Ling 200 Notes
Lecture 8/26
English plural marker = -s
If word ends with voiced sound, use [z]
Ex. dogs (g is voiced)
H deletion can occur in pronouns
Ex. Happy Harry said he didn’t let her hit him hard
Not if the pronoun is stressed
Ex. Happy Harry said HE didn’t let her hit him hard
Linguistics focuses on spoken language
Dialects
Ex. schedule, Jesus, ask, in September vs. in Thursday
Hard to explain preposition logic
No “proper way” to speak language, mostly just social norms
Ex. She know a teacher vs. She knows a teacher
Lungs = power source
Our lungs are smaller than horses, apes, etc b/c we developed a complex muscular system around our lungs to control AND sustain airflow over larynx
Thus, we can’t run as far as animals but we can yell, whisper, and sing
Front chamber of larynx = vowel sounds
Back chamber of larynx
Tongue = consonants, stop consonants (Ex. “t”), hissing sound, rolling r’s
Purpose of language
Connect people (phatic)
Ex. “Oh my gosh it’s raining so much out there”
Transmit information
Maintain or create social order – also consider WHO says it
Ex. gossip, FWIS, “Let’s go out tonight! It’s gonna be groovy”
Organize thought – if you can explain something, you understand it better
Why do we talk to pets? Cars? Other drivers? Yourself?
What is language?
Set of symbols (signs) - arbitrary
Set of rules
Lecture 8/28 Introduction
Nonarbitary signs
Smoke = fire
Beaver dams = beavers
Arbitrary signs
Traffic lights
Wedding rings
Most words and parts of words
Representational signs (arbitrary signs that aren’t entirely arbitrary)
Smiley faces/emojis
Number symbols (Ex. III)
Animal sounds (Ex. “roar”)
“Mom” - mah sound is easier for babies to produce
Language is MOSTLY arbitrary
Speakers don’t need to be able to define all of their language’s signs
Ex. remember (re- means again but -member has no specific meaning)
Rules govern several things
What constitutes a sign?
How are the signs put together?
Ex. Gdansk can’t be an English word
How does context affect a construction? - related to fluency in a language
When and to whom can a speaker use a given construction?
What does the use of a construction say about a speaker’s identity? - sociolinguistics
Infants and toddlers already pick up on Southern vs. Northern dialects, mother/father voices, etc
People are very attuned to slight shifts in tone even in a single conversation
Rules are different from English class rules
Speakers don’t need to be able to articulate all of these rules
Ex. [s] [z] rule from last class, consider who says what kinds of words
What is language?
A complex system of (mostly) arbitrary signs combined in rule-governed, systematic ways
What’s a dialect/variety?
The SAME definition as language
Dr. N argues that everything is a dialect - everyone speaks a dialect of English and there’s no one variety of English that is “correct”
There is no such thing as “perfect” English or universal American English
Complex problem
Language varieties lead to language changing over time
Ex. Old -> Shakespearean -> 1800s -> present-day English
Media is moving language change faster but not uniformly
Rather, the movement of people across the globe makes dialects more similar
Some properties of human languages
Arbitrariness
Discreteness - identifiable pieces in language (Ex. words)
Creativity - making and understanding new sentences all the time
Productivity - creating new words from pieces (Ex. “I’ll re-Venmo you”)
Displacement - talking about things in the future or NOT in front of us
Duality - different ways of portraying language (Ex. written and oral systems)
Transmissability - learning new languages
Prevarication - lying
In summary,
Every human culture has language
Every language is capable of expressing the same things
Every language has discrete units, and “vowels” and “consonants”
Every language has rules
Every speaker is capable of producing many, many varieties of his/her language
Ex. Talking to Reggie vs. talking to your roommate
Every language changes - isolated languages change slower however
Everyone speaks a dialect of a language, not the Language itself
The feelings towards a particular dialect are a direct, absolute reflection of the feelings towards the speakers of the dialect
Ex. If someone thinks a particular dialect is “lazy”, that is a reflection of how
they think about the speakers of that dialect (stereotypes)
Lecture 9/2 Morphology
The mental lexicon is very difficult to define
The mental lexicon is composed of
Phonological information: the sounds that make up the word and their sequencing
Ex. “bat” contains 3 sounds
Ex. “tab” is a different word
Semantic information: the meaning of a word; depends on context
Morphological information: how to form plurals, tenses, etc.
Ex. see → saw
Ex. bit → bits
Syntactic information: the word’s lexical category AKA how it can be used in a sentence
And maybe much more (who uses a word, how it makes you feel, when the word should be used and to whom)
* indicates ungrammatical (word/sentence cannot occur
There are different types of words
Old, older, oldest
Dog, dogger, doggest
The destruction of the city, *the destroy of the city
How do we determine lexical categories?
Distribution/usage - some types of words only occur with other types of words
Morphological possibilities - parallel patterns of similar words
Ex. *doggest vs. rarest
Meaning is NOT a good way to determine lexical categories - instead try using it in a sentence
Ex. Happiness is a noun but it isn’t a person, place, or thing
Ex. Destruction is a noun but it still describes an action - DON’T argue about meaning, think about how you can talk about destructions or a destruction
“friend”
I could use a friend - noun
Did you friend that weird guy from class? - verb
She keeps me in the friend category - adjective
Again, syntax, and morphology determine category
Lexical categories in English
Open
Nouns
Verbs
Adjectives
Adverbs
Closed
Pronouns - different from nouns because you can’t pluralize, put a determiner in front, etc.
Auxiliaries - (Ex. will, be, have)
Prepositions - determines case (Ex. “in”, “about”)
Determiners (Ex. “the”, “a”)
Conjunctions - join parts of sentences (Ex. “but”)
Numerals
Qualifiers
Closed and open lexical categories
Closed categories - pronouns (very difficult to add new ones), determiners
Open classes - nouns, verbs, etc
Do all languages have lexical categories?
Yes, but these vary from language to language
ALL languages have nouns, verbs, and pronouns
However, pronoun meanings vary a lot
Ex. French singular “tu” and plural “vous”
Not all languages have adpositions (prepositions or postpositions)
Not all languages have determiners, conjunctions, and adjectives
Related languages have similar categories
Ex. French and Spanish pronoun categories
Morpheme: the smallest unit of meaning or grammatical function; irreducible
Ex. “un” in “unhappy”
Not directly related to syllable divisions
Make sure you know what each part means
Gets tricky because of etymology but use current knowledge
How many morphemes are then in…?
cat - 1
cat+s - 2
category - 1
un+happy - 2
un+happi+ness - 3
un+happi+ness+es - 4
truth+ful - 2
farm+er+s - 3
Conventions
Morphemes are italicized or in ‘single quotes’
Morpheme boundaries are marked by hyphens
Ex. un-, im-, intra-, -ment, -able, -s
Morpheme boundaries are marked by plus signs
Ex. dis+appear, lion+s, super+bowl
Properties of morphemes
Order
Certain morphemes must go in certain places
Ex. happyun, sbook, *fultruth
Free vs. bound
Free morphemes can stand alone as a complete word
Ex. happy, book, truth
Bound cannot stand on their own as a complete word - must attach to another morpheme
Ex. un-, -s
Ex. the isn’t exactly a morpheme but it can be considered a bound
morpheme
What is bound in one language isn’t bound in another language
Ex. insert image here
Cranberry morphs: morphemes for which there is no (synchronic) meaning
Ex. cran- in cranberry (-berry has meaning), straw- in strawberry, luke- in lukewarm,
-ception in reception
These may have historically meant something
Very common
Essentially, one morpheme has meaning and one doesn’t
Types of morphemes
Stem (AKA root or base)
The core of the word to which other morphemes attach
Carries the main semantic content
Affix
Attaches to a stem
Pay attention to hyphen position
Six different types
Prefix
Ex. un-
Suffix
Ex. -ed
Infix - occur in the middle of base
Ex. -fucking- in fan+fucking+tastic
Ex. fikas = strong → f+um+ikas = to be strong
Circumfix - occur around base
Ex. hujan = rain → ke+hujan+an = to get rained on (denote as ke-
-an)
Ex. be+love+d is the only thing in English that comes close
Reduplication - repetition of part of all of a morpheme
Ex. very very tired or way way back in English (syntactic)
Ex. babi = pig → babibabi = pigs (morphologic)
Suprasegmentals - realized prosodically, usually through stress patterns, the morpheme is the stress itself
Ex. PROduce (noun) vs proDUCE (verb), CONstruct vs. conSTRUCT, INvite vs inVITE
Zero morphs
In English, what marks number and person on verbs, plural on ‘deer’ and ‘fish’, and past tense on ‘pet' and ‘hit’?
It’s not, so ‘deer’ is zero marked
Lecture 9/4 Morphology
Functions of morphemes
Derivational
Changes the meaning of the word or part of speech
Ex. Noun + -ful → adjective
Ex. Re- + verb → verb
Only certain derivational morphemes can go with certain words
Ex. disattach or unconnect
Inflectional
Show up because grammar requires them to
Required for the root to make sense in the sentence
Ex. lock → She locks, She locked
Highly productive (predictable) and can go on most words in the same part of speech
In English, inflectional morphs are: 3rd person, past tense, progressive, past participle, plural, possessive, comparative, and superlative
Simple: contains one morpheme
Ex. bike, the, category
Complex: contains two morphemes
Ex. bikes
Lexical (content): contains semantic meaning
Ex. puppy, kick, tomorrow, Detroit
Ex. re-, dis-, -ment, -er
Grammatical (function)
Ex. I, she, to, of, the
Ex. -s, -ed, -er
Think: what does “the” mean?
Morphology in other languages
Many languages have much more morphology (more complex words) than English
Ex. Greek, Finnish, Turkish, Warlpiri, Latin, Swahili
Some have less
Ex. Mandarin, Vietnamese
Morphological “types” of languages
Degree of synthesis
Number of morphemes per word
Isolating (analytic): one (Ex. Vietnamese)
Synthetic: many morphemes per word
Polysynthetic: multiple stems (Ex. Yupik Eskimo - “gayacuaraliyg” means “He makes a small kayak”)
Degree of fusion
Whether morpheme breaks are easy to find
Agglutinating: discrete and identifiable morphemes
Fusional: inseparable; morpheme boundaries overlap
Ex. Polish “kobiety” means “women”, “woman’s”, “women OBJ”,
“Women!” - plural and case have been fused together
These are SCALES
Ex. English is closer to analytic than synthetic and BOTH agglutinating and
fusional (Ex. -ed) - most of the derivational morphemes are agglutinating and
most inflectional morphemes are fusional
Pronouns
English pronouns indicate singular/plural, person, gender, person/thing
Samoan pronouns indicate whether you’re talking about two people or more than two people and inclusive/exclusive
Inclusive: me and you (Ex. “We won the lottery” includes you)
Exclusive: me (Ex. “We won the lottery” but it doesn’t include you)
Tense
Refers to the time at which an event takes place
Marked on English verbs
Present tense is zero marked
-ed (past)
be -ing (present progressive)
Etc.
Number
Ex. Indonesian has a morpheme for “tiger”, “eat” and “goat” – tense is not marked and
relies on context to determine how many tigers, goats, etc.
Marking on verbs
Many languages mark the subject on the verb
Ex. Spanish
This is NOT marked in English except for some dialects that mark 3rd person singular
Ex. I/you/we/they run vs. S/he/it run-s
Some languages mark subject AND object on the verb
Case on nouns
English uses word order to determine subject and object
In contrast, Latin used the case system to mark subject and object and words could be moved around to determine emphasis
Ex. “agricola vidit lupum” = “The farmer saw the wolf” but “agricolam vidit lupus” = “The wolf saw the farmer”
Noun classifiers
Steps for doing morphological analysis
Add later
In-class problems
Add later
Frequent word-formation processes – how do we come up with new words?
Affixation: attaching new affix to word
Ex. un-Cola
Ex. photograph-er
Morpheme internal change
Ex. man/men, foot/feet, break/broke, sing/sang, life/live, etc.
Suppletion: entire word changes
Total suppletion
Ex. am/was, go/went
Partial suppletion
Ex. buy/bought
Compounding
Ex. blackbird, White House, snowman
Zero-derivation
Functional shift: either no change in the word or a stress shift
Ex. laugh, run, buy, steal, hire, and man are verbs and nouns
Ex. REcord/reCORD, conTRAST/CONtrast
Conversion
Blending: putting two words together (see Washington Post Mensa)
Ex. smog = smoke + fog
Ex. brunch = breakfast + lunch
Shortening (clipping)
Ex. prof, exam, dorm, ling, fan (fanatic)
Acronym
Ex. NASA, AIDS, radar, laser, scuba
Back formation
Ex. donate (donation), televise (television), babysit (babysitter), hard-boil (hard-boiled)
Invention
Ex. zipper, quark
Genericization
Ex. Kleenex
Borrowing
Ex. souvenir, tortilla, taco, safari
Ex. judge, beef, purple, paper, rice
Reading 9/7 Morphology
It’s easy to identify words based on phonological evidence
Phonological properties (Ex. stress typically falls on a certain syllable)
Speaker intuition
Inability to pause in the middle
Nominalizers: affixes that create nouns
Ex.
Verbalizers: turns words into verbs
Compounds essentially are words with more than one root
Linguists use the term gloss instead of translation because there aren’t always perfect semantic equivalents
Allomorphs: alternate forms of a morpheme
Ex. /s/ and /z/ plural in English
Item and process can be used to describe allomorphy
Ex.
Allomorphs and allophones may be conditioned by the same processes, such as place assimilation, voicing, and deletion
Minimizing articulatory effort and maximizing perceptual distinctions are opposing forces
Plural -s and -z are phonologically conditioned, meaning that the choice of which to use depends on the sound before it
Plural -i, - a, and -im are lexically conditioned, meaning that the forms are associated with particular lexemes (words)
Complimentary distribution
Lecture 9/9 Phonetics
Speech sounds ≠ written language
Speech can be only roughly associated with orthography
Sounds ≠ spelling of words
Ex. Caesar believed he’d see key people seize silly amoeba seas
Sounds ≠ individual letters
Multiple sounds can be attributed to one letter
One letter can actually represent more than one sound (Ex. “x”)
Multiple letters can represent a single sound
Some letters are not produced (Ex. “psychology”)
Three branches of phonetics
Articulatory: how speech sounds are produced
Focused on in LING200 (take LING301 or 397 to cover more)
Acoustic: the physical properties of sound waves produced by articulation
Measurable frequencies
Auditory: how sounds are perceived by the ear and brain
The source-filter theory: three systems required for speech
Power: the airstream (starts the things moving)
English uses a pulmonic egressive airstream
Pulmonic: starting from the lungs
Egressive: going outward through the vocal tract
Ex. “duh” sound – air goes out
Other airstream mechanisms are possible
Pulmonic ingressive is rare and involves air going in
Sounds kind of like gasping
Velaric ingressive (clicks)
Glottalic ingressive (implosives)
Glottalic egressive (ejectives)
Source: larynx (where sound begins with the vibration of the vocal cords)
Vocal cords are folds of muscle that, when open, let air pass through, or when closed, vibrate
Glottis: the opening between the vocal cords (see voicing below)
Filter: modifications to the airstream that result in different sounds
Changes frequencies of sounds
ADD PICTURE
Humans have a descended larynx (a separate back chamber and front chamber of the larynx)
This allows us to produce different vowel sounds than most animals
Dangerous because it can lead to choking – thus, only purpose is for speech production
We can’t run as fast as other animals but we can talk – speech was vital for the human species
Voicing
Voiceless: vocal folds are held OPEN; the air passes through glottic unimpeded; there is no vibration
Voiced: vocal cords are held loosely together; the air pushing through them causes them to vibrate
Ex. /s/ → /z/ or /f/ → /v/
Ex. whispering
Articulatory terminology
What do we need to transcribe the world’s languages?
A system that represents ALL the speech sounds
A system that has one symbol for every sound
A system that is easy to learn, based on systems already known
A system that is easy to type (or print)
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
A transcription system designed by the International Phonetic Association to transcribe all the sounds found in human language
Places of articulation
Manner of articulation
Stops: complete blockage of airstream followed by release
Nasals: complete blockage of oral cavity plus lowered velum
Fricatives: partial blockage of airstream to create turbulent airflow; tongue lowers
Ex. hissing sounds, /sh/
Affricates: begin as a stop and release to a fricative
Ex. /ch/, /g/
Approximates: partial blockage of airflow; more open than fricatives (no turbulence)
Ex. car with Michigan accent
Lateral approximates: air escapes around sides of tongue
Ex. ull
Flaps (taps): tongue briefly hits another articulator
Ex. “butter”
p and b are in the same category in the IPA – this is due to voicing
Make sure you’re familiar with English symbols
Lecture 9/11 Phonetics
Consonants: produced with blockage of air as it passes through the vocal tract
Vowels: have relatively unrestricted airflow
caught vs. cot
on vs. off
schwa
I’m going to go bc I can’t focus rn bc I keep thinking about dropping back for physics so can you send me the notes
IPA Consonants
The symbols by themselves are VOICED
Left: voiceless, right: voiced
Upside down r is r in english
Theta is th- voiceless, right of that is th- voiced
j is the y- sound
Black boxes are impossible to occur
White boxes are possible but just don’t occur
Consonants: are sounds produced with blockage (either full partial) of air as it passes through the vocal tract
VOICING
Voiced or voiceless
Vowels have relatively unrestricted airflow through the vocal tract
In English all the vowels are voiced
Tongue frontness?
More variability in the high mid low and front central back of the tongue when it comes to pronouncing vowels
Whereas in consonants its much easier to define where we place our tongue
high - low: movement of jaw related. Front-back: tongue moving front and back in mouth
The pairs of vowels: one is tense and the other is more relaxed.
In the cells, the one on top is tense
The one on the bottom is laxed (relaxed)
In English, on the syllable that is NOT stressed in a word, you can put the upside down e (schwa)
In English (NOT IN OTHER LANGUAGES):
Back vowels tend to need rounding of lips
Front vowels kind of spread your lips
BUT THESE ARE NOT ALL THE VOWELS DUH
Diphthongs: a combination of vowels, the tongue move from one vowel position to another
aI (pie rye)
Au (cow
(backwards c) ci (boy
ou (code
ei (say
Central vowels in English:
Schwa are upside down v are both lax
BUT, us upside down v for stressed syllable or stressed one-syllable and schwa for unstressed syllable
Grammatical morphemes usually contain schwa
Schwa with hook for unstressed syllables ending in er
Vowel distinctions:
Height
Frontness
Lip rounding
Tenseness (only for vowels with a tense/lax counterpart)
Voiceless vowel in ENglish???
Potato: the first syllable in potato often get consumed? Like it becomes ptato?
Diacritics used to denote a vowel is voiceless
Hearing
Auditory Phonetics
Cochlear implants: can’t replicate what the ear does
INCREDIBLE STUFF
The eardrum moves less than the diameter of a hydrogen atom, to HEAR
The inner ear reaches its full adult size when the fetus is 20-22 weeks old
The ears are responsible for keeping the BODY IN BALANCE
The stapes or stirrup is the smallest bone in our body
Fish don’t have ears but they sense pressure changes
Your ear reacts to sound even when you sleep
Listening to sounds at 120 decibels can damage your ears within 7 minutes
Hearing loss is the number one disability in the world!
76.3% of people lose their hearing beginning at the age of 19
Eardrums can rupture but can heal itself. But the scar tissue could make their hearing so different
But the bones in the middle ear do not heal (but this is rare)
Cochlea: filled with fluid and there are hair cells all along the cochlea
Hair cells vibrate depending on the liquids in the cochlea
These hair cells send signal
Smallest hair cells record high frequencies, longer hair cells record lower frequencies
The smaller hair cells break off more easily (AND DON’T COME BACK 🙁)
This is the main reason for why we lose our hearing
BIRDS can regrow hair cells!!! WOWWWWW
Ear wax keeps the outer ear area soft and moist?? FUNCTIONAL
The difference between people’s voices is at the high frequencies, so this is why people find it harder to distinguish between people’s voices over time as they lose their hearing starting at the higher frequencies
Reading 9/14 Phonetics
Speech organs divided into 3 systems
Subglottal: lungs and trachea (windpipe)
Larynx: contains 2 vocal folds that vibrate during voiced sounds
Supralaryngeal: contains different places of articulation
Voicing: vocal fold vibration
Voiced consonant vs. voiceless consonant
In English, h and glottal stop involve larynx but no articulators
Fundamental frequency: physical property of rate of vocal fold vibration
Pitch: PERCEPTION of sound; low to high
Bilabial: complete closure of upper and lower lip; p, b, m, w
Labiodental: upper teeth and lower lip; f, v
Active articulator: thing that moves
Passive articulator: stationary
Ex. labiodentals – upper teeth are passive and lips are active
Alveolar ridge: ridge just behind teeth
Hard palate: domed part of the roof of the mouth
Interdental: tip of tongue between upper and lower teeth; th
Dental: placing tip of tongue against back of upper teeth; th
Postalveolar (palato-alveolar): tongue hitting area behind alveolar ridge; sh in ship
Palatals: tongue hitting center of hard palate
Velum (soft palate): behind hard palate
Velars: tongue hitting soft palate; k, w
Nasal sounds in English are consonants
For nasals, velum is lowered (air passes through nose)
Nasality is separate from places of articulation
Nasal vs. oral
Manner of Articulation
Stops: involve complete closure of vocal tract; p, b, m, t, d, n, k, g, and ng
Nasal stops: have nasal airflow
Stops involve two phases:
Closure: airflow through mouth is completely blocked
Release: constriction is released
Alveolar stop: produced with closure at alveolar ridge
Ex. pity, butter, lady, ladder
Fricatives: tight narrowing of articulators
Stridents: involve funneling of air against the back of the teeth; noisy
Affricates: stop + fricative; j, ch
Approximants: vocal tract that is narrowed but not enough enough to cause noise or complete obstruction; y, l, w
The IPA: each symbol represents only one sound
Vowels are described in 3 dimensions
Backness
Height
High
Mid – mid-central vowel ə is used for unstressed syllables in English
Low
Tenseness – tense vowels are longer and have slightly more peripheral tongue positions
Lip rounding
IPA Vowels
Diphthongs: combinations of vowels that function as a single unit (see Faye’s notes)
Co-articulation: while one sound is being pronounced, the speech organs are prepping to produce the next sound
Ex. reboot – tongue is free to move
Uvular consonants: back of tongue comes in contact with the uvula
Retroflex consonants: tongue curls backwards towards the roof
Syllables: linguistic grouping that consists of a single peak that may be flanked on one or both sides by consonants
Syllable peak (nucleus): is the most prominent part of the syllable; typically a vowel
Onset: consonants that precede the syllable peak
Coda: consonants that follow the syllable peak
IPA uses period in between syllables to represent boundaries
IPA marks stress with ‘ above and to the left of the first sound in the primary stressed syllable
Some words have secondary stresses
Tone languages: frequency distinguishes between words with different meanings
Intonation marks differences in meaning
Ex. questions
All languages have consonants and voiced vowels – some have voiceless vowels
Lecture 9/16 Phonology
Linguistic competence: we not only know the actual words of our language, but we know the possible words of our languages
Ex. blick could be a word in English but *lbick could not be
All languages impose phonotactic constraints on the words of their languages
Continuous sound signals
Since sounds are produced continuously, there are anticipatory effects – coarticulation
Ex. For the word lint, the lateral l affects the i
Ex. keep vs. cool
Impossible to tell where one sound stops and another begins
The English /t/ is pronounced several ways – speakers are aware of the sound and the category
Ex. [t] – “tah”, aspirated t, can feel puff of air
Ex. [th] - “stop”
Ex. [tn] - nasalized t, “button”
Phoneme: sound categories; are one major way
We learn this as infants, long before we are capable of speech
A phoneme is…
An abstract symbol in the mind representing a distinct, meaningful sound
Ex. [p] and [ph] are allophones of the same phoneme /p/
Ex. [p] and [b] are separate phonemes
A sound that is important and psychologically real to native speakers
Usually similar to orthographic symbols
An allophone is…
A variant of a phoneme
Ex. In English, [t] and [th] are allophones of the phoneme /t/ – most English speakers think of these as the same sound
A change in sound that doesn’t cause a change in meaning
Ex. stop vs. sthop is fine
Ex. stop vs. skop is not okay
/a/ represents a phoneme
[a] represents an allophone – phonetic information (aka what is actually produced)
Distribution
We determine whether a sound is a phoneme or allophone by analyzing the environment in which it can occur
This could be between vowels (intervocalic), at the beginning or end of words, “elsewhere”
Allophones can occur in…
Complementary distribution: each sound occurs in a different environment
Superman and Clark Kent are in complimentary distribution because they don’t occur in the same environment – they’re variants of the same person
Free variation: sounds appear in identical environments but do not change meaning
Ex. often vs. ofen – you don’t notice that you change it
Ex. what vs. wha (stopping air at end of word)
Distinct phonemes occur in…
Contrastive distributions: sounds occur in identical environments and trigger different meanings
Minimal pairs (also triads): tell us that things are separate phonemes; are words that differ in meaning only by sound distinctions– use the existence of minimal pairs
Ex. pit vs. bit
Ex. nap vs. map - [n] vs. [m]
Ex. sin vs. sing - [n] vs. [ŋ]
Ex. Korean, [pul] - “fire” vs. [phul] - grass - [p] vs. [ph]
Be careful with complementary distribution
2+ sounds that never occur in the same place aren’t necessarily related
Clark Kent and Peter Parker may never appear in the same environment but that doesn’t mean they’re the same person
Real allophones are 1) phonetically similar and 2) considered the same by native speakers
Lecture 9/18 Phonology
Phonemic inventory
Set of all phonemes in a given languages
Set of phonemes is much smaller than the range of sounds its speakers can produce
Allophonic alignment is language specific
Ex. Hawaiian phonological inventory is different from and slightly smaller than English
Natural classes
Set of two or more sounds that share at least one phonetic feature in common
Nasal consonants [m n ŋ]
Approximants [j w l]
High lax vowels [ɪ ʊ]
High front vowels [i ɪ]
Useful for speaking about properties of various natural classes
Guidelines for identifying natural classes
Make a list of all the features these sounds have in common
Be as general as possible
Come up with the smallest number of features which encompass ALL of the sounds you are accounting for
Be as specific as necessary
Make sure your feature list doesn’t leave out any of the sounds you are accounting for
Practice
Voiceless stops [p t k] – the natural class of voiceless stops all become aspirated in English
Fricatives [insert entire row from IPA]
Some natural classes have specific names
Obstruents: stops + fricatives + affricates
Sonorants: nasals + approximants
Louder than obstruents
Sibilants: fricatives and affricates characterized by high pitch hiss – different from other fricatives
Ex. [s z ʃ ʒ tʃ dʒ]
Why natural classes are important
English plural
cats
[-s] comes after voiceless consonants
dogs
-z] comes after voiced consonants
bushes
[-əz] comes after sibilants
We would say [-z] is the English plural and [-s] and [-əz] are allophones
Sounds undergo and trigger behavior in groups
It is the phonetic features shared by these sounds (more specifically, the articulatory gestures made by speakers when producing these sounds) that causes the phonological change
See Tongan example in slides – t and s are same sound just like s and z plural in English
Common phonological processes
Assimilation: phonological processes that make two adjacent sounds more alike with respect to phonetic features
Voice assimilation: voiced sound becomes voiceless and vice versa
Devoicing
Voicing
Ex. Voiceless alveolar stop [t] becomes voiced flap in “butter”
Place assimilation
Nasal consonants often assimilate to the place of following obstruent
Manner assimilation
Vowel nasalization
Ex. button
These happen for ease of articulation
Ex. incredible becomes ing-credible essentially rather than in-credible so that it’s easier
to pronounce
Regressive assimilation: right-to-left
Progressive assimilation: left-to-right
Dissimilation
The process by which two adjacent sounds become less similar
Sounds that are phonetically similar can be hard to distinguish when they occur next to each other
Much less common that assimilation
Ex. defibrillator, February, globular (not globulal)
Use this as a last resort – not a very likely reason for change in sound
Deletion
Process which eliminates a sound
Very common especially in consonant clusters to reduce complex sequences of articulation
In some Midwestern dialects of English…
Police → pleass
Terrific → trifik
Insertion
Process which adds a sound
Much less common than deletion
Ex. hamster → hamp-ster, prince → print-s (voiceless stop added to nasal)
Metathesis
Process by which two segments or syllables switch positions in a word
Ex. comfortable → comfterble, nuclear → nucular, ask → aks
Reading 9/19 Phonology
Natural classes: groups of sounds that pattern together
Natural classes must 2 criteria
Sounds must share 1+ phonetic features
Sounds must be the complete set of sounds sharing those features in the given data – basically must be exhaustive
Ex. [p t k ʔ] are voiceless stops and they’re the only voiceless stops on the English IPA chart (the given data)
Assimilation is the most common phonological process
Place of articulation
Manner
Nasal
Rounding
Near-minimal pairs: essentially the same as minimal pairs and are still used to demonstrate phonemic status of sounds
Ex. bathe vs. beige – [ð] vs [ʒ]
Aspiration: puff of air, represented [h]
Ex. spin vs. pin
Underlying phoneme: phoneme associated with the allophones
Surface allophone: other allophones linked to the phoneme
Review assimilation, lenition, etc
Perceptual salience: phonological systems tend to be constructed in a way that increases the perceptual distinctiveness of sounds from another
Results in dissimilation
Fortition: strengthening process; makes it clearer what the word it; driven by perceptual salience
Ex. aspiration
Lenition: weakening process in which consonants become less consonant-like and more vowel-like; driven by articulatory ease
Languages exert effort only when payoff will be good
Free variation: two different variant pronunciations in the same word
Ex. bad-duh vs. bad
In general, English stops in word-final position are released or unreleased
Allomorphs: morpheme variants that occur in complementary distribution
Ex. cite (unaspirated /t/) → citable (/t/ becomes flap) → citation → (aspirated stop) – 3
allomorphs
Phonological processes triggered by position of sound in word or surrounding sounds
Open syllables: syllables that end with a vowel
Closed syllables: syllables that end with a consonant
Lecture 9/23 Phonology
Conventions
C = any consonant
V = any vowel
# marks a word boundary
. marks a syllable boundary
Thus, nomad is #CV.CVC#
Sounds are not randomly organized in a language – there are specific positions where they may occur
Ex. English has nuclei and codas
Every syllable has a nucleus (the central part of a syllable), which is usually a vowel
In English, some sonorants [i m n] can also serve as nuclei (when there is no vowel)
Lecture 9/25 Phonology
All languages have open syllables but some languages have open and closed syllables
Spoonerisms
Codas switched with codas
Onsets switched with onsets
Nuclei switched with nuclei
Sonority
Perceived loudness
Higher sonority = more vowel-like
Ahh is the most sonorous vowel – most open vocal tract and most airflow
Sonority scale
Stops
Fricatives
Nasals
Approximants
Vowels
Sonority principle: sonority is highest in the nucleus of a syllable and then progressively lower towards the edges of a syllable
Stressed syllables are less sonorous than unstressed syllables
An ideal syllable has maximal contrast in sonority across CVC
This gives:
Maximal perceptual contrast (i. e., easy to hear) – consonant should be at low sonority as possible
Ex. mirror seems like it could be 1 syllable but meter is clearly 2 syllables
The stressed syllable is the most prominent
Louder than others
The vowels of stressed syllables are usually slightly longer (in msecs)
The vowels of stressed syllables are also often slightly higher in pitch
Ex. Arizona
Polish usually has stress on the second to last syllable but English has variable stress
Stress in compounds
Ex. blackboard vs. a blackboard, tightrope vs. a tight rope
Competing motivations
Language variety users must constantly attend to the motivations of the speaker and the motivations of the hearer
Some processes work for the perceiver
Dissimilation – fortition
Most insertion processes
Phonological Analysis
Seeks to answers the following questions
Insert slide
This process is assimilation
Lecture 10/2 Syntax
What is a word?
An independent string of phonetics (with phonological coherence) containing one or more morphemes that creates a linguistic unit.
It will have ,and fills a rule-governed slot in a sentence
Word classes
Words belong to classes or lexical categories that dictate how the word can be used in a sentence (may be referred to as “parts of speech” but this isn’t a super useful definition)
Thus, word classes are based on morphological structure and syntactic distribution
Morphological structure
happy, happier, happiest
happied, happies, *happying – “happy” is NOT a verb because it can’t take verb related morphemes
hugged, hugging - “hug” is a verb
*hugest
hugs - “hug” is also a noun depending on position in sentence
In general
Nouns have affixes that indicate number, gender or possessor
Verbs have affixes that indicate tense, person, or negation
Adjectives have affixes that indicate comparative or superlative
Syntactic distributions
I am going to walk - verb because of infinitive
A walk would be helpful - noun because of determiner
In general
Nouns are words that can be modified by an adjective or demonstrative (this/that)
Verbs are words that can directly follow an auxiliary verb like do or might
Adjectives are words that can directly precede a noun
Lexical categories in English
Open
Nouns
Verbs
Adjectives
Adverbs
Closed
Pronouns - different from nouns because you can’t pluralize, put a determiner in front, etc. and you can’t modify
Auxiliaries - occur with verbs (Ex. I will walk, You should be happy, They have to go)
Prepositions - determines case (Ex. “in”, “about”)
Determiners - subclass of noun modifiers, may be deictic (Ex. “the”, “a”)
Conjunctions - join parts of sentences (Ex. “but”)
Numerals
Qualifiers
Adverbs
Sentences (attitude)
Hopefully, I’ll pass my test
Verbs (manner, time)
I quickly ran
Adjectives
It was really red
Linguistics is descriptive – other fields are prescriptive and determine what you should and shouldn’t do with language