• Phonology- the study of how sounds are organized within a language and how they interact with each other

Phonotactic Constraints and Foreign Accents

• Phonetic inventories- the sounds that are produced as part of the language

• Phonotactic constraints- the rules and restrictions governing which sound sequences are possible in a language and which are not

  • certain languages do not permit certain pairings of vowels and/or consonants, while other languages allow these pairings

Phonemes and Allophones

• Not all differences in voicing are meaningful to the word; sometimes two varying pronunciations of one word does not change the meaning of the word

  • Ex) “Little” can be pronounced with both a hard “t” sound [t] or a “d” sound [ɾ]

• Noncontrastive sounds- interchanging two sounds in a word does not change the meaning of the word

• Contrastive sounds- replacing one sound with the other in a word can change the word’s meaning

• Phoneme- a set of speech sounds that are perceived to be variants of the same sound

  • Allophone- each member of a particular phoneme set; the various ways that a phoneme is pronounced

    • Ex) the sound /t/ is a phoneme in English, and its allophones are [t], [t^h], [ʔ], and [ɾ]

• Phonemes are abstract psychological concepts that cannot be directly observed in a stream of speech; only the allophones of a phoneme are

  • Phonemes themselves are never pronounced

• Phonetic environment- the sounds that surround the target phone in a word

  • By examining and comparing the phonetic environments of two or more given sounds, the type of distribution can be determined

• Contrastive distribution- a case in which two given sounds occur in the same phonetic environment, and using one rather than the other changes the meaning of the word

• Minimal pair- two words with different meanings whose pronunciations differ by only one sound

  • Ex) team and teen are minimal pairs in English because [n] and [m] are contrastive

• Complementary distribution- sounds that do not occur in the same phonetic environment

  • When sounds are in complementary distribution, there are no minimal pairs

  • These sounds can be predicted to occur in specific phonetic contexts

• Free variation- two different sounds that appear in the same phonetic environment, but can be used interchangeably without changing the meaning of the word

  • These sounds are allophones of the same phoneme

• Overlapping distribution- sounds that can occur in the same environment

Phonological Rules

• There are three parts to a phonological rule

  1. The sound(s) affected by the rule

  2. The environment where the rule applies

  3. The result of the rule

• Conditioning environment- the environment in which the rule applies

• Natural class- a group of sounds in a language that share one or more articulatory or auditory property, to the exclusion of all other sounds in that language

  • Ex) /t/ and /d/ are the natural class of alveolar (oral) stops

  • Can be used to describe both the sounds affected by a rule and the environments where a rule applies

• More properties to describe sounds and natural classes:

  • Sibilant- segments that have a high-pitched, hissing sound quality ([s], [ʃ], [tʃ], [z], [ʒ], [dʒ])

  • Labial- referring to [f] and [v] together with [p], [b], [m], [w], and [w̩]

  • Obstruents- produced with an obstruction of the airflow (fricatives, stops, and affricates)

  • Sonorants- produced with a relatively open passage for airflow (nasals, liquids, glides, and vowels)

• Types of Phonological Rules

  • Assimilation- causes a sound to take on a property from a nearby, often adjacent, segment

    • Palatalization- a special type of assimilation in which a consonant becomes like a neighboring palatal

  • Dissimilation- causes two adjacent sounds to become less similar with respect to some property, by means of a change in one or both sounds

  • Insertion- causes a segment not present at the phonemic level to be added to the phonetic form of a word

  • Deletion- eliminates a sound that was present at the phonemic level

  • Metathesis- changes the order of sounds in order to make words easier to pronounce or understand

  • Strengthening- make sounds stronger

    • Aspiration- voiceless stops become aspirated when they occur at the beginning of a stressed syllable

  • Weakening- cause sounds to become weaker

    • Flapping- an alveolar stop is realized as [ɾ] when it occurs after a stressed vowel and before an unstressed vowel

• Obligatory rules- a rule that always applies in the speech of all speakers of a language or dialect having the rule, regardless of style or rate of speaking

• Optional rules- a rule that may or may not apply in any given utterance, and are responsible for variation in speech

Implicational Laws

• If a language uses a less common sound, one of its more common counterparts will often also be used

• More common sounds in a language are used in more phonetic environments than less common sounds

• Children learning a language acquire the use of more common sounds before they acquire the use of less common ones

  • they will therefore substitute more common sounds when trying to say less common ones

• Less common sounds are less stable and thus are more likely to be lost over time

Solving Phonology Problems

1. Look for minimal pairs

2. Compare the phonetic environments by making a list for each sound

3. Look at the environments to find natural classes

4. Look for complementary gaps in the environments

5. Based on the discovered data, write a rule that will make predictions about where each of the sounds can occur

6. Determine the identity of the phoneme and its allophones

   • Restricted allophone- restricted to occur only in certain conditions

   • Basic allophone- appears elsewhere than the conditions of the respective restricted allophone