1. The sound patterns of language
Phonology
Chapter 5

2. This lecture There are systematic differences between:
What speakers memorize about the sounds of words.
The speech sounds that speakers produce when they utter.
What speakers store in memory about the sounds of language, and how they translate these patterns into speech sounds.. Phonology

3. Phonetics & Phonology
Phonetics -- What are the sounds? How are they made in the vocal tract?
Phonology -- How do sounds combine? How do they affect each other?

4. What is the difference between phonetics and phonology?
Phonetics deals with the physical properties of the elements of the sound system, e.g. how the sound is physically produced.
Phonology deals with the sound systems languages
How speech are organized into systems in different languages
How sounds are combined
The relation between them and how they affect each other.

5. Definition of Phonology
The description of the systems and patterns speech sounds in a language.
Concerned with abstract or mental aspects of speech sounds.
Phonetics- [t] a voiceless alveolar stop
Phonology- ‘tuck’, ‘stuck’, ‘cut’ and ‘duck’.

6. Phonology
What knowledge do we possess about the phonological rules in our language?
Which sound sequences might be a word in our language
thrim/blamp vs. gdit/rpukn
How to pronounce words we never heard before
Change foreign words to pattern like the words in our language
We know how to apply rules to words we never heard before

7. Phonemes and Allophones
Transcribe the following words
Top stop little kitten hunter
The [t] is different in each word.
[t] in ‘top’ is aspirated and non-aspirated in ‘stop’
American English [t] a flap in ‘little’
[t] in ‘kitten’ is a glottal stop
American English– there is no [t] in ‘hunter’

8. The phoneme
The smallest speech sound that distinguishes meaning. Its serves to create meaning differences, e.g. /t/ is different than /d/.
The phoneme is an abstract term, specific to a particular language.
It forms the structure of sound system in a language.

9. Phonemes Consonant chart lists phonemes in English
The terms that are used in creating the chart are called ‘features’ which are marked by sign + & -
E.g [b] + voice + bilabial +stop
[s] – voice + alveolar + fricative

10. Phonemes /p/ [- voice, + bilabial, + stop]
/k/ [- voice, + velar, + stop]
Natural class.
Sounds that have features in common behave phonologically in similar ways.

11. The allophone
Each phoneme may have different realisations depending on the context in which it is found.
the different articulations of /t/
/s/ in seen and soon.
‘seen’ is produced with spread lips, as /i/ follows.
‘soon’ is realised with rounded lips, to prepare for the following rounded vowel, /u/.
This second, rounded /s/ is a variation, or allophone of the phoneme.
Allophones are what we actually produce and hear.

12. Allophones of /t/ There are more [t]’s than you know
Example: the [t] in time is aspirated, but that in stop is not.
aspiration= pause + air release prior to next sound
All these are allophones of the phoneme /t/.
These differences are usually expressed using phonological rules.
word
transcription
context 1
stop
[stɔp]
After [s] 2
time
[tʰajm]
Syllable initial 3
butter
bʌɾər
Between vowels

13. Phonemes and allophones

14. The difference between a phoneme and an allophone
If one allophone is exchanged with another, e.g. if seen is produced with lip rounding, the word, while perhaps sounding a bit strange, is still comprehensible.
If one phoneme is swapped with another, e.g. seen is produced with a /b/, instead of a /s/, the meaning of the word changes- they function contrastively

15. Finding Phonemes minimal pairs of words
A minimal pair is a pair of words that have different meanings and which differ in only one sound.
Here is an example from English:
Sip [sɪp]
Zip [zɪp]

16. Minimal pairs Four golden rules for minimal pairs:
They must have the same number of sounds
They must be identical in every sound except for one
The sound that is different must be in the same position in each word
The words must have different meanings
Hit, hid & his minimal set

17. Phonotactics Constraints on the sequence or position of phonemes
Permitted arrangements of sounds.
Phonological knowledge of the pattern of sounds in English will allow you to find some combination of sounds as acceptable and some as not.
e.g lig, vig but not fslg or nglsb

18. Syllables and clusters
Syllable: a phonological unit that contains more than one phoneme
Syllables must contain a vowel or a vowel like consonants (w, j).
Open syllables (me, no) vs. closed syllables (Sam, dip).
Consonant cluster?
In English: CCV flat CCCV stress
Differs from one language to another.

19. Co-articulation
Our talk is often fast and spontaneous; articulators move from one sound to another without stopping.
Co-articulation: one sound becomes more like its neighboring sound.
Assimilation & elision

20. Assimilation
A rule that makes neighboring sounds similar by spreading a phonetic property from one sound to another
Ease of articulation
E.g. nasalized vowels occur before nasal sounds man vs. map / bob vs. bomb

21. Assimilation Another example I can go [ajkəŋgo]
The velar sound [g] will almost make the preceding nasal sound come out as [ŋ] (velar nasal) rather than the alveolar nasal [n]

22. Elision Note the [d] in “you and me” or in “friendship”
The [d] is usually omitted in spoken English elision

23. Key terms Phonology Phonemes & allophones Minimal pairs and sets
Phonotactics
Syllables
Co-articulation effects