lecture 4 sound system

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Unit 4:

Speech System. The Phoneme.

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(i) Speech (sound) system

• Speech sounds – infinite number of different modulations and variations,

• In other words, we never produce identical sounds! • Still, the listener is capable of categorizing sounds as a

finite set of ‘speech units’. • This is enabled by the existence of the system of speech

sounds: the listener pays attention to some essential elements in the sound perceived, while disregarding other elements, and thus perceiving even different sounding ‘noises’ as one and the same category.

• For example, the different realizations [th], [?t] and [t] have rather different auditory characteristics, but are still perceived as one category, and that is the phoneme /t/.


Why the term ‘system’?

• The term ‘system’ implies several essential characteristics. The sound system contains

• (1) a finite number of units and

• (2) the rules for combining the units.

• Minimal units?– phonemes, or speech sound types, traditionally

defined as ‘the minimal phonological units’. – each phoneme can be ‘broken into’ smaller units,

i.e. properties: distinctive features.


Rules

• The rules governing the occurrence of phonemes are called phonotactic rules.

• E.g. */St-/ is not acceptable at the beginning of an English word.

• Phonotactic rules govern the maximum number of consonants in the initial, medial or final position in words.

• Thus, the maximum number of consonants in English at the beginning of a word is – THREE – always /s/ + /p, t, k/ + /r, l, j, w/,

• and at a word ending it is – FOUR – different possibilities, but these sequencies are lways

precisely structured. E. g. /prQmpts/, /teksts/, /sIksTs/, /twelfTs/

• By applying the rules, we dramatically lower the number of combinatory possibilities in a language.


Phonemic inventories of languages• The number of phonemes is language specific• It varies from 13 (in Hawaiian) up to 50. • The difference in numbers does not mean that some

languages are ‘poorer’ or ‘richer’ than others• No language uses all its combinatory possibilities

exhaustively! • E.g. a language containing 30 phonemes can produce

over 25 million morphemes consisting of 5 phonemes – no lg. needs such a high number of morphemes.

• The potential number of morphemes is dramatically reduced by applying the phonotactic rules.

• Every language has a sufficient number of sounds to express any, even the most complex, notions.


Speech of humans vs. ‘animal talk’• Some animal species produce up to 40 different

recognizable sound types. • Does it mean that some animals have a richer system of

communication?• Difference – the functioning of speech sound units. • Human speech sounds (phonemes) are meaningless! used as building blocks to create morphemes, which

express meaning. • So, although a phoneme signals the difference in, for

example /k&t/ and /s&t/, there is nothing in the phonemes /k/ or /s/ that has anything to do with the meaning, i.e. the semantic content of the two words.


Double articulation

• In other words, phonemes are meaningless units, but they combine into higher-rank meaningful units – MORPHEMES.

• This phenomenon of human languages is referred to as DOUBLE ARTICULATION:– Phonemes – contrastive units (distinguish meaning),

but are themselves meaningless – a sort of building-blocks of languages

– Morphemes – the smallest meaning-bearing units

• It is the basis for the economy and creativity of human language.


Some other properties of sound systems

• Symmetry – a tendency of languages to employ differences in a systematic way. – E.g. the number of voiced and voiceless plosives, fricatives and

affricates tends to be the same. – Vowel diagram: every language has a similar number of front and

back vowels, which are evenly distributed in the whole of vowel space (represented as the diagram).

• Redundancy is the property of speech sounds to be abundant in many redundant signals. – Every speech sound carries the information on the other sounds

surrounding it, which greatly contributes to the easier perception of sounds, even in the context of noise.

lecture 4 sound system

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