Transcript New Employee Orientation

Linguistics week 9
Phonology 2
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The IPA vowel chart
• This is a stylized
representation of the
inside of the mouth
• It shows
– the cardinal vowels
• marked by black dots
– and the approximate
position of vowels common
in many languages
• The next slide shows the
position of English vowels
on the same kind of chart
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Aspiration in Mandarin is phonemic
• pʰ and p are two different phones; two different sounds
• but in Mandarin they are different phonemes
– /pʰa/ (ㄆㄚ) and /pa/ (ㄅㄚ) represent different meanings
– in English pʰ and p do not help to distinguish meaning
– There are no minimal pairs like pʰa and pa
• Slant brackets are used for phonemic transcriptions //
• Square brackets are used for phonetic transcriptions []
• This is an important point
– We will return to it later
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So what is a phoneme?
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A phoneme is a member of the set of sounds of a particular
language
A phoneme can be spoken in different ways, depending on
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the other sounds near it, in the utterance (context)
the local accent or dialect
the person speaking
These different realizations (different ways) are the
allophones of the phoneme
A phoneme can be distinguished from every other
phoneme
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You do this by checking that a minimal pair exists
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Economy of effort: allophonic
differences within one syllable
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The vowels in ㄢ and ㄤ are different (front and back)
because the speaker is preparing for the following
consonant
The consonants /k/ in kit and cat differ slightly because the
speaker is preparing for the following vowel. Tongue
position for the first is further forward
Why do these allophonic differences exist?
In language, as in life, people are lazy!
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It is logical that tongue movement should be minimized
As long as people can understand what we are saying!
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Economy of effort: assimilation
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Another syllable or word influences
pronunciation, in rapid speech
How do you pronounce 根本?
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This is an example of progressive assimilation
What about 多少錢
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This is an example of elision
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Assimilation in English and
French
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Usually it’s regressive
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A phoneme is changed to accommodate
(match) the next phoneme.
Voicing
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Newspaper, of course, have to
News has /z/; newspaper has [s] to
accommodate the following /p/
French avec /avek/ in avec vous /aveg vu/
“with you”
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Assimilation of place of
articulation
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/tem/ in ten minutes
/iƷ/ in is she?
http://www.btinternet.com/~ted.power/assi
milation.html
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For more examples
Read about assimilation at
http://www.personal.rdg.ac.uk/~llsroach/ph
on2/asscoareli-into.htm
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