Phonological rules

LING 200 Spring 2006 Foreign accents and borrowed words

• Borrowed words – often pronounced according to phonological rules of borrowing language • Foreign accents – result from application of native language phonology to target language phonology – especially if language learned as adult Spanish loans into English

Spanish in English

[pres] Padres [phdez]

[tko] taco [thko] [burito] burrito [bio] [sndjeo] San Diego [sændiego]

[r] = alveolar trill [] = retroflex approximant; [] = [] = voiced velar fricative alveolar flap The original shibboleth

• Judges 12:5-6 Some types of phonological rules

• Assimilation (cf. phonetic coarticulation) • Dissimilation • Deletion • Epenthesis Examples of phonological rules

• Assimilation – Mohawk Voicing – Nasal Assimilation in Italian (and many other languages) – Korean s-palatalization Witsuwit’en [] and [] after non-lowering consonants [q] = voiceless uvular stop; [q’] = uvular ejective; [ch] = voiceless aspirated palatal stop; [] = voiceless uvular fricative; [] = voiceless lateral fricative; [] = voiced uvular approximant; [m’] = glottalized nasal

[ntq] ‘up’ [tz] ‘driftwood’ [tcho] ‘blue grouse’ [tilts] ‘she’s in a [nq] ‘uphill’ [ns] ‘ahead’ rush’ [n] ‘dark [tin] ‘it’s [ppt] ‘its abdomen’ birthmark’ slithering’ [ip] ‘it’s flooding’ [wepts] ‘it isn’t [tq’aj] ‘cutthroat rolling’ trout’ [tltm] ‘it’s [nn] ‘it (cloth) is [plm’] ‘its ice’ pounding’ moving’ Witsuwit’en consonant chart labial alveolar palatal labio-velar uvular glottal stops p p’ t th t’ c ch c’ kw kwh kw’ q qh q’  affricates ts tsh ts’

lateral t th t’ fricatives s z ç xw  h

lateral  nasals m n approxim j w  ants lateral l Dissimilation • A sound becomes less similar to another sound • An example from Sanskrit • Phonetic background from Hindi

Sanskrit

Hindi

5 = retroflex Laryngeal contrasts in Hindi

•[] = voiced retroflex stop –[l] ‘branch’ •[] = voiceless retroflex stop –[l] ‘postpone’ •[h] = voiceless aspirated retroflex stop –[hl] ‘wood shop’ •[] = (breathy) voiced aspirated retroflex stop –[l] ‘shield’ Dissimilation

Grassman’s Law (Sanskrit): • Voiced aspirated stops/affricates are deaspirated before another voiced aspirated stop/affricate.

•C Æ C / ___ ... C Grassman’s Law in Sanskrit •[b] = voiced aspirated labial stop • Rightmost voiced aspirate survives /budjte:/ [budjte:] ‘is awake’ /bubo:d/ [bubo:d] ‘was awake’

• Rightmost voiced aspirate devoices and deaspirates before [s] (a different phonological rule); leftmost survives

/bo:dsjati/ [bo:tsjati] ‘will be awake’ Deletion

• Cree. An Algonquian language spoken in Canada (B.C. to Ontario)

/pi:simw/ [pi:sim] ‘sun’

cf. /pi:simwak/ [pi:simwak] ‘suns’

•/w/ Æ Ø / C ___ # (# = edge of word) Epenthesis • Witsuwit’en – No word can begin with // – [h] epenthesized –/tsh/ [htsh] (more narrowly, [htsh]) ‘he’s crying’ •Tsek’ene – No word can begin with // –[] epenthesized –/tsh/ [tsh] ‘he’s crying’ Epenthesis

•English – No word can begin with a vowel –[] epenthesized – uh-oh /o/ [o] – apple /æpl/ [æpl] – the apple /ð/ # /æpl/ [ðæpl] Phonetics vs. phonology

phonetics phonology transcription narrower as needed typically broad, streamlined phonetic detail explicitly represented detail is predicted by as needed rule system contrast how is a particular what is contrastive? contrast realized? sounds what are articulatory, how do sounds form acoustic, perceptible patterns, classes? properties? what are the phonological rules? Final thoughts about spoken language phonetics and phonology

A clip from The Human Language, vol. 3