Phonological hierarchy

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In phonology, the phonological hierarchy describes a series of increasingly smaller regions of an utterance. From larger to smaller units, it is as follows:

1. Utterance
2. Intonational phrase (I-phrase)
3. Phonological phrase (P-phrase)
4. Clitic group
5. P-word (ω) (prosodic or phonological word)
6. Foot (F) e.g. "strong-weak" syllable groups, such as English ladder, button, eat it
7. Syllable (σ) e.g. cat (1), ladder (2)
8. Mora (μ) (“half-syllable”)
9. Segment (phoneme) e.g. [k], [æ] and [t] in cat
10. Feature

The hierarchy from the mora upwards is also called the prosodic hierarchy.

Phonologists may disagree on the exact arrangement of and inclusion in the hierarchy. For example, the clitic group is not universally recognised.

[edit] See Also

• Syntactic hierarchy