Phonology

1. Phonology
October 25, 2010

2. Today’s Plan
• To begin with...
• Phonetics homeworks to hand in!
• Then:
• Another Simpsons-based Quick Write
• Today: Phonology
• Wednesday: review for mid-term.
• Friday: mid-term!
• Note: we will be splitting up into three separate rooms for
the mid-term. (more details to come on Wednesday)

3. Phonology
• The study of how the pronunciation of sounds changes
according to context is called phonology.
• We have already seen some phonological changes with
respect to the phoneme /t/.
• English /t/
Word Broad Narrow Description
‘top’ aspirated
‘stop’ unaspirated
‘batter’ flapped
‘kitten’ glottalized
‘nitrate’ /najtrejt/ palatalized

4. Phonemes and Allophones
• Recall: the basic idea behind the IPA is to have one
symbol for each sound.
• Principle of Contrast:
• “There should be a separate letter for each
distinctive sound; that is, for each sound which,
being used instead of another, in the same
language, can change the meaning of the word.”
• Phonemes contrast with each other; they are
“distinctive sounds”
• Allophones do not contrast with each other;
• They cannot distinguish between words.

5. Phonemes and Allophones
• For example--[t] and [d] are two different sounds
(phonemes) in English;
• they can change the meaning of a word--
tip vs. dip ~ [t] vs. [d] ~ pat vs. pad
• Remember: two words that differ in only one sound
are called a minimal pair.
• However, there is no minimal pair in English
distinguished by a flap vs. a voiceless stop.
• Canadian English: “bottom”
• British English: “bottom”

6. Wait a second…
• Sounds that are distinctive, or contrast, in one language,
are not necessarily distinctive in another.
• Ex: [s] and are distinctive in English.
sheep vs. seep
shack vs. sack
shoot vs. suit
mash vs. mass
etc.
• But they are not distinctive in Japanese…

7. Some Japanese Words
‘this year’ ‘outside’
‘a little’ ‘to know’
‘world’ ‘to do’
‘sugar’ ‘to force/cause’
• Q: What’s the pattern?
• A: appears before [i]: ____ [i]
• [s] appears elsewhere
• There are no minimal pairs for and [s] in Japanese.
⇒ In Japanese, they are not contrastive sounds.

8. Biblical Parallels
“And the Gileadites took the fords of the Jordan against the
Ephraimites. And when any of the fugitives of Ephraim said,
‘Let me go over,’ the men of Gilead said to him, ‘Are you an
Ephraimite?’ When he said, ‘No,’ they said to him, ‘Then
say Shibboleth,’ and he said, ‘Sibboleth,’ for he could not
pronounce it right; then they seized him and slew him at the
fords of the Jordan.”
--Judges 12:5-6

9. Modern-day Shibboleths
(Canadian) Jon (American) Steve
“house”
“howl”
“bike”
“bile”
• Also note (Canadian) Amber:

10. Modern-day Shibboleths
• Canadian English is distinctive in that it “raises” the first
part of the diphthongs [aj] and [aw].
• In both cases, [a] →
[aj] →
[aw] →
• This is “raising” because a low vowel becomes a
mid vowel.
• Technical term: Canadian Raising.

11. Canadian Raising
• Canadian Raising only occurs in certain sound
environments:
• “house” “loud”
• “write” “ride”
• “pipe” “bribe”
• “like”
• Q: When does Canadian Raising occur?
• (what is the relevant sound environment?)
• A: [aj] and [aw] “raise” whenever they appear before
a voiceless consonant.

12. Another Pattern
• Here’s one that we’ve seen before:
[ph
æt] ‘pat’ [spæt] ‘spat’
[th
ap] ‘top’ [stap] ‘stop’
[kh
ar] ‘car’ [skar] ‘scar’
• Voiceless stops are aspirated when they appear at the
start of a stressed syllable.
• Unless they appear immediately after s: s___
• Because aspirated and unaspirated stops don’t appear in
the same phonetic environment in English….
• They are not contrastive sounds.

13. However…
• In languages like Quechua, there are meaningful contrasts
between aspirated and unaspirated stops and affricates.
• Some minimal pairs:

14. Different Levels
• In all languages, there are sounds which contrast.
• They make meaningful differences between words.
• = “phonemes”
• Phonemes also have variants which do not contrast.
• …but reliably appear in particular phonetic
environments.
• = “allophones”
• Phonemes represent abstract, psychological reality
• broad transcriptions
• allophones represent concrete, physical reality.
• narrow transcriptions

15. Big Picture Flashback
• Knowing how the broad level of transcription relates to the
narrow level of transcription is part of what you know as a
competent speaker of a language.
• = knowing which allophone to use for a particular
phoneme, in some particular circumstance.
• Another word for this knowledge is phonology.
• This is subconscious knowledge
• This knowledge takes the form of rules…
• For that reason, it can apply to new, creative forms.
• Try, for example, nonsense words like “mowch” or “skype”.

16. Example Rule
• In Japanese, [s] and are allophones of the same
phoneme.
Phoneme: /s/
Allophones: [s]
• Observations:
• appears only in front of /i/
• [s] appears everywhere else
• Rule: /s/ surfaces as in front of /i/
• Speakers of Japanese “know” this rule

17. Phonological Rules, formalized
• Phonological rules can be written in the following form:
/Phoneme/ → [Allophone] / Environment
• The environment is where we see the phonological
transformation taking place.
• Usually, the phonetic environment consists of the
sounds surrounding the phoneme in question.
• Example rule (Japanese):
/s/ → / __ [i]
(__ [i] = before an [i])

18. Distributions
• Question:
How do we know that the /s/ changes to an in
Japanese, and not the other way around?
• We have to take into consideration the distribution of
the two sounds.
• The distribution is the set of phonetic environments in
which a sound appears.
• Two kinds of distributions:
• contrastive
• complementary

19. Contrastive Distribution
• Two sounds are in contrastive distribution when they
can both appear in the same phonetic environment.
• Sounds that change the meaning of words in a minimal
pair are in contrastive distribution.
• (Because they contrast with each other)
•Example:
‘bit’ vs. ‘pit’ [bIt] vs. [ph
It]
⇒ [b] and [ph
] belong to different phonemes
• Note the distribution:
• the sounds surrounding [b] and [ph
] in this example are
exactly the same.

20. Complementary Distribution
• When sounds are in complementary distribution, they
never appear in the same phonetic environment.

21. Complementary Distribution
• When sounds are in complementary distribution, they
never appear in the same phonetic environment.
all possible
phonetic
environments
sound 1 appears in
these environments
sound 2 appears in
these environments

22. Complementary Distribution
• When sounds are in complementary distribution, they
never appear in the same phonetic environment.
all possible
phonetic
environments
there is no overlap in where the two sounds appear

23. Examples
• [s] and are in complementary distribution in Japanese
• appears before the vowel [i]
• [s] never appears before [i], but it appears most
everywhere else
• [th
] and [t] are in complementary distribution in English
• [t] appears after the consonant [s], and at the end of
syllables
• [th
] appears at the beginning of stressed syllables, but
never after [s]
• Sounds that are in complementary distribution are
generally allophones of the same phoneme

24. Types of Allophones
• A restricted allophone is one that appears in only a
limited set of phonetic environments.
• in Japanese (only before [i])
• [t] in English (only after [s])
• A basic allophone is one that appears in a less
restricted set of environments.
• The basic allophone is also supposed to represent the
phoneme in speakers’ heads.
• [s] in Japanese (phoneme = /s/)

25. More Japanese Words
• What is the distribution of [h], [ç] and [f] in the following
Japanese words?
([ç] is a voiceless palatal fricative)
[çito] ‘person’ [haha] ‘mother’
[çifu] ‘skin’ [asaçi] ‘morning sun’
[heta] ‘awkward’ [fune] ‘ship’
[hon] ‘book’ [ha∫i] ‘chopsticks’
[fuhenfuto:] ‘neutrality’
• Q: Are they in complementary or contrastive distribution?

26. Some Rules
• In Japanese,
[h] appears before [a], [o], and [e]
[f] appears before [u]
[ç] appears before [i]
• Q: Which is the basic allophone, and which are
restricted?
• [h] is the basic allophone; [f] and [ç] are the derived
allophones.
• Two phonological rules account for the distribution:
/h/ → [f] / ___ [u]
/h/ → [ç] / ___ [i]