Malamud 9/13/2006 Intro to Linguistics Lecture 5. Phonology Recall: • phonetics: the physical manifestation of language in sound waves; how these sounds are articulated and perceived • phonology: the mental representation of sounds as part of a symbolic cognitive system; how abstract sound categories are manipulated in the processing of language So phonetics deals with the physiological and acoustic parts of the path between speaker and listener, while phonology resides in the brain. Phonemes The phonological elements of a language are the basic, distinctive sounds, also called phonemes. In English, these are the following (for a dialect of Standard American English). • consonants: p, t, k, b, d, g, č, , f, θ, s, š, h, v, ð, z, ž, m, n, ŋ, l, r, w, y • vowels: i, u, I, U, e, o, ε , ə/ , , æ, a, ay, aw, oy "distinctive" = can be used to make contrasts between different words. For the stops, using minimal pairs (words that differ in exactly one sound): pill till kill bill dill gill For the vowels (for each individual pair of vowels we could come up with a minimal pair): bead booed bid bade bowed bed bud bad bod bide Boyd heed who'd hid hood head hawed had hide how'd jean June jin Jane Jen John join lead lewd lid laid load lead lad lod loud Lloyd And for the nasals: rum run rung In English, the velar nasal [η] can't occur at the beginning of a word -- cf. map, nap, *ngap – What are the restrictions on the way these elements are organized into words? Basic way in which languages differ is their inventory of sounds, or phonemes. For example: • German has the voiceless velar fricative [x], as in Bach "creek". o English has voiceless fricatives such as [s] and velars such as [k], but it doesn't have a single phoneme that has both of these properties. 1 • German also has the high front rounded vowel [ü], as in kühn "clever". o Again, English has high front [i] and rounded [u], but these properies are not combined in one vowel. • English [θ] sets it apart from many languages, including German and French. o They have several voiceless fricatives, but not the interdental. Learning a new (or a first) language includes learning the "list" or inventory of sounds. Syllables Phonological structure - the way these elements are organized - includes the notion of syllable and its subparts. This structure is crucially involved in describing the possible words. • the onset or consonant(s) at the beginning of the syllable o English normally permits up to two consonants o but in addition, [s] can be added to the beginning of many syllables as well, making up to three consonants o all sounds can occur in this position except for [ŋ] • the nucleus or vowel that is the core of the syllable o sometimes a consonant can serve as the nucleus, as in the second syllable of kitten or table • the coda or consonant(s) at the end of the syllable o English normally permits up to two consonants at the end (belt, jump, arc) o but in addition, certain sounds such as [s, t, θ] can be piled up (belts, sixths) Here's a general schema of how syllables are constructed. SYLLABLE RHYME ONSET NUCLEUS CODA consonant(s) vowel consonant(s) Rhyme = nucleus + coda, e.g. in blend rhyme = [ε] + [nd]. Sonority Human speech involves repetitive cycles of opening and closing the vocal tract = syllables. Relatively closed position = onset , then relatively open nucleus, then closing for coda or the next syllable's onset. The degree of vocal tract openness correlates with the loudness. Speech sounds differ on a scale of sonority: vowels = most sonorous end, obstruents (stops, affricates, fricatives) = least sonorous end. In between are the liquids [l] and [r], and nasal consonants like [m] and [n]. 2 Least sonorous sounds are restricted to the margins of the syllable -- the onset in the simplest case -- and the most sonorous sounds occur in the center of the syllable -- most often a vowel. E.g., "soon" * "blend" * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * [s][u][n] [b][l][ε][n][d] "pretending"- each syllable corresponds to a peak in sonority. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * [p][r][ə][t][ε][n][d][ I][ ŋ] "film"= one syllable BUT "fiml","pummel" = two syllables "fizm","chasm"=two * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * [f][ I][l][m] [f][ I] [m] [l] [f] [I] [z][m] [p][ ][m][l] [k][æ][z][m] • This breakdown does not need to be memorized for each word: syllabification is a general property of the language. • In these last two words, the consonant serves as the sonority peak - it is syllabic (a nucleus). English permits nasals and liquids to be syllabic, at least in unstressed syllables: prism, bottom, sump'm (for "something"), cap'm (for "captain"), hidden, button, kitten, risen bottle, little, towel, swimmer, higher, butter • For [r], the consonant can function as a vowel even in a stressed syllable: bird, fur, word In some dialects, such as Standard British, Boston, and Coastal Southern US, any [r] in the rhyme of a syllable (whether nucleus or coda) loses its r-ness and becomes a schwa-like vowel. These are called "r-less" dialects. • Another general property of English: restrictions on what consonants can be an onset cluster - sonority has to increase by two steps. • actual words with obstruent+liquid (two steps):brick, true, free, crab; play, blue, flea, glib • possible words with obstruent + liquid:blick, clee • impossible words with obstruent + nasal (just one step) :*bnick, *fnee, *gmue, *dmay • historical loss of initial obstruent in cluster (letter now silent):knee, knight, gnat, gnaw 3 • This too is part of our general knowledge of the language: we can distinguish blick and *bnick as "possible" and "impossible" even if we've never heard either word before. But what about words like snow (obstruent + nasal onset cluster)? • Take (almost) any English onset, and tack an [s] on the front of it, ignoring sonority. snow (cf. no), stop (cf. top), spray (cf. pray) • This is a special property of [s] and no other obstruent in English: loud fricative noise: it doesn't depend on the normal syllable structure. In German (and Yiddish), for example, it's the (alveo)palatal fricative, as in Schmutz "dirt." Once again, syllable structure is a way in which languages differ. Hawaiian: no coda consonants, maximum of one consonant in the onset. So: borrowed words get a lot of extra vowels, to create new syllables of the proper type. ink > 'înika Norman > Nolemana Polish: allows more consonants at the beginning or end of a word than English does. This is why some Polish names are hard for English speakers to say, such as Gdansk or Zbigniew Brzezinski. bzdura "nonsense" babsk "witch" grzbiet [gzhbyet] "back" marnotrawstw [-fstf] "of wastes" A language learner comes to understand what structures are possible in that language by observing the attested patterns. Allophones There are often differences in the way a phoneme is pronounced in a specific context. The variant pronunciations are called allophones ("other sounds"). When it's important to make this difference: • we'll use [square brackets] to indicate sounds from a phonetic point of view, i.e. focusing on their physical properties and the details of actual pronunciation; • and we'll use /slashes/ to indicate sounds from a phonological point of view, i.e. as part of an abstract representation independent of potential differences in the way the sound in pronounced in specific contexts. • I.e., [ ] = allophone, / / = phoneme. A classic example of sound alternation in English relates to the [s] found at the beginning of a syllable before a voiceless stop. spin is basically pin with [s] added, but the /p/ in each case is pronounced differently. 4 • pin contains an aspirated version of /p/, with a puff of air after the stop is released; [ph] • spin contains a plain /p/, without a puff of air after the stop; this is written just [p] The same is true for pairs like pit~spit, pot~spot, pair~spare, etc. A simple statement of this alternation is as follows: allophone [p] immediately following [s] the phoneme /p/ becomes: at the beginning of the allophone [ph] word But the same generalization holds not just for /p/ but for the other voiceless stops, /t/ and /k/. Compare these word pairs: • top~stop, take~stake, tie~sty, etc. • kin~skin, cope~scope, can~scan, etc. So more accurately, there's a single general statement that covers all these cases, stated in terms of natural classes. unaspirated immediately following [s] voiceless stops are: at the beginning of the aspirated word How do we know that aspirated and unaspirated voiceless stops are not different phonemes? The same way Lois Lane knew Clark Kent was the same guy as the Superman: they never appear at the same place in the same time. This is called complementary distribution. Expanding to more than one-syllable: voiceless stops are aspirated when they occur syllable- initially and are followed by a stressed vowel (rápid, raphídity); & word-initially regardless of stress (photháto). At the beginning of a word, a preceding /s/ prevents the stop from being syllable- or word-initial. Different stresses cause alternations: underlying sound /t/ is pronounced as [t] etc. or [th] etc. rápid [p] rapídity [ph] authéntic [t] authentícity [th] récord [k] recórd [kh] This process is completely unconscious for most speakers, and often quite hard to unlearn. 5 English speakers who learn a language like French or Spanish, in which all voiceless stops are unaspirated, typically impose aspiration according to their native rule; but that's wrong for these languages, and sounds foreign. Similarly, a French or Spanish speaker learning English will typically fail to produce aspiration in the right places; this is part of what it means to have a foreign accent.