The Goals of Phonology:

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The Goals of Phonology

• to note and describe the sound patterns in
  language(s)

• to detect and taxonomize (classify) general
  patterns

• to explain these patterns

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Sound Patterns any behavior of speech sounds

• the nature of the units in speech (e.g., phones,
  syllables, words)

• their inherent structure (e.g., alveolar, voiced,
  glottalized, high F2)

• patterns of languages sound inventories (
  paradigmatic constraints)

• patterns of sound sequences ( syntagmatic
  constraints)

• contextual variation in phonemes or other units

• systematic phonetic variation in related
  morphemes (morphophonemics)

• patterns in sound change

• patterns in how speech sounds are acquired (in
  1st and 2nd language learning)

• patterns in misperception of sounds

3
Explain reduce the unknown to the known.
In other words, take a puzzle and solve it by
referring to things already known or knowable.
E.g., to explain thunder and lightning by
attributing it to action of angels requires that
we accept the existence of angels. This replaces
one unknown by another unknown. It is not an
explanation (pending proof that angels do exist).
Citing gravity as the cause of objects falling
and planets orbiting around other celestial
bodies is not an explanation (and Newton
recognized this and worried about it). What is
this thing gravity? Just a label until it can
be reduced to previously known entities.
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Where are the explanations to be sought?

• Phonetics

• Psychology

• The context in which language and speech are
  used the task constraints, society, culture

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Tasks in the phonological analysis of a language

• Phonetically transcribe language data spoken by a
  native speaker
• Obtain a list of all the sounds used in the data
  (cons, vowels)
• Classify the sounds (with the help of the IPA)
• Make a list of how sounds are combined into words
  (CV,VCV, etc.)
• Describe the sound pattern of the language (cons
  system, cons processes, phon rules, derivations)

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Key terms

• Contrast two words show meaning difference as a
  result of a sound difference at the same point in
  the words
• Complementary distribution a condition in which
  two sounds occur in different phonetic
  environments
• Environment class of sounds and boundaries
  which surround a particular sound being
  investigated
• Phonetic similarity condition in which sounds
  share certain phonetic properties in common
• Phoneme/lexical form a basic sound which may or
  may not have phonetic variants (learned/unpredicta
  ble)
• Allophone/phonetic form variation of a phoneme
  (predictable/rule-governed)

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Complementary distribution

• Assumptions in phonological analysis
• All the sounds found in a data is representative
  of the all possible sounds (this can be revised
  as we encounter more data (eg. Jamaican Creole
• We compare words which show pairs of phonetically
  similar sounds.
• The aim is to determine if such sounds are
  different phonemes or variations of the same
  phoneme (example (1) in (Jensen, p.38)
• If they occur in different environments and we
  can account for their distribution in those
  environments by rule, then they are allophones of
  the same phoneme

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Procedures in establishing phonemic status

1. Draw a table in which the two sounds being
   compared are charted
2. Charting an environment of a sound means stating
   the class of sounds or boundary in which each
   sound occurs (Jensen p. (2), table 2)
3. If we observe from the chart that where one sound
   occurs the other does not, and we can safely say
   that the occurrence of the each sound is
   conditioned or determined by the environment,
   then
4. We will propose that the two sounds are in
   complementary distribution
5. If the sounds are in complementary distribution,
   then they will re referred to as allophones of
   the same phoneme
6. Note that there are some cases that two sounds
   may be different phonemes, but occur in different
   environments. These sounds are usually not
   phonetically similar

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Complementarity of sounds

• Distribution of allophones are governed by (a)
  rule(s) (the rule tells us where each one can be
  found at any point in time when we encounter them
  in words
• How do we choose the basic sound (phoneme/lexical
  rep). We can answer this by looking at the
  environments in which these sounds occur.
• Choose the one that occurs in the greatest
  environments (states the rules that derive from
  that sound)
• Your rule should be stated in the simplest form

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Coincident distribution

• Two sounds which occur at the same point in an
  identical environment meaning difference
• The two words constitute a minimal pair
• The only differing sounds in the two words are
  phonemes
• Venn diagram ( Jensen p. 45 fig. 16)

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Overlapping distribution