An Introduction to English Phonology April McMahon Edinburgh University Press 01 pages i-x prelims 18/10/01 1:14 pm Page i An Introduction to English Phonology 01 pages i-x prelims 18/10/01 1:14 pm Page ii Edinburgh Textbooks on the English Language General Editor Heinz Giegerich, Professor of English Linguistics (University of Edinburgh) Editorial Board Laurie Bauer (University of Wellington) Derek Britton (University of Edinburgh) Olga Fischer (University of Amsterdam) Norman Macleod (University of Edinburgh) Donka Minkova (UCLA) Katie Wales (University of Leeds) Anthony Warner (University of York) An Introduction to English Syntax Jim Miller An Introduction to English Phonology April McMahon An Introduction to English Morphology Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy 01 pages i-x prelims 18/10/01 1:14 pm Page iii An Introduction to English Phonology April McMahon Edinburgh University Press 01 pages i-x prelims 18/10/01 1:14 pm Page iv © April McMahon, 2002 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh Typeset in Janson by Norman Tilley Graphics and printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin A CIP Record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7486 1252 1 (hardback) ISBN 0 7486 1251 3 (paperback) The right of April McMahon to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Disclaimer: Some images in the original version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. 01 pages i-x prelims 18/10/01 1:14 pm Page v Contents To colleagues ix 1 Sounds, spellings and symbols 1 1.1 Phonetics and phonology 1 1.2 Variation 4 1.3 The International Phonetic Alphabet 5 Recommendations for reading 11 2 The phoneme: the same but different 12 2.1 Variation and when to ignore it 12 2.2 Conditioned variation in written language 13 2.3 The phoneme 14 2.4 Some further examples 17 2.5 The reality of the phoneme 19 Exercises 21 Recommendations for reading 22 3 Describing English consonants 23 3.1 What’s inside a phonetic symbol? 23 3.2 Consonant classification 23 3.3 The anatomy of a consonant 24 Exercises 34 Recommendations for reading 35 4 Defining distributions: consonant allophones 36 4.1 Phonemes revisited 36 4.2 Making generalisations 36 4.3 Making statements more precise 38 4.4 A more economical feature system 40 4.5 Natural classes 46 4.6 A warning note on phonological rules 47 01 pages i-x prelims 18/10/01 1:14 pm Page vi vi AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH PHONOLOGY Exercises 50 Recommendations for reading 51 5 Criteria for contrast: the phoneme system 52 5.1 Minimal pairs and beyond 52 5.2 Phonetic similarity and defective distributions 53 5.3 Free variation 56 5.4 Neutralisation 58 5.5 Phonology and morphology 60 5.6 Rules and constraints 62 5.7 The phoneme system 63 Exercises 65 Recommendations for reading 66 6 Describing vowels 67 6.1 Vowels versus consonants 67 6.2 The anatomy of a vowel 69 6.3 Vowel classification 74 Exercises 77 Recommendations for reading 78 7 Vowel phonemes 79 7.1 The same but different again 79 7.2 Establishing vowel contrasts 79 7.3 Vowel features and allophonic rules 85 7.4 Phonetic similarity and defective distribution 87 7.5 Free variation, neutralisation and morphophonemics 88 Exercises 91 Recommendations for reading 91 8 Variation between accents 92 8.1 The importance of accent 92 8.2 Systemic differences 94 8.3 Realisational differences 99 8.4 Distributional differences 101 Exercises 102 Recommendations for reading 103 9 Syllables 104 9.1 Phonology above the segment 104 9.2 The syllable 104 9.3 Constituents of the syllable 105 01 pages i-x prelims 18/10/01 1:14 pm Page vii CONTENTS vii 9.4 The grammar of syllables: patterns of acceptability 106 9.5 Justifying the constituents 109 Exercises 115 Recommendations for reading 116 10 The word and above 117 10.1 Phonological units above the syllable 117 10.2 Stress 118 10.3 The foot 124 10.4 Segmental phonology of the phrase and word 128 Exercises 131 Recommendations for reading 132 Discussion of the exercises 133 References 143 Index 145 01 pages i-x prelims 18/10/01 1:14 pm Page viii This page intentionally left blank 01 pages i-x prelims 18/10/01 1:14 pm Page ix To colleagues This textbook is designed for use on ten- or twelve-week introductory courses on English phonology of the sort taught in the first year of many English Language and Linguistics degrees, in British and American universities. Students on such courses can struggle with phonetics and phonology; it is sometimes difficult to see past the new symbols and terminology, and the apparent assumption that we can immediately become consciously aware of movements of the vocal organs which we have been making almost automatically for the last eighteen or more years. This book attempts to show students why we need to know about phonetics and phonology, if we are interested in language and our knowledge of it, as well as introducing the main units and concepts we require to describe speech sounds accurately. The structure of the book is slightly unusual: most textbooks for beginning students, even if they focus on English, tend to begin with an outline of elementary universal phonetics, and introduce phonological concepts later. I have started the other way round: in a book which is primarily intended as an introduction to phonology, it seems appro- priate to begin with one of the major units of phonology, the phoneme. The idea of phonological contrast is a complex but necessary one, and students do seem, at least in my experience, to cope well with an intro- duction of this more abstract idea before they become embroiled in the details of phonetic consonant and vowel classification. When it comes to presenting those details, I have also chosen to use verbal descriptions rather than diagrams and pictures in most cases. There are two reasons for this. First, students need to learn to use their own intuitions, and this is helped by encouraging them to introspect and think about their own vocal organs, rather than seeing disembodied pictures of structures which don’t seem to belong to them at all. Secondly, I know from meet- ing fellow-sufferers that I am not the only person to find supposedly helpful cartoons and diagrams almost impossible to decipher, and to feel that the right word can be worth a thousand pictures. If students or ix 01 pages i-x prelims 18/10/01 1:14 pm Page x x AN INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH PHONOLOGY teachers feel the visual centres of their brains are being insufficiently stimulated, many diagrams and photographs are available in the addi- tional reading recommended at the end of each chapter. In a textbook of this length, choices are also inevitable: mine are to concentrate on segmental phonology, with some discussion of stress and syllables, but a brief mention only of intonation. The theoretical machinery introduced extends only to segments, features, basic sylla- bification and elementary realisation rules: issues of morphophonemics and rules versus constraints are again mentioned only briefly. My hope is that a thorough grounding in the basics will help students approach more abstract theoretical and metatheoretical issues in more advanced courses with greater understanding of what the theories intend to do and to achieve, and with more chance of evaluating competing models realistically. My warmest thanks for help and advice on this book go to my students in Sheffield (who were not necessarily aware that I was just as interested in their attitude to exercises and examples as in their answers), and to Heinz Giegerich and Andrew Linn (who were all too aware that their input was required, and have withstood pestering with typical patience). Particular thanks also to my son Aidan, who, following our recent move to Yorkshire, replaced // with /υ/ in words, quite consciously and systematically, during the writing of this book. If a six-year-old can work this out, first-year undergraduates have no excuse. 02 pages 1-150 18/10/01 1:14 pm Page 1 1 Sounds, spellings and symbols 1.1 Phonetics and phonology Although our species has the scientific name Homo sapiens, ‘thinking human’, it has often been suggested that an even more appropriate name would be Homo loquens, or ‘speaking human’. Many species have sound- based signalling systems, and can communicate with other members of the same species on various topics of mutual interest, like approaching danger or where the next meal is coming from. Most humans (leaving aside for now native users of sign languages) also use sounds for linguis- tic signalling; but the structure of the human vocal organs allows a par- ticularly wide range of sounds to be used, and they are also put together in an extraordinarily sophisticated way. There are two subdisciplines in linguistics which deal with sound, namely phonetics and phonology, and to fulfil the aim of this book, which is to provide an outline of the sounds of various English accents and how those sounds combine and pattern together, we will need aspects of both. Phonetics provides objective ways of describing and analysing the range of sounds humans use in their languages. More specifically, articulatory phonetics identifies precisely which speech organs and muscles are involved in producing the different sounds of the world’s languages. Those sounds are then transmitted from the speaker to the hearer, and acoustic and auditory phonetics focus on the physics of speech as it travels through the air in the form of sound waves, and the effect those waves have on a hearer’s ears and brain.