Linguistics A. Week 4 Phonology (Sound Patterns of Language) Part 1

Transcription

1 Linguistics A Week 4 Phonology (Sound Patterns of Language) Part 1

2 Phonology (vs. Phonetics) Phonetics How sounds are articulated in the vocal tract; Acoustic/auditory properties of linguistic sounds; Phonology Discrete representation of linguistics sounds in metal grammar; Rules governing the possible arrangements (patterns) of sound segments, how individual sounds are structured into syllables, words, etc.;

3 Phonological Features We expect the characterization of sounds in mental grammar (discrete mental representations of sounds) to be substantive in nature. We will see that discrete sound segments are made up of more basic discrete elements called phonological features. Phonological features are substantive insofar as they based on substantive phonetic (acoustic, articulatory, etc.) properties of linguistic sounds. A sound segment, then, is a set of discrete phonological features. Knowing a sound segment means knowing which features this set contains. This can be most easily captured in terms of a set of " valued features; for example {"F, }, where +F indicates the presence of a particular feature F and!f indicates the absence of F.

4 The Major Classes of Linguistic Sounds Obstruent sounds oral stops fricatives obstruent consonants affricates Sonorant sounds Nasal stops Liquids sonorant consonants Glides Vowels vowels

5 Feature Specification of Major Classes O N L G V consonantal + + +!! sonorant! syllabic!!/+!/+! + nasal! +!!!/+ (O = obstruents, N = nasals, L = liquids, G = glide, V = vowels)

6 Consonant Features "consonantal "sonorant "syllabic "nasal "voiced "continuant "labial "alveolar "palatal "anterior "velar "coronal "sibilant

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8 A close-up look: Feature Specifications of Labials p b m consonantal sonorant!! + syllabic!!! or + nasal!! + voiced! + + continuant!!! labial alveolar!!! palatal!!! anterior velar!!! coronal!!! sibilant!!!

9 Vowel Features!consonantal +sonorant +syllabic "nasal "voiced "high "low "front "back "round "tense

10 Feature Specifications of English Vowels high + +!!! + +!!!! low!!!! +!!!! +! front !!!!!! back!!!!! ! round!!!!! !! tense +! +!! +! +!!! [i] [w] [e] [e] [F] [u] [U] [o] []] [a] [ ]

11 Phones, Phonemes and Allophones Defining a set of phonological features, along with their possible arrangements and values, allows us to specify the set of all possible sounds occurring in human languages, called phones. The set of phones occurring in a particular language (say, English or Japanese) thus constitutes a subset of the set of all possible phones, almost invariably a proper subset (though clearly some languages make use of a much wider range of sounds than others).

12 Phonemes are basic abstract sound units that occur in a particular language and are used systematically to distinguish one word from another in that language. To distinguish the notion phone from the more abstract notion phoneme we will put the former inside of square brackets [ ] and the latter inside of slanted brackets / /. For example, /s/ will be used to indicate a phoneme whereas we will use the notation [s], when referring to the phone.

13 In general the relation between phones and phonemes is one-to-one. However, in some cases a single phoneme in a language may correspond to more than one phone; in other words, the phonetic realization of the phoneme differs depending on the surrounding phonological context. When two or more different phones correspond to a single phoneme, we call them allophones of the phoneme. For example, as we will see, the two phones [p] and [p h ], as witnessed in words like [pwl] and [sp h wl] respectively, are allophones of a single phoneme /p/.

14 Identifying Phonemes and Allophones phonemic level: /P 1 / /P 2 / allophonic level: [p 1 ] [p 2 ] [p 3 ] (1) Minimal pairs (2) Phonological similarity (3) Distribution (contextual predictability of variation)

15 Minimal Pairs When two different, distinct sounding words (or possible words ) are otherwise identical except for one phone occurring in exactly the same position (phonological context) in each word, the two words are said to form a minimal pair. In such cases, these two distinct phones, by which the two words in question differ minimally, are very likely to constitute distinct phonemes in the language.

16 [ wp] [t h wp] tip [lwp] lip [dwp] dip [rwp] rip [nwp] nip [±wp] chip [swp] sip [ wp] jip [zwp] zip [wwp] whip [ wp] ship [hwp] hip

17 [b t] [bit] beet [but] boot [bwt] bit [bot] boat [bet] bait [b]t] bought [bet] bet [b t] but [bft] bat [bat] Baht

18 Phonological Similarity [p h wt] ~ [k h wt] for a minimal pair differring only with respect to the sounds [p h ] ~ [k h ]. Similarly, the minimal pair [spwt] ~ [skwt] differ only with respect to the sounds [p] ~ [k]. But we should not jump to assume that there are four distinct phonemes /p h /, /k h /, /p/, /k/ based on these facts alone. Given the phonological similarity of the pair [p] ~ [p h ] and of [k] ~ [k h ], we must consider the possibility that these pairs constitute allophones of a single phoneme. We should first check to see if there are any minimal pairs distinguished only by whether a voiceless stop is aspirated or not; if there are no such minimal pairs, we should check the distribution of these sounds to see of they alternate in predictable ways depending on the phonological context.

19 Complementary Distribution Nasal vowels Oral vowels bean [bi#n] bead [bid] bee [bi] roam [ro#m] robe [rob] row [ro] pain [pe#n] paid [ped] pay [pe]

20 Deriving Surface Phones (Allophones) from Underlying Phonemes Suppose that words have two phonological representations, an Underlying Representation (UR), which contains only phonemic information, and a Surface Representation (SR), which contains all information necessary for actual phonetic articulation of distinct phones. The UR of a word consists only of sounds that are phonemes in the language. UR is then mapped to SR, possibly involving the application of phonological rules. Thus, the SR of a word may differ systematically from the UR and may include phones that are not even phonemes in the language.

21 Mapping UR to SR UR phonemic (Phonological Rules) SR (allo)phonic

22 Context-Sensitive Phonological Rules X Y (W) (Z) rule context input output target = an occurrence of X

23 a b / eaf ebf a b / c eaf eaf caf cbf a b / c d eaf eaf caf caf cad cbd

24 Nasal vs. Oral Vowels Nasal and oral vowels are in complementary distribution. Nasal vowels occur before a nasal consonant; oral vowels occur elsewhere. The phonological context in which nasal vowels appear is narrower (more specific) than the context in which oral vowels appear. Strategy: take the allophone that occurs in the wider (more general) context to correspond to the underlying phoneme, and derive all other allophones by way of context-sensitive phonological rules.

25 Nasalization Rule!consonantal +consonantal +syllabic +nasal!syllabic!nasal +nasal

26 Nasalization Rule (simplified notation) V V: / C [+nasal]

27 Derivations of the SRs of the words bead and bean: UR: /bid/ /bin/ Nasalization Rule NA bi:n SR: [bid] [bi:n]