First Notes on Phonology February 14, 2012
• Phonology vs. Phonetics: what is the difference?
o PHONETICS studies how speech sounds are articulated and perceived. Phonetics deals with physically observable aspect of phones (e.g., buzzing when you make a +voiced sound; movement of your tongue when you make a [+back] vs. [+front] vowel, etc.)
o PHONOLOGY is more abstract. Phonology studies the organization of phones and relationships holding between phones.
• We’ve seen that languages can have different phonotactic constraints that affects, for instance, how words are syllabified or pronounced.
• We’ll now see that languages also can organize their phones in different ways.
o Two languages may have the same phones, but may organize these phones in different ways. The method of phone “organization” we will be interested in is whether the distribution of phones is PREDICTABLE or UNPREDICTABLE.
• Phonology addresses the following questions: o Which phones are predictable and which ones are unpredictable in a particular language? o What is the phonetic context that allows us to predict the occurrence of these sounds? o How can we formalize speakers’ phonological knowledge in terms of rule notation?
4.1 Predictable vs. Unpredictable Distribution of Phones
• Japanese and English both have the phones [s] and [ʃ] in their inventory of phones.
o Japanese: [ʃimasu] ‘do’
o English: [slæʃ] ‘slash’
• In English, however, the distribution of [s] and [ʃ] is unpredictable.
o Given the frame [ li __ ]: you can fill in the __ with either [s] or [ʃ] (“lease” vs. “leash”)
o Same with [ __ or]: if you fill a [s] in the blank, you get the word “sore”; if you fill a [ʃ] in the blank, you get the word “shore”
We call pairs of words like [lis] and [liʃ], or [sor] and [ʃor], MINIMAL PAIRS
MINIMAL PAIR: a pair of words with different meanings that differ only by a single phone that occurs in the same place in each word.
• By contrast, there are no minimal pairs in Japanese for [s] and [ʃ].
o Given the frame [__imasu], a Japanese speaker would only be able to fill in [ʃ]. There is no word [simasu]. o Given the frame [__an], a Japanese speaker would only be able to fill in [s]. There is no word [ʃan].
• We can say that in Japanese, the distribution of [s] vs. [ʃ] in Japanese is fully predictable: the distribution of these phones depends on the sounds surrounding the phone (their ENVIRONMENT).
4.2 Phonemes vs. Allophones
• PHONEME: The abstract, mental representation of a sound. The form of a phone that is found in the list of words that make up your mental lexical.
o Phonemes are written between / slanted brackets /
• ALLOPHONE: One of a set of (potentially) multiple phones used to pronounce a single phoneme.
o Allophones 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.
How can you tell?
If you can find minimal pairs for two phones, 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.
4.3 Practicing Finding Minimal Pairs (Consonants only shown below, but the same logic applies to vowels)
[p] and [b] [pɪt] and [bɪt] [nɪp] and [nɪb]
We conclude that [p] and [b] are allophones of two distinct phonemes. /p/ [p] /b/ [b]
[t] and [d] [tɑl] and [dɑl] [lɛt] and [lɛd]
We conclude that [t] and [d] are allophones of two distinct phonemes.
/t/ [t] /d/ [d]