LING 220 LECTURE #6

PHONOLOGY: THE FUNCTION AND PATTERNING OF SOUNDS

PHONOLOGY is the study of sound systems of languages. Out of a wide range of sounds the human vocal apparatus can produce (studied by PHONETICS), only a small number is used distinctively in any one language. Phonology is concerned with the FUNCTION and the PATTERNING of sounds. pin, bin, tin, kin, sin

These words differ only in their initial consonant segments. beat, bait, bet, bat, boot, boat, bought

These words differ only in their vowel segments.

Segments whose function is to contrast forms are PHONEMES: ↓ distinctive sounds! Phonetic differences that are linguistically significant are PHONEMIC.

moon, noon : different meanings: /m/ and /n/ are PHONEMES!

MINIMAL PAIRS:

beet, bit MINIMAL PAIRS seal, zeal

feel, foot NOT a minimal pair!

A minimal pair consists of two forms with distinct meanings that differ by only one segment found in the same position in the word.

STUDY Table 3.1 on p. 59.

1 ENVIRONMENT: the phonetic context in which a sound occurs, e.g., /d/, /t/ are articulated as flaps when they occur between two vowels ↓ environment!

NEAR MINIMAL PAIRS: segments in nearly identical environments, for example: author, either

Contrasts are language specific:

Thai: pàa ‘forest’ different meanings! phàa ‘to split’

English: phit [ph] same meaning! pit [p]

English: Ben /´/ different meanings! ban /æ/

Turkish: ben ‘I’ [´] or [æ] same meaning!

STUDY Tables 3.3 and 3.4 on pp. 61.

ALLOPHONES: phonetically conditioned predictable variants of the phoneme.

/l/ PHONEME

[l≤]["] [l] ALLOPHONES

after word-finally elsewhere voiceless or before a stops consonant in the same syllable

2 /g/ PHONEME

g 8 [g] [g ≤] [ ] ALLOPHONES

before word-finally elsewhere front vowels

COMPLEMENTARY DISTRIBUTION: The distribution of allophones in their respective phonetic environments is such that one never appears in the same phonetic context as the other.

Consider the distribution of /h/ and /˜/ in English:

head, heart, perhaps, enhance etc.

sing, coming, wing, reading etc.

There are no English syllables ending in [h] and there no English syllables beginning with /˜ / . It would appear that [h] and [˜] are in complementary distribution, and should be assigned as allophones of the same phoneme.

Wrong!

These two sounds have very little in common (they are both consonants).

PHONETIC SIMILARITY: sounds that represent different pronunciations of the same phoneme must be phonetically similar (=same place or manner of articulation).

FREE VARIATION: When two phonemes appear in the same context without causing a change in meaning.

economics /i/ or /´/ either /ij/ or /aj/

3 Free variation among allophones map [p] or [ph] or [p–]

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