unaspirated
A speech sound (stop) in which airflow is cut off immediately at closure of vocal folds.
unbound
A pronoun whose antecedent is inferred from context rather than explicitly mentioned in the same sentence. ex: He is handsome. Who ‘he’ is depends on the discourse context.
uninterpretable
A word or phrase whose meaning is not clear and cannot be discerned.
unitary system hypothesis
States that a bilingual child uses one lexicon and one grammar for all languages being acquired.
universal grammar (UG)
A generativist theory usually credited to Noam Chomsky positing that human beings have an innate capacity to learn language.
unmarked
The version of a linguistic component which has not had any features or properties added to it. ex: singular versus plural
unrounded (vowel)
A vowel sound which is produced without the rounding of the lips. ex: [i] [I] [e] [a]
uvula
A projection in the vocal tract stemming from the back of the soft palate.