pingalinga

[arethinn]

Is there a term for an utterance that isn't a word, but is more than one syllable? For example, lennith. This is not a word (not in English anyway), but it's not a phoneme or syllable either (it's two syllables, obviously). If we were discussing meaning I might call it an "element" ("in the word kavelennith, the element lennith means..."), but I am referring to it as a piece of sound. Is there a specific term for that?

(unrelated p.s. Apparently I recently passed 2000 entries as this one seems to be #2093. Huh. And to my even greater surprise, my first post also happened to be on April 12th - in 2002, that is.)

Comments

[michiexile]

For smallest semantically significant element, the linguists use morpheme. It sounds like what you're talking about is the phonetical realisation of a specific morpheme.

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

Possibly "Root". (This can also be used as an abbreviation for "root morpheme".)