English phonemes, their allophones and variants (Module 3). Sound symbols. Single
vowel symbols /i:/, /i/, /ə/, /u:/, /υ/, /a:/, and /ǽ/ - long and short vowels.
After having spent quite some time on phonetics and the different branches of it, we will now
turn our attention to its more theoretical counterpart, phonology. During one of our first joint
sessions, you have already briefly come across the two terms in opposition to each other in
connection with the defintion of consonants and vowels.
First task in developing a phonological description of a particular language:
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determine which sounds can convey a difference in meaning (same thing a child has to do
when beginning to learn a language and realize that, for example, there is a difference
between the words white and right)
when two sounds can be used to differentiate words, they belong to different phonemes
however: there may be small shades of sounds that cannot be used to distinguish words,
e.g. differences between the consonants at the beginning and end of the word pop (puff of
air vs. no puff of air; opening of lips vs. no opening of lips) -- both belong to the same
phoneme
NOTE: phoneme not a single sound, but usually a group of sounds
phonemic transcription (or broad transcription) = records only those sound variations
that cause a difference in meaning (vs. allophonic or narrow transcription)
Phonetic variability
Speech does not simply consist of a string of target articulations linked by simple movement
between them. In fact, articulation of individual sound segments is almost always influenced by
the articulation of neighboring segments, often to the point of considerable overlapping of
articulatory activities. Phonetic variability is due not just to differences among individual
speakers, but very often also to the phonetic context (context sensitivity). However, those
variations usually do not pose any difficulty to a listener - in fact, variations can be decoded with
apparently unconscious ease.
Examples of context-sensitive variation:
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nasalization of oral vowels if preceding a nasal consonant (as in sand, can't, bend)
palatalization of [s] when preceding a [j] -- turns into [ʃ] (as in this year, tissue)
peripheral vowels may become centralized, esp. in rapid speech if unstressed (vowel
reduction towards [ə])
There are three types of assimilation:
1. assimilation of place (as in ratbag or oatmeal -- [t] often realized as [p])
2. assimilation of manner (as in Indian pronounced as [ɪnʤən] -- stop [d] and approximant
[j] merge to form an affricate [ʤ])
3. assimilation of voicing (as in have to -- [v] often realized as [f], assimilating to unvoiced
[t])
Yet another special case: Elision - instance of complete sound deletion, e.g.
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in consonant clusters, such as facts (deletion of [t]) or fifths (deletion of [θ]) -- to ease the
articulation process
when unstressed, the word and often loses its [d]
entire unstressed syllables are often elided from longer words, such
as Februaryand library
Phonemes and Allophones
Phonemes
Contrastive systems range in complexity from languages with less than 20 distinctive consonants
and vowels to languages with 60 or more. English, depending on the particular dialect, has up to
24 consonants and up to about 20 vowel sounds (Warlpiri (=Australian Aboriginee language):
only 3 distinctive vowel sounds -- /a/, /i/, and /u/).
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phoneme = contrastive/distinctive sound within a particular language (notation: /…/)
allophone (also variant) = sound which counts as an alternative way of saying a
phoneme in a particular language (notation: […])
Examples:
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English /r/ may be realized as [r], [ɹ], etc. (different realizations of /r/ do not cause a
change in meaning, contrary to, e.g., Spanish (e.g. pero (= but) vs. perro (= dog)))
Warlpiri /a/ may be realized as [ɒ], [æ], etc. (in Warlpiri, different realizations of /a/ do
not cause a change in meaning, contrary to, e.g., English)
English /n/ and its allophones:
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[n̪] - dental by assimilation before a dental fricative, e.g. tenth, month
[n:] - lengthened before a voiced obstruent in the same syllable such as [d], [z], or [ʤ],
e.g. tend, tens, plunge
[n] - normal quality elsewhere, e.g. net, ten, tent
NOTE: [ŋ] not relevant here because this sound exists as a distinctive phoneme in the
English sound system, e.g. in sin vs. sing, ban vs. bang)
In sum - Two views of the phoneme:
1. functional: focus on differences in pronunciation which have an effect on the meaning of
a word; phonemes = sounds that serve to differentiate words from each other, cf. as
in minimal pairs* such as red vs. led, real vs. zeal
2. phonetic: focus on actual pronunciation of phonemes (demands narrow phonetic
description) and phonetic variability within a single phoneme; phonemes = set of related
sounds (phones) -- if a phoneme has more than one variant: phoneme consists of a set of
allophones standing in complementary distribution
* minimal pair = word pairs whose sound structures are identical except one minimal
difference, a single sound segment that occurs in the same place in the string -- the substitution
of one for the other makes a different word, e.g. crick and creek (all the possible variations crick, creek, crook, croak, crake, crack and crock - constitute a minimal set)
Task 2:
Decide whether the following pairs of words are minimal pairs or not and give reasons!
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Oma : Opa
Rand : Rat
Rad : Rat
bitten : bieten
Rosen (pronounced with an alveolar trill) : Rosen (pronounced with an uvular trill)
Buch : Bücher
dir : Tier
Rasen : rasen
Sache : Sachen
Milch : mild
blau : Bau
Weg : Steg
chunk : hunk
Allophones
In general: allophones = conditioned variants of a phoneme; generated by phonological
conditioning(= a matter of language-specific 'rules of pronunciation')
Examples of allophones:
/a/
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[a]̃ before a nasal consonant (Engl. can't (RP))
[a] elsewhere
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[g] between two voiced sounds (in languages where there is no difference between voiced
and voiceless sounds, e.g. many Australian Aboriginal languages)
[k] elsewhere
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[ŋ] before a velar consonant (Span. banca, mango)
[n] elsewhere
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[ð] between two vowels (Span. Toledo; see also Span. realizations of /b/ and /g/ as
in Cuba and Diego -- weakening from plosive to fricative manner)
/k/
/n/
/d/
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[d] elsewhere
In most of the above examples, it is rather easy to point to the conditioning factors responsible
for allophonic variation. However, note that these tendencies do not yield identical consequences
in all languages! Furthermore, some instances of allophonic variation cannot be explained that
easily.
Example from Korean:
/r/
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[r] word-initial or intervocalic
[l] elsewhere
Problematic here:
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'similarity' of [r] and [l] not easy to justify
note, however: [r] and [l] prone to confusion even in the English language, as
inmeteorological, corollary, irrelevantly, etc.
Another allophonic adjustment in English:
/l/
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[ɫ] post-vocalic (dark /l/ - velarized by raising of the back of the tongue towards the soft
palate)
[l] elsewhere (pre-vocalic)
Note that ...
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in extreme cases (dialects of London, South Australia) the raising of the back of the
tongue virtually creates an [u] vowel
type of assimilation not found in many of the world's languages (cf. German kalt,
Italian caldo)
The range of allophonic variation encountered in natural languages means that it is not easy to
predict which sounds can or cannot be allophones of a single phoneme.
Phonemic norms: Phoneme & Allophone - Which one should be which?
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allophones = variations from a norm (the phoneme)
frequently, one of all allophones suggests itself as the normal value/phoneme
Examples:
1. if English /w/ is voiceless after voiceless plosives (e.g twin, quit), and voiced elsewhere
(i.e. under all other circumstances), then /w/ (rather than /w̥/) is the phoneme
2. if the two allophones of a single phoneme are [ŋ] before a velar consonant, and [n]
elsewhere, then /n/ (rather than /ŋ/) is the phoneme
3. if the two allophones of a single phoneme are [a]̃ before a nasal consonant, and [a]
elsewhere, then /a/ (rather than /a/̃ ) is the phoneme
Free variation
Free variation vs. complementary distribution:
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complementary distribution = allophonic variation dependent on the phonetic
environment the phoneme occurs in (e.g. [ɫ] vs. [l] in English)
free variation = allophonic variation independent of the phonetic environment the
phoneme occurs in; random interchangeability