In some models of

phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...

as well as morphophonology in the field of

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

, the underlying representation (UR) or underlying form (UF) of a

word A word is a basic element of language that carries semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguist ...

morpheme A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...

is the abstract form that a word or

is postulated to have before any phonological rules have been applied to it. In contrast, a surface representation is the phonetic representation of the word or sound. The concept of an underlying representation is central to

generative grammar Generative grammar is a research tradition in linguistics that aims to explain the cognitive basis of language by formulating and testing explicit models of humans' subconscious grammatical knowledge. Generative linguists, or generativists (), ...

. If more phonological rules apply to the same underlying form, they can apply wholly independently of each other or in a feeding or counterbleeding order. The underlying representation of a morpheme is considered to be invariable across related forms (except in cases of suppletion), despite alternations among various

allophone In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plos ...

s on the surface.

Examples

In many cases, the underlying form is simply the phonemic form. For example, in many varieties of

American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lang ...

, the phoneme in a word like ''wet'' can surface either as an unreleased stop or as a flap , depending on environment: ''wet'' vs. ''wetter''. (In both cases, however, the underlying representation of the morpheme ''wet'' is the same: its phonemic form .) Phonological rules may change the phonemes involved. In such cases, pipes (", ") or double slashes may be used in transcription to distinguish the underlying form from its phonemic realization. For example, the word "cats" has the phonemic representation . If it is assumed that the underlying form of the English plural suffix is a sound, the underlying form of "cats" would be . (The surfaces as an because of the phonological process of devoicing after an unvoiced consonant.) Sandhi, such as tone sandhi in Chinese, is another phonological process that changes the phonemes of a morpheme from its underlying form.

References

Phonology {{Phonology-stub

Examples

See also

References