Phonology and Allophones

Phonology

the study of the systems and patterns of speech sounds in a language

factors that affect pronunciation

• mouth of food

• out of breath

• regional accent/2nd language

• social group

• signal identity and solidarity

Minimal pair

words that differ by one sound [phoneme]

Phoneme

smallest unit of sound that can affect the meaning of a word [mental representation]

changing phonemes

different word is produced

phonemes show what type of distribution

contrastive [each phoneme contrasts with every other phoneme]

relationship b/t phonemes and allophones

a phoneme is realised by one or more allophones

allophone

the actual spoken sound studied in phonetics

difference b/t getting a phoneme wrong vs an allophone

phoneme- may say a different word to that intended, allophone- just sounds strange but still the same word

allophones are in ___ distribution

complementary distribution,

what allophone do you use to label the phoneme

‘elsewhere’ - has no particular environment

steps for finding environments

• Find patterns in the data

• look at the sounds preceding and after the sound

• word boundary represent #

• underscore _ is a placeholder for sound we are investigating

allophonic rules eg /n/ -> [n̪]/ _θ

source is realised as {output in IPA terms} in {environment