Key Terms for Phonology and Morphology

These words form part of the discussion of the readings for this section, and you should become familiar with them. You can find them defined separately in the Glossary in the back of our textbook, as well as the online glossary on this site. Some of these terms may also come from our lectures, supplementary readings, and workbook exercises for the unit. You may find it helpful to continually refer back to this list as you progress through the material and lectures of this unit.

phoneme
vowel
tense vowel
lax vowel
diphthong
monophthong
allophone
released / unreleased
aspirated
complementary distribution
free variation
schwa
consonant
glottis / glottal
synthetic
analytic
morpheme
allomorph
affix
base
free morpheme
bound morpheme
derivation
inflection