Glossary - N
Nasal cavity - an opening that leads from the nostrils to the back of your throat.
Natural class - linguistic objects that behave in the
same way across a language. here we mean a group of phonemes that share
a set of features, so that if a rule applies to one member of the natural
class it applies to the other members of the natural class.
/p t k/ form
a natural class (voiceless plosives). if the rule of aspiration in English
applies to /p/, it will also apply to /t k/.
voiced consonants also form
a natural class, in Dutch they’re
all subject to devoicing at the end of a syllable.
Non-configurational languages - that depend on inflection rather than word order. compare to configurational.
Non-gradable antonym - see gradable antonym. strictly speaking you can’t be more dead than someone else (or more alive, unless it’s a figure of speech), so the pair dead – alive is a pair of non-gradable antonyms.
*Noun - word used to refer to a person, a place or a
thing.
‘Susan’, ‘table’, ‘happiness’ , ‘year’, ‘woman’
‘Suzanne’, ‘tafel’, ‘geluk’, ‘jaar’, ‘vrouw’