Chapter 3 Phonology
l What is phonology?
n Phonology is the study of sound systems and patterns.
n Phonology and phonetics are two studies different in perspectives, which are concerned with the study of speech sounds.
n Phonology focuses on three fundamental questions.
u What sounds make up the list of sounds that can distinguish meaning in a particular language?
u What sounds vary in what ways in what context?
u What sounds can appear together in a sequence in a particular language?
l Phonemes and allophones
n A phoneme is a distinctive, abstract sound unit with a distinctive feature.
n The variants of a phoneme are termed allophones.
n We use allophones to realize phonemes.
l Discovering phonemes
n Contrastive distribution – phonemes
u If sounds appear in the same environment, they are said to be in contrastive distribution.
u Typical contrastive distribution of sounds is found in minimal pairs and minimal sets.
l A minimal pair consists of two words that differ by only one sound in the same position.
l Minimal sets are more than two words that are distinguished by one segment in the same position.
u The overwhelming majority of the consonants and vowels represented by the English phonetic alphabet are in contrastive distribution.
u Some sounds can hardly be found in contrastive distribution in English. However, these sounds are distinctive in terms of phonetic features. Therefore, they are separate phonemes.
n Complementary distribution – allophones
u Sounds that are not found in the same position are said to be in complementary distribution.
u If segments are in complementary distribution and share a number of features, they are allophones of the same phoneme.
n Free variation
u If segments appear in the same position but the mutual substitution does not result in change of meaning, they are said to be in free variation.
l Distinctive and non-distinctive features
n Features that distinguish meaning are called distinctive features, and features do not, non-distinctive features.
n Distinctive features in one language may be non-distinctive in another.
l Phonological rules
n Phonemes are abstract sound units stored in the mind, while allophones are the actual pronunciations in speech.
n What phoneme is realized by what allophones in what specific context is another major question in phonology.
n The regularities that what sounds vary in what ways in what context are generalized and stated in phonology as rules.
n There are many phonological rules in English. Take the following ones as examples.
l [+voiced +consonant] – [-voiced]/[-voiced +consonant]_
l [-voiced +bilabial +stop] – unaspirated/[-voiced +alveolar +fricative]_
l Syllable structure
n A syllable is a phonological unit that is composed of one or more phonemes.
n Every syllable has a nucleus, which is usually a vowel.
n The nucleus may be preceded by one or more consonants called the onset and followed by one or more consonants called the coda.
l Sequence of phonemes
n Native speakers of any language intuitively know what sounds can be put together.
n Some sequences are not possible in English. The impossible sequences are called systematic gaps.
n Sequences that are possible but do not occur yet are called accidental gaps.
n When new words are coined, they may fill some accidental gaps but they will never fill systematic gaps.
l Suprasegmental features
n Features that are found over a segment or a sequence of two or more segments are called suprasegmental features.
n These features are distinctive features.
n Stress
u Stress is the perceived prominence of one or more syllabic elements over others in a word.
u Stress is a relative notion. Only words that are composed of two or more syllables have stress.
u If a word has three or more syllables, there is a primary stress and a secondary stress.
u In some languages word stress is fixed, i.e. on a certain syllable. In English, word stress is unpredictable.
n Intonation
u When we speak, we change the pitch of our voice to express ideas.
u Intonation is the variation of pitch to distinguish utterance meaning.
u The same sentence uttered with different intonation may express different attitude of the speaker.
u In English, there are three basic intonation patterns: fall, rise, fall-rise.
n Tone
u Tone is the variation of pitch to distinguish words.
u The same sequence of segments can be different words if uttered with different tones.
u Chinese is a typical tone language.