Phonology I

Chapter 7: Phonology: The Sound Patterns of Language (Part I)

Basic Concept

Phonology is concerned with how specific languages organize and use speech sounds.

While phonetics is a party of phonology and provides the means for describing speech sounds, phonology is concerned with the ways in which these speech sounds form systems and patterns in human language.
Unlike phonetics which is concerned with sounds as they occur in the real world, Phonology is interested in sounds as they are represented in the mind of the speaker and in the relationship between these mental representations and the real-world sounds.

Phonology	Phonetics
Use / / Abstract	Use [ ] Concrete

Phoneme vs. Phones vs. Allophones

Phonemes

Phones

Allophones

Abstract sounds stored in our memory

Memory: /I/
Mouth: [I:] before voiced consonants, [I] elsewhere

Mental representation of the sounds

Finite number of phonemes

Organizable (labial, interdental, alveolar.. etc.)

Contrastive phonological segments, distinctive sounds

The substitution of one for the other makes a different word.

Phonemes vary from language to language

Ex1. /ü/ is a phoneme in French, not in English.
Ex.2 In English, [p] and [p^h ] are not separate phonemes, while in Thai, these two sounds are separate phonemes: /p/ and /p^h /.
/paa/ (forest) vs. /p^haa/ (split)

Concrete phonetic segments
Actual realization of the phonemes

Non-contrastive
Hard to organize
Infinite number of
phones
You never hear same phone twice.

The different phones that are the realizations of one phoneme
Predictable
Phonetic variants of a phoneme
Rule-governed
No difference in meaning, no minimal pairs

Ex. [u] and [ ű] are allophones of the same
phoneme /u/.

Minimal Pairs

A minimal pair is defined as a pair of words with different meanings that are identical in phonetic form except for one segment, e.g. spill vs. skill.

Are these minimal pairs?
               rube vs. rude
                seed vs. soup
               can vs. bin
               bowl vs. dole

Free Variation

The substitutability of one sound for another in a given environment, with no change in the word’s meaning, e.g. either, economics.

Complementary Distribution vs. Contrastive Distribution

Contrastive distribution means that the sounds are distributed in the data in a way that distinguishes one word from another. For example the sounds /p/ and /k/ are in contrastive distribution in English in such words as skill and spill .

Contrastive distribution is an indication that the two sounds in question are different phonemes.

Complementary Distribution

Mutual exclusiveness of a pair of sounds in a certain phonetic environment.

If two sounds are in complementary distribution, they never occur in the same phonetic environment, and their occurrence is predictable and rule-governed.

The replacement of one sound for the other does not change the meaning of the word.

Complementary distribution is an indication that the sounds in question are allophones of the same phoneme.

For example, [ĩ] and [i ] are allophones of the same phoneme /i/.
[ĩ] occurs before nasal consonants in the same syllable: bean [bĩ n]
[i] occurs elsewhere: beat [bit]

Distinctive Features

A feature that distinguishes one phoneme from another.
A single feature can be thought of as having two values, plus (+), which signifies its presence, and minus (-), which signifies its absence.

e.g.                  p       b       m
          Stop       +       +        +
          Labial    +       +        +
          Voiced   -       +        +
          Nasal     -        -        +

Features are also used to capture a generalization about several phonetically different sounds. For example, we can capture the similarity between [m] and [n] by using the feature [+nasal]. Groups of sounds that can be described with a common feature are called natural classes, e.g. Natural Classes : Bilabials /p, b, m, w/

Redundancy

Nondistinctive and nonphonemic features
If a feature value is predictable by a rule, it is a redundant feature
[+voice] is redundant for nasal phonemes in English.

[+nasal] is redundant for English vowels.