Assimilation

1
Assimilation

• Chapter 2 Roca Johnson

2
An Experiment

• Say
• Whats the cabfare from here to Newark?
• When youre saying the b in cab, where is
  your bottom lip?
• Do you pronounce the b the same way in
• Can you find me a cab?

3
A Question

• Why would the b in cab be pronounced
  differently in
• cab vs. cabfare
• cup vs. cupful
• in cabfare/cupful, the p and b anticipate the
  labiodental f and become labiodental

4
Assimilation

• the process in which a phonetic segment takes on
  the character of a neighboring sound
• five days five tons
• v f

5
The Organization of Language
Syntax
Phonology Phonetics
Semantics Pragmatics
the signifier cup
the signified
6
The Linguistic Sign

• the sign results from the conjunction of a
  signifier and a signified
• the relation of signifier to signified is
• arbitrary (except for echoic sounds)
• unique each sign only has one signifier and one
  signified, e.g.
• bank in financial bank is one sign
• bank in river bank is another

7
Signifier Uniqueness

• Do we want to say that cab in
• Find me a cab.
• is a different sign than cab in
• Whats the cabfare?
• Consider
• Economy (Occams razor)
• Linguistic intuition

8
The Basic Form

• With variation like that for p,
• pH, p, p?, P
• how do we choose one form as basic?
• The form that occurs in the most environments is
  considered basic
• k?p, spaI, k?ps

9
The Basic (Underlying) and Derived Forms

• the basic form is connected to the derived
  (spoken) form by rule
• p ? P/___ f
• Focus p ? P
• Environment ___ f

10
The Notion of a Lexical Representation

• a lexical form - a basic, or underlying, form
• Lexical Form Derived Form
• /p/ ? pH / ?______
• There is an active relation between a lexical
  form and a derived form in that the latter is
  derived from the former by rule.
• p is rewritten as pH syllable initially

11
The Notion of a Phonemic Representation

• a phoneme - a minimal unit of sound contrast
• Phonemic Form Phonetic Form
• /p/ p
• pH
• there is a static relation between a phoneme and
  its phones in that the former serves as a
  classifier of the latter

12
The English Past Tenseworksheet B

• dZ?mpt versus r?bd
• d ? t/-voice_____
• voice ? -voice/-voice____

13
Chapter 4 Roca Johnson

• Overview of Needed Info in Chapters 1 3
• Natural Classes of Sounds
• (Distinctive Features)

14
Overview of Chapter 1

• An obstruent - exhibits significant obstruction
  to the airstream in the mouth
• stops
• p t k (?)
• b d g
• fricatives
• f T s S x (h)
• v D z Z ? (?)
• affricates
• t?S
• d?Z
• glottals have no mouth obstruction and are thus
  not classed as obstruents

15
Noteworthy Obstruent Symbols

• x - voiceless velar fricative German ich
• ? - voiced velar fricative Persian A?A
• h - voiceless glottal fricative English that
  head
• ? - voiced glottal fricative English ahead
• t?S - tie bar indicates unitary nature of t and S
• d?Z - and d and Z

16
Overview of Chapter 3

• A sonorant - a sound with high energy output
  relative to the articulatory effort required to
  produce it (a singable sound)
• - always voiced
• Nasals m n N ?
• Liquids - part of oral cavity is occluded
• laterals l ? ? ?
• rhotics ? ? ?
• r
• Roca classifies nasals as stops because of oral
  occlusion
• but as sonorants because of open nasal passage

17
N

• Rocas claim
• N does not have lexical status in English
• N results from assimilation of lexical /n/ to a
  following g or k, which is often then deleted

18
?

• the palatal nasal sonorant
• Spanish año (year) Portuguese ninho (nest)
• English onion, canyon, bunion, union, Runyon
• claim ? does not have lexical status in
  English
• Why not?
• ? results from assimilation of /n/ to a
  following glide /j/

19
?

• Amer. English city Span. pero
• Roca claims that the flap is a sonorant because
• contact between tongue tip and the alveoli is
  fleeting in the extreme, and therefore airflow
  remains essentially unaltered p. 79
• (Compare the trill which is classed as a sonorant
  for the same reason.)

20
Noteworthy Sonorant Symbols

• ? - palatal lateral Span. paella It.
  zabaglione
• ? - velar lateral Mid-Waghi a?a?e
• ? - velarized alveolar lateral
• Russ. po?ka polka vs. polka shelf
• ? - retroflex American r
• r - alveolar trill Span. rosa
• worksheet C,D

21
Advantages of Parameter Labels over Phonemes

• shows the significant differences at a glance
• voiced bilabial stop obstruent
• voiceless bilabial stop obstruent
• labels are based on the phonetic realization of
  the sounds rather than on arbitrary symbols

22
Disadvantages of Parameter Labels

• not as simple a description as it could be
• does not capture the complementary nature of many
  of the labels
• obstruents are non-sonorants
• voiceless sounds are non-voiced
• vowels are non-consonants
• This suggests we could get a simpler description
  with a binary marking, as in Jakobsons . . .

23
Distinctive Features

• Examples sonorant
• voice
• Assumed to be part of universal grammar
• Ideal for classification (cf. female)
• allows us to capture sound patterns
• p ? P /___ f
• labial ? feature/ ____ feature

24
Chapter 4Capturing Assimilation

• Goal to cover many facts
• under one simple rule

25
Fact 1

• There is clearly one phonological process going
  on when bilabials are pronounced as labiodentals
  before a labiodental
• cupful grapevine comfort
• cabfare subvert home video
• in chapter 2, we chose a basic form p from
  among pH p? p and P
• The use of phonetic symbols would necessitate 6
  rules here, one for each pair of phonemes
  (pf,bf,pv,bv,mf,mv)

26
Fact 2

• The in-/im- prefixes show a variation similar to
  the /pf/ variation
• intolerant impossible
• indefinite imbalance
• innumerable immaterial
• Which should be the basic form here, in- or im-?

27
Deciding the Basic Form

• in- has a wider distribution
• intolerant impossible
• indefinite imbalance
• inseparable immaterial
• inhospitable
• in- occurs in the neutral context
• inactive imactive
• inert imert
• inimitable imimitable
• inoperable imoperable
• So in- is the basic form.

28
If in- is the basic form, how do we get im-?

• coronal ? labial / labial
• nasal
• n ? m

29
The feature coronal

• covers t,d,s,z,T,D,
• S,Z,t?S,d?Z,n
• refers to activity of the tongue blade
• the tongue is the active articulator
• distinctive features are based on the active
  articulator
• only the active articulator is believed to be
  cognitively involved in the speech gestures

30
Single-Value (Unary) Features

• indicates that while one value is present its
  opposite must be absent (voice cannot also be
  -voice)
• some features do not have this inherent
  opposition. Ex. if an articulation is labial
  it can also be dorsal.
• English w
• Yoruba k?p ak?pa worksheet F-I

31
The SPE Feature Matrix

• A word was represented lexically as a Feature
  Matrix

32
The SPE Rule Formalism is Arbitrary

• any feature matrix could be rewritten as any
  other feature matrix, missing the basic nature of
  assimilation
• coronal ? labial / coronal
  imt/imd
• nasal
• coronal ? labial / dorsal
  imk/img
• nasal

33
The Autosegmental Formalism

• uses association lines to capture changes
• coronal labial coronal labial
• ?
• nasal nasal
• n p ? m p
• the link between coronal and nasal is broken
• nasal becomes associated instead with labial

34
Association Lines

• indicate simultaneous occurrence
• coronal labial
• nasal
• the nasal feature becomes associated with the
  labial feature

35
Autosegmental Phonology

• each feature is autonomous - it behaves
  independent of every other feature
• assimilation is represented as a simple change in
  the association of one feature
• worksheet J,K

36
Generalization of the Autosegmental Assimilation
Rule to dorsals

• incorrect ingratitude
• INk??Ekt INg?Q??tud
• coronal dorsal coronal dorsal
• ?
• nasal nasal
• n k/g ? N
  k/g

37
Collapsing the input and output of the rule

• coronal dorsal
• nasal
• association is shown with the dotted line
• disassociation with the crossed out line

38
Generalization of the Autosegmental Assimilation
Rule to place of articulation

• coronalP . . .P
• nasal
• The nasal assimilates to the place of
  articulation (P) of the following segment

39
Coverage of the Generalized Rule

• coronalP . . .P
• nasal
• . . .P can be
• labial impossible
• dorsal incorrect
• coronal intolerant

40
An Apparent Redundancy

• coronalP coronal
• nasal
• This rule states that the nasal disassociates
  with the coronal and then associates with the
  coronal!
• The justification for this apparently vacuous
  rule
• coronal can be further broken down
• worksheet L,M

41
Features dependent on coronal

• nasal
• coronalP coronalP
• -distributed distributed
• tent tenth
• distributed is dependent on coronal
• dependency is indicated by diagonal lines

42
Features dependent on coronal

• nasal
• coronalP coronalP
• anterior -anterior
• tent trench
• anterior is dependent on coronal
• dependency is indicated by diagonal lines

43
Phonological Representations have multiple planes
nasal coronal
distributed

• the nasal and coronal tiers share the same plane
• the distributed tier is on a different plane

p. 112,b