Phonemes and Features part 1 Flashcards
What is Phonology?
The study of how human speech sounds are organized as part of a language’s grammar.
What do phonologists focus on?
Sounds as abstract concepts (phonemes) rather than their physical expression.
What are natural classes in phonology?
complete sets of sounds that share the same value for a feature or set of features. Natural classes are language specific: English: [p t k] – these three sounds form a natural class.
What is the significance of phonological rules?
They govern sound patterns and distribution within a language.
What is a phoneme?
An abstract speech sound that can change the meaning of a word, like /n/ and /m/ in “net” and “met.”
What is a minimal pair?
Two words that differ only by one phoneme, e.g., “net” vs. “met.”
What is a near-minimal pair?
Words that differ in only one or a few ways, in the same sound environment (e.g., “pressure,” “pleasure”).
What are contrastive phonemes?
Phonemes that distinguish meaning between words, e.g., /n/ and /m/.
What is phoneme contrast?
When two sounds can make a difference in meaning and occur in the same environment.
What are non-contrastive sounds?
Sounds that do not change word meaning when they vary in pronunciation.
They can either be in variation or in complementary distribution
What does it mean if phones are “in variation”?
They can alternate in pronunciation without changing meaning, like [t] and [ʔ] in “button.”
What is complementary distribution?
When two phones never appear in the same environment, e.g., [n] and [n̪].
One sound is used in specific environments other is used everywhere else
Contrastive distribution
when phones occur in the same environment and would change a word’s meaning if substituted, indicates the sounds are phonemes
What are allophones?
Different realizations of a phoneme depending on the environment, e.g., [n] and [n̪] for /n/.
How are phonemes and allophones represented?
Phonemes are in /slashes/; allophones are in [brackets].
