Synchrony, Asynchrony

The correspondence of sound and image, voice and body, spoken words and moving lips, such that the audible appears to come from the visible. In synch sound cinema, synchrony largely means that the movements of characters’ lips “match” the sounds that emanate from them (see the work of Rick Altman). Asynchrony is synchrony’s opposite. In structuralism, synchronic linguistics studies language as a system, whereas diachronic linguistics studies language as an evolving historical phenomenon.

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