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Phonology: the Function and Patterning of Sounds three PHONOLOGY: THE FUNCTION AND PATTERNING OF SOUNDS Michael Dobrovolsky A person's tongue is a twisty thing, there are plenty of words there of every kind, and the range of words is wide, and their variation. - HOMER, The Iliad, 20 We saw in Chapter 2 that there are a large number of speech sounds that human beings can produce and perceive. No human language exploits all of these possibil- ities. Furthermore, the sounds of all languages are patterned and organized in such ways that linguists can discover some system that underlies their appearance. Linguists generally assume that speakers have (at least) some subconscious knowl- edge of this system. For example, we saw in Chapter 1 that English speakers recog- nize that forms like slish and screnk are acceptable, while forms like srish and screpk are not. But speakers can do more than note that certain forms are unnatural in their system; they can also correct such forms to make them acceptable in their own lan- guage. Without knowing exactly why, most English speakers would pronounce a form like srish as [sari/] rather than saying [nj] or [si/]. It is this largely subconscious knowledge of sound patterns that phonologists are interested in uncovering. This chapter is about phonology, the component of a grammar made up of the elements and principles that determine how sounds vary and pattern in a language. Phonologists attempt to make explicit formal statements about the sound patterns of individual languages in order to discover something about the linguistic knowl- edge that people must have in order to use these patterns. Even more broadly, the study of phonology attempts to discover general principles that underlie the pat- terning of sounds in human language. The existence of patterns in language depends on the organization of certain basic elements or units that combine to make up these patterns. Three major units of analysis will be presented in this chapter. We are already acquainted with the idea that the flow of speech can be divided into segments. In this chapter, we investigate 64 CHAPTER THREE the patterned variation of segments. A second unit of phonological analysis is the feature. Features may be thought of as the smallest building blocks of phonologi- cal structure, corresponding as they do to articulatory or acoustic categories such as [voice] or [strident]. We will also learn how segments are built up from features and how this fact is connected with phonological patterning. We will also investigate the properties of syllables in phonology. A syllable is a unit of linguistic structure that consists of a syllabic element—usually a vowel—and any segments that are associ- ated with it. (The word segment itself can be divided into two syllables: seg and ment.) These units—feature, segment, and syllable—interact with the processes we investi- gated in the previous chapter and with certain general principles to produce the sound patterns of language. The existence of patterned elements implies that there must be some principles of organization. Features, segments, and syllables are organized into hierarchical lev- els; each level is composed of elements at the level beneath it. In Figure 3.1, the word-level unit segment is represented by the abbreviation Wd. This word consists of two syllables, each of which is represented with the Greek letter a (sigma). Each syl- lable is made up of a number of segments (the internal structure of syllables is also hierarchical, and is treated in Section 5 of this chapter). Each segment, in turn, is composed of features. A representation of segment is given in Figure 3.1. (For pur- poses of illustration, only a few features are provided for each segment.) Wd Word level Syllable level Segment level -syllabic +syllabic -syllabic -syllabic +syllabic -syllabic -syllabic Feature level -sonorant +sonorant -sonorant +sonorant +sonorant +sonorant -sonorant •9 '• +coronal -high +high +labial +reduced +nasal +coronal Figure 3.1 Partial phonological representation of segment Us ) In the next sections, we look at the phonological knowledge that enables speak- ers to distinguish among forms and to deal with the considerable phonetic variation Si found in the pronunciation of speech segments. £..;'• E:, 1 SEGMENTS IN CONTRAST All speakers know which segments of their language contrast. Segments are said to Ill: contrast (or to be distinctive or be in opposition) when their presence alone may dis- tinguish forms with different meanings from each other. The segments [s] and [z] contrast in the words sip and zip, as do the vowels of hit, hate, and hot. lit:: PHONOLOGY: THE FUNCTION AND PATTERNING OF SOUNDS 65 1.1 MINIMAL PAIRS A minimal pair consists of two forms with distinct meanings that differ by only one segment found in the same position in each form. The examples [sip] sip and [zipj zip given previously form a minimal pair and show that the sounds [s] and [z] contrast in English. A number of minimal pairs that demonstrate consonant contrasts for English are given in Table 3.1; remember it is on the basis of sound and not spelling that mini- mal pairs are established. In displaying contrasts, contrasting words are often placed along the horizontal axis with respect to their place of articulation, reading from left to right (labial, alveolar, and so on), and vertically with respect to manner of articu- lation, in order to show which places and manners of articulation are exploited by the language in question. Table 3.1 Contrasts among consonants in English Labial Interdental Alveolar Alveopalatal Velar Glottal Stops and affricates (noncontinuants) tap [p] pat [t] match ItJl pick [k] tab |b] pad [d] Madge Pig Igl Continuants leaf [f] thigh [9] sip [s| mesher in hip [h] . leave [v] thy [5] zip fz] measure bi Nasals sum [m] sun fn] sung [rjj Liquids and glides wet [w] yet lil leer [1] rear [r] The phonetic context in which a sound occurs is called its environment. Pairs that show segments in nearly identical environments, such as azure/assure or author/either, are called near-minimal pairs. They help to establish contrasts where no minimal pairs can be found. You may assume that two segments contrast once a minimal pair or a near- minimal pair has been established. It is in fact rare to find minimal pairs for all dis- tinctive sounds in all environments in a language, since the historical evolution of every language has led to some sounds being utilized more frequently than others, or being eliminated from some environments. For example, you will find no mini- mal pairs involving [h] and [n] in word-initial or word-final position in English, because there are no words that begin with [rj] or end in [h]. It is also difficult to find 66 CHAPTER THREE minimal pairs in English that have the phone [3], which occurs for the most part in words borrowed from French such as azure and mirage. Vowel contrasts in English Contrasts among English vowels can be established with a few sets of examples. For now, we will continue to assume that English vowel-glide sequences like [ij], [uw], [ow], and so on are single vowels. From this perspective, we can say that the vowels [ij] and [1], [ej[ and [e], and so on, contrast. Table 3.2 Vowel contrasts in American English beet Ibijt] [ij] bit [bit] [i] bait [bejt] [ejl bet [bet] [el bat [bat] l*\ cooed [k"uwdi [uw] 2 P could [k'-ud] [0] V code [khowd| [owj A caught [k»3t] t>] cot [k"at] [a] cut [k"At] [A| lewd [luwd] [uwj loud [lawd| [aw] lied [Iajd] [aj] Lloyd [lojd| [ojl 1.2 LANGUAGE-SPECIFIC CONTRASTS Contrasts are language-specific; sounds that are distinctive in one language will not necessarily be distinctive in another. For example, the difference between the two 2.1 vowels [e] and [ae] is crucial to English, as we can see from minimal pairs like Ben [ben] and ban [baen]. But in Turkish, this difference in pronunciation is not distinc- tive. A Turkish speaker may pronounce the word for 'I' as [ben] or [baen], and it will make no difference to the meaning. Table 3.3 Language-specific vowel contrasts: English versus Turkish English Turkish [ben] Ben [benl [baen] ban [baen] Conversely, sounds that do not contrast in English, such as long and short vowels, may be distinctive in another language. There are no minimal pairs of the type [haet]:[hae:t] or [luws]:[lu:ws] in English. But in Japanese and Finnish, short and long vowels contrast, as the next examples show. PHONOLOGY: THE FUNCTION AND PATTERNING OF SOUNDS 67 Table 3.4 Short/long vowel contrasts in Japanese and Finnish Japanese [tori] 'bird' [tori:] 'shrine gate' [kiboj 'scale' [kibo:] 'hope' Finnish [tuli] 'fire' [tu:li] 'wind' [haeta?] 'distress' [ha?:tae:] 'to evict' Establishing the contrasting segments in a language is a first step in phonological analysis. But in any language, there are many sounds that never contrast. The fol- lowing section deals with this aspect of phonological analysis. PHONETICALLY CONDITIONED VARIATION: PHONEMES AND ALLOPHONES Everyday speech contains a great deal of phonetic variation that speakers pay little or no attention to. Some of this variation arises from nonlinguistic factors such as fatigue, excitement, orthodontic work, gum chewing, and the like. This kind of vari- ation is not part of the domain of phonology. But much phonetic variation is sys- tematic. It occurs most often among phonetically similar segments and is conditioned by the phonetic context or environment in which the segments are found. This vari- ation occurs because segments are affected and altered by the phonetic characteristics of neighboring elements or the larger phonological context in which they occur.
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