Phonological rules

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Phonological rules

• LING 200
• Spring 2006

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Foreign accents and borrowed words

• Borrowed words
• often pronounced according to phonological rules
  of borrowing language
• Foreign accents
• result from application of native language
  phonology to target language phonology
• especially if language learned as adult

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Spanish loans into English
Spanish in English
pA?res Padres phAd?ez
tAko taco thAko
burito burrito b??i?o
sAndje?o San Diego s?ndiego
r alveolar trill ? voiced velar fricative
? retroflex approximant ? alveolar flap
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The original shibboleth

• Judges 125-6

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Some types of phonological rules

• Assimilation (cf. phonetic coarticulation)
• Dissimilation
• Deletion
• Epenthesis

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Examples of phonological rules

• Assimilation
• Mohawk Voicing
• Nasal Assimilation in Italian (and many other
  languages)
• Korean s-palatalization

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Witsuwiten
? and ? after non-lowering consonants
q voiceless uvular stop q uvular
ejective ch voiceless aspirated palatal
stop X voiceless uvular fricative ?
voiceless lateral fricative ? voiced uvular
approximant m glottalized nasal
nt?q up t?z driftwood t?Xcho blue grouse
tilt?s shes in a rush n?q uphill n?s ahead
?n?X dark birthmark tin?? its slithering p?p?t its abdomen
ip?X its flooding we?p?ts it isnt rolling t?qaj cutthroat trout
t?lt?m its pounding n?n?? it (cloth) is moving p?l?m its ice
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Witsuwiten consonant chart
labial alveolar palatal labio-velar uvular glottal
stops p p t th t c ch c kw kwh kw q qh q ?
affricates ts tsh ts
lateral t? t?h t?
fricatives s z ç xw X h
lateral ?
nasals m n
approximants j w ?
lateral l
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Dissimilation

• A sound becomes less similar to another sound
• An example from Sanskrit
• Phonetic background from Hindi
• Sanskrit
• Hindi

5 retroflex
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Laryngeal contrasts in Hindi

• ? voiced retroflex stop
• ?Al branch
• ? voiceless retroflex stop
• ?Al postpone
• ?h voiceless aspirated retroflex stop
• ?hAl wood shop
• ?? (breathy) voiced aspirated retroflex stop
• ??Al shield

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Dissimilation

• Grassmans Law (Sanskrit)
• Voiced aspirated stops/affricates are deaspirated
  before another voiced aspirated stop/affricate.
• C? ? C / ___ ... C?

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Grassmans Law in Sanskrit

• b? voiced aspirated labial stop
• Rightmost voiced aspirate survives

/b?ud?jAte/ bud?jAte is awake
/b?ub?od?A/ bubod?A was awake

• Rightmost voiced aspirate devoices and
  deaspirates before s (a different phonological
  rule) leftmost survives

/b?od?sjati/ b?otsjati will be awake
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Deletion

• Cree. An Algonquian language spoken in Canada
  (B.C. to Ontario)

/pisimw/ pisim sun
cf. /pisimwak/ pisimwak suns

• /w/ ? Ø / C ___ ( edge of
  word)

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Epenthesis

• Witsuwiten
• No word can begin with /?/
• h epenthesized
• /?tsh??/ h?tsh?? (more narrowly, h?tsh??)
  hes crying
• Tsekene
• No word can begin with /?/
• ? epenthesized
• /?tsh??/ ??tsh?? hes crying

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Epenthesis

• English
• No word can begin with a vowel
• ? epenthesized
• uh-oh /??o/ ???o
• apple /æp?l/ ?æpl?
• the apple /ð?/ /æp?l/ ð??æpl?

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Phonetics vs. phonology
phonetics phonology
transcription narrower as needed typically broad, streamlined
phonetic detail explicitly represented as needed detail is predicted by rule system
contrast how is a particular contrast realized? what is contrastive?
sounds what are articulatory, acoustic, perceptible properties? how do sounds form patterns, classes? what are the phonological rules?
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Final thoughts about spoken language phonetics
and phonology
A clip from The Human Language, vol. 3