"Morphophonology (also morphophonemics or morphonology) is the branch of linguistics that studies the interaction between morphological and phonological or phonetic processes."
The study of the way in which morphemes (smallest units of meaning) are pronounced in different contexts.
Phoneme: A unit of sound that can change the meaning of a word when substituted for another sound.
Allophone: A variant form of a phoneme that doesn't alter meaning and is used according to context.
Morpheme: The smallest unit of meaning in a word.
Allomorph: A variant of a morpheme that is used based on rules of phonology.
Phonotactics: The study of sound patterns within and between words.
Assimilation: When a sound takes on the characteristics of a nearby sound.
Dissimilation: When a sound changes to become less like a nearby sound.
Metathesis: When sounds switch places within a word.
Epenthesis: The addition of a sound to a word.
Deletion: The removal of a sound from a word.
Reduplication: The repetition of a part of a word to create emphasis or new meaning.
Vowel harmony: The phenomenon where vowels within a word take on similar features.
Consonant harmony: The phenomenon where consonants within a word take on similar features.
Tone: The use of pitch to convey meaning within a word or sentence.
Stress: The emphasis placed on a syllable within a word.
Prosody: The patterns of stress, tone, and rhythm within a language.
Suprasegmentals: The phonetic features that extend beyond individual sounds, such as stress and intonation.
Natural Phonology: The theory that phonological processes are innate and universal.
Optimality Theory: The theory that phonological rules are ranked in a hierarchy of importance and are selected based on the most optimal solution for a given language.
Generative Phonology: The theory that phonological processes can be generated by a set of rules and constraints.
Assimilation: This refers to the process in which a sound becomes more like a neighboring sound. For example, the final consonant of "cats" may become voiced in "cats and dogs" because the following word "and" begins with a voiced consonant.
Dissimilation: This is the opposite of assimilation. It refers to the process in which a sound becomes less like a neighboring sound. For example, "potato" and "tomato" are pronounced with different stress patterns because the two words have a similar sound ("tato").
Epenthesis: This is the addition of a sound to a word. For example, the word "film" may be pronounced with an extra vowel sound as "fil-uhm".
Deletion: The removal of a sound from a word. For example, the word "often" is usually pronounced without the /t/ sound.
Metathesis: This is the switching of sounds within a word. For example, the word "ask" may be pronounced as "aks" by some speakers.
Vowel reduction: The process in which some vowels are pronounced with less emphasis and become shorter or less distinct. For example, the "e" in "photographer" is reduced to a schwa sound (ə).
Nasalization: This refers to the process in which a vowel sound is pronounced with added nasal resonance. For example, the word "man" may have a nasalized vowel when spoken with certain accents.
Tonal changes: In some languages, the tone of a word can change according to its position in a sentence or the surrounding words.
"Its chief focus is the sound changes that take place in morphemes (minimal meaningful units) when they combine to form words."
"Morphophonological analysis often involves an attempt to give a series of formal rules or constraints that successfully predict the regular sound changes occurring in the morphemes of a given language."
"Such a series of rules converts a theoretical underlying representation into a surface form that is actually heard."
"The units of which the underlying representations of morphemes are composed are sometimes called morphophonemes."
"The surface form produced by the morphophonological rules may consist of phonemes."
"The surface form produced by the morphophonological rules may...be subject to ordinary phonological rules to produce speech sounds or phones."
"Morphophonology (also morphophonemics or morphonology)."
"Morphemes are minimal meaningful units."
"Morphophonology studies the interaction between morphological and phonological or phonetic processes."
"Morphophonological analysis often involves an attempt to give a series of formal rules or constraints."
"[Morphophonology] attempts to predict the regular sound changes occurring in the morphemes of a given language."
"Such a series of rules converts a theoretical underlying representation into a surface form that is actually heard."
"Surface forms produced by the morphophonological rules may...be subject to ordinary phonological rules to produce speech sounds or phones."
"The units of which the underlying representations of morphemes are composed are sometimes called morphophonemes."
"The morphophonological analysis may bypass the phoneme stage."
"The morphophonological analysis may...produce the phones itself."
"The units of which the underlying representations of morphemes are composed are sometimes called morphophonemes."
"The surface form produced by the morphophonological rules may consist of phonemes."
"The morphophonological analysis may bypass the phoneme stage and produce the phones itself."