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Phonological Rules Announcements INTD0112 Introduction to Comments on HW1. HW3 is now posted. It’s due next Wednesday Linguistics in class, or no later than 5pm by e-mail. Endangered language code names. Lecture #9 Oct 5th, 2009 Phonology: One piece of the puzzle Summary of Wednesday’s class Remember that our goal in linguistics is to Phonemes are meaning-distinguishing sounds. They answer the following question: are unpredictable. They are abstract entities. “What is it that we know when we know a Allophones are phonetic variants of the same phoneme. They are predictable. They are the physical language?” sounds we produce. The study of phonology is one step towards Phonemes become allophones via phonological this goal: It reveals to us the kind of processes (e.g., aspiration, nasalization, etc.). These subconscious knowledge that native speakers processes are represented formally as phonological have about the sound system of their language. rules. We discuss this today. Phonological rules Informally speaking, a phonological rule takes an underlying form as input, operates on it, Formalizing our phonological and derives a surface form as output. The operation of the rule, however, is subject to a knowledge main restriction: it has to occur in a certain phonological environment. 1 Phonological rule notation Phonological rule notation Abstractly, we can represent this in the following notation: X Æ Y/ ___ Z Suppose instead that we want to say that X changes to Y after (rather than before) Z. Basic definitions: the “Æ” means “changes to”; the slash “/” means “in the environment of”; and the How do we do that? “___” positions the input in the environment (that is Well, a simple change will get us the before or after the relevant segments that determine the phonological change). required result: What this rule simply says is that an input X is X Æ Y / Z ___ changed to Y when it occurs before Z. Phonological rule notation Phonological rule notation By convention, we will use “σ” to indicate a Suppose further we want to place a certain syllable boundary, and “#” to indicate a word restriction on the occurrence of the segment. boundary. For example, that it has to occur “syllable- Now, read the following rules. Can you figure initial” or “at a word boundary.” out what they mean? Again, we can come up with two simple X Æ Y / σ ___ notations to indicate this: X Æ Y / ___ # Phonological rule notation Phonological rule notation In some cases an element in the environment Sometimes we might have more than one may be optional. How do we represent that in context for the application of a rule. How do we indicate that using our rule notation? the notation of our rules? Braces come to the rescue, as in this rule: Brackets will do the trick. Consider this rule. ⎧Z ⎫ What does it mean? X Æ Y / ___ ⎨ ⎬ X Æ Y / ___ (Z) # ⎩# ⎭ The above rule simply means that “X changes to Y either before Z or at word boundary.” 2 [l]-devoicing Let’s start with the rule for /l/ devoicing in English. Informally put, the rule says Ok, so why don’t we look at some concrete “/l/ gets devoiced when following a examples to see how this works? syllable-initial voiceless stop.” How do we represent this in phonological rule notation? /l/ Æ [l•] / σ [voiceless stop] ___ Aspiration Challenging the aspiration rule How about aspiration of voiceless stops in English? But now, consider this: “Voiceless stops become aspirated in Usain Bolt runs [fæst´®] than any other human English when they occur syllable- being. initially.” Why no aspiration here? How do we represent that in formal rule notation in phonology? [voiceless stop] Æ [aspirated] / σ ___ Vowel nasalization Vowel length in English Now, vowel nasalization: Remember the rule for vowel length in “In English, vowels become nasalized English? when they are followed by a nasal Vowels are lengthened before voiced consonant.” consonants, but not before voiceless consonants: Rule notation: bad [bQ:d] bat [bQt] V Æ [nasal] / ___ [nasal] leave [li:v] leaf [lif] Ok, but how about vowel nasalization in Scots How would the rule look like in formal Gaelic? Remember the rule? notation? 3 Vowel length in English Deletion How about deletion rules? But now consider these cases: For these, we use the symbol Ø in the output obey [owbej] of the rule (i.e., after the arrow). redo [®idu] For example, English speakers delete the [´] in an open syllable when it is followed by a Why is there no vowel lengthening here? stressed syllable, giving us [p»l•iès] from [p´»liès]. How do we represent this in rule notation? [ə] Æ Ø / C ___ σ C Vstressed Epenthesis So, which form is derived from the other? The Ø comes in handy for phonological rules that Question: Given two allophones of one phoneme insert sounds as well. The key difference here is that in the language, how do we decide which one is the Ø will be in the input to the rule. the underlying form and which one is the surface For example, in some English dialects, consonant form? In other words, which one is derived from clusters of [l] and another consonant are not allowed in syllable-final position. Speakers of these dialects, the other? therefore insert a [´] to fix the syllable, e.g., milk As a case in point, we assumed that oral vowels in [milək]. English get nasalized before nasal consonants. In rule notation, this would be represented as: But what would go wrong if we assume instead Ø Æ [´] / [l] ___ C σ that nasal vowels get “oralized” before nonnasal consonants? So, which form is derived from the other? So, which form is derived from the other? For example, in English oral vowels occur The rule of thumb is this: The form that occurs initially, finally, as well as before nonnasal in a larger number of phonetic contexts is most consonants. Nasal vowels, by contrast, occur likely to be the underlying form. The form that only before nasal consonants. is restricted in its occurrence to particular Conclusion: English vowels are underlyingly contexts is most likely to be a derived form. oral. The underlying form, thus, is typically the Can you extend this reasoning to aspiration in elsewhere form. English? 4 Revisiting earlier phonology problems Next class agenda Morphological analysis: Chapter 3 cont. Italian. Morphology cont. : The lexicon and processes Spanish. of word formation. Chapter 4. Russian. Ukrainian. 5.
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