Class Notes from February 16, 2012 (on and writing phonological rules)

1.) Homework

Grammatical words of English Ungrammatical words of English [pleŋk] *[lpeŋk]

[preŋk] *[rpeŋk]

[briŋ] *[rbiŋ]

[bræɡ] *[rbæɡ]

[twi] *[wti]

• The feature we’re actually interested in overall is [+] vs. [-sonorant] sounds.

• Onset Phonotactic Principle: In an onset, if one is [+sonorant], it must come second.

• This problem was intended to illustrate the Sonority Sequencing Principle

• Some of you noticed that the onsets of ungrammatical words would have generally made good codas. This demonstrates that in codas, you want your [+sonorant] sounds to come first.

• prefer to build with the most -like sounds (the most sonorous sounds) nearer the middle and the least vowel-like sounds (stops, voiceless ) near the edges. Syllables structured in this way conform to the sonority profile

[…….-sonorant ……………………..] […………….……..+sonorant/……………] [-] nasals vowels [l, r] [j,w] low sonority high sonority ------ constricted vocal tract unconstricted vocal tract low in acoustic energy high in acoustic energy • This seems to be a very strong tendency among languages. I’ve posted a link to a study that looks at Egyptian , , Mongolian, and Malayalam (unrelated languages) and finds that the preferred shape of syllables in all of these languages obeys the sonority sequencing principle.

1 2.) Phonology

• : The abstract, mental representation of a sound. The form of a that is found in the list of words that make up your mental lexical.

o are written between / slanted brackets /

• : One of a set of (potentially) multiple phones used to pronounce a single phoneme.

o are written between [ square brackets ] (the way we’ve been writing everything up to this point).

• A single phoneme will correspond to one or more allophones.

• Your Basic Task in Phonology Problems: determine whether two phones are allophones of the same abstract phoneme, or allophones of two distinct abstract phonemes.

Do you have this? Or this? /phoneme/ /phoneme/ /phoneme/

[allophone]4 [allophone] [allophone] 1 [allophone] 1

How can you tell?

If you can find minimal pairs for two phones (they are in complementary distribution), you know that each is an allophone of a different phoneme.

If you can’t find minimal pairs for two phones, you know that they are allophones of the same phoneme.

3.) Example of Allophones in English

[pʰɪt] [pʰrəpʰer] [pʰle]

[spɪt] [rətʰɪrn] [wɪks]

[tʰɪl] [kʰlɪr] [wɪk]

[stɪl] [kʰɪl] [skɪl]

• When [p], [t], and [k] are pronounced with a release of air, we describe them as being ASPIRATED. o We can represent aspirated phones with a superscript , e., [ph], [], [kh]

2 • When [p], [t], and [k] are not pronounced with a release of air, we describe them as being UNASPIRATED. o We can represent unaspirated phones by leaving off the superscript.

• What is the distribution of [tʰ], [pʰ], and [kʰ]? o They are all found at the beginning of an Onset

• What is the distribution of [t], [p], and [k]? o They are found everywhere else (in Codas, not at the beginning of Onsets)

• What does this tell us? These phones are in complementary distribution. There are no minimal pairs containing [p] and [ph]. o [p] and [ph] are two different allophones of the same phoneme, /p/ o [t] and [th] are two different allophones of the same phoneme, /t/ o [k] and [kh] are two different allophones of the same phoneme, /k/

4.) Walking through a Phonology Problem

• The following words are from Tagalog (Filipino). datiŋ ‘to arrive’ daɾaʔiŋ ‘will complain’ dami ‘amount’ maɾumi ‘dirty’ dumi ‘dirt’ maɾami ‘many’ daɾatiŋ ‘will arrive’ daʔiŋ ‘to complain’ manduɾukot ‘pickpocket’ mandukot ‘to go pickpocketing’

Step 1: Are there any minimal pairs?

Step 2: Figure out the distribution of [d] and [ɾ]. Make a chart! # means word boundary, __ means ‘where the phone goes’

[d] [ɾ] #_a a_a #_u u_u n_u a_u

Generalizations: [d] occurs word-initially [d] also occurs after nasals [ɾ] occurs between vowels

The sounds are in complementary distribution. There are no minimal pairs. We know they are allophones of the same phoneme.

3 Step 3: What is the phoneme? You’ll select one of the phones as basic: that one will be the phoneme. The phone you select as the phoneme will have the widest distribution (we can describe its distribution as “elsewhere”). It looks like [d] has a wider distribution than [ɾ]. So, we can model the relationship between phonemes and allophones as shown below: /d/

[d] 3 [ɾ ]

Step 4: Write a rule describing where /d/ surfaces as [ɾ]. Define the environment such that everywhere else, /d/ surfaces as [d]. /d/  [ɾ] / Vowel __ Vowel “The phoneme /d/ becomes [ɾ] when (in the environment) of between vowels.”

5.) Group Problem 1: Swampy Cree

[b] and [p]: [asabap] ‘thread’ [paskwaw] ‘prairie’ [mibit] ‘tooth’ [ospwaɡan] ‘pipe’ [wabos] ‘rabbit’ [pimi] ‘lard’ [nabew] ‘man’ [p] [b] #_a a_o s_w a_a a_# i_i a_e

The distribution of [b] is “between vowels.” It looks like [p] has the “elsewhere” distribution. Rule: /p/  [b] / Vowel __ Vowel (/p/  [p] / elsewhere) [k] and [g]: [kodak] ‘another’ [oɡik] ‘these’ [waskow] ‘cloud’ [tʃiɡahiɡan] ‘axe [niɡi] ‘my house’ [tahki] ‘often’ [koɡos] ‘pig’ [niska] ‘goose’

[k] [g] #_k o_i s_o i_a #_o i_i h_i o_o s_a o_a

The distribution of [g] is “between vowels.” It looks like [k] has the “elsewhere” distribution. Rule: /k/  [g] / Vowel __ Vowel (/k/  [k] / elsewhere)

4 [d] and [t]: [mibit] ‘tooth’ [nisto] ‘three’ [tahki] ‘often’ [adim] ‘dog’ [kodak] ‘another’ [mide] ‘heart’

[t] [d] i_# o_a #_a a_i s_o i_e

The distribution of [d] is “between vowels.” It looks like [t] has the “elsewhere distribution. Rule: /t/  [d] / Vowel __ Vowel (/t/  [t] / elsewhere)

• What have we learned about Swampy Cree?

• We have learned that there are three phonemes in the , /p, t, k/. Each of these phonemes maps onto two different allophones:

/p/ /t/ /k/

[p 3] [ b ] [t] 3 [d] [k] 3 [g]

• We have also learned that the rules that change each phoneme into the form of the allophone that looks different from the phoneme (i.e., /p/  [b]) have something in common….

Rule 1: /p/  [b] / Vowel __ Vowel Rule 2: /k/  [g] / Vowel __ Vowel Rule 3: /t/  [d] / Vowel __ Vowel

• It would be nice if we could make a more general statement about phonological rules in the language…let’s try to combine these three rules into one rule.

• Attempt One:

/p, t, k/  [b, d, g] / Vowel __ Vowel (/p, t, k/  [p, t, k] / elsewhere)

• This is a good first pass attempt! It relates the three rules to each other, which was our goal.

• Attempt Two:

• Can we make our rule even more general? We are still listing out the phones individually. This is descriptively adequate but not very theoretically informative.

• We’ll try instead with features:

5 Rule, final form: /-continuant, -voiced/  [+voiced] / [+vocalic] __ [+vocalic]

• How did I come up with this rule?

o Between the / slanted / brackets, I listed those features that are necessary to characterize the phonemes as a set: they are all [-continuant] and [-voiced]. I could have added more features, but as long as I’ve characterized all and only those phonemes which I have evidence participate in the rule, I’ve done my job.

o Between the [ square ] brackets, I listed only the features that change when you go from the phoneme to the allophone that doesn’t look like the phoneme (i.e., from /p/ to [b]). The only feature that changes is [-voiced] goes to [+voiced].

o After the /, I put the environment. Since I’m characterizing the phonemes and allophones in terms of features, we should do the same for the environment. All vowels are [+vocalic].1

1 We could have added [+tense], too: all the vowels we see in the environments are also [+tense].

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