endofonetic

Endofonetic is a term used in linguistics to describe the internal phonetic structure of a word or morpheme. It refers to the sequence of sounds that constitute a linguistic unit, as perceived by a native speaker. This concept is distinct from exophonetic, which focuses on the physical or acoustic properties of speech sounds as produced by a speaker.

The study of endofonetics examines how sounds are organized and interact within the mental representation of a word. This includes aspects like phonotactics, which are the rules governing the permissible sequences of sounds in a language, and prosodic features such as stress and intonation as they are internalized. For example, the difference between "psychology" and "psychotherapy" lies not just in their spelling but in their endofonetic structure, specifically the placement of stress and the presence of the initial 'ps' cluster, which native speakers process as a single unit.

Understanding endofonetics is crucial for analyzing phonological systems and how speakers access and process linguistic information. It helps explain phenomena like the mental representation of loanwords and the development of sound changes within a language. While acoustic phonetics describes the physical reality of sound waves, endofonetics deals with the cognitive and linguistic reality of those sounds as they exist in the mind of the speaker.