The phonological word or prosodic word (also called pword, PrWd; symbolised as ω) is a
constituent in the
phonological hierarchy. It is higher than the
syllable
A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...
and the
foot but lower than
intonational phrase and the
phonological phrase. It is largely held to be a
prosodic domain in which phonological
features within the same
lexeme
A lexeme () is a unit of lexical meaning that underlies a set of words that are related through inflection. It is a basic abstract unit of meaning, a unit of morphological analysis in linguistics that roughly corresponds to a set of forms ta ...
may spread from one
morph to another, from one
clitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic ( , backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a ...
to a
clitic host, or from one clitic host to a clitic.
The phonological word and grammatical word are non-isomorphic. Sometimes what counts as a word for the phonology can be either smaller or larger than what counts as a word for syntactic purposes. A clear case of this mismatch is compound words, which count as two words phonologically, but one in the syntax.
See also
*
Phonetic word
References
Phonology
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