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PHONOLOGY:THE SOUND PATTERNS OF
LANGUAGE
by Don L. F. Nilsen
and Alleen Pace Nilsen
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MINIMAL PAIRS
CONTRASTIVE DISTRIBUTION: Pronounce the following minimal pairs: “bit,” “beat,” “bet,” “bat,” “bite,” “bought,” “but,” and “bout”
In these words, the vowel sounds are in exactly the same phonetic environment, preceded by a /b/ and followed by a /t/.
Since only the vowel is changing, then the changing of the vowel must be making the difference in distinguishing these different words.
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COMPLEMENTARY DISTRIBUTION
Now consider these minimal pairs in English: “then-den,” “lather-ladder,” and “breathe-breed.” In English /ð/ and /d/ are in contrastive distribution.
(Fromkin Rodman Hyams [2011] 275-278)
But in Spanish, /ð/ and /d/ are in complementary distribution. /ð/ always occurs between vowels and /d/ never occurs between vowels.
In the Spanish word “duda” for example, the first <d> is pronounced /d/ and the second is pronounced /ð/.
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In Spanish, these two sounds never occur in the same phonetic environment, never allow there to be contrasting minimal pairs, and never make a real difference.
In Spanish, therefore, the difference between /ð/ and /d/ is said to be “phonetic,” but not “phonemic.”
Notice that in Spanish these two sounds are spelled with the same letter of the alphabet, <d>.
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NATURAL CLASSES OF SOUNDS:NASALS
/m/ /n/ and /η/ are in a natural class called nasals. Natural classes are important so that linguists can make generalizations, like “In English, vowels become nasal in the environment of nasal consonants.
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/p/ /t/ and /k/ form the natural class of voicless stops. In English, voiceless stops are aspirated if they are followed by a stressed vowel and not preceded by /s/.
This makes sense because aspiration is a puff of air. This puff would occur after a stop. It would occur into a stressed syllable. If the consonant were voiced or if some of the air had leaked out because of a preceding /s/, the aspiration would be less pronounced.
ASPIRATION:
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VOICING
When Verbs add -ed to become past tense this ending becomes voiced if the preceding sound is voiced as in “planned” or voiceless if the preceding sound is voiceless as in “jumped.”
Since /t/ is not voiced and vowels are voiced, a /t/ between vowels often becomes voiced so that “latter” and “writer” are pronounced like “ladder” and “rider.”
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PALATALIZATION
When a word that ends with a /t/ is followed by a –ual, -ial, or -ion ending, the palatal vowel <y-> changes the /t/ sound into a /č/ sound.
addict addictionact actual or actionpart partial predict prediction
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STOPS BECOMES CONTINUANTS
Because /k/ is a stop, and vowels are continuants, an affix beginning with a vowel often changes /k/ to /s/.
critic criticize or criticismfanatic fanaticismromantic romanticism
This ability of the <c> to have two different pronunciations allows us to spell these words the same way even though they are pronounced diffently. The benefit of this is that it helps us to see that these words are in the same word-family even though the <c> part is pronounced differently.
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CONSONANT ASSIMILATIONFOR EASE AND SPEED
VERB 3rd sing pres ind: sings, hits
VERB past: buzzed, jumped
VERB past part: popped, killed NOUN plurals: cats, dogs
NOUN possessives: Mike's, Fred's
ADJ substantive: its, ours
PREFIX: (NOTE: im- assimilates as follows): illegal, immature, impotent, indelicate, irreligious
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CONSONANT DISSIMILATION: FOR CLARITY
VERB 3rd person singular present inddicative: buzzesVERB past tense: heatedVERB past participle: spotted
NOUN plural: horsesNOUN possessive: Max’sNOUN: belfry
ADJ: ignoble
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MORE CONSONANT ASSIMILATIONS
MODAL PLUS "HAVE" ASSIMILATION: coulda, mighta, shoulda, woulda
MODAL PLUS "TO" ASSIMILATION: gonna, hafta, hasta, supposta, useta
CONTRACTIONS: *ain’t, can’t, couldn’t, won’t, wouldn’t, shan’t, shouldn’t, *mayn’t, (mightn’t, mustn’t)
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DISSIMILATION AGAIN
“-al” is a suffix that changes a Noun into an Adjective, but when the Noun ends in /l/, dissimilation occurs:
“anecdotal” but “angular”“penal” but “perpendicular”“spiritual” but “similar”“venal” but “velar”
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VOWEL REDUCTION AND ASSIMILATION
BRITISH VOWEL REDUCTION: aluminum, laboratory, secretary
LONG AND SHORT GRADES: do-done, go-gone, nation-national, obscene-obscenity, punitive-punish, sign-signature, soup-supper
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vowel reduction and word stress
When a suffix changes a word from one Part of Speech to another, this suffix affects which syllables are stressed, and which are unstressed and can change to different vowel grades like schwa or short grade:
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analysis-analytic
compete-competition
maintain-maintenance
medicine-medicinal
phone-phonetic
solid-solidity
Talmud-Talmudic
telegraph-telegraphy
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HISTORIC PHONOLOGY REFLECTED IN SPELLINGS
TRACES: ic-ich-I, knight, hostel-hôtel- hotel, scribere-écrire-scribe
DOUBLETS: chief-chef, dish-discus, hotel-hostel, ship-skiff, shirt-skirt
GRIMM'S LAW: courage-hearty, corn-horn, decade-ten, dozen-twelve, dent-tooth, pedestal-footnote, padre-father, plate-flat, pyre-fire
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MORE HISTORIC PHONOLOGY REFLECTED IN SPELLINGS
GERMANIC UMLAUT: child, goose, man, mouse, woman (cf. book-beech)
GREEK RHOTOCISM: genus-generic; opus-opera
ENGLISH: schwa and silent e
ACRONYMS AS WORDS: AID, AIDS, BIRP, CREEP, GASP, MANURE, MASH, NOW, NUT, SAG, VISTA, ZIP
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FOREIGN INFLUENCES ON PHONOLOGY & SPELLING
BORROWINGS: chaise longue, cole slaw, frankfurter, hamburger, lingerie, rouge, schnitzel, wiener
BILINGUAL COGNATES: actual, embarazada, grocería, libraria, molestar, principio, (cf. blanket [white], porpoise [pig fish], puny [puis né], walrus [whale horse])
INDO-EUROPEAN ABLAUT: sing-sang-song
MODAL PAST-SUBJUNCTIVE: can-could, may-might, shall-should, will-would
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FINAL THOUGHTS FROM OGDEN NASH
The one-l lama,He’s a priest.The two-l llama, He’s a beast.And I will bet A silk pajamaThere isn’t any Three-l lllama.
In response to this poem one wit remarked, “A three-alarmer (three-l lllama) is a really big fire.”
Joseph, 21 Years of Age:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c3_GEPq9-o
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