A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics David Crystal

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change is known as a sound shift, e.g. a vowel shift (as took place between
Middle and Early Modern English – the Great Vowel Shift) or a consonant
shift (as in several of the correspondences between Latin and English). A regular
series of changes is traditionally referred to in comparative philology as a
sound law – one hypothesis about such ‘laws’ (the neogrammarian hypothesis)
being that they had no exceptions, i.e. at a given time all words containing a
sound in a given phonetic environment would change in the same way, and
any which did not could be explained by reference to a further law. Several
apparent exceptions to the initial statement of such laws came to be explained
by investigations which were carried out working on this premise. See also
diffusion, wave (1).
sound spectrograph
see spectrograph
sound-symbolism (n.) A term used in semiotics and linguistics to refer to
a direct association between the form and the meaning of language: the
sounds used reflect properties of the external world, as in cases of onomatopoeia
(e.g. cuckoo, murmur, crash) and other forms of synaesthesia (e.g. sl- in such
words as slimy, slither). Sound-symbolic words are also sometimes referred to
as mimetic.
sound system A term for the network, or system, of phonetically realized
contrasts which constitute the phonology of a language, dialect, etc.
source (adj./n.) (1) A term used in the phrase source feature to refer to one of
the five main dimensions of classification in Chomsky and Halle’s distinctive
feature theory of phonology (the others being major class features, cavity
features, manner-of-articulation features, and prosodic features). The term
subsumes the feature oppositions of heightened subglottal pressure, voice
and strident. See Chomskyan.
(2) In acoustic phonetics, source refers to the waveform of the vibrating
larynx. Its spectrum is rich in harmonics, which gradually decrease in
amplitude as their frequency increases. The various resonance chambers of
the vocal tract, especially the movements of the tongue and lips, then act on
the laryngeal source in the manner of a filter (see filtered speech), reinforcing
certain harmonics relative to others. The combination of these two elements is
known as the source-filter model of vowel production.
(3) In the study of communication, source refers to a point of origin of a
message, as opposed to its ‘destination’. More specifically, in semantics, the
term is used as part of a localistic theory of meaning: an entity takes a ‘path’
from a ‘source’ to a ‘goal’. In case grammar, it refers to the place from which
something moves. See semantic role.
(4) In historical linguistics, the term is used to characterize a language
from which a particular feature (such as a loan word) comes (the ‘source
language’); the receiving language is known as the ‘matrix’ language. Alternative
terminology is ‘donor’ and ‘recipient’ language.
(5) In translating and interpreting, the term describes the language from which
a message originates (the ‘source language’); the ‘target’ language is the one into
which the translation takes place.