phonology (topic 3) Flashcards
what are features? what are they used for?
they are the ‘atoms’, the simple primitives of phonology. they stand at the basis for lexical contrast.
what are three important questions in phonological typology?
what kind of distinctions can be made in inventories?
how many different features do we need to describe an inventory?
what features are (un)able to combine with each other?
what three things are features used for to analyse and describe?
- possible contrasts
- possible inventory structures
- possible phonological processes (described in rules)
what is the formula for the theoretical number of possible phonemes? what prediction can be based on this?
2 to the power of n, where n is the number of features.
prediction: if a distinction cannot be expressed by our universal features, it cannot be phonemic (and vice versa).
what three parts does the description of phonological rules have?
- input segments to the rule
- segments that are the context for the rule
- results of change of rule
what is the idea of feature economy? what is an example that provides proof?
grammar wants inventories to have an as small number of features. –> features should be used maximally efficiently.
early 20th century Zulu had more features than modern Zulu.
what is the formula for the economy index?
E = S/F, where S is the number of sounds and F the number of features (thus the higher the number the better).
in inventory typology, what are some broad characteristics that are universal?
- distinction between consonants and vowels
- broadly the same features everywhere: height/backness/rounding in vowels and place/manner/voicing in consonants
what are the three basic forms of vowel systems, decreasing in frequency? what could be one reason for the first one to be the most common? what should we keep in mind for the third?
- triangular system: height distinctions and backness distinctions on all heights, except for the lowest (e.g. Spanish). explanation: backness differences are perceptually less salient in low vowels.
- quadrilateral system: uses all height and backness distinctions possible, so 4 or 6 vowels (e.g. Slovak, English).
- linear system: height contrast, but no backness contrast at all (e.g. Adyghe). keep in mind that there might be huge phonetic variation, even using all of the vowel space, but that’s not contrastive.
what are five universals about vowel systems?
every phonological system has at least: - two degrees of aperture - one front vowel or the glide /j/ - one unrounded vowel - one back vowel a vowel system can only be contrastive for nasality if there are nasal consonants.
what is the most common three-vowel system? give an example of a language that has this.
/i u a/
Classical Arabic
what are five universals about consonant systems?
every phonological system:
- has stops (tend to be at least two from the voiceless series /p t k/)
- has stops that are laryngeally unspecified
- has a distinction between stops and non-stops
- has place contrasts
- has coronal consonants
what is a piece of evidence that a (grammar-internal) grammar of phonology exists?
alternation (morphemes change their form in different contexts) shows that there is an underlying grammar that influences how they surface.
what are three possible types of grammar-external explanations? give an example for the first two.
- duplicated ones from grammar-internal, e.g. economy explained with cognitive load
- diachronic/evolutionary: no voicing contrast in many Australian Aboriginals languages, presumably because of inherited auditory disease that affects exactly the frequencies at which voicing is perceived
- historical/diachronic: ‘this language is this way because change has led to its current state’ –> shifts explanatory burden to theory of language change.
