Glossary
Allophone: Phonetic variations in sounds which do not change meaning. For instance, the various ways that /r/ can be produced in English are allophones, they are still all recognised as the same phoneme.
Alveolar Ridge: The small boney ridge behind the upper front teeth.
Alveolar: A sound produced near or on the alveolar ridge.
Assimilation: A process where one sound is iinfluenced by the characteristics of an adjacent sound.
Bilabial: A sound that involves contact between the two lips.
Continuant A sound which involves the continuous expulsion of air, as opposed to a stop sound where the air is blocked by one or more articulator.
Dental: A dental sound is made when the place of articulation is on or near the teeth.
Elision or Ellipsis: The deletion of certain sounds in connected speech.
Egressive The normal direction of airflow is out through the mouth or nose called egressive.
Final position: The position of a sound at the end of a syllable or word.
Fortis: A fortis sound involves greater effort, ie muscular tension, to produce and are usually voiceless.
Fricative: A term applied to the manner of articulation of consonants where the constiction of the air flow between articulators causes friction.
Glottal: Sound made where the vocal folds are the articulators.
Glottis: The space between the focal folds or cords.
Initial position: Tthe position of a sound at the beginning of a syllable or word.
Ingressive Speech produced by breathing in is called ingressive.
Intervocalic: A sound that comes between vowel sounds, as for the / t / in butter.
IPA :The International Phonetic Association
Labial: A sound articulated with the lips.
Labiodental: Place of articulation involving the upper lip and the lower teeth, such as /f/.
Larynx (also known as the voice-box): An organ at the top of the windpipe, containing the vocal cords which produce voice.
Lateral: Describes a manner of articulation of consonants where contact between articulators restricts central air flow so that the air escapes around the sides or laterally, as in /l/
Lenis:. A lenis sound is pronounced with less muscular tension than a fortis sound and is usually voiced.
Medial position: A consonant is in medial position (or intervocalic position) when it comes between vowel sounds, as the /t/ in butter.
Nasal: A consonant sound, produced with the soft palate lowered so that air passes through the nasal cavity, such as /n/.
Palatal: A sound produced on or near the hard palate.
Palato-alveolar: Describes sounds produced just behind the alveolar ridge.
Palate: The roof of the mouth whcih can be subdivided into the hard and the soft palate (velum)
Phoneme: An abstract unit representing the smallest distinctive speech sound that distinguishes one word from another.
Plosive (also described as a 'stop'): Describes a manner of articulation of consonants where the air is compressed behind a closure within the mouth, before being released as the sound is produced, such as /p/ pr /t/.
Prosodic: describes features of speech above the level of phonemes or segments, such as stress and intonation.
RP: Received Pronunciation. A term used to define a variety of southern English which is commonly used as the standard pronunciation model, despite the fact that few people speak it in its full form.
Stress: Refers to the relative prominence of a syllable within a word (ie word sress), or a word within in a sentence (ie sentence stress). .
Tone unit: a chunck of speech, either a phrase or word, that is gnerally marked by pauses at its boundary
Tonic syllables: The syllable within a tone unit that carries the most prominence.
Sonorant: refers to sounds where there is no constriction of the air flow by the articulators, as for example with vowels.
Syllable: A phonological unit describing the number of speech sounds into which a word may be divided. Syllable structure can vary considerably from language to language.
Unvoiced / voiceless sound: describes sounds where the vocal cords do not vibrate.
Velar: A velar sound is produced at the velum, or the soft palate.
Velum: The soft palate, ie tThe part of the palate that is just behind the hard palate. A sound produced in this area is called a velar sound.
Vocal cords or folds: Voice-producing part of the larynx.
Voiced sound: a sound produced with vibration of the vocal chords
