Phonology

Linguistics: Phonology

1. PHONOLOGY:
-UseandOrganizationof
Speech Sounds-
Öğr. Gör. AYLİN AYDIN
WEEK 5

2. 1.WHAT IS PHONOLOGY
2. BASIC UNITS OF PHONOLOGY
3. BRANCHES OF PHONOLOGY

3. 1. WHAT IS PHONOLOGY

4. Despite the infinite variations which occur when we speak, all speakers of
language agree that certain utterances are the «same» and others are «different».
Phonology tells us why this is the case.
Note that, everyone who know sa language knows its phonology unconsciously.

5. PHONETICS
How are speech
sounds made?
PHONOLOGY
How are speech
sounds
classified?
PHONOLOGY is concerned with the abstract,
PHONETICS is concerned with the physical properties of sounds.
PHONOLOGY is study of sounds in context ,
PHONETICS is study of sounds in isolation.

7. Phonology deals with the following questions:
1.Why do related forms differ?
2.What is stored in the mind?
3.What sounds go together?
4.How are sounds organized into syllables?
5.What are the differences between languages?

8. 1. Why do related forms differ?
Sane—Sanity. Electric— Electricity/ Atom—Atomic
Phonology finds the systematic ways in which the forms differ and explains them

9. 2. What is stored in the mind?
Phonology studies abstract mental entities, such as structures and processes.
This contrasts with phonetics, which deals with the actual production and
acoustics of the sounds of language.

10. 3. What sounds go together?
Looks at what sounds/sound combinations are accepted and why.

11. 4. How are sounds organized into
syllables?
With the use of phonological trees syllables are broken up more easily.
Syllables are made up of a rhyme and an onset (any consonants before the rhyme).
The rhyme made up of a nucleus (the vowel sound(s) in the syllable, the key
component of all syllables) and a coda (any consonants following the nucleus).

12. 5. What are the differences between
languages?
For example, different languages can use different phonemes, or different
syllable structures (what sounds can go together to make sequences or words)
and phonology identifies these differences.

13. 2. BASIC UNITS OF PHONOLOGY

14. 1.PHONE
2.PHONEME
3.ALLOPHONE
4.MINIPAL PAIRS

15. Phone is a sound.
It is the smallest unit of sound.
The speech sounds we hear and produce are all phones.
It is represented with phonetic symbols.
i.e. [t]

16. PHONEME is a speech sound that signals a differencein meaning
i.e. dime
vsdine
They sound exactly alike but their meanings are different. It is
the /m/ and /n/ that made the difference in meaning.

17. Allophones are variations of the same phoneme.
/p/
[p] [ph]
Spit pit
phoneme
allophones

19. A minimal pair is a pair of words with ONE phonemic difference only.

20. SUMMARY

21. 3. BRANCHES OF PHONOLOGY

22. BRANCHES OF PHONOLOGY
A.SEGMENTAL
PHONOLOGY
B. SUPRASEGMENTAL
PHONOLOGY
1.Assimilation
2.Elision
3.Linking
4.Phonotactics
1.Word stress
2.Sentential stress
3.Tones

23. A. SEGMENTAL PHONOLOGY
Phonological rules are based on the observation of changes in the
character, quality, loss, or addition of sounds in the normal, natural use
of language.
When two words, or even syllables, interact at the boundary, three
main classes ofchange seem to occur:
These are;
1) changes in sound character= ASSIMILATION
2)loss of sounds=ELISION
3) addition of sounds=LINKING
4) Sound andphonemecombinations= PHONOTACTICS
all of which are features of segmental phonology.

24. 1.ASSIMILATION
Notethattheoverallphonologicalenvironmentofaword(orevena
seriesofwords)conditionstheexactwayinwhichdifferentallophones
ofaphonemearepronounced.
Abackvowel,forexample, mightcausethespeakersofaparticular
languagetoproduceafarther-backversionofaconsonant.Anasal
consonantmightinfluenceaneighbouringvoweltobeproducedwith
nasalization. Whenonesoundisdrawnclosertoanotherinthisway,
theprocessiscalledassimilation;onesoundissaidtohave
assimilatedtoanother.
Assimilationcancausesoundstoberaisedorlowered,voicedor
devoiced,aspiratedorunaspirated,andmore,dependingonthe
phonologicalenvironmentandthewayinwhichit“conditions”the
soundsaroundit.

29. Progressive assimilation works from left to right. That is, the assimilatedphoneme
comes after that which forces the assimilation process. Good candidates for this type
of assimilation are the past tense forms of verbs and plurals of nouns inEnglish.
meaning that
form and function
are the same ,
but pronunciation.

30. 2. ELLISION
‘elision’.

34. 3. LINKING
The sound /r/ functions as a linking device when two words, the first ending
in a vowel and the next beginning with a vowel, are spontaneously pronounced

35. 4. PHONOTACTICS
Phonotacticsis independent of syllable structure. The way
sounds in a language are grouped, clustered is known as
‘phonotactics’. Inother words, phonotactics is about the
possible phoneme combinations of alanguag
e.
Syllableisafundamentalbutelusiveunitinphonology.Every
wordconsistsofasequenceofsomenumberofsyllables,and
evenspeakerswithnoknowledgeofphoneticsoroflinguistics
usuallyfinditeasytoagreeonhowmanysyllablesaword
contains.
Forexample,weallagreethatgirlcontainonesyllable,that
buttercontaintwo,thatlinguisticscontainthree,that
educationcontainfour,andsoon.

36. Aword has as many syllables as the number of vowels it has. Then, the first
letter of English alphabet (a) is a syllable when used in the meaning of “one” or
“some”. A notation isuseful for a discussion of syllables here.
Vowels are abbreviated as (V) whileconsonants as (C).
Atypical syllableconsists of three main parts:
1. Onset (beginning sound)
2. Nucleus(center)
3. Coda (finalsound)
As such, the onset in the syllable penis /p/, the nucleusis /e/ and the coda is/n/.
PHONOTACTICS

37. PHONOTACTICS

38. PHONOTACTICS

39. B. SUPRASEGMENTAL PHONOLOGY
1. Word Stress
Stressiscontrastive; thatis,forawordtohavestress,ithastohavemorethan
onesyllable:onestressed,oneunstressed. Astressedsyllableisproduced
withgreateramountofenergythananunstressedone.Astressedsyllableis
spokenandheardlouderandlonger,sinceanextrapushingofairfromlungsis
involved. Clearly,themusclesonchest,lungs,andlarynxexpendmoreenergy
inproducingsuchsyllables.

40. Notethat, misplaced stresses can yieldunintended meanings
Word Stress

41. Depending on the syllable stressed, the syntactic function (e.g. noun, verb, etc.)
and meaning of a word may radically change
Word Stress

42. Dependingon where stress is, its noun or verb function can be determined.
Word Stress

43. “…the stress pattern of a word is an important part of its identity for the native
speaker. There is a great deal of evidence that native speakers rely very
muchon the stress pattern of a words when they are listening. In fact,
experimentshave demonstrated that often when a native speaker mishears a
word, it isbecause the foreigner has put the stress in the wrong place, not
because he or she mispronounced the sounds of the word.”
Word Stress

44. Word Stress

45. 3. SententialStress
An examination of quite a number of utterances (i.e. sentences) in English
(bothinBritishorAmerican),revealsthatalmosteveryutterancewillhaveamain
stress, located in one of its words. Such stress is known as ‘sentence stress’ in the
literature. Which word in the following sentence has the sentence stress?
I’m a student.
Your guess is right: it is on student . Because student has more than one
syllable, we need to take another step and identify the stressed syllable. Which
syllableinstudentgetsthestress?Theansweristhefirstsyllable:student
Under normal circumstances, words that carry higher information content in
the utterance are given higher stress than those carrying lower information as well
as those that are predictable from the context. It is generally the case that one word
isstressedmorethananyothersinceitpossessesthehighestinformationcontent
for an utterance in a discourse; stressed item informs the hearer most.

46. SententialStress
All words can be divided into two in view of what they do in asentence: content and function
words. Content words are nouns, verbs, adjectives,and adverbs while function words are articles,
prepositions, conjunctions, and modalauxiliaries.
Generally speaking, then, it is thecontent words that receive the sentential stress in English.
In other words, the items on the left hand column are (potentially) stressablein unmarked
utterances whereas the ones on the right column are not stressable inthe normal course of
speaking. What we have so far explained is in fact one of thefour types of sentence stress,
known as ‘tonic stress’.

47. Types of Sentence Stress
Four major types of stress are identified at the utterance level :
o Tonic Stress (i.e. Sentential),
o New Information Stress,
o Emphatic Stress, and
o Contrastive Stress.
SententialStress
•Tonic stress is characterized by reporting, proclaiming statements.
She dislikes lectures.
Show them how they can get out of the buil ding.
Both sentences have tonic stress, which are in content words at the
sentence initial position. Tonic stress is regarded as the unmarked sentential stress
as it is the most widespread one in English. The following three types of stress are
so-called marked stress types, as they deviate from the usual tonic stress.

48. •The second type of stress is called ‘New Information Stress’.
As the namesuggests, the new information in an utterance is stressed. New
information cantypically be found in the answers to wh -questions.
Consider the following in which new information stress is underlined:
A) Where are you from?
B) I’m from Bonn.
•The third type of stress is called ‘Emphatic Stress’, which can be common in
the so-called emphatic speeches. Emphatic stress can generally be seen on
emphatic reflexives such as himself and own
adverbs such as very, so, and such
emphatic words by nature such as indeed, terribly, and utterly.
I cook my owndinner.
She was so furious.
I’m terribly sorry.
SententialStress

49. The final type of stress is ‘Contrastive Stress’, which is used to show contrast
in the same sentence or across sentences.
Study the exchange below howcontrastive stress can be used:
A) How areyou?
B) I’m OK. How are you?
A) I’m not toobad.
The following is a SUMMARYof what is said so far in regards to the types of
sentential stress:
I. Tonic stress is almost always found in a content word in utterance final
position. It is usually found in reporting, declarative utterances.
II. New information stress is found in words that contain new information,
especially in question and answer exchanges.
III. Contrastive stress can be placed on any word that is contrasted in
discourse.
SententialStress

50. 3. Tones
Tones tend to
be universal