demarcative

American

[dih-mahr-kay-tiv, dee-mahr-kay-] / dɪˈmɑr keɪ tɪv, ˈdi mɑrˌkeɪ- /

Also demarcational

adjective

Linguistics.

(of a phonological feature) serving to indicate the beginning or end of each successive word in an utterance, as word-initial stress in Hungarian or penultimate stress in Polish.

First recorded in 1950–55; demarcate + -ive

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023