Introduction to Russian phonology and word structure

1. Introduction to Russian phonology and word structure Ch 11: Phonemes and minimal pairs

2. Q&A • 1. What is the difference between a phoneme and a phone?

3. Q&A • 1. What is the difference between a phoneme and a phone? • A phone is a sound that can be measured and analyzed by machines. A phoneme is a basic sound in a language – it is an idea.

4. Q&A • 2. What information does a phonemic transcription capture? What does it ignore? What does this mean for Russian?

5. Q&A • 2. What information does a phonemic transcription capture? What does it ignore? What does this mean for Russian? • The phonemic system: • Captures all essential, meaning-distinguishing information • Ignores all automatic phonological phenomena • For Russian this means many things, like that consonant palatalization is phonemic, but vowel adjustments are not, that [i] and [] are one phoneme /i/, etc.

6. Notes on phonemes • We use minimal pairs to establish whether a sound can distinguish meaning, but we also use other practical judgments • Cf. the issue of [] and [h] in English • Note that phonemes are written between slashes: //

7. Q&A • 3. What is an allophone?

8. Q&A • 3. What is an allophone? • A conditioned variant of a phoneme • E.g., the vowel variants that we learned about in chapters 4 & 6, or the aspirated and unaspirated /k/ in English key and ski

9. Q&A • 4. If we have two allophones, how do we know which one is basic (which one is the phoneme)?

10. Q&A • 4. If we have two allophones, how do we know which one is basic (which one is the phoneme)? • Choose the one that • Occurs in a neutral environment (isolated or with no influences) • Is most frequent

11. Q&A • 5. What are all the allophones of /a/ and /i/?

12. Q&A • 5. What are all the allophones of /a/ and /i/? • Allophones of /a/ are: [a], [æ], [] • Allophones of /i/ are: [i], []

13. Q&A • 6. What are the differences between phonetic and phonemic transcription in Russian? Or: what distinctions does the phonemic transcription lack?

14. Q&A • 6. What are the differences between phonetic and phonemic transcription in Russian? Or: what distinctions does the phonemic transcription lack? • It lacks:  and  • Phonemically all a and o reduce to /a/, or to /i/ after a soft consonant and not in an ending • Soft velars are not phonemic, so we have only /k/, /g/, and /x/ • There is also no soft mark on /č/ because softness is not phonemic there

15. Q&A • 7. Some of the starred consonants in the exercise are on their way to becoming phonemes. Which ones and why?

16. Q&A • 7. Some of the starred consonants in the exercise are on their way to becoming phonemes. Which ones and why? • The soft velars. New words are bringing them into opposition with hard velars, making their existence independent of environment. This is what happened earlier to /v/ and /f/.

17. Just checking… • Are there any questions about the minimal pairs on pp. 83-85? Maybe we should go over these together…