Phonology, part 2

November 1, 2010

• While you work on another Quick Write, here’s a funny painting of Superman based on a kid’s drawing:

Weekday Update• Mid-term: will hopefully be graded and returned to you by Friday.

• Today: more phonology

• = we’ll look at distributions again from a slightly different angle.

• Then we’ll discuss some reasons why linguists believe that phonology is part of what you “know” as a speaker of a language

• ...even though it is subconscious knowledge

• But before we get into that, let’s take a look at the last Quick Write…

A Noble Spirit

Place Assimilation• Place assimilation occurs when:

• One consonant’s place of articulation becomes identical to that of a neighboring consonant.

• /n/ often takes on the place of articulation of a following consonant.

• ‘unpleasant’

• ‘month’

• ‘engrossed’

• Likewise, alveolars--except for /s/ and /z/--assimilate to following dentals

Ex: width, tenth, wealth

Allomorphy• What’s going on here?

/in-/ + probable = improbable

/in-/ + mobile = immobile

/in-/ + possible = impossible

• /in-/ changes to /im-/ before both /p/ and /m/.

• /p/ and /m/ are both produced with the lips.

To explain patterns like this, we’re going to need to know something about how we actually produce the sounds of English.

We have to study Phonetics!

Where Were We?• In phonology, there are both phonemes and allophones.

• Phonemes are contrastive sounds.

• Change meaning in minimal pairs, etc.

• Represent mental abstractions.

• Allophones are variants of phonemes.

• They appear in particular phonetic environments.

• Represent observable, concrete reality.

• There are formal rules that determine when a phoneme becomes an allophone in some environment.

• /Phoneme/ [Allophone] / Environment

Where Were We?• Example rules:

• In English, [t] and [th] are allophones of the phoneme /t/.

• /t/ [th] / at the beginning of stressed syllables

• (unless it’s preceded by /s/)

• In “Japanese”, [h], [ç] and [f] are allophones of the same phoneme.

• Japanese rules: /h/ [ç] / ___ [i]

/h/ [f] / ___ [u]

• How do we know that /h/ changes to [f], and not the other way around?

A Conundrum• Phonological rules look like this:

/Phoneme/ [Allophone] / Environment

(=Abstract) (=Observable)

• That means that, as linguists, we only see the allophones, on the (observable) surface.

• Q: How can we figure out what the phonemes are?

• (not to mention the rules?)

• Note: babies learning language have the same problem

Questions• Q1: How do linguists know that Japanese [h], [ç] and [f]

are actually allophones of the same phoneme?

• A: because they are phonetically similar, and are in complementary distribution.

• (not contrastive distribution)

• Q2: How do we know that /h/ changes to [ç] and [f], and not the other way around?

• A1: It’s the simplest way to describe the pattern.

• A2: Japanese speakers think of the three sounds as “the same”, at some level.

• Remember: we’re trying to describe the phonological rules (grammar) that speakers of a language “know”.

Distributions• A “distribution” is simply the collection of phonetic

environments in which a sound may appear.

• Phonetic environment = the sounds surrounding the phoneme or allophone in question.

1. Contrastive distribution:

• Two sounds can both appear in the same phonetic environment.

• And they can change the meaning of a word (as in a minimal pair).

• The two sounds are allophones of different phonemes.

Complementary Distribution• When sounds are in complementary distribution, they never appear in the same phonetic environment.

• (They appear in non-overlapping environments.)

• [h], [ç] and [f] are in complementary distribution in “Japanese”

• [ç] appears before the vowel [i]

• [f] appears before the vowel [u]

• [h] appears before all the other vowels.

• Sounds that are in complementary distribution are generally allophones of the same phoneme.

• The phoneme just changes shape, depending on the context….

Enter…the Batman

An Analogy• Consider Commissioner Gordon. He knows a couple of guys:

• Batman

• Bruce Wayne

• He’s noticed that he never sees them together, in the same place, at the same time.

• In fact, one of them (Batman) really only shows up in certain situations…

The Distribution of Batman and Bruce Wayne

• Batman appears when:

• The Joker is on a crime spree.

• The Penguin has kidnapped the mayor’s daughter.

• Catwoman just broke out of jail, etc.

• Bruce Wayne appears when:

• They’re at a philanthrophy convention.

• The auto show is in town.

• He’s jogging in Central Park, etc.

Conditioning Environments• Do these environments have anything in common?

• The Joker is on a crime spree.

• The Penguin has kidnapped the mayor’s daughter.

• Catwoman just broke out of jail, etc.

• They’re all crimefighting situations

• Do these environments have anything in common?

• They’re at a philanthrophy convention.

• The auto show is in town.

• He’s jogging in Central Park, etc.

• They’re just non-crimefighting situations…

Complementary Distribution• Bruce Wayne and Batman are in complementary distribution

• They never appear together in the same place, at the same time

Bruce Wayne appears here

Batman appears here

crimefighting situations

other situations

Analyzing Distributions

1. Given two sounds in a language, treat them like Batman and Bruce Wayne.

• Ask yourself: is it possible to show that they’re meaningfully different sounds (or people)?

2. Try to force them into the same situation together

• In the case of Batman and Bruce Wayne, invite them both to the same party

• In the case of sounds, see if they ever appear in the same phonetic environment

Strategy, continued3. Describe what kind of phonetic environment each sound

appears in.

• Figure out if there is anything in common among the various phonetic environments in which each sound appears.

• If two different sounds never appear in the same phonetic environment, they’re in complementary distribution.

• You can then assume that they’re allophones of the same phoneme.

Restricted and Basic• A sound that only appears in a limited set of environments is the restricted allophone.

• Ex: Batman only appears in crimefighting situations, so…

• Batman is the restricted “allo-person”

• A sound that appears more generally is the basic allophone.

• Bruce Wayne is the basic “allo-person”.

• In Japanese:

• [f] only appears before [u] restricted allophone

• [h] appears before [a], [e], [o] basic allophone

Phonological Rules• In general, you can assume:

• The basic allophone is the representation of the underlying phoneme.

• The appearance of the restricted phoneme is conditioned by its environment.

4. You can write a rule for the conditioned allophone:

/Bruce Wayne/ [Batman] / __ crimefighting situations

/h/ [f] / ___ [u]

Non-Complementary• What happens if you find two sounds in the same

environment?

• There are two possibilities:

1. They are in contrastive distribution

• …if they contrast between the meanings of different words

2. They are in “free variation”

• …if they do not change the meaning of the words

Free Variation• = Two different sounds appear in the same environment, but they don’t change the meaning of the word.

• Ex: vs . “kit”

• and are allophones of the same phoneme.

• They are in free variation.

• = you can freely substitute one for the other.

• Another example (some dialects of English):

• “thought”

• “thought”

• Also witness: Tina Fey

Some More Data• There is an interesting rule regarding the production of /r/ in some English dialects.

• Compare Canadian English with English English

CE EE

“care”

“park”

“read”

“other”

“ride”

“carrot”

“cart”

• Do you see any patterns?

The Rules• In English English:

• /r/ appears as [r] when it precedes vowels

• Examples: read, carrot

• /r/ appears as when it appears at the end of a syllable or word

• Examples: care, other

• /r/ makes a preceding vowel long when it appears before a consonant in the same syllable

• Examples: park, cart

Rhotic vs. Non-Rhotic• Note: English is divided up between “rhotic” dialects and “non-rhotic” dialects

• rhotic: /r/ appears everywhere

• non-rhotic: /r/ disappears, sometimes

• Rhotic dialects:

• Canadian English, General American, Irish English, Scots English…

• Non-Rhotic dialects:

• English English, Australian English, some areas of the American South and East Coast…

Really, it does• Phonologists are not just making this stuff up for fun

• Interesting phenomenon:

• in non-rhotic dialects, /r/ sometimes appears in places where it doesn’t appear in rhotic dialects

• Ex: “I was thinking about an idear I had...”

• Q: Why on earth does that happen?

Idears, Explained• In non-rhotic dialects,

words ending in /Vr/ surface as .

• Phonology notation note:

• V = “vowel”

• C = “consonant”

• Examples:

• “care”

• “fear”

• “wire”

Idears, Explained• But remember: in these dialects,

• /r/ appears as [r] whenever it precedes a vowel.

• So an /r/ appears as [r] at the end of words like “care”, “fear” and “wire”…

• when they appear before other words which start with vowels.

• Examples:

“care a lot”

“fear I had”

“wire a house”

Psychological Reality• When a child is learning to speak a non-rhotic dialect, “idea” looks no different from “care”, “fear” or “wire”

• It normally ends with

• it gets interpreted as /ajdir/ “idear”

• The /r/ will surface whenever it appears before a word that begins with a vowel: “an idear I had”.

• Psychological (phonemic) representations of the same word are different between dialects:

• non-rhotic: /ajdir/

• rhotic:

Other Evidence• Speech errors provide more evidence that things are going on inside the mind that we can’t observe directly, in physical reality.

• “Slips of the tongue”

• Examples:

“stick in the mud” “smuck in the tid”

“gone to seed” “god to seen”

• Both errors exhibit metathesis.

• = two sounds have switched places with each other.

Example Error• “stick in the mud” “smuck in the tid”

• error: phonemic and have switched places.

• Phonetically:

•

• Notice: in the error, the /t/ in “tid” is aspirated.

• The aspiration rule has to apply after the switch.

• Speech error process:

• First, phonemes switch

• Then, phonological rules apply…