PHONOLOGY (Notes)

1 PHONOLOGY: THE SOUND PATTERNS OF LANGUAGE Further Phonetic Details - the IPA does not capture all phonetic features. - As such, the IPA has been supplemented with additional symbols (diacritics). - the focus is given on differences that might be used in some human language to indicate a change in meaning. Speakers with English-type grammars normally produce round consonants before round vowels. - [kwul] ‘cool,’ [twu] ‘two,’ and [mwun] ‘moon.’ if you were to say [kul] or [mun] (with no rounding of the consonant), everyone would know that you meant ‘cool’ and ‘moon,’ respectively. Thus the rounding of a consonant is NON-CONTRASTIVE (it doesn’t change the meaning of a word). Speakers with Marshallese-type grammars, the difference between round and unround consonants is very important. For example [am nikwnikw] means ‘your cloth’ but - [amw nikwnikw] means ‘our (i.e., belonging to me and some other people, but not you) cloth.’ Thus in Marshallese-type grammars, the rounding of a consonant is a CONTRASTIVE feature (it changes the meaning of a word. - On the other hand, the difference between [ʃ] and [ʧ] is of no consequence in Marshallese: - For example, the verb which means ‘to go barefoot’ can be pronounced [ʃintəbw] or [ʧintəbw] - No Marshallese speaker will pay any more attention to this difference than you would to the difference between [kwul] and [kul] - Thus what counts as contrastive in one grammar may not be in another. - Part of what you know, as a speaker with a particular grammar, is which aspects of the speech stream matter for conveying differences in meaning and which ones do not. - Since the knowledge of what to ignore and what to pay attention to appears to vary from grammar to grammar (so that, e.g., Marshallese-type grammars differ from English-type grammars in this regard), you must learn to ignore certain aspects of the speech signal when you learn your grammar. The Phoneme Criterial vs incidental Criterial : difference in phonetic features which result in changing of meaning - eg: Eng [ʧɪp] vs [ʃɪp] ; Mrs [am] ‘your’ vs [amw ] ‘our (but not you)’ Incidental : difference in phonetic features which are irrelevant in changing of meaning - eg: Eng [mwun] vs [mun] ; Mrs [ʃintəbw] vs [ʧintəbw] ‘to go barefoot’ Speakers must produce and pay attention to those segments which determine meaning differences, but can safely ignore those differences which do not influence meaning.

2 The sound differences that matter for a given grammar are called phonemic differences. Differences that do not matter for the purpose of determining meaning are called phonetic differences. Phonemic sounds are contrastive to the speaker. The set of sounds of a given grammar, defined in such a way as to list only those aspects of their production that are criterial for the determination of meaning, are known as the phonemes of that language. Phonemes are what one must learn to pay attention to in order to ultimately derive accurate semantic representations. Minimal Pairs and Allophones How can we determine what the set of phonemes for a given grammar are? substitution : in English [bæt] means ‘bat’ and [pæt] means ‘pat, - the difference between [b] and [p] is a phonemic one. - thus [bæt] and [pæt] are a minimal pair : both have an equal number of sound segments, and a change of one sound feature changes the meaning of the word. - [b] and [p] are contrastive in an English-type grammar. - Likewise, [tæ t ] and [tæ d ] are a minimal pair, and [tæ k ] ‘tack’ and [tæ g ] ‘tag’ are minimal pairs: thus VOICING is a contrastive feature in English- type grammars.  On the other hand, if we substitute an unrounded [m] for the [mw] of [mwun] ‘moon,’ giving [mun], the newly created word may sound a little funny, but it still means ‘moon.’  The difference between [m] and [mw] is therefore not a phonemic one – they are non-contrastive .  Distinctions which are just phonetic are generally found to have a well-defined distribution.  Take for example nasalization: - [mɛt] ‘met’ [m n] ‘men’ (The ‘tilde’ diacritic indicates nasalization of vowels.) ɛ̃  Although [m t] would sound odd in English, it still means ‘met’. ɛ̃  The distribution of nasalized vowels is, (in English but not in French), completely predictable.  We can state the prediction in the form of the following ‘rule’ of grammars of the English-type: - Rule 1: Nasalize vowels before nasals.  This rule accounts for the fact that in English nasalized vowels occur always and only before nasals. - /mɛn/ →[m n] ɛ̃  The final form has both nasalization of its vowel (by Rule 1) and lip-rounding of its consonant (by Rule 2).  Note that since Rules 1 and 2 apply to all input forms to the grammar, the output of these rules, taken together, will create a situation in which [ ] will occur only ɛ̃ where [ɛ] does not (before nasals), and vice-versa.  The two phonetic segments [ ] and [ɛ] are in ɛ̃ complementary distribution — one never occurs in the same environment as the other.