Transcript Sound Structure - University of Pennsylvania

Sound Structure
Part II: Phonology
1-28-2009
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
Seeing Speech
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
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
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]
Lost in Translation
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
– bLue~bRew, Light~Right, maLt~maRt
– Phonology is not just about the sound inventory, it’s also
about how sounds are put in use
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
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/
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]
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:
1. English voiceless stops (e.g., p, k, etc.) are
a. Aspirated if word initial, or syllable-initial
preceding a stressed vowel:
Compare récord vs. recórd
b. Otherwise unaspirated.
Phonemes: Nasalized vowels
• e.g. English speakers have not memorized any nasal
vowels
• but English speakers do make nasal vowels:
mat [mӕt] vs man [mǣn]
• We have one phoneme that can be realized
phonetically as nasal or oral
• One phoneme /ӕ/ with two allophones [ӕ] and [ǣ]
Implications for learning words
• When we learn words, we don’t 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
Phonemes and Allophones
allophone
allophone
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 (pӕt bӕt)
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/ŋ are distinct phonemes
Finding Phonemes
• Sometimes it isn’t possible to find minimal pairs
for all sounds, but speakers can tell whether a
contrast would yield a distinct possible word,
even if it’s not a real word.
• e.g. “bat” vs “bap”: I know that “bat” is a word
and that “bap” isn’t, and that “bap” is a possible
word. So /t/ /p/ are distinct phonemes.
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
Rules of Pronunciation
• [vowel]  [nasal] / __ [nasal consonant]
• the kind of sound that changes
• in this rule, it’s vowels
• Note: man but not mat
• Note: man and can and tan and san(k)
Rules of Pronunciation
• [vowel]

• “becomes”
[nasal] / __ [nasal consonant]
Rules of Pronunciation
• [vowel]  [nasal] / __ [nasal consonant]
• the change
• here, nasal
• Notice: I didn’t put [nasal vowel]--I don’t
have to put vowel b/c that doesn’t change
• Only put what changes = simpler, less to
remember
Rules of Pronunciation
• [vowel]  [nasal]
• “when”
/
__ [nasal consonant]
Rules of Pronunciation
• [vowel]  [nasal] / __ [nasal consonant]
• This is the environment that causes the change
• The underlining shows the position of the sound
that’s changing
• Here: before a nasal consonant
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]
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
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.
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
Syllable Structure
Legislator: le-gi-sla-tor; four syllables ()
Monosyllabic cat:

Onset
k
Rhyme
Nucleus
æ
Coda
t
Onsets and Speech Errors
Spoonerisms (Rev. Dr. W. A. Spooner, 1844-1930)
Target:
Output:
dear old queen
queer old dean
Target:
Output:
You have wasted the whole term
You have tasted the whole worm.
Target:
Output:
You missed my history lectures.
You hissed my mystery lectures.
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)
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 don’t just memorize words
but form generalizations over them
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"
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
Expletive infixation
Expletive Infixation is not something that our
English teachers instruct us in; yet we know
a great deal about it – what’s the rule?
Go home and try with your friends & Tas
It has to do with stress patterns of language
inde-f*cking-pendent
unrea-f*cking-listic
*indepen-f*cking-dent *unreali-f*cking-stic
Summary
• Articulatory features
• Phonemes
• Syllables
• Feet
• Words
• Sentences