Transcript 17-Phonology

Phonology
October 24, 2012
Housekeeping
• To begin with...
• Phonetics homeworks to hand in!
• Then:
• Another Simpsons-based Quick Write
• Today: We start working on Phonology…
• Friday: mid-term!
• Note: I changed my mind about the tables of consonants
and vowels…
• I won’t be providing partial replications of them on the
exam.
• Which means: you should learn them!
Broad and Narrow
 Broad transcriptions
• Represent only contrastive sounds (phonemes)
• Enclosed in slashes: / /
• Generally use only alphabetic symbols
• Narrow transcriptions
• Represent phones
• Capture as much phonetic detail as possible
• Enclosed in brackets: [ ]
• Can require use of diacritics
Phonology
• The study of how the pronunciation of sounds changes
according to context is called phonology.
• We have already seen some phonological changes with
respect to the phoneme /t/.
• English /t/
Word
Broad
Narrow
Description
‘top’
aspirated
‘stop’
unaspirated
‘batter’
flapped
‘kitten’
glottalized
‘nitrate’
/najtrejt/
palatalized
Phonemes and Allophones
•
Recall: the basic idea behind the IPA is to have one
symbol for each sound.
•
Principle of Contrast:
•
“There should be a separate letter for each
distinctive sound; that is, for each sound which,
being used instead of another, in the same
language, can change the meaning of the word.”
•
Phonemes contrast with each other; they are
“distinctive sounds”
•
Allophones do not contrast with each other;
•
They cannot distinguish between words.
Phonemes and Allophones
•
For example--[t] and [d] are two different sounds
(phonemes) in English;
•
they can change the meaning of a word--
tip vs. dip
~ [t] vs. [d] ~
pat vs. pad
•
Remember: two words that differ in only one sound
are called a minimal pair.
•
However, there is no minimal pair in English
distinguished by a flap vs. a voiceless stop.
•
Canadian English:
“bottom”
•
British English:
“bottom”
Wait a second…
• Sounds that are distinctive, or contrast, in one language,
are not necessarily distinctive in another.
• Ex: [s] and
are distinctive in English.
sheep
vs.
seep
shack
vs.
sack
shoot
vs.
suit
mash
vs.
mass
etc.
• But they are not distinctive in Japanese…
Some Japanese Words
‘this year’
‘outside’
‘a little’
‘to know’
‘world’
‘to do’
‘sugar’
‘to force/cause’
• Q: What’s the pattern?
• A:
appears before [i]: ____ [i]
• [s] appears elsewhere
• There are no minimal pairs for
and [s] in Japanese.
 In Japanese, they are not contrastive sounds.
Biblical Parallels
“And the Gileadites took the fords of the Jordan against the
Ephraimites. And when any of the fugitives of Ephraim said,
‘Let me go over,’ the men of Gilead said to him, ‘Are you an
Ephraimite?’ When he said, ‘No,’ they said to him, ‘Then say
Shibboleth,’ and he said, ‘Sibboleth,’ for he could not
pronounce it right; then they seized him and slew him at the
fords of the Jordan.”
--Judges 12:5-6
Modern-day Shibboleths
(Canadian) Jon
“house”
“howl”
“bike”
“bile”
• Also note (Canadian) Amber:
(American) Steve
Modern-day Shibboleths
• Canadian English is distinctive in that it “raises” the first
part of the diphthongs [aj] and [aw].
• In both cases, [a] 
[aj] 
[aw] 
• This is “raising” because a low vowel becomes a
mid vowel.
• Technical term: Canadian Raising.
Canadian Raising
• Canadian Raising only occurs in certain sound
environments:
• “house”
“loud”
• “write”
“ride”
• “pipe”
“bribe”
• “like”
• Q: When does Canadian Raising occur?
• (what is the relevant sound environment?)
• A: [aj] and [aw] “raise” whenever they appear before
a voiceless consonant.
Another Pattern
• Here’s one that we’ve seen before:
[phæt]
‘pat’
[spæt]
‘spat’
[thap]
‘top’
[stap]
‘stop’
[khar]
‘car’
[skar]
‘scar’
• Voiceless stops are aspirated when they appear at the
start of a stressed syllable.
• Unless they appear immediately after s: s___
• Because aspirated and unaspirated stops don’t appear in
the same phonetic environment in English….
• They are not contrastive sounds.
However…
• In languages like Quechua, there are meaningful contrasts
between aspirated and unaspirated stops and affricates.
• Some minimal pairs:
Different Levels
• In all languages, there are sounds which contrast.
• They make meaningful differences between words.
• = “phonemes”
• Phonemes also have variants which do not contrast.
• …but reliably appear in particular phonetic
environments.
• = “allophones”
• Phonemes represent abstract, psychological reality
• broad transcriptions
• allophones represent concrete, physical reality.
• narrow transcriptions
Big Picture Flashback
• Knowing how the broad level of transcription relates to the
narrow level of transcription is part of what you know as a
competent speaker of a language.
• = knowing which allophone to use for a particular
phoneme, in some particular circumstance.
• Another word for this knowledge is phonology.
• This is subconscious knowledge
• This knowledge takes the form of rules…
• For that reason, it can apply to new, creative forms.
• Try, for example, nonsense words like “mowch” or “skype”.
Example Rule
• In Japanese, [s] and
phoneme.
Phoneme:
Allophones:
are allophones of the same
/s/
[s]
• Observations:
•
appears only in front of /i/
• [s] appears everywhere else
• Rule: /s/ surfaces as
in front of /i/
• Speakers of Japanese “know” this rule
Phonological Rules, formalized
• Phonological rules can be written in the following form:
/Phoneme/

[Allophone] / Environment
• The environment is where we see the phonological
transformation taking place.
• Usually, the phonetic environment consists of the
sounds surrounding the phoneme in question.
• Example rule (Japanese):
/s/ 
/ __ [i]
(__ [i] = before an [i])
Distributions
• Question:
How do we know that the /s/ changes to an
Japanese, and not the other way around?
in
• We have to take into consideration the distribution of
the two sounds.
• The distribution is the set of phonetic environments in
which a sound appears.
• Two kinds of distributions:
• contrastive
• complementary