Phonology

1
Phonology

• How phonetic units are organised
• Features and rules
• Syllable structure
• Phonotactics
• Suprasegmental phonology
• Reading
• ODK, Ch. 3 pp. 68-95, 95-113
• Q. 1-3, 4-12, 14, 15.

2
Phonological levels

• (Word)
• Syllable (s )
• Segment e.g. k
• Features e.g. voice

3
Contrastiveness

• Minimal pair test
• Take two words in a language
• If they differ in only one segment and have
  different meanings, then these words form a
  minimal pair.
• The differing segments are contrastive
• e.g.
• What about h and ? ?

4
Phonetically conditioned variation

• Distribution where segments occur
• Complimentary distribution
• Free variation
• Phonemes
• Variants allophones
• Phonetic vs. phonemic transcription
• thæp ? vs. /tæp/

5
Hints for solving phonology problems

• Look for minimal pairs
• Allophones are usually phonetically similar
• Are they in complementary distribution?
• Select allophone with widest distribution (the
  elsewhere variant) and write rule
• State where evidence is not conclusive

6
Syllables

• Onset (O)
• Rhyme (R)
• Nucleus (N)
• Coda (C)
• Syllabification
• Phonotactics language-specific
• Gaps
• Accidental
• Systematic

7
Syllables

• Closed/Open
• Coda?
• Heavy/Light
• Tense/Lax vowel? Consonant?
• Position
• Final
• Penultimate
• Antepenultimate

8
Features

• Subsegmental
• Binary /-
• Arranged in a matrix
• Allow us to group segments into natural classes
  more later
• SPE, Chomsky Halle, 1968

9
Feature types

• Major class features (SPE)
• Laryngeal features
• Place features
• Dorsal features
• Body of the tongue
• Manner features
• We will be systematic in familiarising ourselves
  with features

10
Features

• syllabic, consonantal
• vowel vs. consonant vs. glide
• sonorant, continuant
• stop vs. fricative vs. nasal vs. liquid
• Laryngeal features voice, SG, CG
• SG aspirated consonants
• CG ?

11
Place features

• labial lips
• anterior
• from alveolar ridge forward
• coronal
• alveolars, alveopalatals, palatals
• strident sibilants
• noisy fricatives

12
Dorsal features

• Placement of tongue body
• high
• alveopalatals, palatals, velars
• back
• velars, uvulars, pharyngeals
• low
• pharyngeals

13
Manner features

• nasal
• continuant
• lateral
• delayed release
• affricates

14
Vowel features

• high
• low
• back
• round
• nasal
• tense
• reduced

15
Natural Classes

• Classes of sound that share a feature or
  features, e.g.
• nasal consonants
• voiceless stops
• Only use minimal set of features, but almost
  always include major class features
• Use features in phonological rules, or to
  describe articulatory processes.

16
Examples

• Engish word-initial consonant clusters after /s/
• Assimilation
• Deletion
• Epenthesis
• Vowel harmony in Turkish

17
Assimilation
-syllabic sonorant voice -nasal
-voice / s
-syllabic -consonantal -continuant -voice -delayed
release
Underlying representation Surface representation
18
Vowel harmony in Turkish

• at horse
• adam man
• kitap book
• ev house
• göz eye

• atlar horses
• adamlar men
• kitaplar books
• evler houses
• gözler eyes

19
Suprasegmental Phonology

• Stress placement
• Look at syllable weight
• Identify feature patterns in segments
• Tonal phonology
• Segmental vs. tonal environments