Exam 2 Study Guide - The Study of Language | LING 2100, Study notes of Linguistics

Download Exam 2 Study Guide - The Study of Language | LING 2100 and more Study notes Linguistics in PDF only on Docsity! LING2100_Phonology_Study Guide 1 Phonology The way native speakers (mentally) react to the “behavior” of speech sounds in their language. This is a speaker-oriented definition of phonology. A typical textbook definition would make reference to the organization of speech sounds, i.e., their patterning and distribution within a language specific system. Phonetics, the study of concrete speech sounds, complements and at the same time contrasts phonology in the sense that phonology is a scientific (systematic) attempt at making sense out of the seemingly random and complex information that is available “on the surface” (i.e., out of the variable phonetic signal). This is traditionally modeled via phonological rules. The seemingly random and complex but ‘tangible’ phonetic information on the surface is thus modeled to be the output of the phonological rules that are argued to exist in the mind of a speaker. The input to the phonological rules is argued to consist of abstract and categorical (i.e., invariable) mental entities. Phoneme An abstract unit of the underlying phonological system located in the mind. The inventory of the underlying phonemes of a language is established by means of patternings, or systematic relationships, of speech sounds in a language. A phoneme seems to be an absolutely indispensable theoretical construct of any phonological analysis. In the traditional one (the one we are doing in class), it represents a relatively simple, manageable, and in a certain sense “static” underlying input to the phonological rules that straightforwardly map it onto the complex surface phonetic output which is in a very real sense “dynamic” and hardly manageable as such. The phonemic status of a segment is marked by slants, e.g., /s/ represents the phoneme ‘s’ (i.e., voiceless alveolar fricative) in the mind of a speaker. Allophone A concrete physical realization of a phoneme or a predictable surface sound of a language, i.e., the one which is spoken. The allophonic status of a segment is marked by square brackets, e.g, [s] represents the actual (surface) pronunciation of the allophone ‘s’ (i.e., the actual or potential physical articulation of a voiceless alveolar fricative). This is the “dynamic” level at which there exists a staggering diversity, the scientific fact being that no two speakers pronounce their speech sounds in the same way. What is more, a single speaker is really not able to reproduce the exactly same sound twice. This is in direct contradiction to the most natural intuitions speakers have about language. In phonological theory, this intuition is explained by making reference to phoneme, a kind of a mental template for an allophone. LING2100_Phonology_Study Guide 2 The allophones of a phoneme form a set of sounds that 1) do not change the meaning of a word, 2) are all phonetically quite similar to one another, 3) occur in phonetic contexts different from one another; cf. Complementary distribution. The differences between allophones can be stated in terms of phonological rules. Phonological rules make the distribution of the allophones of a phoneme predictable. Distribution The set of phonetic environments in which a speech sound occurs. If two sounds are found in different phonetic environments (or positions, or contexts), they are distributed differently. There are several (logical) ways in which the distribution of two (or more) speech sounds can be related: they might have exactly the same distribution, overlapping distribution, or disjoint distribution. Notice that the same distribution and overlapping distribution can be either contrastive or noncontrastive, whereas disjoint distribution can only be noncontrastive. This is because the terms contrastive and noncontrastive refer to a slightly different aspect of distribution, the one having to do with the cognitive meaningfulness of the sounds (i.e., their phonemic status), while the same, overlapping, and disjoint distributions solely refer to logical, strictly speaking non-linguistic, aspects of distribution that I believe were simply adopted from mathematical theory. Contrastive distribution Two speech sounds are in contrastive distribution when interchanging the sounds in the same position is cognitively meaningful, i.e., it changes the meaning of a word (or creates a new, potential word of a language, e.g., the contrast between ‘one’ vs. ‘wug’ points to the fact that [n] and [g] represent two different phonemes of English, namely /n/ and /g/, respectively). In traditional phonology this interchanging is sometimes referred to as a minimal pair test. What contrastive distribution and the minimal pair test unmistakably imply is that the two speech sounds are unpredictable in the phonological sense, i.e., the “correct” sound has to be retrieved from the native speaker’s memory where it is arbitrarily associated with a particular meaning; the “correct” sound is NOT a result of a phonological(ly predictable) rule. Noncontrastive distribution A pedantic way of classifying complementary distribution and free variation into one category. Complementary distribution Ignoring all the details below, the two sounds are in complementary distribution if they do not occur in the same phonetic environment. Otherwise a subtype of disjoint distribution (i.e., the sounds do NOT occur in the same position) in which the set of the two positions is exhaustive. LING2100_Phonology_Study Guide 5 Minimal pair A pair of words (that have different meanings) whose pronunciations differ by exactly one sound in the same position. The minimal pair test is a simple technique of establishing which speech sounds are contrastive (i.e., used to differentiate words) in a language. If the sound substitution causes differences of meaning (i.e., creates a new word), the sounds are said to be in contrastive distribution or to represent allophones of different phonemes. In other words, if the sounds are contrastive, they CANNOT be ‘the same,’ (i.e., they cannot be one and the same phoneme in the mind of a speaker). Phonological processes Classification of phonological rules according to the kind of process they involve. Assimilation Quite intuitively: Changing one sound into another because of the influence of the neighboring sounds, as in the change of underlying /n/ to [ŋ] in ink [ɪŋk] (cf, nasal place of articulation assimilation) or of underlying /z/ to [Ω] in does she? [d√Ωßi] (cf. palatalization). More accurately: Making a feature or a bundle of features of a segment more “similar” to the feature or the bundle of features of another segment. Palatalization A special type of assimilation in which a consonant becomes like a neighboring palatal (or front vowel). Place of articulation assimilation A segment assimilates to the place of articulation of a following segment. Dissimilation A phonological process by which two close or adjacent sounds become less alike with respect to some feature, by means of a change in one or both sounds. E.g., It. veleno(so) ‘poison(ous)’ < L. VENEN(OS)U (Cf. ‘venomous’). Insertion A process which causes a segment not present at the phonemic level to be added to the phonetic form of a word. E.g., dance, strength, something; cents:sense. Deletion Eliminates a sound that was present at the phonemic level. E.g., Russ. /mest-o/ ‘place’ + /nɨj/ ADJ-suffix → [mesnɨj] ‘local.’ NE. signature : sign; soft : soften Metathesis Changes the order of sounds. E.g., Sp. palabra ‘word’ < VL. PARABOLA ‘fable,’ cf. It. parola. NE. axed ‘asked’ Fortition (Strengthening) Makes sounds “stronger.” Aspiration A type of fortition. A period of voicelessness after the release of an articulation, as in English /pɪt/ [p h ɪt h ]. Lenition (Weakening) Makes sounds “weaker.” Flapping A type of lenition. An articulation in which one articulator, usually the tip of the tongue, si drawn back and then allowed to strike against another articulator in returning to its rest position. Cf. wri[‰]er : ri[‰]er; Are they different? Multiple rule application cat-s, dog-s, horse-s LING2100_Phonology_Study Guide 6 /kæt+z/→ [kæts], /døg+z/→[døgz], /høɹs+z/→[høɹsəz] 1) Schwa insertion rule: insert schwa between two sibilants {s, z, ß, Ω, tß, dΩ} /kæt+z/→ *[kætz], /døg+z/→[døgz], /høɹs+z/→[høɹsəz] 2) Voicing assimilation rule: /-z/ takes on the voicing specification of the preceding consonant: /kæt+z/→ [kæts], /døg+z/→[døgz], /høɹs+z/→[høɹsəz] Notice that the ordering of the rules is important; different ordering “predicts” wrong results. 1) Voicing assimilation rule: /-z/ takes on the voicing specification of the preceding consonant: /kæt+z/→ [kæts], /døg+z/→[døgz], /høɹs+z/→[høɹss] 2) Schwa insertion rule: insert schwa between two sibilants {s, z, ß, Ω, tß, dΩ} /kæt+z/→ [kæts], /døg+z/→[døgz], /høɹs+z/→*[høɹsəs] Syllable A unit of speech for which there is no satisfactory definition. Syllables seem to be necessary units in the mental organization and production of utterances. The analysis or model of a syllable presented in class implies that syllable has an internal hierarchical structure with the nucleus node and the coda node subsumed under rime (or rhyme). The onset is a sister to the rime node. Sonority The loudness of a sound relative to that of other sounds with the same length, stress, and pitch. Based on their sonority sounds can be arranged on a scale from the least to the most sonorous: stops > fricatives (affricates) > nasals > liquids > glides > vowels Sonority sequencing generalization In any syllable, there is a segment constituting a sonority peak that is preceded and/or followed by a sequence of segments with progressively decreasing sonority values (cf. sonority scale).