Transcript More usage-based phonology

Usage-based phonology
Usage-based phonology
High frequency words are shorter than low
frequency words
 time (hi)
 dime (lo)

Usage-based phonology
High frequency words are shorter than low
frequency words
 time (hi)
 dime (lo)
Why?

Usage-based phonology

Theory 1: Articulatory practice
 more practiced forms are produced faster
 UR of time is passed to motor production
which has practiced it more so it's faster
 UR of dime is passed to motor production
which hasn't produced it as often
Usage-based phonology

Theory 2: Examplar model
 All experienced instances stored with phonetic
detail
 Instances of time are heard, produced, and
stored in shorter experienced form
 Instances of dime are heard, produced, stored
as longer words
Usage-based phonology

Theory 2: Examplar model
 All experienced instances stored with phonetic
detail
 Instances of time are heard, produced, and
stored in shorter experienced form
 Instances of dime are heard, produced, stored
as longer words
 (This assumes articulatory practice, but goes
a step further)
Usage-based phonology

Which theory is correct?
Usage-based phonology

Which theory is correct?
 Homophones are the key to the answer
 time thyme
 need knead
 right write
 would wood
Usage-based phonology

Which theory is correct?
 Homophones are the key to the answer
 time thyme
 need knead
 right write
 would wood
 Are they stored as phonemes? (identical
storage)
 Are they stored in phonetic form? (storage is
different for individual words)
Usage-based phonology
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Experiment
 Measure length of spoken homophones
Usage-based phonology
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Experiment
 Measure length of spoken homophones
 Homophones have different lengths
 Hi freq members are shorter
 Lo freq members are longer
Usage-based phonology

Experiment
 Measure length of spoken homophones
 Homophones have different lengths
 Hi freq members are shorter
 Lo freq members are longer
 This is evidence for storage with phonetic
details, not storage in phonemic form
Phoneme
So are phonemes real or not?
Can phonemes be real yet storage is not
phonemic?
Could storage be phonetic, yet people can form
phonemic units when needed?

Phoneme
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Definitions of the phoneme
 Jones: family of sounds that are the same for
practical purposes
Phoneme

Definitions of the phoneme as physical reality
 Jones: family of sounds that are the same for
practical purposes
 Bloomfield: The features in the sound wave
that all allophones have in common
 (In many cases there is no phonetic
constant)
Phoneme

Definitions of the phoneme as physical reality
 Jones: family of sounds that are the same for
practical purposes
 Bloomfield: The features in the sound wave
that all allophones have in common
 (In many cases there is no phonetic
constant)
 Phonemes are a collection of allophones
Phoneme
Definitions of the phoneme as psychological
reality
 A unit perceived to be the same thing by
speakers
 Mental images of a sound (or collection of
sounds)

Phoneme
Definitions of the phoneme as psychological
reality
 A unit perceived to be the same thing by
speakers
 Mental images of a sound (or collection of
sounds)

Phoneme
Definitions of the phoneme as psychological
reality
 A unit perceived to be the same thing by
speakers
 Mental images of a sound (or collection of
sounds)
 The intentions of the speaker

a phoneme [...] is an underlying intention shared
by the speaker and the listener (who are always
“two in one”). The shared knowledge of
intentions guarantees communication between the
speaker and the listener within a given language,
even if the actually pronounced forms diverge
substantially from what is intended...In other
words, phonemes are fully specified, pronounceable percepts.
Phoneme
Is the phoneme just a convenient fiction
invented by phonologists?

Phoneme

What are phonemes made up of?
 Underspecified phoneme:
 Phonemes made up of all features that
contrast it with other phonemes
Phoneme

What are phonemes made up of?
 Underspecified phoneme:
 Phonemes made up of all features that
contrast it with other phonemes
 Phonemes defined in terms of how they
contrast with other phonemes
 Fall all features of that phoneme X has that
distiguish it from other phonemes
Phoneme

What are phonemes made up of?
 Underspecified phoneme:
 Phonemes made up of all features that
contrast it with other phonemes
 Phonemes defined in terms of how they
contrast with other phonemes
 Fall all features of that phoneme X has that
distiguish it from other phonemes
 Phonemes are underspecified since they
only contain contrastive features
Phoneme

What are phonemes made up of?
 Underspecified phoneme:
 Example: What features needed to
distinguish /a, i, u/?
 Only high and round
 /i/ + high -round
 /a/ - high – round
 /u/ + high +round
 No need to mention, back, tense, ATR, low
Phoneme

What are phonemes made up of?
 Fully-specified phoneme:
 One of the allophones is identical to
phoneme
 It contains all features, not just contrastive
ones
Phoneme

What are phonemes made up of?
 Fully-specified phoneme:
 One of the allophones is identical to
phoneme
 It contains all features, not just contrastive
ones
 What features needed to define /a, i, u/?
Phoneme
Some theories don't distinguish/separate
phonetic level and phonemic level
 OT and some exemplar/usage-based theories

Phoneme
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How do you identify phonemes?
 Conmutation test: interchange phones
 If meaning doesn't change they are in
complementary distribution (same
phoneme)
Phoneme

How do you identify phonemes?
 Conmutation test: interchange phones
 If meaning doesn't change they are in
complementary distribution (same
phoneme)
 If meaning changes they belong to
different phoneme (constrastive
distribution)
Phoneme
Problem: This test works for phones that are
very similar like [t] and [th]
h
 [t ] and [p] are also in complementary
distribution, but don't belong to same
phoneme

Phoneme
Problem: This test works for phones that are
very similar like [t] and [th]
h
 [t ] and [p] are also in complementary
distribution, but don't belong to same
phoneme
Resolution (?) check the orthography. Phonemes
are written with same letter

Phoneme
Problem: This test works for phones that are
very similar like [t] and [th]
h
 [t ] and [p] are also in complementary
distribution, but don't belong to same
phoneme
Resolution (?) check the orthography. Phonemes
are written with same letter
Well, in written language, with phonetic
symbols yes

Phoneme

Problem: Some phonemes share allophones
 In Chuckchee /i u e/ have two allophones:
 [e o a] in words with low vowels
 [i u e] elsewhere
Phoneme
[i] and [e] aren't in complementary distribution
 [i] of /i/ and [e] of /e/ occur in same context
 So, [i] and [e] must not belong to same
phoneme
If you swithc [i] and [e] in word without low
vowel, meaning would change

Phoneme
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Evidence that phonemes are real
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Existence of alphabets (none are phonetic)
Pauite speaker who learned to transcribe
phonetically transcribed things phonemically
Phoneme
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Evidence that phonemes are real
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
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Existence of alphabets (none are phonetic)
Pauite speaker who learned to transcribe
phonetically transcribed things phonemically
Speech errors involve phoneme manipulation

fish grotto > frish gotto

(or are you just switching sounds, not phonemes?)
Phoneme
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Evidence that phonemes are real

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People can count number of phonemes in a word

(But are they just counting phones?)

(Is this based on spelling knowledge?)
Contra: People who don't know alphabetic writing
can't add, delete, manipulate phonemes in words

(Even if you can add, delete, manipulate sound in a
words just means you can identify sound, not that you
see them as phonemes)
Phoneme
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Evidence that phonemes are real
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Language games involve moving phonemes around
Phoneme
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Evidence that phonemes are real
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Language games involve moving phonemes around

(Is identifying sounds the same as identifying
phomemes?)
Phoneme
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Evidence that phonemes are real
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Neurological evidence (Magnetic
electroencephalogram)

Russians and Koreans heard [ta] [da]

Russians produced different brainwaves

Koreans brainwaves stayed the same. Why?
Phoneme

Evidence that phonemes are real

Neurological evidence (Magnetic
electroencephalogram)

Russians and Koreans heard [ta] [da]

Russians produced different brainwaves

Koreans brainwaves stayed the same. Why?

Russian
/t/
/d/
| |
[t]
Korean
/t/
/\
[d]
[t] [d]
Phoneme

Russians versus Koreans

They both heard tones that changed
Korean
Russian
Phoneme
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Russians versus Koreans
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Then they heard change from [t] to [da]
Korean
Russian
Phoneme
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Sound change is hard without phonemes

sound change affects all instances of a phoneme in
a particular environment


So you change all phoneme x in language


x > y / __ z
if there are no phonemes you'd have to go word by word
exemplar by exemplar and change each one
(No problem for usage-based, words are connected
to each other based on phonetic similarity so
connection propagate change)
Phoneme
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Chain shifts

e.g. t: > t > d > ð > ∅

Sounds interact with each other

e.g t > d forcing d > ð

If words are stored as phonemes, shift is simple

If they aren't how is chain shift possible?
Phoneme
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

Phonetic processes refer to phonetic
environments not to words
Processes apply to unknown/new words
If words are stored not phonemes processes
shouldn't apply to new words
Phoneme
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In Polish and Spanish, stress is contrastive, not
(completely) predicable
In French and Finnish, stress is completely
predictable, never contrastive
Phoneme
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
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In Polish and Spanish, stress is contrastive, not
(completely) predicable
In French and Finnish, stress is completely
predictable, never contrastive
In experiment, speakers taught words with
different stress patterns
Spanish and Polish speakers made few
mistakes with nonce words
Finnish and French words made lots of stress
mistakes
Phoneme

Interpretation of results:


Spanish and Polish speakers store words with stress
pattern
French and Finnish speakers don't store stress
pattern but apply rule to get stress on words
Phoneme

Interpretation of results:


Spanish and Polish speakers store words with stress
pattern, so they stored stress of nonce words
French and Finnish speakers don't store stress
pattern but apply rule to get stress on words, so
they didn't store stress on nonce words and made
more mistakes
Phoneme

Other interpretation of results:


Spanish and Polish speakers stress words on many
different syllables, they are ambidextreous
Finnish and French speakers only stress one place,
they are monodextreous, and have a hard time
using both “hands”
Phoneme
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Other interpretation of results:



Spanish and Polish speakers stress words on many
different syllables, they are ambidextreous
Finnish and French speakers only stress one place,
they are monodextreous, and have a hard time
using both “hands”
It's a matter of habit not rule versus storage
Phoneme


If we store words with details, when we hear
female Aussie say new word, we would repeat
it with a high pitched Aussie accent.
We don't because we don't store it with details
but phonemically
Phoneme



This assumes exemplar models can't handle
sub-word units, but they do/can
Words are stored with connections to the same
word said by different people at different
times
Words are stored with connections to other
words that are phonetically similar
Phoneme

Kids make systematic substitutions that they
don't hear adults do



thin > fin, three > free
This is only possible if they are substituting
one phoneme for another.
If words aren't stored phonemically how could
this happen?
Phoneme

In exemplar theory, all words beginning with
[Θ] would be connected to all other words
with [Θ] which could account for this fact
Phoneme
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
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Phonetic processes refer to phonetic
environments not to words
Processes apply to unknown/new words
If words are stored not phonemes processes
shouldn't apply to new words

(Actually they can by analogy)
What is the truth?

My take on it


People store words with phonetic details not as
phonemes
People can also groups sounds into phonemic-like
units (and shades of color into colors, and can
categorize many things too)


Alphabets helps people with these phonetic groupings
People can view things in multiple ways
The phoneme in different theories

Structuralism: phonemes are defined in terms
of how they contrast with each other and their
distribution (complementary or contrastive)
The phoneme in different theories


Structuralism: phonemes are defined in terms
of how they contrast with each other and their
distribution (complementary or contrastive)
Generativism: phonemes are defined in terms
of the features they contain
The phoneme in different theories



Structuralism: phonemes are defined in terms
of how they contrast with each other and their
distribution (complementary or contrastive)
Generativism: phonemes are defined in terms
of the features they contain
Cognitive linguistics: phonemes are mental
images related to articulation of the sounds
The phoneme in different theories

Usage-based: phonemes are categories. Sounds
that belong to the same category belong to
the same phoneme. Similarity can be
articulatory and/or acoustic
The phoneme in different theories


Usage-based: phonemes are categories. Sounds
that belong to the same category belong to
the same phoneme. Similarity can be
articulatory and/or acoustic
Prototype theory: one sound is chosen as the
central/prototypical (abstract) member of the
category against which all others are defined
by.
The phoneme in different theories

Exemplar theory: categorization of sounds into
phoneme-like units may be done, but it isn't
necessary to store, produce, undestand
speech. No abstract prototype stored.