Phonology

• Prosodics refers to patterns of stress and intonation in speech. For example, interrogative sentences have intonation.
• Phonetics refers to the physical aspects of producing sounds.
• Homophones are words that sound the same but have different meaning.
• Monophthong refers to a vowel sound where the vocal tract stays in one position for the entire word.
• Diphthong refers to a vowel sound where the vocal tract moves to another position while the sound is being made.
• Sound iconicity refers to where a sound has a natural connection to the meaning it conveys. For example, 'bang' 'eeeek'.
• Consonance refers to the repetition of consonant sounds.
• Assonance refers to the repetition of vowel sounds.
• Sibilance refers to the repetition of 's' sounds.
• Lexical onomatopoeia refers to words that are recognised in the dictionary and reflect the sound they describe. For example, 'hiss' and 'meow'.
• Non-lexical onomatopoeia refers to words that are not described in the dictionary but reflect the sound that they describe. For example, 'kapow'.
• Minimal pair refers to a pair of words which differ by only one phonological element. For example, 'bat' and 'pat'.
• An example of a shibboleth is the 'r' sound. It is not pronounced in Received Pronunciation but is pronounced in American English.
• Elision refers to words like 'gonna' and 'wanna'.