Caballero 1

Mariana Caballero
Dr. Mark Aune
English 760
13 November 2003
PHONOLOGY
What is phonology?
Phonology is the component of a grammar made up of the elements and principles
that determine
how sounds vary and pattern in a language.
The study of phonology attempts to discover general principles that underlie the
patterning of
sounds in human language.
BASIC CONCEPTS
Features: The smallest unit of analysis of phonological structure, combinations of
which make
up segments.
Segments: Individual speech sounds.
Syllables: A unit of linguistic structure that consists of a syllabic element and
any segments that
are associated with it.
Caballero 2
Allophones: Variants of a phoneme, usually in complementary distribution and
phonetically
similar.
Environment: The phonetic environment in which a sound occurs.
Phoneme: A contrastive segmental unit with predictable phonetic variants.
Glides: Sounds that are produced with an articulation like that of a vowel, but
move quickly to
another articulation.
Phonemes are enclosed in slanted brackets / /; phonetic notation is indicated by
square
brackets [ ]
SEGMENTS IN CONTRAST
Segments are said to contrast (or to be distinctive or be in opposition) when
their presence alone
may distinguish forms with different meanings from each other.
Example: the segments [s] and [z] contrast in the words sip and zip.
Minimal pairs : consist of two forms with distinct meanings that differ by only
one segment
found in the same position in each form. It is on the basis of sound and not
spelling that minimal
pairs are established.
Example: zip and sip.
Caballero 3
COMPLEMENTARY DISTRIBUTION
It is the distribution of allophones in their respective phonetic environments
such that one never
appears in the same phonetic context as the other.
Example: Not all ls in English are pronounced the same way. Some are voiced and
some are
voiceless. Voiced: blue; gleam; slip.
Voiceless: plow; clap; clear.
The voicelessness the ls is a consequence of their phonetic environment.
Since no voiceless l occurs in the same phonetic environment as a voicelessness
one (and vice
versa), it is said that the two variants are in complementary distribution.
PHONEMES AND ALLOPHONES
Predictable variants of certain segments are grouped together into a contrastive
phonological unit
called a phoneme. These variants, which are referred to as allophones, are usually
phonetically
similar and are frequently found in complementary distribution.
Allophonic variation: is found throughout language. In fact, every speech sound we
utter is an
allophone of some phoneme and can be grouped together with other phonetically
similar sounds
into a class that is represented by a phoneme on a phonological level of
representation.
Caballero 4
LANGUAGE-SPECIFIC PATTERNS
Although the phenomenon of allophonic variation is universal, the patterning of
phonemes and
allophones is language-specific. What is discovered for one language, may not hold
true for
another.
SYLLABLES
The syllable is usually composed of a nucleus (usually a vowel) and its associated
nonsyllabic
segments.
Internal structure of a syllable
Nucleus (N): is the syllable’s only obligatory member. It is a syllabic element
that forms the core
of a syllable.
Coda (C) consists of those elements that follow the nucleus in the same syllable.
Rhyme (R) is made up of the nucleus and coda.
Onset (O) is made up of those elements that precede the rhyme in the same
syllable.
Caballero 5
People don’t syllabify words randomly. That is because syllables comply with
certain constraints
that prohibit them (in English) from beginning with an unnatural sequence.
Constraints can be stated for each of the terminal subsyllabic units O, N, and C.
Phonotactics, the set of constraints on how sequences of segments pattern, forms
part of a
speaker’s knowledge of the phonology of his or her language. Example: when we try
to adjust
syllables of a foreign language, to conform with the pronunciation requirements of
our own
language.
FEATURES
Linguists view segments as composed of smaller elements. These elements are called
features:
the units of phonological structure that make up segments.
Speech is produced by a number of coordinated articulatory activities such as
voicing, tongue
position, lip rounding and so on. Features such as [voice], [high], [round]—
features are written
in square brackets—directly reflect this activity, in that each feature is rooted
in an
independently controllable aspect of speech production.
Matrix is the representation of a segment with features. Each feature or group of
features defines
a specific property of the segment. This representation is in binary terms: [+]
means that a
feature is present, and [-] means that it is absent.
Example: Feature matrix for the English vowel [a]
Caballero 6
+syllabic These features define the segment as
-consonantal vowel, consonant, or glide (here, a vowel)
+sonorant
-high These features define the placement
+low of the tongue (here, a low back vowel)
+back
-round This feature defines lip rounding (here, unrounded)
+tense This feature defines tenseness/laxness (here, tense)
The features of English
· Major class features: features that represent the classes consonant, obstruent
and
sonorant.
· Laryngeal features: features that represent states of the larynx.
· Place features: features that represent place of articulation.
· Dorsal features: features that represent placement of the body of the tongue.
· Manner features: features that represent manner of articulation.
SCHOOLS OF PHONOLOGY
· Structuralism
- The Prague school
- Trubetzkoy
- American distributionalism
- Morphophonemics
- Binarity and biuniqueness
· Jakobson
Caballero 7
- Universalism
- Acoustic features
· Generative Phonology
- Chomsky and Halle, The Sound Pattern of English (SPE)
- Systematic phonetic and systematic phonemic representations
- Abstractness
- Morpheme structure constraints
- Redundancy rules
- Rules
- Features
- Markedness
· Phonological Theories after SPE
- Natural Phonology (Stampe)
- Natural Generative Phonology (Vennemann, Hooper)
- Autosegmental Phonology (Goldsmith)
- Metrical Phonology (Liberman and Prince)
- Dependency Phonology (Anderson and Durand)
- Lexical Phonology (Kiparsky)
- Underspecification (Arcangeli)
- Feature Geometry (Sagey, Clements)
- Govemment Phonology (Kaye, Lowenstamm and Vergnaud)
- Articulatory Phonology (Browman and Goldstein)
- Particle Phonology (Schane)
Caballero 8
- Cognitive Phonology (Lakoff)
- Prosodic Phonology (Nespor and Vogel)
- Moraic Phonology (Hayes)
- Harmonic Phonology (Goldsmith)
- Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky)
- Declarative Phonology (Bird and Klein)
Caballero 9
Bibliography
O’Grady, William, Michael Dobrovolsky, Mark Aronoff, eds Contemporary Linguistics.
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.
Delahunty, Gerald P. and James J. Garvey eds. (1994). Language, Grammar and
Communication: A Course for Teachers of English. New York: McGraw Hill.
Joint European Website for Education in Language and Speech. 2003. HLTCentral. 10
November 2003. <http://www.hltcentral.org/page-823.0.shtml>.
Suggested Readings
Anderson, S. R. (1985). Phonology in the Twentieth Century. Chicago, London:
University of Chicago Press.
Archangeli, D. and Langendoen, D.T. (Eds.) (1997). Optimality Theory: An Overview.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Carr, Ph. (1993). Phonology. Basingstoke: MacMillan.
Clark, J. and Yallop, C. (1995). An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology (2nd
ed.).
Oxford: Blackwell.
Clements, G. N. and Keyser, S.J. (1983). CV Phonology. A generative theory of the
syllable. Cambridge/Mass.: The MIT Press.
Durand, J. (1990). Generative and Non-Linear Phonology. London, New York:
Longman.
Caballero 10
Goldsmith, J. (1989). Autosegmental and Metrical Phonology. Oxford: Blackwell.
Harris, J. (1994). English sound structure. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hawkins, P. (1984). Introducing phonology. London: Hutchinson & Co.
Hyman, L. M. (1975). Phonology. Theory and Analysis. New York-Montreal-London:
Holt.
Katamba, F. (1989). An Introduction to Phonology. London: Longman.
Kaye, J. (1989). Phonology: a Cognitive View. Hillsdale N.J., London: Erlbaum.
Kenstowicz, M. (1994). Phonology in Generative Grammar. Cambridge MA, Oxford:
Blackwell.
Kenstowicz, M. and Kisseberth, C. (1979). Generative Phonology: Description and
Theory. San Diego: Academic Press, Inc.
Lass, R. (1984). Phonology. An introduction to basic concepts. Cambridge:
University
Press.
McCarthy, John J. (2002). A Thematic Guide to Optimality Theory. Cambridge:
University Press.
Postal, Paul M. (1968).Aspects of Phonological Theory. New York: Harper and Row.
Roca, I. (1994). Generative Phonology. London and New York: Routledge.
Roach, P. (1983). English phonetics and phonology. A practical course. Tutor's
book.
Cambridge: University Press.
Schane, S. A. (Ed.) (1973). Generative Phonology. Englewood Cliffs.
Caballero 11
Spencer, A. (1996). Phonology. Oxford: Blackwell