Phonology

THIS LECTURE

There are systematic differences between:

What speakers memorize about the sounds of
words.
The speech sounds that speakers produce when
they utter.
What speakers store in memory about the sounds
of language, and how they translate these patterns
into speech sounds.. Phonology
 PHONETICS & PHONOLOGY

Phonetics -- What are the sounds? How are they

made in the vocal tract?

Phonology -- How do sounds combine? How do

they affect each other?
 PHONETICS &
PHONOLGY

Phonetics deals with the physical properties of the

elements of the sound system, e.g. how the sound is
physically produced.

Phonology deals with the sound systems languages

How speech are organized into systems in different
languages
How sounds are combined
The relation between them and how they affect
each other.
 DEFINITION OF
PHONOLOGY

The description of the systems and patterns speech

sounds in a language.

Concerned with abstract or mental aspects of speech

sounds.

Phonetics- [t] a voiceless alveolar stop

Phonology- ‘tuck’, ‘stuck’, ‘cut’ and ‘duck’.
 PHONOLOGY

What knowledge do we possess about the

phonological rules in our language?
•Which sound sequences might be a word in our
language
thrim/blamp vs. gdit/rpukn
•How to pronounce words we never heard before
•Change foreign words to pattern like the words in
our language
•We know how to apply rules to words we never
heard before
 PHONEMES AND ALLOPHONES

Transcribe the following words

Top stop little eighth cat
The [t] is different in each word.
[t] in ‘top’ is aspirated and non-aspirated in
‘stop’
American English [t] a flap in ‘little’
[t] in ‘eighth’ is a dental t
[t] in ‘cat’ is unreleased
 THE PHONEME

The smallest speech sound that

distinguishes meaning. Its serves to create
meaning differences, e.g. /t/ is different
than /d/.
The phoneme is an abstract term, specific
to a particular language.
It forms the structure of sound system in a
language.
 PHONEMES

Consonant chart lists phonemes in English

The terms that are used in creating the chart
are called ‘features’ which are marked by
sign + & -
E.g [b] + voice + bilabial +stop
[s] – voice + alveolar + fricative
 PHONEMES

/p/ [- voice, + bilabial, + stop]

/k/ [- voice, + velar, + stop]

Natural class.

Sounds that have features in common behave

phonologically in similar ways.
 THE ALLOPHONE

Each phoneme may have different realisations depending

on the context in which it is found.

the different articulations of /t/

/s/ in seen and soon.
‘seen’ is produced with spread lips, as /i/ follows.
‘soon’ is realised with rounded lips, to prepare for the
following rounded vowel, /u/.
This second, rounded /s/ is a variation, or allophone of
the phoneme.
Allophones are what we actually produce and
hear.
 ALLOPHONES OF /T/

There are more [t]’s than you know

Example: the [t] in time is aspirated, word transcription context
but that in stop is not.
1
aspiration= pause + air stop [stɔp] After [s]
release prior to next sound 2 time [tʰajm] Syllable
All these are allophones of the initial
phoneme /t/.
3 butter bʌɾər Between
These differences are usually
expressed using phonological rules. vowels
PHONEMES AND
ALLOPHONES
 THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A
PHONEME AND AN ALLOPHONE

If one allophone is exchanged with another, e.g. if

seen is produced with lip rounding, the word, while
perhaps sounding a bit strange, is still
comprehensible.

If one phoneme is swapped with another, e.g. seen is

produced with a /b/, instead of a /s/, the meaning of
the word changes- they function contrastively
 FINDING PHONEMES
minimal pairs of words

A minimal pair is a pair of words that have

different meanings and which differ in
only one sound.
Here is an example from English:
Sip [sɪp]
Zip [zɪp]
 MINIMAL PAIRS

Four golden rules for minimal pairs:

•They must have the same number of sounds
•They must be identical in every sound except
for one
•The sound that is different must be in the same
position in each word
•The words must have different meanings
Hit, hid & his minimal set
 PHONOTACTICS

Constraints on the sequence or position of

phonemes
Permitted arrangements of sounds.
Phonological knowledge of the pattern of sounds in
English will allow you to find some combination of
sounds as acceptable and some as not.
e.g lig, vig but not fslg or nglsb
 SYLLABLES AND CLUSTERS

Syllable: a phonological unit

that contains more than one
phoneme Syllable
Syllables must contain a vowel
or a vowel like consonants (w, onset rime
j).
Open syllables (me, no) vs. Consonant(s) nucleus coda
closed syllables (Sam, dip).
Consonant cluster? vowel consonant
In English: CCV floor
CCCVC stress
Differs from one language to
another.
 CO-
ARTICULATION
Our talk is often fast and spontaneous;
articulators move from one sound to another
without stopping.
Co-articulation: one sound becomes more like its
neighboring sound.
Assimilation & elision
 ASSIMILATION

A rule that makes neighboring sounds similar by

spreading a phonetic property from one sound to
another

Ease of articulation

E.g. nasalized vowels occur before nasal sounds

man vs. map / bob vs. bomb
 ASSIMILATION

Another example

I can go [ajkəŋgo]

The velar sound [g] will almost make the

preceding nasal sound come out as [ŋ] (velar
nasal) rather than the alveolar nasal [n]
 ELISION

Note the [d] in “you and me” or in

“friendship”
The [d] is usually omitted in spoken
English elision
 KEY TERMS

Phonology
Phonemes & allophones
Minimal pairs and sets
Phonotactics
Syllables
Co-articulation effects