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The Goals of Phonology:

The Goals of Phonology:. to note and describe the sound patterns in language(s). to detect and taxonomize (classify) general patterns. to explain these patterns. ‘Sound Patterns’ = any behavior of speech sounds:. the nature of the units in speech (e.g., phones, syllables, words ).

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The Goals of Phonology:

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  1. The Goals of Phonology: • to note and describe the sound patterns in language(s) • to detect and taxonomize (classify) general patterns • to explain these patterns

  2. ‘Sound Patterns’ = any behavior of speech sounds: • the nature of the units in speech (e.g., phones, syllables, words) • their inherent structure (e.g., alveolar, voiced, glottalized, high F2) • patterns of languages’ sound inventories (= paradigmatic constraints) • patterns of sound sequences (= syntagmatic constraints) • contextual variation in phonemes or other units • systematic phonetic variation in related morphemes (“morphophonemics”) • patterns in sound change • patterns in how speech sounds are acquired (in 1st and 2nd language learning) • patterns in misperception of sounds

  3. ‘Explain’ = reduce the unknown to the known. In other words, take a puzzle and solve it by referring to things already known or knowable. E.g., to explain thunder and lightning by attributing it to action of angels requires that we accept the existence of angels. This replaces one unknown by another unknown. It is not an explanation (pending proof that angels do exist). Citing ‘gravity’ as the cause of objects falling and planets orbiting around other celestial bodies is not an explanation (and Newton recognized this and worried about it). What is this thing ‘gravity’? Just a label until it can be reduced to previously known entities.

  4. Anatomy Production Aerodynamics Perception Shape-Sound Mapping Where are the explanations to be sought? • Phonetics • Psychology • The context in which language and speech are used: the task constraints, society, culture

  5. Tasks in the phonological analysis of a language • Phonetically transcribe language data spoken by a native speaker • Obtain a list of all the sounds used in the data (cons, vowels) • Classify the sounds (with the help of the IPA) • Make a list of how sounds are combined into words (CV,VCV, etc.) • Describe the sound pattern of the language (cons system, cons processes, phon rules, derivations)

  6. Key terms: • Contrast = two words show meaning difference as a result of a sound difference at the same point in the words • Complementary distribution = a condition in which two sounds occur in different phonetic environments • Environment = class of sounds and boundaries which surround a particular sound being investigated • Phonetic similarity = condition in which sounds share certain phonetic properties in common • Phoneme/lexical form = a basic sound which may or may not have phonetic variants (learned/unpredictable) • Allophone/phonetic form = variation of a phoneme (predictable/rule-governed)

  7. Complementary distribution • Assumptions in phonological analysis • All the sounds found in a data is representative of the all possible sounds (this can be revised as we encounter more data (eg. Jamaican Creole • We compare words which show pairs of phonetically similar sounds. • The aim is to determine if such sounds are different phonemes or variations of the same phoneme (example (1) in (Jensen, p.38) • If they occur in different environments and we can account for their distribution in those environments by rule, then they are allophones of the same phoneme

  8. Procedures in establishing phonemic status • Draw a table in which the two sounds being compared are charted • Charting an environment of a sound means stating the class of sounds or boundary in which each sound occurs (Jensen p. (2), table 2) • If we observe from the chart that where one sound occurs the other does not, and we can safely say that the occurrence of the each sound is conditioned or determined by the environment, then: • We will propose that the two sounds are in complementary distribution • If the sounds are in complementary distribution, then they will re referred to as allophones of the same phoneme • Note that there are some cases that two sounds may be different phonemes, but occur in different environments. These sounds are usually not phonetically similar

  9. Complementarity of sounds • Distribution of allophones are governed by (a) rule(s) (the rule tells us where each one can be found at any point in time when we encounter them in words • How do we choose the basic sound (phoneme/lexical rep). We can answer this by looking at the environments in which these sounds occur. • Choose the one that occurs in the greatest environments (states the rules that derive from that sound) • Your rule should be stated in the simplest form

  10. Coincident distribution • Two sounds which occur at the same point in an identical environment = meaning difference • The two words constitute a minimal pair • The only differing sounds in the two words are phonemes • Venn diagram ( Jensen p. 45 fig. 16)

  11. Overlapping distribution

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