Phonology and Morphology

Description

How is it that when you encounter a new word, you immediately know if it sounds “good” in your native language? How come that a word that sounds good in one language doesn’t sound okay in another? Do some (all? a few? most?) languages follow particular sound patterns to make and avoid various word shapes? These are just a few questions we will be trying to answer in our endeavour to figure out what phonological knowledge is (and does).
In the sections on phonology, you will learn about the sound patterns of languages and how phonetic contrasts can be used to distinguish words. Languages differ from one another in what phonetic contrasts they use for this purpose, and you will be invited to solve problems from a variety of languages illustrating these differences in behaviour. You will apply concepts learned, like phonemes, allophones and alternation, to data sets. You will notice that while languages differ phonologically, there are also strong tendencies that apply in most if not all languages, so we will look at how phonological theory aims to account for such tendencies. In the morphology section, you will be introduced to linguistic morphology and word formation and the study of the internal structure of words.