Phonology

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Phonology
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Phonology is

• The study of sound systems within a language
• The study of how speech sounds pattern
• The study of how speech sounds vary
• The study of how speech sounds contrast

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Definitions

• Phone speech sound
• Phoneme / /
• Contrastive units in a langauge
• Never pronounced
• Realized by one or more allophones
• Allophone
• Pronounced (every sound you produce)
• Variation of a phoneme

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Possibilities

• Allophones of separate phonemes
• /t/ /th/
• ? ?
• t th
• Allophones of the same phoneme
• /t/
• t th

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Questions to ask when comparing phones

• What is the environment?
• Is there a difference in meaning
• Are they allophones of the same phoneme or do
  they belong to different phonemes?

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Types of Distribution

• Contrastive distribution difference in meaning,
  form a minimal pair, belong to separate phonemes
• Example
• cat khQt and hat hQt

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Types of Distribution Cont.

• Free Variation phones appear in exactly the same
  environments no difference in meaning are
  allophones of the same phoneme.
• Example
• economics i or E initially

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Types of Distribution Cont.

• Complementary phones appear in differing
  environments are allophones of the same phoneme
• Example
• top thap and stop stap

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Variation in sounds The case of t in American
English

• Say the following words
• top, stop, metal, and right
• What is the difference between the four ts?
• top thap the t is aspirated th
• stop stap the t is unaspirated t
• metal mERl the t is a flap R
• right rayt the t is unreleased t

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The case of t in American English

• The sound we perceive as t actually has four
  phonetic realizations
• Since in our mind, the abstract sound is still a
  t we call t a PHONEME.
• Phones go in brackets t, phonemes go in slashes
  /t/
• Every language has phonemes and variants of that
  phoneme, which we call ALLOPHONES
• Appearance of allophones depends on rules

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Phonemes and Allophones

• What are the rules for the different allophones
  of /t/?
• /t/
• th t t R

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Allophonic rules for /t/

• /t/? th word-initally and in front of stressed
  syllables
• table, treat, attend, until, attack
• /t/ ? R intervocalically, when second vowel is
  unstressed
• better, Betty, butter, cutie, buttocks
• /t/ ? t word-finally
• set, right, caught, pit
• /t/? t elsewhere
• stop, street, antics, Baltic

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Phonemes are CONTRASTIVE

• Weve established phonemes are abstract ideals of
  our languages sounds in our mind which are
  realized in different allophones
• Phonemes are also what produce a change in
  MEANING between words. This why we say that
  phonemes are contrastive

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Minimal Pairs

• Take the following pronunciations
• brajth brajt brajt bright
• Violating allophone rules results in funny
  pronunciation, not confusion in meaning
• When a switch in only one phone produces a change
  in meaning of a word, the two sounds CONTRAST so
  they must belong to different phonemes
• brajt vs brajd vs brajb
  bright/bride/bribe
• So, we can say that in English, t, d and b
  all belong to DIFFERENT phonemes /t/, /d/, and /b/

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Minimal Pairs

• Pairs (or trios, etc) of words that only differ
  in one sound, while the other sounds remain the
  same are called Minimal Pairs
• Ex cane/gain decree/degree back/bag
• What are some examples of minimal pairs to
  contrast the following sounds?
• p v b
• s v S
• l v

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Phonemes and Allophones

• So, in a pair of words like flea fli and free
  fi we can determine that the phones l and
  are allophones of DIFFERENT phonemes
• In a pair of words like phit and spit we can
  determine that ph and p are allophones of the
  SAME phoneme. (since we can say sphit and its
  still understandable)