration in phonetic structure due to the phonological properties of the form or its environment (e.g., deletion of a vowel that is adjacent to another vowel; devoicing of a consonant word‑finally)

Answer 26

phonological process

Question 27

the systematic patterns of sounds in language and the study of those patterns

Answer 27

phonology

Question 28

the phonetic realizations of a phoneme; may be identical to the underlying phoneme or derived by a phonological process

Answer 28

surface allophones

Question 29

the allophone of a phoneme that occurs in the widest array of environments; the allophone taken to be the “basic” form, from which other allophones are derived via phonological processes

Answer 29

underlying phoneme

Question 30

the phonological process by which unstressed vowels are converted to schwa‑like allophones

Answer 30

vowel reduction