LING 100B

Jan 8 - PHONETICS

Outline:
- Transcription
- Sound Patterns
- Sound Changes
- Segments

Sociolinguistics
- [IPA is based on Latin alphabet, uses specialized symbols]
- Study of linguistics structures used in discourse and social roles/situations associated with them.
- How language is used in social context including how language varies across social context (different
people / different places)

Changes in:
- Words (Lexicon)
• Aunt vs Auntie (different words for the same thing)
- Pronunciation (Phonetics and Phonology)
• Caribbean, Toronto
- Morphology
• I seen it, he took it, ain’t/aren’t, got / gotten (past participle), you / y’all / you guys
- Syntax
• Intensifiers - e.g. very, really, totally, literally etc.

- Mutually Intelligible - often exists on a continuum.

• People speak different varieties / dialects of the same language.
• Language variation may arise from social circles, geographic location, class (status).
• Factors include age, gender, location, class, education and cultural background.

- Quotatives: use of ‘like’ in “She’s like: ‘I like pies’”

Jan 10

- Speech Community - group of people who speak to one another.

• Often interested in people who share ways of speaking e.g. terminology / slang
• Always involves variation in size.

- Speech Varieties - particular way of speaking language.

• We use variety instead of accent or dialect as these imply that accent or dialect varies from the norm.
• Code Switching can occur inside a language between dialects/accents and outside.
• Dialect Continua - e.g. Romance dialect continuum, Arabic dialect continuum.
- Swedish and Norwegian are not mutually intelligible. (One-sided).
• We consider mutually intelligible languages different languages due to political (non-linguistic) reasons
e.g. Political borders.
- Standard vs. Non-Standard Varieties
• Class, Level of Education, Age, Culture etc. are factors towards prestige.
• Education is normally standard and non-standard.
• But the standard form in writing is not isomorphic to the standard form in speech.
- e.g. whom (accusative case) in writing is rarely used in standard spoken English.

- SCE - Standard Canadian English

• Infinitive - ‘to go’. Can put an adverb or negation in between them (called split infinitive) . e.g. to not
go, to boldly go etc.
• You cannot split an infinitive in Latin. So people do not like it being used in SCE.
• Language attitudes are prevalent.

- Linguistic insecurity - when someone values a spoken variety other than the one they speak.
• Standard implies existence of non-standard varieties of English.
• Non-standard varieties linguistically are as correct as standard varieties.

- Matched-Guise Tasks
• Standard speakers are perceived as more intelligent, higher class, more educated and more correct.
• Nonstandard speakers are perceived as less intelligent, lower class, less educated but friendlier and
more pleasant.

Jan 15
- Limits to English Orthography:
• Many - 1: (Many to One)
- read / read. One spelling which corresponds to present and past tense (and different sounds)
• 1 - Many: (One to Many)
- to/too/two. One sound
- cache, shore, pressure, delicious, attention, tension. all make a ‘sh’ sound.
- Digraph - two symbols to represent one sound.
- Silent letters (e.g. silent e) is present for historical reasons.
• English has 5 vowel letters, but at least 12 vowel sounds.

- IPA developed by International Phonetic Association

• Standardized
• One sound = one symbol
• Can be used to transcribe any language
• Vowels tend to not be the same, but consonants tend to be the same as English.
• Vowels work better for European Languages e.g. French, German etc.

- [ ] represents transcription

- Phonetics - science of speech production and perception

• Articulatory phonetics - how speech production works
• Acoustic phonetics - how speech is perceived ie. ignoring acoustic data because of habituation.
- Air forced through vocal cords. These produce vibration (sound) which is modulated by pharynx, oral
cavity, and nasal cavity
which are three filters.

- Speech signal is analogue

(continuous).
- But our presentation of
speech is digital.
- Segments and Features
exist.

- Vowels shape the vocal

tract and are more sonorous.

- Consonants block (narrow) the vocal tract and are

less sonorous.

- Box corresponds to oral cavity.

• Imagine cross section of human mouth above.
• i is close to the front of the mouth at the top

- English vowels (everything except … ) can be:

• High / Mid / Low
• Front / Central / Back
• Tense / Lax (How tightly you hold your mouth)
• Rounded / Unrounded (Shape of your lips)

- Schwaa is unstressed vowel (mid-central)

- 3 Low values in IPA.
- MUST specify the a with hat or without (dipthong or monothong)

-True and fake diphthongs exist in English.

•We will write diphthongs using lax
vowels.
Jan 17
- Vocal Tract: larynx and above.
- Vowels involve shaping vocal tract.
• Distinguished by overall shape of oral cavity.
- Consonants involve blocking / narrowing of vocal tract.

Properties of Vowels:
- Rounded vs Unrounded vowels.
- Tense vs Lax
- Front/Centre/Back
- Height (High/Middle/Low)

- Also:
• Voiceless vowels, nasality (don’t need to know)

- [ɑ] is a low, back, tense, unrounded vowel.

- Tense vowels can end monosyllabic words.

• bee, bay, shoe, beau, spa.
- Lax vowels cannot end monosyllabic words.

Properties of Consonants:
- Consonant:
• Voicing
• Place of Articulation
• Manner of Articulation

- Closing vocal folds makes them vibrate to produce sound.

- As air comes out faster, vocal cords vibrate faster.

- Voiced vs voiceless consonants occur:

• sip vs. zip
• this (voiced) vs. thin (voiceless)

- Consonants:
• Stops:
- Oral (voiced or Voiceless). [p] & [b]
- Nasal (usually voiced) - air moves through as
velum moves out of the way.
 • Fricative: Oral tract is narrowed (air passes through noisily). [f] is labiodental.
• Affricate: Stop and Fricative next to another. Fudge: [dʒ]. Catch: [tʃ]
• Approximants: Closest to being like a vowel. Vocal tract is narrowed (ie the most sonorous)
- We describe English ‘r’ as [ɹ]. Non-english [r] is the rolled ‘r’.
- Liquids - involve some narrowing e.. [l] and [ɹ]
- Glides - essentially vowels that act like consonants.
• [j] (~ [i]) and [w] (~ [u])

- English consonants can be:

• Labial
- Bilabial: [p], [b], [m]
- Labiodental: [f], [v] (Note: this cannot stop air, ie. No labiodental stops)

• Interdental: [θ], [ð]

• Alveolar: [t], [d], [n], [s], [z]
• Alveopalatal: [ʃ], [ʒ], [tʃ], [dʒ].
• Velar: [k], [g], [ɲ]
• Glottal: [ʔ], [h]

- [w] - is a labiovelar glide

- English voiceless stops are regularly aspirated (puff of air goes with it)

- [ɛ]
- [ɹɛd]

Jan 22
- Consonant: voiced or voiceless
- Vowels:
- æ is front, low, lax and unrounded vowel.
- ɑ is back, low vowel.
- In California, front lax vowels move down.
- ɛ is open, front, mid, lax vowel.
- ŋ is velar, nasal (and thus voiced). Appears at the end of syllable/word.
- ʃ is voiceless, alveo-palatal, fricative.

- Voiceless stops in English are regularly aspirated.

- Some varieties produce aspirated stops - defined by phonetic context.
- A voiceless stop is aspirated when it is immediately before a stressed value at the beginning of a
syllable.

- Aspiration - extension of voicelessness into the vowel

- Also affects sonorant consonants (nasals, squids and rhotic)
- ‘trill’ vs ‘drill’/ ‘plead’ vs ‘bleed’ (breathy vs non-breathy consonant)

- Mark stress using ‘ or accent

- Use vertical line underneath consonant for sonorous consonant
- ә (*with r) or r-coloured schwa

Jan 24
- Broad Transcription - includes contrastive information (differentiate between morphemes)
- Narrow Transcription - precisely represents all details of articulation. (that does not differentiate between
words)

- Intonation - pitch contour of a sentence

• Declarative, Question, List, Contrast, Rise-fall-rise.
- Tone - pitch contour on a syllable.

Jan 29
- IPA developed for representing details that are more than needed to understand what they say (broad vs.
narrow transcription)
- English spelling is irregular due to complex history.
• Advantage to standardized English is that you can read the language across many different spoken
languages.

Feb 5 - PHONOLOGY
- Phonetics - accurately describe sound that occurs in language.
• Involves anatomy / acoustics of speech production and perception.

- Phonology - recognizing patterns of sounds

• Organization of sounds in a language
• Classifying patterns of sounds.
• Describing changes that sounds undergo.
• Some sounds distinguish words, others do not. e.g. [bɪt] vs [pɪt]
• Others cannot distinguish between words e.g [pɪt] vs. [pʰɪt]
• [b], [p] and [pʰ] are different sounds, however [p] and [pʰ] are the same sound in English.

- Phone - acoustic / articulatory sound.

• [p], [pʰ], [b] are all phones in English. [q] and [c] do not occur as phones in English.

- Phoneme - contrastive unit of sound (in English).

• [baɪ] (buy) and [paɪ] (pie) are minimal pairs in English (in terms of consonants)
• [baɪ] and [bɔɪ] are also minimal pairs. Minimal pairs allows distinguishing two morphemes from one
another.

- Allophones - a way of pronouncing a phoneme. Allophones of a single phoneme do not contrast.

• [p] and [pʰ] are allophones of the phoneme /p/
• You never say a phoneme. (It is an abstract representation of a sound in a language)

- Minimal Pair - pair of words that are distinguished by a change in a single segment.
• Distinguished by change in sound.
• Contrast in meaning
 • Near minimal pair - get as close as possible e.g use a voiceless stop just differ in placement. e.g. [bɪt] vs.
[bʊk]
• We always prefer true minimal pair over near minimal
pair.

- Two languages can have the same set of sounds but these
sounds can differ in different scenarios.

• Monolingual English speakers will have trouble differentiating

[pәl] between [pʰәl] and [bәl]
• [l] and [r] (and [ɹ]) are liquids. All l’s and all r’s are liquids.

- English and Hindi both have three bilabial phones: [b], [p], and [pʰ]
• English has two phonemes, Hindi has three phonemes.

- English and Hindi both have two liquid phones: [l], [r]
• English has two phonemes, Korean has one phoneme.

- Some of these variations are predictable. e.g we know that

a tap will not occur at the beginning of a word in
Canadian English.

Feb 7
- Phoneme /t/ (abstract unit of phonological contrast)
- Phone [t], [th] (what we hear). These two phones are
actually allphones for the phoneme /t/

- Complementary Distribution - They never occur in the same context. One or the other. e.g. [l] and [ł] are
in complementary distribution.

- Free Variation - The opposite of complementary distribution (either allophone can occur freely) e.g. [k]
and [k’] are in free variation word-finally in English.

- Light L e.g [lif]. - Occurs immediately before a vowel.

• leaf [lif], like [laɪk], sleep [slip], delightful [dәlaɪtfәɫ]
- Dark L - velarized e.g. [fil], [wɔl]. Occurs after a vowel.
- feel [fiɫ], wall [wɔɫ], milk [mɪɫk], nickel [nɪkәɫ]

- Natural Class of Sounds - Set of all phonemes in a language, that share a property/properties.
• e.g. Vowels are a natural class, Consonants are another natural class. They do not play the same role in
language.
• Way of dividing set up into subsets.

- In Canadian English - diphthongs each have two allophones.

• /aɪ / - [aɪ], [ʌɪ]. e.g. [ɹaɪd], [ɹʌɪt]
• / aʊ / - [aʊ], [ʌʊ] e.g. [haʊz], [hʌʊs] (near-minimal pair)
[See book for diagram / natural class definitions]

Feb 14
- Phoneme - contrasts unit of sound in a language. We know something is a phoneme if you can find
minimal pairs for them.
- Allophone - Different ways of pronouncing the same phoneme. Allophones of single phoneme do not contrast.
• (Either in free variation or specific environment)

- Focus on features.
- Vowels:
• [+syllabic] (all vowels are syllabic by definition)
• [+back] / [-back]
• [+high] / [-high]
• [+low] / [-low]
• [+tense] / [-tense]
• [+reduced] : [ә] ***

- Consonants:
• [+sonorant] / [-sonorant]
• [+continuant] / [-continuant]
• [+consonantal] / [-consonantal]
• [+strident] / [-strident]

- Divide up syllables into segments (separated by ‘.’). [sɪ.lә.bәl]

- Many phonological processes are sensitive to syllable
structure. (light vs. dark /l/)

- Project Nucleus, From Onset (as many consonants as

possible), Form coda.

Feb 26
- Neutralization - ‘middle’ and ‘mittle’. Result of two
phonemes ‘sharing’ an allophome. In this context both of
their phonemes.
- GO OVER DIFFERENT ALLOPHOMES IN TEXTBOOK

- Feature - units of contrast in a language - allow us to talk

about similarities and differences in sounds.
• May be monovalent e.g. labial, coronal. or bivalent [+- voice, +- high, +- sonorant]

- Natural Class - set of segments unified by sharing particular set of features.

• The larger the natural class, the fewer features (gets more and more zoomed in)

- Each syllable has obligatory and optional parts (in every spoken language on Earth)
• Every syllable is built out of a nucleus.
 • Coda is optional after, Onset is optional before. These are consonants.
• There is asymmetric relationship: two words rhyme if their last syllable share a nucleus and a coda.

- Hawaiian has no codas. There is an optional consonant followed by a vowel.

- Japanese has optional onsets and codas. You never have more than one consonant in onset or coda (ie. no
complex onsets or codas)

- Sonority Requirement (Sonority Sequencing Principle)- a well-formed syllable must rise leading up to the
nucleus, and fall after it.
• Three consonant cluster (CCC) onsets only possible with /s/ as the first C
• CCC codas are possible only if the final C is voiceless.

- Syllable Contact Law - Sonority should rise across a syllable boundary. (languages prefer it)
• [dɪs.tɹɛs] vs. *[dɪst.ɹɛs]
• Obstruent is a stop or a fricative.

- Rule Notation - There is an underlying

representation /A/ which is realized
as a surface form [B] in the
environment C. (Where A, B and C are
single segments (ie. d becomes flap) or
natural classes).
• /midl / -> [mɪ
• Sonorants devoice in X
environment.

- Voiced stops become

voiceless word finally.
- Voiced stops are
• -continuant
• +consonantal
• +voiced
• -nasal
• -sonorant
• -delayed release

- ONLY LIST FEATURES

THAT CHANGE / ARE
AFFECTED BY THE
RULE.

Feb 28
- Solving phonology
problem (step by step):
• Locate sounds
 • Identify minimal pairs (to determine if two sounds are phonemes)
• List environments using T diagrams for each sound.

- [See book for diagrams]

- Canadian Raising - diphthongs [ai] -

• Alveolar stop are realized as [r] between two vowels when second is unstressed.
- Ideally minimal pairs should be singular morphemes.
- We do Canadian raising, then flapping.
• Order in which we apply rules matters!

March 5
- Test: Two phonology questions, one other question. rule structure.
• Rule ordering and syllable structure will not be on test.
- [See notebook for working]
March 12
- Historical Linguistics (aka diachronic linguistics) - how languages change over time.
• Study of how language changes over time. Historically seen as branch of philology now often as a
subset of variations linguistics.
- Neuroscience and Linguistics - Language localized areas - language disorders. (see textbook if this topic is
not chosen for final topic)

- Middle English - the Geoffrey Chaucer text excerpt.

- Changes are natural and occur in older (ie. all) languages.
• All languages change, this is neither good nor bad.

- Phonetic, Phonological, Morphological, Syntactic, Lexical (word categories)/ Semantic (word meaning)
and Social / Pragmatic changes occur.
• ex. of phonological change: fricatives -> voiced / V_V ([lif]-> [livz])
• Word can change it’s meaning or we can get entirely new words (lexical change e.g. to google (v))
• Social changes are what you speak in order to be heard in social contexts. (“how do you do?”)

- Before English…:
• Celtic expansion (later Roman expansion) of Britain.
- Celtic language family includes Irish Gaelic, Scot’s Gaelic, Breton, Manx etc.
- Latin was also spoken for a time in England, but did not leave a lasting impact there.

- Old English (450 - 1100 CE). Beowulf (copy of oral poem) is a text that most of our data comes from.
• Angles, Saxons and Jutes
• Viking Era : Northern and Southern varieties.

[Changes between boundaries are drawn to coincide with important invasions that led to events that created
phonological, morphological and syntactic changes]

- Middle English (1100-1500 CE). Canterbury Tales

• Normal invasion in 1066

- Modern English (1500 - Present CE). Shakespeare is an example of early modern English.
• What we speak today is Contemporary Modern English.
• Canadian English was heavily influenced by Scottish English.
• Modern English is a colonial language (establishment of English through repressive laws throughout
the world)

- Standard English did not have a lot of influence from Celtic languages. (There is more influence in
regional Scottish / Irish variants)

- Languages do not change due to one person. A generation of children grow up speaking a slightly
different language than their parents speak.
• A lot of change seen in a language is intergenerational.
• Phonological change e.g. Canadian raising, affrication in Quebec French, voicing of Fricatives, Great
Vowel Shift.
 • Great Vowel Shift - all the vowels rotated up. Those all too high moved down. Then

- Pattern in English - irregular verbs tend to change to be regularized over time.

- Some Morphological changes involve addition/removal of affixes / suffixes:
• Addition of affixes
• Loss of affixes
• Reanalysis
- Morphological changes often involve either regularization or analogy.
• Irregular 9”strong” verbs: usually regularization, sometimes new irregulars by analogy.

March 14
- All aspects of language structure undergo change.
- Fricative voicing - staff to staves (instead of stafes)
- Morphological change: can involve addition / loss of affixes.
- I am -> I’m (clitic)
• But Morphological changes mostly involve regularization or analogy:
- Irregular verbs -> regular verbs, however sometimes there are new irregular verbs by analogy.

- Syntactic Change:
• Old English was verb 2nd language. (Verb is always the second constituent).
• _V(S)(O)
• Modern English - can have residual verb second word order.
- Negative inversion still exists: “Rarely has he ever deceived me”, “What will you say?”
- English lost verb second word order along with case morphology. (At same time in history)
- Negation comes before verbs in Contemporary Modern English (“They do not speak the truth”
instead of “They speak not the truth”)
- We get a lot of changes in word order by the drop of ONE RULE. (Main verbs never move to T in
modern English.

- Semantic Change:
• Easiest to discuss is changes in words / meaning of words.
• Borrowing from French. Also incorporation into English for food items (e.g. Burrito,
• Compounding - merging two words together.
• Derivation - ‘er’ derivation for verbs. e.g sing, singer.
• Coining - inventing / creating new word and giving it meaning.
• Clipping - short form of words
• Backformation - create a new word. Backform and reanalyse. Pea was backformed from pease (you had
individual ‘grain’s of pease, like sugar) (Cerise was the same, was borrowed than backformed as it
looked like a plural to English speakers).
• Blends - ‘spork’, ‘glamping’ ‘vlog’ ‘email’ ‘brunch’

• Broadening / Narrowing - in meaning e.g. ‘iPad’ referring to any tablet computer is broadening.
- BandAid referring to any plaster.
• Amelioration / Purjoration - word developing more positive or negative meaning.
• Shift - change in meaning.
 • Weakening - meaning becomes less intense.

- Sound change is regular. If a given sound change affects one word in a language, then it will also affect all
other words where the sound occurs in the same environment.

- Causes of Change:
Internal
• Articulatory simplification (e.g. keep everything voiced, it is easier)
• Phonological reorganization (e.g. Great Vowel Shift)
• Regularization
• Analogy
• Reanalysis

External
• Borrowing (language contact)
• Social factors (e.g. attitudes)

- Language Families
• Hypothetically there should have been one group of the first humans.
• ~7000 languages currently
• Any given language will over time develop into different varieties. Dialects are essentially a continuum.
• Language families with a common ancestor belong to the
same family.
- e.g. French and Italian belong to Latin
- English and Dutch belong to Proto-Germanic.

March 19
- Comparative method used to discover language families ie.
different poetry systems used.
- Cognate - come from a common ancestor.

- Grimm’s Law - correspondence between words.

• Cognate of cannabis (latin) in English is help. [k] -> [h]. We
subsequently borrowed the word ‘cannabis’ into English
• You can uncover regular correspondences in sounds.
- * means earlier form (not ungrammatical)
- > means goes to (like an arrow)
- Otherwise phonological changes are written the same.

- Sound changes can be conditioned by their environment. In English, reduced vowels [ә] were deleted
word-finally.
• *ә > ∅ / __ #
- To do with internal social factors and language contact (inter-language contact).

Language Acquisition
- Language spoken by caregivers and language spoken by children end up being different
• Known as Plato’s Problem (Poverty of the Stimulus)
• ‘How do we know how to identify objects if we don’t know what they are’

- Children are told positive evidence (ie are not told “sentence X is ungrammatical”)
• Every child will arrive at an adult grammar if placed in an environment where language is spoken.
• Must somehow know which information to pay attention.
- Computational linguistics - learning a human language from what a young child hears
• Learn from errors.
• Issues: we provide computers with what is a noun, what is a verb etc.

- Phonological Development:
• Stress in English has syntactical and lexical meaning.
• There is evidence that babies can hear stress in utero.
• 1 MONTH: Can distinguish sounds that contrast in human languages.
• 6 MONTHS: Babbling.
• 10/12 MONTHS: Loss of ability to hear non-L1 contrasts.
- Will eventually stop hearing contrasts that are not relevant in the language.
- Can produce consonants before vowels before consonants after vowels.
• Children can distinguish different sounds of English before they produce those sounds. (They can hear
the difference between [k] and [h] before they actually produce those sounds in speech.)

- Stressed Syllable retention - keep the syllable that the is stressed only.
• elephant -> el
- Syllable simplification - keeping a couple of syllables.

- L1 and L2 are different languages (1st and 2nd languages learned respectively)

March 21
- Cluster Simplification: [sɪksθs] -> [sɪks]
- Broadening is a subset of weakening: e.g. cleaning products such Kleenex now mean tissues.

- Babbling is a structured part of language acquisition. Also a part of physical development (waving arms
around, walking etc.)
- Language Learning vs. Learning Acquisition
• Adults learn best through explicit learning. Children learn best by acquiring (not explicit learning)
• L2 learning is best with some explicit teaching combined with immersion.

- Stressed syllable retention

- Syllable simplification
- Substitution [ɹain] -> [wain]

- English allows 3 consonants before vowel and 4 consonants after vowel.

- Every language requires

March 26
- Whole Object
- Type Assumption - calls every adult woman ‘mum’.
- Basic Level Assumption

- Overextension - assumption that word applies to more things than it actually does.
- Under-extension - assumption that word applies to less things that it actually does.

- Children overgeneralize for past tense of irregular verbs (go -> goed)
• Produce morphological forms that they never would have heard (as they did not hear in adult speech)

- Syntactic Development:
• 12 - 18 months : 1 word stage
• 1.5 - 2 years : 2 word stage (non SVO) just VO or SV, but cannot put all three together.
• 2 - 2.5 years : telegraph
• 2 - 4 years : Wh Movement

- Kids understand yes/no questions before they can form them.

• Subject Object inversion involves movement from T head to C head.
• Movement occurs.

- Naturalistic vs Experimental Methods.

- Epistemic
- Deontic
- Dynamic / Ability

March 28
- Word Gap - Children in poorer backgrounds do less well in school than those in higher income
backgrounds.
• Poor ability to engage in language tasks in school.

- What linguistic input is relevant for children?

• There are social factors that affect this.