Chapter 4 The Sound Patterns of Language

 Chapter 4 The Sound Patterns of Language 

1 Phonology 

Phonology helps us understand how languages use sounds to build words and meaning.

Phonology cares about the core unit, the basic building block, of each sound in a language. These building blocks might be pronounced differently depending on the situation. For instance, the "t" sound in "tar," "star," "writer," "butter," and "eighth" all represent the same unit in phonology, even though they might sound a little different when spoken because of the sounds around them.

2 Phonemes 

The individual sounds in a language that can change the meaning of a word are called phonemes. Learning letters isn't just memorizing symbols. We're actually using our understanding of phonemes, the basic sound units, to connect sounds with written letters 

Notice:  The /t/ sound itself is like a category, and all the various ways we say "t" in speech are considered examples of that category

What makes a sound a phoneme is that it can change the meaning of a word

EXP:

fat and vat 

/f/ voiceless labiodental fricative

/v/ voiced labiodental fricative 

You can say that /f/ and /v/  are two different sounds in English because replacing one with another makes a semantic difference. It means that /f/ and /v/ are different phonemes

Natural Classes 

The manner and place of articulation can be seen as a feature of distinguishing each phoneme. Since these two sounds have some features in common, linguists sometimes group them together as a natural class of phonemes    

3 Phones and Allophones

• If phonemes are the sound type in mind, phones are the different version of phonemes in actual speech, which are phonetic units, in square bracket “[ ]”.

• An allophone is a set of phones, all of which are versions of one phoneme 

EXP: the sound /t/ in “tar” has a stronger puff of air than the sound /t/ in “star” but it still has the same phoneme /t/. This aspirated phone is represented more precisely as [tʰ]

Notice: the [t] sound between vowels in a word like writer often becomes a flap, which we can represent as [ɾ]. That’s another phone

The big difference between phonemes and allophones is when you change one phoneme by another( like /p/ for /b/) it can change the word but if you change one allophone by another it changes the pronunciation of the word.

Complementary Distribution  

When two different allophones of one phoneme, each used in different places in words, they are said to be in complementary distribution. 

EXP: 

tar and star

• In the word “tar “ the sound /t/ is in the initial position with aspiration ( puff of air) 

• In the word “ star” the sound /t/ is placed after another consonant in the initial position and never has the aspiration 

The place where an allophone occurs with or without aspiration never overlaps and so the different

pronunciations are in complementary distribution.

Minimal Pairs and Sets

Minimal Pairs: If two words sound almost the same but have different meanings because just one sound is different in the same spot, those words are called a minimal pair.

Minimal sets: Words are considered a minimal set if you can swap out a single sound (at the same spot in each word) to create different words

EXP:

4 Phonotatics

Phonotactics are the rules that state which sound sequences are possible in a language and which are not. 

For example, the words lig or vig is not contained in the minimal set of “big – pig – rig – fig – dig – wig” because they are not English words but our phonological knowledge of the pattern of sounds in English words would allow us to treat these forms as acceptable words and may be used in some future time 

However, these forms of words such as [fsɪɡ] or [rnɪɡ] exist in English because it does not obey the phonotactics  

5 Syllables 

A syllable must contain a vowel or vowel-like sound, including diphthongs

The basic elements of the syllable are the onset (one or more consonants) followed by the rhyme {nucleus (vowel)+coda(consonant)} 

open syllables: have an onset and a nucleus, but no coda

EXP: me, to, no

closed syllables: when a coda is present 

EXP: up, cup, at, hat 

Consonant Clusters

Both the onset and the coda can consist of more than a single consonant, also known as a consonant cluster

EXP: 

• consonant cluster onset (stop)

• consonant cluster coda (post)  

6 Coarticulation Effects

Coarticulation: the process of making one sound virtually at the same time as the next sound

Assimilation: the process whereby a feature of one sound becomes part of another during speech production 

EXP: Got to go => gotta go 

 

Nasalization: pronunciation of a sound with air flowing through the nose, typically before a nasal consonant

English phonological rule can be stated in the following way: “Any vowel becomes nasal whenever it immediately precedes a nasal.”

EXP 

“can”  [kæn] in “I can go” => [kəŋ] 

“and” [ænd] in “You and me” => [ən]

Elision: the process of leaving out a sound segment in the pronunciation of a word

Elison /t/ 

EXP: aspects [æspɛks] or he must be [himəsbi] 

Elison /k/

EXP: we asked him [wiæstəm]

Vowels also disappear through elision, with the result that sometimes a whole syllable may not be pronounced 

EXP: 

• [ɛvri] for every

• [ɪntrɪst] for interest

• [kæbnət] for cabinet

• [kæmrə] for camera

• [prɪznər] for prisoner 

• [spoʊz] for suppose