The phonological word or prosodic word (also called pword, PrWd; symbolised as ω) is a

constituent Constituent or constituency may refer to: Politics * An individual voter within an electoral district, state, community, or organization * Advocacy group or constituency * Constituent assembly * Constituencies of Namibia Other meanings * Const ...

in the

phonological hierarchy The phonological hierarchy describes a series of increasingly smaller regions of a phonological utterance, each nested within the next highest region. Different research traditions make use of slightly different hierarchies. For instance, there is ...

higher than the

syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...

and the

foot The foot ( : feet) is an anatomical structure found in many vertebrates. It is the terminal portion of a limb which bears weight and allows locomotion. In many animals with feet, the foot is a separate organ at the terminal part of the leg made ...

but lower than

intonational phrase In linguistics, a prosodic unit, often called an intonation unit or intonational phrase, is a segment of speech that occurs with a single prosodic contour ( pitch and rhythm contour). The abbreviation IU is used and therefore the full form is o ...

and the

phonological phrase Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

. It is largely held (Hall, 1999) to be a

prosodic domain In linguistics, prosody () is concerned with elements of speech that are not individual phonetic segments (vowels and consonants) but are properties of syllables and larger units of speech, including linguistic functions such as intonation, str ...

in which phonological

features Feature may refer to: Computing * Feature (CAD), could be a hole, pocket, or notch * Feature (computer vision), could be an edge, corner or blob * Feature (software design) is an intentional distinguishing characteristic of a software item ...

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 taken ...

may spread from one

morph Morph may refer to: Biology * Morph (zoology), a visual or behavioral difference between organisms of distinct populations in a species * Muller's morphs, a classification scheme for genetic mutations * "-morph", a suffix commonly used in tax ...

to another or 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 w ...

to a clitic host or from one clitic host to a clitic.

References

*Hall, T. A. (1999). "The phonological word: a review" In: T. A. Hall & Ursula Kleinhenz (eds.) ''Studies on the Phonological Word''. 1-22. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Phonology {{phonology-stub