Phonology Final

Phone

A single sound

Contrast (contrastive distribution)

same environments; difference in meaning

Complementary distribution

distinct environments

Free variation

same environments; no difference in meaning

Phoneme

What each contrastive phone in a language belongs to

Allophones

Phones in complementary distribution or free variation which belong to the same phoneme

Locality

we want conditioning environments to be local (eg. ideally adjacent to the segment)

Naturalness

Implies typological abundance

Neutralization

Two phones that used to contrast in a certain phonological position no longer contrast

Abstractness

a UR form is considered to be sufficiently “concrete” as long as for each segment in the UR, there is some context in which that segment surfaces intact

Major class features

consonantal (obstruction of vocal tract), sonorant (vocal tract open), syllabic (nucleus of a syllable)

Manner features

continuant (without closure in oral cavity), delayed release, lateral, nasal, ATR

Place features

labial, coronal (tongue blade/front of tongue), anterior (on or in front of alveolar ridge), distributed (whole tongue blade)

Laryngeal features

Voice, spread glottis, constricted glottis

Natural classes

Two (or more) segments constitute this when they share a given set of phonetic features to the exclusion of all other sounds in the language

Given two rules A and B, where A is ordered before B:

Feeding

the application of rule A creates an environment for the application of rule B

Given two rules A and B, where A is ordered before B:

Counterfeeding

Had B applied before rule A, the application of B would have fed A

Given two rules A and B, where A is ordered before B:

Bleeding

The application of rule A destroys an environment for the application of rule B

Given two rules A and B, where A is ordered before B:

Counterbleeding

Had B applied before A, the application of B would have bled A

Autosegmental phonology

This theory divides the representation of each segment into two parts: the usual feature matrix and the timing tear to which feature bundles are linked.

Timing tier

A sequence of units representing schematically the temporal manifestation of the string

Association lines

link segments between the timing tear and the melodic tier

Stray erasure

When something is left unlinked and then delted

Well-formedness conditions

Association lines cannot cross. All vowels must (eventually) bear some tone, and all tones must be borne by some vowel

Ghosts

Empty timing slots lacking a segmental association

Compensatory lengthening

The lengthening of a vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant

Pitch accent languages

Have only one syllable with assigned tone per word (typically the stressed syllable)

Intonational langauges

Do not use pitch contrastively

Tone-bearing unit (TBU)

What is allowed to link to a tone in an autosegmental representation

General tone association rules

left-to-right association and spreading

Tone stability

The deletion of a vowel does not result in the deletion of the tone borne by the vowel

Floating tones

Tones not associated with a TBU

Downstep

Phenomenon whereby a tone known to be H is realized lower than a preceding H. The L is floating, not linked.

Downdrift

Process whereby a L tone lowers the register (pitch range) in which following H tones are realized. The L is linked, not floating.

Twin Sister Convention

adjacent identical tones on one TBU are automatically simplified into one

Obligatory Contour Principle

At the melodic level, adjacent identical elements are prohibited. No two of the same tones in a row.

Derivational framework

SPE-style where SR is created from rewrite rules applying to UR. Rules apply sequentially

Non-derivational framework

Optimality theory. Constraints on the well-formedness of SR, evaluation happens all at once

Onset

The consonant sound or sounds at the beginning of a syllable, occurring before the nucleus

Nucleus

Middle of a syllable (usually a vowel)

Coda

The consonants of a syllable that follow the nucleus

Rhyme

Nucleus and coda together

CV

Maximally unmarked syllable structure

Sonority Hierarchy

vowels > glides > liquids > nasals > fricatives > stops

Sonority Sequencing Principle

Between any member of a syllable and the syllable peak, a sonority rise or plateau must occur

Light vs. heavy syllables

CV is always light, CVV is always heavy, and CVC is language specific

Weight-by-position (WSP)

Rule applying in languages in which CVC syllables are heavy

Stress

Phonological organizing principle without consistent phonetic correlates

Trochee

Left-dominant (x .)

Iamb

Right-dominant (. x)

Dominance

Determines the side of the foot where the head is located

Directionality

Determines the direction in which foot construction scans the stress domain

Boundedness

bounded stress rules build maximally binary stress feet, while unbounded languages put no upper limit on the size of a foot

Quantity-sensitivity

Governs the distribution of light and heavy syllables in terminal nodes of feet

Prosodic preferences

Infants are born with this from their ambient language environment

Neural commitment

Acoustic specialization to the sounds of a language. Infants learn their phonemes and phonotactics around 6-12 months, corresponding to babbling and first words

Transitional probabilities

How babies learn phonotactics and word boundaries

Common child phonology processes

Simplification (CV structure preferred), substitution, harmony (esp consonant harmony, rare in adult phonology), long-distance metathesis, consonant fusion, chain-shifts