Linguistics 113 Handout 1

Colleen Richey 26 Aug 2003

Reading: Spencer Ch.1, pp1-10; Wolfram and Johnson Ch.1
Homework 1 will be handed out on Thursday August 28, due Thursday September 4


1. What is phonetics? What is phonology?
Phonetics and phonology both involve the study of the sounds of language.

Phonetics is the study of the physical aspects of speech sounds:
Articulatory phonetics how sounds are produced in the vocal tract
Acoustic phonetics the acoustics of sounds
Speech perception how sounds are perceived and interpreted by listeners

Phonology is the study of the patterningof sounds in languages
What sounds does a language use?
What are the relationships between the sounds?
What is the distribution of the sounds?

Phonology is like the grammar of sound for a language.

Example 1: Russian [ij and [ij

Phonetics: vowels, high tongue position, lips unrounded
[ij is a monophthong, high F2
[ij is a diphthong, rising F2 (really [mij)


b' i t' b i t'
iI'i or bit' tobe viI'i (they) led
iskrc spark b'it' tobeat staIi tables
im'c name sud'it' tojudge k5n'i horses
ivc willowtree din'c melon ini wife(gen.sg.)

ugcI corner ugIi corners
ugcI' coal ugIi coals
Iampc lamp Iampi lamps
p'csn'c song p'csn'i songs

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Phonology: [ij and [ij are similar sounds (high, unrounded vowels)
No word pairs exist that differ only in [ij and [i]
[ij occurs in the beginning, middle, and end of words
[ij occurs in the middle and end of words, never the beginning
[ij occurs after a palatalized consonant
[ij occurs after a nonpalatalized consonant


2. Phonemes and Allophones

When analyzing the above sound pattern in Russian, linguists say that in some abstract sense
[ij and [ij are the same sound. The actual physical differences in pronunciation depend on
the phonological context.

This abstract concept of a sound is called a phoneme. Phonemes form the basic sounds of
language - the building blocks that distinguish words from each other. The actual
pronunciations of a phoneme are called its allophones.

It doesnt really matter how we label a phoneme we could use any symbol (! " #) its
only an abstract representation of a sound. Typically, however, we use the symbol for the
allophone that is occurs in the most environments.

Russian has thephoneme/ i/ , which is pronounced as [ij after a nonpalatalized consonant and as
[ij elsewhere.

Example 2: Voiceless stops in Hindi

Hindi has the aspirated and unaspirated voiceless stops: [p, p, t, t, |, |, k, kj

paI takecareof paI edgeof knife
tan modeof singing tan roll of cloth
|aI postpone |aI placefor buyingwood
kan ear kan mime

Rule: If two words are pronounced differently, they must differ in at least one phoneme.
A pair of words that differ in only one sound is called a minimal pair.

Each line above is a minimal pair contrasting aspiration for each place of articulation. In our
analysis of Hindi we say that aspirated and unaspirated stops belong to different phonemes
(are in contrast).




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Example 3: Voiceless stops in English

English also has unaspirated and aspirated stops: [p, p, t, t, k, kj

spn span pn pan
stn Stan tn tan
skn scan kn can

[s k n j [ k n j

Unaspirated stops occur after [sj, but never at the beginning of a word.
Aspirated stops occur at the beginning of a word, but never after [sj.

When two similar sounds never occur in the same environment, they are in complementary
distribution. They are allophones (variants) of the same phoneme.

Unaspirated and aspirated stops in English do not contrast; they are allophones of the same
phoneme.


3. Summary
Phonetics is the physical description of sounds in languages.
Phonology is the system of sounds in languages.
Phonemes are the basic sound units of a language.
Sounds that contrast are separate phonemes.
Sounds that are in complementary distribution are allophones of the same phoneme.