02 phoneme

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TOPIC 2: PHONEMES AND ALLOPHONES

Question: Why would most (all?) English speakers say that lips, slip, spill, Pils, and lisp

comprise the “same sounds” in different orders?

Answer: Although the physical SOUNDS differ from word to word, the words do

comprise the same set of PHONEMES.

phoneme: (first try at a definition) “a basic sound unit of a language”

allophone(s): the phonetic variant(s) of a phoneme

phonological rules: generalized statements defining the conditions for the appearance of

the particular phonetic realizations (allophones) of an “underlying” phonemic form

Some formal conventions / /: Slant brackets enclose phonemic (“underlying”) forms, e.g. /p ls/ ‘Pils’ [ ]: Square brackets enclose phonetic forms, e.g. [p s] ‘Pils’ ([ ] =“dark” l) X Y / __Z: “X is realized as Y in the environment before Z” X Y / Z___: “X is realized as Y in the environment after Z”

Recipe for phonemic analysis

ASSEMBLE A FULLY REPRESENTATIVE DATA SET, ACCURATELY TRANSCRIBED.

a. Do phonetic charts for consonants and vowels.

b. Collect local environments for the sounds being investigated.

c. Look for patterns in environments—do particular sounds appear exclusively in certain

environments?

d. If the answer to (c) is “yes”, state the environment in the most general way possible.

Often one allophone will most easily be stated as “elsewhere”.

e. Set up an underlying form for the phoneme (usually the “elsewhere” allophone), and

write phonological rules (A B / P ___ Q) deriving the other allophones. Write the

rules in as general a form as possible, leaving out unnecessary material.

f. See whether the pattern worked out in (e) can be generalized to other sets of sounds.

For example, a rule that aspirates all the voiceless stops is more general than a rule

that just aspirates /t/.

Linguistics 120A 2. Phonemes and Allophones 13

Example 1: English velars The English phoneme /k/ can be described as having (at least) three allophones: a

“neutral” velar allophone, which we can symbolize as [k], a backed allophone, which be

can symbolize as [k] and a raised or fronted allophone, which we can symbolize as [k].

Submit the following words to the “recipe” above

keen [ ] cool [ ] creep [ ]

kin [ ] could [ ] clean [ ]

Kate [ ] coal [ ] crone [ ]

kettle [ ] cut [ ] clone [ ]

catch [ ] cod [ ] crop [ ]

clod [ ] Thinking like a phonologist: What additional questions does our analysis raise?

- Can the analysis be extended to a larger class of segments than just /k/?

- We have only looked at /k/ in / [word ___ (C) V. What happens in

/ C___V

/ V___ ]word

/ V___V (in particular, if the vowels “conflict”, which one wins?) Some other issues of phonology that this data set illustrates:

- HOW DO WE KNOW THAT THERE IS ANYTHING TO LOOK FOR IN THE FIRST PLACE?!

- The messiness of dealing with real life data.

- The idealized nature of phonological rules vs. precise phonetic descriptions.

- The usually “local” nature of phonological rules.

- The phonetic naturalness of phonological processes.

- A tendency for “anticipation” of following environments to be stronger than

“perseverance” of preceding environments.

Example 2: Papago (Focus: [t , t , d, d )

1. [ bid im] ‘turn around’ 12. [ h wgid] ‘smell’

2. [ ta pan] ‘split’ 13. [ t iha ] ‘hire’

3. [ hido ] ‘cook’ 14. [ to i] ‘become hot’

4. [ t kid] ‘vaccinate’ 15. [ wi ut] ‘swing’

5. [ gatwid] ‘shoot’ 16. [ ta ta ] ‘feet’

6. [ t uku] ‘become black’ 17. [ ki t ud] ‘build a house for’

7. [ dag p] ‘press with hand’ 18. [ do dom] ‘copulate’

8. [ toha] ‘become white’ 19. [ ta tam] ‘touch’

9. [ d u ki] ‘rain (noun)’ 20. [ d w d] ‘soil, earth’

10. [ w mt] ‘help, marry’ 21. [ t gig] ‘name, reputation’

11. [ d k] ‘taste’ 22. [ t i wia] ‘settle, establish residence’


The Vowel System of Papago

front central

unrounded

back

rounded

high i, i , u, u

mid o, o

low a, a

The Consonants1

labial alveolar palato-alveolar retroflex palatal velar glottal

voiceless stops p t k

voiced stops b d

g

voiceless affricates t

voiced affricates d

voiceless fricatives s

h

nasals m n

liquids

glides w

j

The Data Sorted by Immediate Context (Letters index the word used, from data set above.)

t t

d

d

2,16,19 [word ___a

13 [word ___i 3 i___o 1 i___i

8,14 [word ___o 4 [word ___

4,5,12 i___ ]word 9 [word ___u

15 u___ ]word 6 [word ___u 17 u___ ]word 11 [word ___

5 a___w 17 i ___u 7 [word ___a 20 [word ___

16,19 a ___a 21 [word ___

18 [word ___o

10 m ___ ]word 22 [word ___i 18 o ___o

16,19 [word ___a

20 ___ ]word

1 Data and analysis assembled by Bruce Hayes, based on Saxton, Dean, Lucille Saxton, and Susie Enos

(1983) Dictionary: Papago/Pima-English, English-Papago/Pima, University of Arizona Press, Tucson.


Left Contexts Only: No Pattern

t t

d

d

2,8,14,16,20 [word ___ 4,6,13,21,22 [word ___ 3,4,5,12 i___ 1 i___

15 u___ 17 i ___ 15 u___ 9 [word ___

5 a___ 7,11,18 [word ___ 20 [word ___

16,19 a ___ 18 o ___

10 m___ 20 ___

Right Contexts Only

t t

d

d

2,16,19 ___a

13 ___i 3,18 ___ o 1 ___i

8,14 ___o 4 ___ 4,5,12,

15, 20

___ ]word 9 ___u

10,15 ___ ]word 6,17 ___u 7 ___ a 20 ___

5 ___w u ___ 18 ___ o 11 ___

16,19 ___a v ___i

There is a simple and coherent generalization (the kind that phonologies tend to favor).

“The palato-alveolar affricates occur before high vowels, and the alveolar stops occur elsewhere.”

Few Data

Especially for [d ]. But among the values of a precisely formulated phonological analysis are (1) that it suggests areas where you should look for further data and (2) that it makes predictions that can be tested by such data. Formalizing to Achieve Generality

• Assume underlying /t,d/: these are what you get if no rule perturbs the basic pattern.

• State rule as simply as possible, leaving out whatever is not needed

A heuristic: look at every single feature and ask whether the rule works without it?

• It’s good to give rules names, for easy reference


Features in Rules

• Segments are actually clusters of features, i.e. a segment is the sum of its phonological properties.

• Rules change only the features explicitly mentioned, and all features not mentioned by a rule remain unaltered.

Unaltered features in Papago: voicing, nonnasality, others...

Alveolar Palatalization

stop

alveolar

affricate

palato-alveolar / ___

vowel

high

Illustrative Derivations

• Choice of forms: Enough to make the operation of the system clear.

• Underlying forms: This will be the “base” form whose features have not been

changed by rules.

• Put altered sounds in the appropriate place when a rule applies, and long hyphen

to show that a rule is inapplicable.

• Slant brackets surround underlying forms, square brackets surround surface

forms. Omit brackets in intermediate forms.

‘split’ ‘vaccinate’ ‘press’ ‘turn around’

Underlying forms: / ta pan/ / t kid/ / dag p/ / bidim/

Alveolar Palatalization: ---------- t kid ---------- bid im

Surface forms: [ ta pam] [ t kid] [ dag p] [ bid im]

The “Why” of Alveolar Palatalization (from Bruce Hayes’s lecture notes)

• I know two other languages that affricate before high vowels. Examples: Japanese, Quebec French.

• High vowels have a narrow air channel, and when a /t/ is released into a high vowel, the burst is noisy (say [ti], [ta] to yourself to check). Affrication is conjectured to be an exaggeration of this natural effect, perhaps for the purpose of rendering the /t/ more audibly distinct from “quieter” stops like /p,k/.

• I don’t know why affrication in Papago changes the place of articulation—conceivably this is an influence from Spanish and English, since virtually all Papago speakers are bilingual in one of these languages.

2

2 Data from http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/, which lists most of the world’s languages with their locations

and number of speakers.


RETURN TO A DEFINITION OF THE “PHONEME” Definition #1: Phonemes as sounds (from above)

phoneme: “a basic sound unit of a language” Conveys the idea that a phoneme is an abstraction away from a particular pronunciation, but it the definition is rather vague and doesn't really tell us anything about the phonological system, the “grammar of sound”. Definition #2: Phonemes defined as sets of sounds

phoneme: “a unit of phonological contrast” contrast: Sounds are in contrast if they can distinguish words. The clearest way to demonstrate that sounds are in contrast is to locate a minimal pair of words; the clearest way to demonstrate that sounds are not in contrast is to demonstrate that they are in complementary distribution. minimal pair (or minimal set): words differing from each other by only a single sound (or, more correctly, by only a single phonological contrast—pairs may differ minimally in features such as stress or tone) A minimal 20-tuplet for English consonants (19-tuplet if you pronounce ‘wail’ and ‘whale’ identically)

[p] pail [t] tail [t ]— [k] kale

[b] bail [d] dale [d ] jail [g] gale

[f] fail [ ] — [s] sale [ ] shale [h] hail

[v] veil [ ] they’ll [z] Zale [ ] —

[m] male [n] nail [ ] —

[l] —

[ ] rail

[w] wail [j] Yale

[ ] whale complementary distribution: two sounds, X and Y, are in complementary distribution if X could never appear in an environment where Y could occur and vice versa

Examples that we have seen: • English “light” vs. “dark” l’s • English aspirated vs. unaspirated stops • English velars (three kinds of “k”) • Papago alveolar stops vs. alveopalatal fricatives • (in Hayes course reader) Maasai voiceless stops vs.

voiced stops vs. voiced fricatives free variation, for example, English aspirated vs. unreleased stops in final position


The language specific nature of contrast and complementary distribution (and, as a consequence, of phonological systems)

“One language’s allophonic variants may be another language’s phonemes.” Likewise,

languages may differ in allophonic variants of comparable phonemes. Examples:

• “light” vs. “dark” l: cf. Russian [ vo na] ‘fleece’ vs. [vol naja] ‘license’ • aspirated vs. unaspirated stops: cf. Thai pa a ‘jungle’, p a a ‘operate’, ba a ‘shoulder’ • alveolar stops vs. alveopalatal affricates: cf. English top vs. chop • Spanish has no aspirated stops and only one kind of l • Wolof has no alveopalatal sounds at all, either in contrast or in complementary

distribution with alveolars

Question: English [p] and [t ] are in complementary distribution. Are they therefore

allophones of the same phoneme?

Definition #3: Phonemes defined by derivational relations

phoneme: “a member of the set of basic phonological units that are put into

correspondence with a set of phonetic realizations by rule”

Allophones in a theory with derivations

• Allophones are the set of sounds that are put into correspondence with a single

phoneme.

• The elsewhere allophone, if there is one, is the one that emerges after environment-

specific rules have applied.

Advantages over the “sets of sounds” definition:

• Defining phonemes in terms of contrast between phonemes and the relationship of

complementary distribution does not directly capture the systematic nature of

sound relations, e.g. it seems almost an accident that voiceless stops, as a group, all

have an aspirated allophone in word initial position

• This definition avoids methodological problems that rely on establishing contrast

through minimal pairs and complementary distribution: (1) some languages

have few if any true minimal pairs, and (2) many sounds are in complementary

distribution that we would not want to say are allophones of one phoneme (English

/h, or even English [th] vs. [p])


Discussion Problems

CANTONESE3

Transcription is IPA. Like all Chinese languages, Cantonese is a tone language. Tones are shown by “tone letters” following the words. The vertical stroke represents the pitch range of the speaker’s normal speaking voice. The horizontal line represents the tone as a relative pitch or pitch change within that range. For example, [ ] = a tone with level pitch at the top of the speaking range, [ ] = a tone rising from a mid-level pitch to the highest pitch, etc. 1. k ok accurate 37. tin mad

2. t n allow 38. si market

3. p apple 39. si matter

4. ts a bad 40. ts an meal

5. ts k bamboo 41. kun observe

6. t úk bird 42. ts a orange

7. y book 43. k pass

8. ts e car 44. tut pay for train w. debit card

9. k at card 45. h permanent

10. pin change, become different 46. l k pick up

11. l t chestnut 47. t y pig

12. t ú Cheung (proper name) 48. t y place

13. t i Chinese characters 49. si poem

14. ts clear 50. k poor

15. so comb 51. sa sand

16. k t cough 52. tyn short

17. jim dye 53. t in sky

18. tsa elbow 54. p in slice

19. t n enter 55. yt snow

20. kok feel 56. yn sour

21. p flat 57. t it stanza of poem

22. ts flush 58. t n stupid

23. s food for cooking a meal 59. sam three

24. t t go out 60. tap take (bus, etc.)

25. tsa grab 61. si time, period of time

26. l k green 62. t i time, occasion

27. pun half 63. t ap tower

28. kin healthy 64. fu trousers

3 The starting point of the data was a 120A paper by Marissa Tse. Additional data come from Stephen

Matthews and Virginia Yip, Cantonese; A Comprehensive Grammar, Routledge, 1994, Virginia Yip and Stephen Matthews, Basic Cantonese: A Grammar and Workbook, Routledge, 2000, Keith S.T. Tong and Gregory James, Colloquial Cantonese, Routledge, 1994, and Kwan Choi Wah et al., English-Cantonese Dictionary, The Chinese University Press, 1991. A very useful online dictionary is at

http://humanum. arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-can.


29. s m heart 65. si try

30. si history 66. s k uncle

31. hú Hong (proper name) 67. ha walk

32. ts k quick 68. t úk wear

33. tsan real 69. ts k weave

34. wut live 70. se finished

35. t ú long 71. ts o wrong

36. m k look for 72. jú yield

Analyzing the data: 1. Aspiration: Is aspiration vs. non-aspiration of stops and affricates distinctive? One approach to answering this would be to set up a complete distribution table for each of the aspirated and unaspirated consonants. However, a short cut would be to simply scan the data for MINIMAL PAIRS, which would immediately demonstrate CONTRAST. 2. Vowels: What are the vowel phonemes? Step 1: Scan through the data and make a list of all the vowels that you find. Then arrange them in a standard vowel chart this will help identify sets of vowels which look suspicious in terms of whether or not they contrast. Step 2: Make a distribution table to see whether distributional patterns show COMPLEMENTARY DISTRIBUTION, i.e whether certain vowels can be grouped as allophones of a single phoneme. SUGGESTION: There are three kinds of environments: preceding, following, and tone. Just to get an idea before painstakingly filling out all these environments for all the vowels, take a pair of “suspicious” vowels, e.g. [i, ] and quickly scan through the data for preceding environment, following environment, and tone. If one of these looks more promising than the others, concentrate on that one. 3. Coronal obstruent phonemes: What are the coronal obstruent phonemes? (coronal sounds = dentals, alveolars, alveopalatals; obstruents = stops, affricates, fricatives) Step 1: List all the coronal obstruents in the data. Step 2: Make a distributional table for each of the coronals. 4. Tones: How many contrastive tones does Cantonese have? By far the easiest way to determine this is to find minimal pairs distinguished only by tone. Even if you could not find a full set of words distinguished only by tone, you could probably find enough pairs that, when added up, would show all the contrasts. Try find one set of words that are distinguished only by the tones that appear in the data. Lango: The Hayes textbook has a dataset for phonemic analysis on page 44. A start toward analysis of this data is posted on the 120A website.

02 phoneme

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