Phonological rules
LING 200
Spring 2006
Foreign accents and borrowed words
• Borrowed words
– often pronounced according to phonological
rules of borrowing language
• Foreign accents
– result from application of native language
phonology to target language phonology
– especially if language learned as adult
Spanish loans into English
Spanish
in English
[pAres]
Padres
[phAdez]
[tAko]
taco
[thAko]
[burito]
burrito
[bio]
[sAndjeo]
San Diego
[sndiego]
[r] = alveolar trill
[] = voiced velar fricative
[] = retroflex
approximant; [] =
alveolar flap
The original
shibboleth
• Judges 12:5-6
Some types of phonological rules
•
•
•
•
Assimilation (cf. phonetic coarticulation)
Dissimilation
Deletion
Epenthesis
Examples of phonological rules
• Assimilation
– Mohawk Voicing
– Nasal Assimilation in Italian (and many other
languages)
– Korean s-palatalization
Witsuwit’en
[] and [] after non-lowering consonants
[q] = voiceless uvular stop; [q’] = uvular ejective; [ch] = voiceless
aspirated palatal stop; [X] = voiceless uvular fricative; [] = voiceless
lateral fricative; [] = voiced uvular approximant; [m’] = glottalized nasal
[ntq] ‘up’
[tz] ‘driftwood’
[tilts] ‘she’s in a
rush’
[nX] ‘dark
birthmark’
[ipX] ‘it’s flooding’
[nq] ‘uphill’
[tltm] ‘it’s
pounding’
[tXcho] ‘blue
grouse’
[ns] ‘ahead’
[tin] ‘it’s slithering’ [ppt] ‘its abdomen’
[wepts] ‘it isn’t
rolling’
[nn] ‘it (cloth) is
moving’
[tq’aj] ‘cutthroat
trout’
[plm’] ‘its ice’
Witsuwit’en consonant chart
stops
labial
alveolar
palatal
labio-velar
uvular
glottal
p p’
t th t’
c ch c’
kw kwh kw’
q qh q’

ç
xw
X
h
j
w

affricates
ts tsh ts’
lateral
t th t’
fricatives
sz

lateral
nasals
m
n
approxima
nts
lateral
l
Dissimilation
• A sound becomes less similar to another sound
• An example from Sanskrit
• Phonetic background from Hindi
Sanskrit
Hindi
5 = retroflex
Laryngeal contrasts in Hindi
• [] = voiced retroflex stop
– [Al] ‘branch’
• [] = voiceless retroflex stop
– [Al] ‘postpone’
• [h] = voiceless aspirated retroflex stop
– [hAl] ‘wood shop’
• [] = (breathy) voiced aspirated retroflex stop
– [Al] ‘shield’
Dissimilation
Grassman’s Law (Sanskrit):
• Voiced aspirated stops/affricates are deaspirated
before another voiced aspirated stop/affricate.
•
C  C / ___ ... C
Grassman’s Law in Sanskrit
• [b] = voiced aspirated labial stop
• Rightmost voiced aspirate survives
/budjAte:/
[budjAte:]
‘is awake’
/bubo:dA/
[bubo:dA]
‘was awake’
• Rightmost voiced aspirate devoices and
deaspirates before [s] (a different phonological
rule); leftmost survives
/bo:dsjati/
[bo:tsjati]
‘will be awake’
Deletion
• Cree. An Algonquian language spoken in Canada
(B.C. to Ontario)
/pi:simw/
[pi:sim]
‘sun’
cf. /pi:simwak/
[pi:simwak]
‘suns’
• /w/  Ø / C ___ #
(# = edge of word)
Epenthesis
• Witsuwit’en
– No word can begin with //
– [h] epenthesized
– /tsh/ [htsh] (more narrowly, [htsh]) ‘he’s
crying’
• Tsek’ene
– No word can begin with //
– [] epenthesized
– /tsh/ [tsh] ‘he’s crying’
Epenthesis
• English
–
–
–
–
–
No word can begin with a vowel
[] epenthesized
uh-oh /o/ [o]
apple /æpl/ [æpl]
the apple /ð/ # /æpl/ [ðæpl]
Phonetics vs. phonology
phonetics
phonology
transcription
narrower as needed
typically broad,
streamlined
phonetic detail
explicitly represented
as needed
detail is predicted by
rule system
contrast
how is a particular
contrast realized?
what is contrastive?
sounds
what are articulatory,
acoustic, perceptible
properties?
how do sounds form
patterns, classes?
what are the
phonological rules?
Final thoughts about spoken
language phonetics and phonology
A clip from The Human
Language, vol. 3