Week 3 Flashcards
What is phonology concerned with?
Phonology is concerned with the abstract or mental aspect of the sounds in a language rather than with the actual physical articulation of speech sounds.
This makes phonology part of the linguistic level in the speech chain (see PP3 s2).
What is phonetics concerned with?
The physical aspects of speech sounds; how speech sounds function in a language.
What is remarkable about [k] and [g]? And what are these sounds called? What is an example?
That in French, Spanish, German and English they have the potential to create meaning contrasts; replacing one sound with the other can produce a different word.
Sounds which have this potential are phonemes; sounds that are contrastive in a language.
French coût [ku] ‘cost’
French goût [gu] ‘taste’
Contrastive sounds
Phonemes; sounds which have the potential to make a different word by replacing just one sound.
Minimal pairs
Word pairs that differ in just one sound.
Finding minimal pairs is a good way to test whether a sound functions as a phoneme.
How do you test if a sound functions as a phoneme?
Find minimal pairs.
How are phonemes represented?
Slant brackets //.
Loan phonemes (and how would Dutch native speakers pronounce them)?
Dutch has words like goal, tango, baguette. These are all non-native words (loanwords). Some speakers pronounce such words with a voiced velar stop, which may give rise to marginal minimal pairs.
Dutch [kol] ‘cabbage’
English/Dutch [gol] ‘goal’
Others replace the sound with a native phoneme, /k x/.
Loanwords
Goal, baguette.
Some observations in English speech sounds
- The most frequent sound is schwa.
- Alveolar consonants are very frequent.
- Voiceless stops are more frequent than their voiced counterparts.
- /g/ had a (much) lower frequency than the other stops.
- Consonant inventories show a high degree of symmetry.
Which sounds are frequent in English?
Alveolar consonants, voiceless stops, schwa.
Allophones
Not all sounds that occur are necessarily phonemes. For example, while [g] is not a native phoneme in Dutch, it’s sometimes found in native Dutch (compound) words.
zakdoek [zagdum]
However, the voicing of [g] is determined by the context; the following stop is voiced. This means we’re not dealing with the phoneme /g/ but rather a voiced allophone of /k/.
What is a complication in setting up the phoneme system of a language?
Not all sounds that occur are necessarily phonemes.
[ʀ]
Voiced uvular thrill
[ʁ] (French)
Voiced uvular fricative:
1. Word-initial
2. Between vowels
3. After a voiced consonant
[ʁ°] (French)
Voiceless uvular fricative:
1. After a voiceless consonant
French trois /tʁwa/ ‘three’
[ ̝ʁ] (French)
Voiceless uvular approximant:
1. Word-final
2. Before a consonant
French mère [mɛʁ] ‘mother’
French has three distinct realisations of ‘r’, what are they? And what do we call this?
- Voiced uvular fricative
- Voiceless uvular fricative
- Voiced uvular approximant
Allophones variations
These three sounds differ in their distribution; they occur in different positions in the word.
Their distribution is not arbitrary but systematic; which of the three sounds occurs depends on the phonetic context.
The distribution of the sounds is mutually exclusive; where we find one type of sound, we never find the others.
Allophones variation
When a language has multiple distinct realisations of the same sound, like the ‘r’ in French.
- Voiced uvular fricative
- Voiceless uvular fricative
- Voiced uvular approximant
Allophones variations; distribution
The three ‘r’ sounds differ in their distribution; they occur in different positions in the word.
Allophones variation; systematic
Their distribution is not arbitrary but systematic; which of the three sounds occurs depends on the phonetic context.
Allophonic variation; mutually exclusive
The distribution of the sounds is mutually exclusive; where we find one type of sound, we never find the others.
Complementary distribution vs. parallel distribution
Complementary: sounds whose distribution is mutually exclusive.
Parallel: /k/ and /g/ in French, Spanish, German and English, whose distribution overlaps; both sounds can occur in exactly the same position.
If sounds are in parallel distribution, then the phonetic distinction is contrastive and the sounds function as phonemes.
Voicing alternations in Dutch
Slabben [slabə]
Slab [slap]
These singular-plural pairs show an alternation: the voiced stops and fricatives in the plural forms are voiceless in the corresponding singular forms.
Does Dutch allow voiced stops and fricatives in the final position of words?
No!
[slab] ‘slab’
[ʋɔlv] ‘wolf’
Neutralisation in final position (Dutch)
Voiced and voiceless stops and fricatives are in parallel distribution in the initial position of words:
pas [pas] ‘pass’ vs.
bas [bas] ‘bass’
Final devoicing can be applied to…
Stops and fricatives (obstruents).
Which sounds do not undergo final devoicing?
Nasals and liquids (sonorants).
Natural class (in final devoicing)
Obstruents function as a natural class in Final Devoicing; all members of the class pattern together.
What do syllables consist of?
Onset (the consonants before the vowel) and a rhyme (the vowel plus any following consonant). The rhyme consists of a nuclues and a coda.
/bɛd/
Onset: /b:
Rhyme:
1. Nucleus: /ɛ/
2. Coda: /d/
