Sound Structure

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Sound Structure

• Part II Phonology
• 1-28-2009

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Review of Phonetics

• Speech sounds are decomposable into articulatory
  primitives (also known as features)
• Consonants and Vowels
• Feature differences (e.g., voiced vs. voiceless,
  nasal vs. not nasal, labial vs. alveolar vs.
  velar) lead to the diversity of sounds across
  languages
• We seem to perceive speech sounds as discrete
  units rather than continuous acoustic signals

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Seeing Speech
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Further aspects of sound Cognitive

• How important is speech to language?
• The phoneme the basic, distinctive sounds of a
  language
• What it means to be distinctive
• How words are organized into subparts (syllables
  and other units) for the determination of stress
• Knowledge of language--the internal grammar in
  your mind--will get more and more abstract than
  the physiological aspects of language

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Cross-Linguistic Differences

• Everyone has encountered a language that contains
  a speech sound that is not in their native
  language
• As a general point, languages differ greatly both
  in terms of how many phonemes they have and in
  terms of which phonemes they have
• Number of phonemes
• Many Some Khoisan languages, around 140
  phonemes
• Few E.g. Hawaiian, 13 phonemes

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Being Distinctive

• We refer to the phonemes above as distinctive
  because they make contrasts between different
  words
• This can be illustrated for stops by using
  minimal pairs a pair of words that differ in
  only one phoneme
• pill bill p vs. b
• till dill t vs. d
• kill gill k vs. g

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Lost in Translation
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R vs. L

• Many Korean and Japanese speakers have trouble
  learning the contrast between R and L in English
• It is NOT because these sounds are absent in the
  native language
• Seoul vs. Korea
• Notice that they are NOT in contrastive positions
  (l at the end of a syllable but r at the front)
• But English uses R and L contrastively minimal
  pairs
• bLuebRew, LightRight, maLtmaRt
• Phonology is not just about the sound inventory,
  its also about how sounds are put in use

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Differences that are not distinctive

• Some aspects of pronunciation are not
  distinctive.
• Example aspiration (puffing air)
• pit vs. spit
• The former p is aspirated, but the p in the
  latter is not
• But the distinction between aspirated and
  non-aspirated p is not distinctive in English
  (although it is in other languages). That is, in
  English there are no pairs like
• phIt hole in the ground, etc.
• pIt (whatever this might be)
• Rule of thumb come up with minimal pairs as a
  test for phonemes

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Transcribing differences

• When we transcribe speech sounds using the IPA
  notation, we may do so in different ways.
• If we are interested in every phonetic detail, we
  would indicate effects like aspiration in
  English, even if it is not distinctive (phIt)
• If we are interested more in the phonological
  inventory, we would omit the aspiration, as it is
  not distinctive (pIt)
• For our purposes we will be concentrating on the
  latter type
• Sometimes when we focus on phonology, an abstract
  representation, we use slashes, e.g. /p/

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Phonemes and Allophones

• Sometimes the same phoneme is pronounced in
  different ways depending on its context
• The variants of a phoneme are called allophones
  of that phoneme
• When we are talking about such distinctions, the
  phoneme is in slashes // and the allophones are
  in square brackets
• The aspiration of e.g. /p/ is a case of this
  type we say that /p/ in English has the
  allophones p and ph

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Phonemes and Allophones, cont.

• So, for instance, the phoneme /p/ appears in each
  of the following words
• pit
• spit
• How, the first contains the allophone ph, while
  the second contains p
• In fact, the rule for aspiration in English is
  more general complex
• English voiceless stops (e.g., p, k, etc.) are
• Aspirated if word initial, or syllable-initial
  preceding a stressed vowel
• Compare récord vs. recórd
• b. Otherwise unaspirated.

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Phonemes Nasalized vowels

• e.g. English speakers have not memorized any
  nasal vowels
• but English speakers do make nasal vowels
  mat m?t vs man m?n
• We have one phoneme that can be realized
  phonetically as nasal or oral
• One phoneme /?/ with two allophones ? and ?

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Implications for learning words

• When we learn words, we dont memorize their
  pronunciations directly
• We memorize the abstract phoneme representations
  (e.g., /pit/ and /spit/)
• The aspiration rule will turn /p/ in the former
  to an aspirated ph
• This saves a tremendous amount of memory but
  involves online computation

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Phonemes and Allophones
allophone
allophone
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Finding Phonemes More in recitation

• The phonemes differ from language to language.
• How do we figure out what the phonemes of a
  language are?
• One trick is to look for minimal pairs (p?t b?t)

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Finding Phonemes

• Minimal pairs are two words that have different
  meanings, but differ in only one sound sip/zip,
  day/bay, ram/ran/rang
• Since the difference between the sounds is
  meaningful, it must be stored in memory.
• Our minimal pairs above let us conclude that
• s/z are distinct phonemes,
• d/b are distinct phonemes,
• m/n/? are distinct phonemes

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Finding Phonemes

• Sometimes it isnt possible to find minimal pairs
  for all sounds, but speakers can tell whether a
  contrast would yield a distinct possible word,
  even if its not a real word.
• e.g. bat vs bap I know that bat is a word
  and that bap isnt, and that bap is a
  possible word. So /t/ /p/ are distinct phonemes.

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Finding Phonemes

• Same procedure with vowels
• e.g. beat/bit/bait/bet/bat/but/boot/boat/bought
• When working on phonological problems, first look
  for minimal pairs. Yes phonemes

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Rules of Pronunciation

• vowel ? nasal / __ nasal consonant
• the kind of sound that changes
• in this rule, its vowels
• Note man but not mat
• Note man and can and tan and san(k)

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Rules of Pronunciation

• vowel ? nasal / __ nasal consonant
• becomes

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Rules of Pronunciation

• vowel ? nasal / __ nasal consonant
• the change
• here, nasal
• Notice I didnt put nasal vowel--I dont have
  to put vowel b/c that doesnt change
• Only put what changes simpler, less to remember

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Rules of Pronunciation

• vowel ? nasal / __ nasal consonant
• when

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Rules of Pronunciation

• vowel ? nasal / __ nasal consonant
• This is the environment that causes the change
• The underlining shows the position of the sound
  thats changing
• Here before a nasal consonant

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Rules of Pronunciation

• To show after a nasal consonant, we could have
  done this
• nasal consonant ___
• To show between a nasal consonant and a nasal
  consonant, we would have done this
• nasal consonant ___ nasal consonant

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Rules of Pronunciation

• So, English speakers unconsciously know the
  following rule
• vowel ? nasal / __ nasal, consonant
• vowels become nasal when before a nasal
  consonant
• This is a rule of assimilation, making sounds
  more similar.
• Rules of dissimilation (making sounds less
  similar) also exist, but are less common

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Phonemes and their distributions

• Other cases of distinctive features lead to some
  interesting observations
• Consider the nasals
• rum run rung
• These phonemes are distinct at the end of the
  word but, ng, unlike the other two, has the
  property that it never occurs word-initially in
  English
• map nap ngap
• In order to understand these patterns, we have to
  move from the phonemes to the principles by which
  phonemes are organized into words and other units.

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The Syllable

• A familiar notion is that of the syllable as
  in, Philadelphia has five syllables
• Newborns perceive speech in terms of syllables
• Basically, each vowel corresponds to a syllable
• A refined set of hypothesis about the syllable is
  important for many linguistic generalizations
• Definitions (initial)
• Onset the beginning of the syllable
• Nucleus vowel in the middle of the syllable
• Coda consonant(s) at the end of a syllable

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Syllable Structure
Legislator le-gi-sla-tor four syllables (s)
Monosyllabic cat
s
Onset Rhyme k
Nucleus Coda æ t
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Onsets and Speech Errors
Spoonerisms (Rev. Dr. W. A. Spooner, 1844-1930)
Target dear old queen Output queer old
dean Target You have wasted the whole
term Output You have tasted the whole
worm. Target You missed my history
lectures. Output You hissed my mystery lectures.
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Further aspects of the syllable

• Onset
• English normally allows two consonants.
• s can be added initially in many cases as well,
  resulting in onsets with three consonants (e.g.
  splash)
• All sounds can occur in this position with the
  exception of ng. Thus the subdivision of the
  syllable is crucial for stating this
  generalization.
• Coda
• English normally allows two consonants, although
  again there are cases where more stack up (e.g.
  belts)

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Syllables and well-formedness

• Conditions on syllable structure define a set of
  (phonologically) possible words in a language
  for instance
• Actual words brick, true, free, crab, etc.
• Non-words that are possible words of English
  blick, clee, flork
• Impossible words bnick, fnee, dmay
• Words in which historical change has made an
  initial consonant silent knee, knight, gnat
• Another reason that we dont just memorize words
  but form generalizations over them

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Differences across languages

• Languages differ in terms of the constraints they
  impose on syllable structure
• E.g. Hawaiian
• No coda consonants
• Maximum of one consonant per onset
• Examples ink 'înika
• Norman Nolemana
• E.g. Polish many consonant clusters at the
  beginning of words that are impossible in
  English
• bzdura "nonsense"
• babsk "witch"
• grzbiet gzhbyet "back"
• marnotrawstw mar-no-trafstf "of wastes"

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Infixation more on this next week
Suffix Attached to the end of a word
(work-ed) Prefix Beginning (un-important) Infix
Inside a word What is an example of an
infix in English? There is at least one
phenomenon with the relevant properties. this
illustrates the basic principle that larger
linguistic units are built out of smaller ones
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Expletive infixation
Expletive Infixation is not something that
our English teachers instruct us in yet we know
a great deal about it whats the rule? Go
home and try with your friends Tas It has to do
with stress patterns of language
inde-fcking-pendent unrea-fcking-listic in
depen-fcking-dent unreali-fcking-stic
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Summary

• Articulatory features
• Phonemes
• Syllables
• Feet
• Words
• Sentences