phonology

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CHAPTER 3
phonology
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Phonology It is a study which deals with the sequential and conditioned patterning of sounds in a language.
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Sequential Why does English have the following words, but not the others? splender smkenter contempt conteskm vouge geawt cling ngokt

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Sequential Why does Chinese have the following
words, but not the others? ?? ?? ?? ?? ??
?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ??
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Phonetically ph p b
Translation of ?? ?? Taipei or Taibei ? Peking or Beijing?
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phonological knowledge permits a speaker to produce sounds which form meaningful utterances, to recognize a foreign accent, to make up new words, to add the appropriate phonetic segments to form plurals and past tenses, to produce aspirated and unaspirated voiceless stops in the appropriate context, to know what is or is not a sound in ones language, and to know different phonetic strings may represent the same meaning unit.
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I. Phonemes The phonological units of language
A. Definition and Examples   Phonemes are the phonological units of language. They are contrastive segmental units composed of distinctive features, which differentiate words. The difference between sip and zip signaled by the fact that the initial sound of the first word is s s and the initial sound of the second word is z z .
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The forms of the two words--that is , their sounds--are identical except for the initial consonant. s and z can therefore distinguish or contrast words. They are distinctive sounds in English. Such distinctive sounds are called phonemes.
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B. Minimal pair/set
When two (a set of) different forms are identical in every way except for one sound segment that occurs in the same place in the string. The two words are called a minimal pair. sink and zink are a minimal pair, as are fine and vine, and chunk and junk.
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 C. Free variation
Some speakers of English substitute a glottal stop for the t at the end of words such as dont or cant or in the middle of words like bottle or button. The substitution of the glottal stop does not change the meanings dont and don? do not contrast in meaning, nor do bat?l orba??l.
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A glottal stop is therefore not a phoneme in English since it is not a distinctive sound. These sounds t and ? are in free variation in these words.
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More examples economics ? ? either i a? route u au leisure i ?
However, since these pair of sounds are still in
contrast in other situations, they are not
considered in free variation other than these
examples.
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Phonemes, Phones, Allophones 
Phonemes abstract mental representations of the phonological units of a language.
Phones the actual sounds, phonetic segments, in
a language.
Allophone one of the actual realizations/
variants of the abstract phoneme. Allophones of a
phoneme are phonetically similar and are in
complementary distribution or in free variation.
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Phones and Allophones
A phone is a phonetic unit or segment while allophones are predictable phonetic variants and realization of an abstract phoneme. Allophones are phonetically similar and in complementary distribution or in free variation.
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Phonemes vs. Allophones 
An allophone is a predictable phonetic variant of a phoneme. (?ian ?p?)
The phonetic alternation between a phoneme and
its allophone is rule-governed.
Symbols /i/ slashes to enclose phonemes. i
square brackets for allophones.
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 D. Complementary distribution
Allophones of the same phoneme will occur separately in different phonological contexts. This is the so called in complementary distribution. For example, the nasal vowels occur before nasal consonants while oral vowels occur in syllable-final position and non-nasal (or oral consonants) position. So, nasal and oral vowels are in complementary distribution.
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Complementary Distribution
When two or more sounds of the same phoneme never occur in the same phonemic context or environment, they are said to be in complementary distribution.
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For instance
pie spy tick stick can scan
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Requirement of phonetic similarity We may then define a phoneme as a set of phonetically similar sounds which are in complementary distribution with each other. However, in English, the velar nasal ? and the glottal glide h are in complementary distribution ? is not found word initially and h does not occur word finally.
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But they share very few feature values ? is a velar nasal voiced stop h is a glottal voiceless fricative. Therefore, they are NOT allophones of the same phoneme /?/ and /h/ are different phonemes.
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II.    Distinctive Features 
A. Definition and Examples
B. The values of distinctive features
C. What are the features?
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Binary valued Features
A feature can be thought of as having two values, which signifies its presence and - which signifies its absence. For examples
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More on distinctive features 
tin vs. sin
t vs. s, so the distinctive feature is
stop (or continuant )
beat vs. meat
b vs. m, so the distinctive feature is
nasal
peel vs. pool
i vs. u, so the distinctive feature is
back round
? vs. ?
l vs. ?, so the distinctive feature is
retroflex
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Phonemic features for Consonants
consonantal the class of sounds of obstruents, liquids, and nasals.
sonorant the class of sounds of vowels, glides, liquids, and nasals.
syllabic the class of sounds that constitute the nucleus of syllables, including vowels, and some liquids and nasals.
anterior the class of sounds whose place of articulation is in front of the palato-alveolar area, including labials, interdentals, and alveolars
coronal the class of sounds including dentals, alveolars, and palatals.
sibilant the class of sounds characterized acoustically by a hissing sound, including affricates, and alveolar and palatal fricatives.
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Phonemic features for Vowels
high the class of sounds produced with the tongue in the high position in oral cavity.
mid the class of sounds produced with the tongue in the non-high non-low position in oral cavity.
central the class of sounds produced with the tongue in the non-back, non-front position in oral cavity.
back the class of sounds produced with the tongue in the back position in oral cavity.
rounded the class of sounds produced with pursed lips, such as u, o.
tense vowels produced with longer duration and higher tongue position and pitch than the corresponding lax vowels, such as i, e, u, o.
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E. Predictability of Redundant Features
When a feature is predictable by rule, it is redundant. Nasality is a redundant feature in English vowels, but it is a nonredundant (distinctive or phonemic) feature for English consonants. Cankæn, the nasality of the vowel æ is predictable, because all the nasalized vowels in English occur only before/after a nasal consonant. The nasality is redundant here.
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But the nasality for consonant n is unpredictable, because can or cat have different meanings. In other words, n and t are unpredictable and therefore phonemic.
Q Is nasality in Mandarin Chinese vowels a
redundant feature?
A Yes. Similar to English, Mandarin Chinese does
not distinguish nasal from oral vowels. Nasal
vowels only occur before/after nasal consonants,
hence predictable.
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Phonemic or Redundant? 
A. Aspiration
Redundant for English Phonemic for Chinese, Thai
e.g. pi vs. phi
B. Vowel lengthening
Redundant for English Phonemic for Japanese
e.g biru vs. biru
C. Consonant lengthening
Redundant for English Phonemic for Japanese
e.g. saki vs. sakki
D. Voicing
Redundant for Chinese Phonemic for English,
Japanese, Taiwanese
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Redundancies 
Definition The value of some features of a single phoneme is predictable or redundant due to the specification of the other features of that segment.
For example
English front vowels ? unrounded
nasal vowels ? voiced
Universal redundancies Stop ? obstruent ?
consonantal Vowel ? sonorant ? continuant
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Syllable structure
n
s
p
t
s
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III. Sequential Constraints
Some words never occur together in a language actually, they determine what are possible but nonoccuring words in a language, and what phonetic string are impossible or illegal. For example, after a consonant like /b/, /g/, /k/, or /p/, another stop consonant is not permitted by the rules of the grammar.
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If a word begins with an /l/ or an /r/ , every speaker knows that the next segment must be a vowel. That is why /lb?k/ does not sound like an English word. It violates the restrictions on the sequencing of phonemes, called phonotactic constraints.
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Lexical gap vs. Impossible words 
Lexical gaps possible but non-occurring words, such as bic. They are accidental gaps.
Impossible words words that violate the
phonotactic rules of a particular language, such
as pslitnk.
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IV. Natural classes
Phonological rules often refer to entire classes of sounds rather than to individual sounds. There are natural classes, characterized by the phonetic properties or features that pertain to all the members of each class. They often undergo the similar phonological rules.
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For instance
f, s, p, t, k are of the natural class with the same feature -voiced. While p, t, k form another natural class sharing -continuant feature. Again p, t form a even more natural class because they share the anterior feature.
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Distinctive features
1. A natural class is a group of sounds that share one or more distinctive features. 2. A natural class often undergo similar phonological changes.
For example
Vowels get nasalized before nasal consonants.
Voiceless stops become aspirated when at syllable
initial position.
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Features Specification for C and V
Using the phonetic properties or features, we can provide feature matrices for all phonemes.
For example
Vowels of /u, o, ?, ?/ have
features of back, -low, round
Consonants of /f, v, s, z, ?, ?, ?, ?/
have features of continuant consonantal
See Table 7.4 on p. 299 (vowels) and Table 7.5
on p. 300 (consonants)
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V. Prosodic Phonology
A. Intonation
We have discussed the use of phonetic features to distinguish meaning. We can see that pitch can be a phonemic feature in languages such as Chinese, or Thai, or Akan. Such relative pitches are referred to phonologically as contrasting tones. We have level tones (or registers) and contour tones.
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If the pitch contour is extended to the whole sentence/phrase, it is called the intonation. Syntactic differences or information are often shown by different intonation contours, such as rising or falling intonation to indicate a declarative or interrogative sentence.
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B. Word stress
In English and many other languages, one or more of the syllables in each content word are stressed. The stressed syllable is marked by in the following examples
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1. pervert (noun) as in My neighbor is a pervert.
2. pervert (verb) as in Dont pervert the idea.
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Stress is a property of a syllable rather than a segment, so it is a prosodic or suprasegmental feature.To produce a stressed syllable, one may change the pitch (usually by raising it), make the syllable louder, or make it longer.
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The stress pattern of a word may differ from dialect to dialect. For example, in most varieties of American English the word laboratory has two stressed syllables in one dialect of British English it receives only one stress. In fact, in the British version one vowel drops out completely because it is not stressed.
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Just as stressed syllables in poetry reveal the metrical structure of the verse, phonological stress patterns relate to the metrical structure of a language.
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Poetry (metrical feet) When I Was One and Twenty When I was one and twenty, I heard a wise man say Give crowns, and pounds, and guineas But not your heart away. (iambic feet)
Children Verse Ten bottles of beer on the wall,
ten bottles of beer. If one of the bottle should
happen to fall, Nine bottles of beer on the wall.
(? ? ' ? ? ' )
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C. Sentence and Phrase Stress
When words are combined into phrases and sentences, one of the syllables receives greater stress than all others. That is, just as there is only one primary stress in a word spoken in isolation, only one of the vowels in a phrase (or sentence) receives primary stress or accent all the other stressed vowels are reduced to secondary stress.
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1 1 1 2 tight rope ? tightrope (a rope for acrobatics) 1 1 2 1 tight rope ? tightrope (a rope drawn taut)
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The placement of the primary stress is often determined by the syntactic structure of the utterance. In English we place primary stress on an adjective followed by a noun when the two words are combined in a compound noun, but we place the stress on the noun when the words are put in a noun phrase structure.
Compound Noun Adjective Noun
 hotdog bluebird White House hot dog blue bird white house
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These minimal pairs show that stress may be predictable if phonological rules include nonphonological information that is, the phonology is not independent of the rest of the grammar. The stress differences between the noun and verb pairs discussed in the previous section are also predictable from the word categorythe syntactic category.
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VI. The Rules of Phonology
A. Introduction
The relationship between the phonemic representations stored in ones mental lexicon and the phonetic representations that reflect the pronunciation of these words is rule-governed.
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The phonemic representation need only include the nonpredictable distinctive features of the string of phonemes that represent the words. The phonetic representation derived by applying these rules includes all the linguistically relevant phonetic aspects of the sounds.
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B. Five Rules of Phonology
1.   Assimilation Rules
It assimilates one segment to another by copying or spreading a feature of a sequential phoneme on to its neighboring segment, thus making the two phones more similar.
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Assimilation rules are caused by articulatory or physiological process because we incline to increase the ease of articulation, that is, to make it easier to move the articulators when we speak.
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Assimilation rules in language reflect what phoneticians often call coarticulation- the spreading of phonetic features either in anticipation of sounds or the perseveration of articulatory processes.
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For example Nasalize vowels and diphthongs before nasal consonants.
Phonological Rule
C V ? nasal / ____ nasal (C)
A phonological rule should include 1. The
segment affected 2. Phonetic change 3. The
phonemic environment/context
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Read the Phonological Rules
-consonantal ? -voiced / -sonorant ____
-sonorant syllabic
-voiced -voiced
Japanese sukiyaki /u/ ? u devoiced Any
Japanese vowel becomes devoiced when it occurs
between voiceless obstruents.
-continuant ? aspirated / ____ -nasal
-voiced
English particular /p, t, k/ ? ph, th,
kh Any voiceless stop will become aspirated when
it is in the syllable initial position.
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Write the Phonological Rules
Voiced consonants, such as stops, affricates, and
fricatives, will become devoiced when they are at
the word final position.
obstruent ? -voiced / ____ voiced

Consonants of stops, fricatives, and affricates
will become palatalized when preceding a high
vowel.
C ? palatal / ____ V
-obstruent
high
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Anticipated or Regressive assimilation AB?BB
A. Partial assimilation inpossible?impossi
ble (n?m) congratulate (n??)
B. Total assimilation in legal?illegal (n?l / ___l) in literate?illiterate
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Perseverative or Progressive assimilation AB?AA
A. Partial assimilation called
d walked t d?t /
-voiced____
B. Total assimilation
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2.   Dissimilation rules
A segment becomes less similar to another segment rather than more similar. A classic example of disimilation in Latin and the results of the process show up in modern English.
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Example
b. insertion wanted t?d needed d?d
c. change lineal?linear
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3.   Feature Addition Rules
The aspiration rule in English, which aspirates voiceless stops in certain contexts, simply adds a nondistinctive feature. The assimilation rules dont add new features but change phonemic feature values, whereas the aspiration rule add a new feature not present in phonemic matrices
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The aspiration rule can apply only to the voiceless stops / p /, / t /, / k /, because the specification of the class of sounds on the left of the arrow is unique to this class, but only when one of the segments occurs in the environment specified after the slash, at the beginning of a syllable ( / ___) before a stressed vowel.
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aspirated/ ____v?
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4. Segment Deletion and Addition rules (epenthesis)
Phonological rules can delete or add entire phonemic segment. In French, word-final consonants are deleted when the following word begins with a consonant ( oral or nasal) or a liquid, but are retained when the following word begins with vowel or a glide.
Eg /p?tit livr/ /p?ti livr/ small picture /p?tit ami/ /p?tit ami/ small friend
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In Spanish, a rule inserts an e at the beginning of a word that otherwise would begin with an s followed by another consonant, for example, escuela school, estampa stamp, and espina spine.
Ø ? e / s_____
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5.   Movement (Metathesis) Rule
Phonological rules may also move phonemes from one place in the string to another. In some dialects of English, the word ask is pronounced ?ks, but the word asking is pronounced ?sk??.
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C. One to Many and Many to One Relations
1. Many to One relationship /x/ /y/ a /z/

• The same phone may be an allophone of two or more
  phonemes, as m shown to be an allophone of
  both / b / and / m / in Akan.

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English Example /i/ (compete) competition ? /?/ (medicinal) medicine ? /e/ (maintain) maintenance ? /?/ (telegraph) telegraphy ? ? ? /?/ (analysis) analytic ? /a/ (solid) solidity ? /o/ (phone) phonetic ? /u/ (Talmudic) Talmud ?
V ? ? / -stress
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Many to one
All the vowels will be reduced into schwa when
they are unstressed.
imply ? implication
photograph ? photography
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2. One to Many relationship
Examples incapable
insensitive
impolite
ungrateful
ungenerous
unable
unmoved
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None to one (insertion)
One to none (deletian)
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Neutralization
Given the phonemic representation and the phonological rules, we can always derive the correct phonetic transcription. /t/ and /d/ are both phonemes, but they become a flap D when they occurs between a stressed and an unstressed vowel in such words of latter- ladder and writer rider.
From the instance, we can know that two distinct
phonemes may be realized phonetically as the same
sound.  This phenomenon is called neutralization.
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3. There is no one to one relation between phonemes and phones in the languages around the world.
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D. The Function of Phonological Rules
In the broadest sense, any phonological rule, in some analysis, is posited as involved in deriving a pronunciation of a surface phonetic representation from an underlying phonological representation.
Input Phonemic representation of words in a
sentence (underlying
representation) DS
Phonological rules Output Phonetic
representation of words in a sentence
(surface representation) SS

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In this conception, both rules appealing to phonological and lexical information and purely phonetic rules are included. However , this lable (phonological rule) has been restricted to some proper subsets. It would exclude rules appealing to morpholexical information like preterite or ablauting verb while including rules appealing to major.
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Word classes like noun or Latinate vocabulary others would exclude all such rules both groups might include as exclude purely phonetic (allophonic) rules independently.
Some would exclude purely morphophonemic
rules, while others would apply the term
phonological rules only to such rules,
excluding all others types . In Natural
generative phonology , the term is applied only
to phonetic (allophonic) rules, all other types
being excluded.
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Slips of the Tongue evidence for phonological rules
Any speech error in which a segment or a feature occurs in an unintended position bread and breakfast for bed and breakfast, piss and stretch for pitch and stress , pig and vat for big and fat.
The last example is called spoonerism (named
after William Archibald Spooner), a speech error
in which phonemic segments are reversed or
exchanged. E.g. the deer old queen is
pronounced the queer old dean.
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E. Morphophonemics The pronunciation of morphemes
A branch of linguistics which analyses the phonological rules on grammatical factors that determine the form of phonemes also called morphophonology , morphonology, and morphonemics.
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me?l?dy harm?ny s?mph?ny
m?lodious harmonious s?mphonious m?
ladic harmadic s?mphanic
The particular phonetic forms of some morphemes
are determined by regular phonological rules that
refer only to the phonemic context.
Adjectival suffix (The morphemic
context) Tri-syllabic lengthening
Root-oC-ious Di-syllabic laxing Root-aC-ic
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The basic unit recognized in such analysis is the morphophoneme for example, the notion of plural (a morpheme) in English nouns includes /s/ ( as in cats) , /z/ (as in dogs) , /?z/ (as in horses), zero( as in sheep), and several other forms.
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Morphophonemic rule
The application of a morphophonemic rule is
determined by both the morphology and phonology.
When a morpheme has alternate phonetic forms,
these forms are called allomorphs.
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Morphophonemic rule
The plural morpheme has the underlying
(phonological) form /z/. The variation comes
from 2 phonological rules.

• Insert a ? before the plural ending when a
  regular
• noun ends in a sibilant

2. Change the voiced /z/ to voiceless when it is
preceded by a voiceless sound.
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Remember morphophonemic rules apply only to morphemes instead of any phones in the phonological context.
Take the plural rule as an example. It does not apply to the following s sound. race res ? rez sauce s?s ? s?z rice rais ? raiz It is because s sound is NOT a plural morpheme.

• Compare
• ray pl /re/-s ? rez
• saw pl /s?/-s ? s?z
• rye pl /rai/-s ? raiz

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Why do we choose the underlying form for plural /z/ but not/s/?
Phonemic bus pl butt pl
bug pl Representation /b?s z/ /b?t z/
/b?g z/ apply rule (1) ?
NA NA Apply rule (2)
s
NA Phonetic Representation b?s?z b?t
s b?g z
If we choose /s/ to be the underlying form for
plural, what would be the result of the
derivation? (You do it.)
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Is the past tense in English also a
morphophonemic rule?
Explain why this is a morphophonemic rule? Show
the derivation processes of all three phonetic
variations.
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Is the negative in English also a
morphophonemic rule?
Explain why this is a morphophonemic rule? Show
the derivation processes of all three phonetic
variations.
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Is the negative morpheme in Akan also a
morphophonemic rule?
m? p? I like m? mp? I dont
like m? t? I speak m? nt? I
dont speak m? m? k? I go m? ?k? I
dont go
Explain why this is a morphophonemic rule? Show
the derivation processes of all three phonetic
variations.
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Problems to ponder on
Observe the following data, sign sain signature s?gn?t?? design d?zain designation d?z?gne??n paradigm p?r?daim paradigmatic p?r?d?gm?D?k
Ignore the vowel change temporarily. Pay
attention to the g-no g alternation. What
phonemic/underlying form do you propose for these
words and what is the derivation process?
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Problems to ponder on
Observe and read out loud the following data bomb bombardier iamb iambic crumb crumble
Pay attention to the b-no b alternation.
What phonemic/underlying form do you propose for
these words and what is the derivation process?
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Exercise
Observe and read out loud the following data gnostic vs. ignore know vs. picnic gnat knee gnarled knot gnaw knight
Pay attention to the g-no g and k-no
k alternations. What phonemic/underlying form
do you propose for these words and what is the
derivation process?
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The End