Phonology

The study of how different languages organize sounds to use in building words and phrases and sentences

What is a distinctive sound?

The concept of contrast distinguishes the words from one another

bait /bet/

bail /bel/

Contrastive/distinctive/meaningful sounds:

/t/ /l/

What are minimal pairs?

• help find sounds that contrast in any language

• contrastive sounds are called phonemes

• goat /got/ vs. coat /kot/ = /g/ /k/

• cap/cab

• bag/back

• bag/badge

Minimal pairs?

beat bit

bait bet

bat bite

boot but

boat bought

What are allophones?

Transcribe the following words:

Tick stick bitter hits

What is a phone?

A particular pronunciation of a phoneme

A collection of phones of the same phoneme are called allophones

• pill till kill

• spill still skill

• par tar car

• spar star scar

Thai—aspirated and unaspirated sounds

[paa]‘forest [paa] ‘to split’

[tam]‘to pound’ [tam] ‘to do’

[kat] ‘to bite’ [kat] ‘to interrupt’

Is aspiration meaningful?

Complementary distribution: sounds that do not occur in identical environments

Contrastive distribution: sounds that occur in identical environments

What about Korean [r] vs. [l]?

• [param] ‘wind’

• [irim]‘name’

• [pal] ‘foot’

• [mal] ‘horse’

• [ilkop] ‘seven’

• [ipalsa] ‘barber’

What about [r] and [l] in English?

• Cannot predict when [l] and [r] will occur in English.

• Contrastive sounds

• Belong to different phonemes

• They are related to each other by a phonological rule, which determines when the actual sound produced is [r] and when it is [l]

• French: words are distinguished by nasalization of the vowel:

• [lo] ‘prize’[lo] ‘long’

• [l ] ‘ugly [l ] ‘flax’

• [la] ‘there’ [la] ‘slow’

• The sounds [o] and [o] correspond to two different phonemes /o/ and /o/

• English: the nasalization is predictable by a phonological rule.

• Roam rope

• Lame lace

• Lamb lap

• The sounds [o] and [o] correspond to a single phoneme /o/ which is realized as [o] or [o] depending on the context.

• Phonemes in English and French

• English French

• /o/ /o/ /o/

• [o] [o] [o] [o]

What are natural classes?

• Rules refer to natural classes of sounds• A natural class is a set of sounds that share some

property (properties) and only members of that set have this (these) property/properties.

• [m, n, ]—nasal consonants• All members have the properties of being nasal and

consonants.