Phonology, part 3

October 31, 2012

Solving Phonology Problems• Here’s a step-by-step way to walk through the process.

• Given two sounds in a language:

1. Determine their distribution.

• For every word in which you find the sound, write down the sounds that both precede and follow it.

2. Q: Are the two sounds ever found in the same phonetic environment?

3. A: Yes

• In that environment, do the two sounds form a minimal pair?

• If yes they are contrastive phonemes.

• If no they are in free variation.

Solving Phonology Problems4. If No--the sounds are never found in the same phonetic

environment--then:

• The two sounds are in complementary distribution.

• The sounds are allophones of the same phoneme.

5. Determine which allophone is basic, and which allophone is restricted.

• Basic allophone: found in the widest variety of phonetic environments.

• Restricted allophone: found in only a specific phonetic environment.

6. Write a rule that accounts for when you get one allophone vs. the other.

Solving Phonology Problems7. Phonological rules look like this:

• /basic allophone/ [restricted allophone] / Environment

• Oftentimes, the hardest part of a phonology problem can be figuring out what the phonetic environment is that conditions the phonological change!

Some More Data• There is an interesting rule regarding the production of /r/ in some English dialects.

• Compare Canadian English with English English

CE EE

“care”

“park”

“read”

“other”

“ride”

“carrot”

“cart”

• Do you see any patterns?

The Rules• In English English:

• /r/ appears as [r] when it precedes vowels

• Examples: read, carrot

• /r/ appears as when it appears at the end of a syllable or word

• Examples: care, other

• /r/ makes a preceding vowel long when it appears before a consonant in the same syllable

• Examples: park, cart

Rhotic vs. Non-Rhotic• Note: English is divided up between “rhotic” dialects and “non-rhotic” dialects

• rhotic: /r/ appears everywhere

• non-rhotic: /r/ disappears, sometimes

• Rhotic dialects:

• Canadian English, General American, Irish English, Scots English…

• Non-Rhotic dialects:

• English English, Australian English, some areas of the American South and East Coast…

Really, it does• Phonologists are not just making this stuff up for fun

• Interesting phenomenon:

• in non-rhotic dialects, /r/ sometimes appears in places where it doesn’t appear in rhotic dialects

• Ex: “I was thinking about an idear I had...”

• Q: Why on earth does that happen?

A Conundrum• Phonological rules look like this:

/Phoneme/ [Allophone] / Environment

(=Abstract) (=Observable)

• That means that, as linguists, we only see the allophones, on the (observable) surface.

• Q: How can we figure out what the phonemes are?

• (not to mention the rules?)

• Note: babies learning language have the same problem

Idears, Explained• In non-rhotic dialects,

words ending in /Vr/ surface as .

• Phonology notation note:

• V = “vowel”

• C = “consonant”

• Examples:

• “care”

• “fear”

• “wire”

Idears, Explained• But remember: in these dialects,

• /r/ appears as [r] whenever it precedes a vowel.

• So an /r/ appears as [r] at the end of words like “care”, “fear” and “wire”…

• when they appear before other words which start with vowels.

• Examples:

“care a lot”

“fear I had”

“wire a house”

Psychological Reality• When a child is learning to speak a non-rhotic dialect, “idea” looks no different from “care”, “fear” or “wire”

• It normally ends with

• it gets interpreted as /ajdir/ “idear”

• The /r/ will surface whenever it appears before a word that begins with a vowel: “an idear I had”.

• Psychological (phonemic) representations of the same word are different between dialects:

• non-rhotic: /ajdir/

• rhotic:

Other Evidence• Speech errors provide more evidence that things are going on inside the mind that we can’t observe directly, in physical reality.

• “Slips of the tongue”

• Examples:

“stick in the mud” “smuck in the tid”

“gone to seed” “god to seen”

• Both errors exhibit metathesis.

• = two sounds have switched places with each other.

Example Error• “stick in the mud” “smuck in the tid”

• error: phonemic and have switched places.

• Phonetically:

•

• Notice: in the error, the /t/ in “tid” is aspirated.

• The aspiration rule has to apply after the switch.

• Speech error process:

• First, phonemes switch

• Then, phonological rules apply…

Loanword Phonology• Another way to establish the “psychological reality” of phonology is to look at how sounds change in words that are “borrowed” from another language.

• In these cases, the “underlying” phoneme = the original sound.

• Ex: English words borrowed into Japanese

“sea food”

“cinema”

“Citibank”

“zip code”

“shepherd”

Pidgins• When speakers of different languages encounter each other, they have a variety of communication options:

• Use one of their native languages

• Use a “lingua franca” = a common second language

• Create a new language and use that

• Languages created in contact situations are known as pidgins.

• They tend to have a simplified grammar and lexicon.

• Historically, pidgins have often developed:

• in centers of trade

• through slavery

Creoles• When pidgins are acquired by children as their native language, they become creoles.

• Originally a pidgin, Hawaiian Creole emerged in a complex trade setting in the 1800s

• Hawaii’s economic draw was sugar cane

• Laborers were imported from China, Portugal, Korea, Japan, Russia, Puerto Rico, the Phillippines...

• While the English, Americans and Japanese battled for political control.

• An English-based pidgin developed as a means of communication between the different groups.

• Listen to a sample

• Also check out: http://www.pidginbible.org/

The Quick Write• Let’s check out the phonology of a small sample of Hawaiian Creole.

• What’s happening to the consonants here?