Lecture 5 Phonology (1)

• while phonologists are interested in the patterning of such sounds and the rules that underlie such variations.
• Phonological analysis relies on the principle that certain sounds cause changes in the meaning of a word or phrase, whereas other sounds do not.
2. Phonetics & phonology
• 3) Phoneticians are concerned with how sounds differ in the way they are pronounced. Eg. how these two [t]s differ in the way they are pronounced in the word “tea” & “too” ;
• The minimal pairs test • The phoneme theory • Allophonic variations
• pit VS bit
2.2 Phonemic contrast音位对立
• If the phonetically similar sounds are two distinctive phonemes, e.g./p/ & /b/ in “pit”& “bit”, they are said to form a phonemic contrast.
• A simple methodology to demonstrate this is to take a word, replace one sound by another, and see whether a different meaning results.

Brainstorming:
• Activity 1: • How do human beings communicate with
each other? What kinds of media/means/substances do they apply to communicate?
Speech and Writing
The articulator apparatus of a human being contains 3 important areas/cavities:
1) the pharynx (the throat)
2) the oral cavity (the mouth; most variable & active)
Position of the vocal folds: voiceless
• When the vocal cords are apart, the air can pass through easily and the sound produced is said to be voiceless. Consonants [p, s, t ] are produced in this way
3) and the nasal cavity (the nose).
•The air- stream coming from the lungs is modified in various ways in these cavities, resulting in the production of various sounds.
Position of the vocal folds: glottal stop

[l] in [pleis]
pronounced.
Allophones are any of the different variants of a phoneme, which share more phonetic features in common and which are phonetically conditioned each.
sounds are put together (sound patterns) and used to convey meaning Phoneme

2.1 Some important definitions:
2.1.1 Phone（音子）; 2.1.2 Phoneme（音位）& Allophones（音位变体）;


2.2 Ways to identify phonemes:
2.2.1 Minimal pair（最小对立对）; 2.2.2 Complementary distribution（互补分布）; 2.2.3 Phonetic similarity（语音相似性）; 2.2.4 Free variation（自由变体）.
最小音差对是指除在相同位置上的发音 2.2.1 Minimal Pair 不同以外，其余部分发音都相同的两个词。

Examples:


Definition:

[pit] vs. [bit] [bet] vs. [bæ t] [mo] vs. [mõ]
A minimal pair refers to two different words which are identical in every way in pronunciation except one sound that takes place at the same position.

• Allophones音位变体: variants of the same phoneme, e.g. light-wheel-play: clear-dark-devoiced, pipe: aspiratedunaspirated
• complementary distribution互补分布: those sounds that never occur in the same environment are in complementary distribution, e.g. clear [l] before a vowel-dark [l] after a vowel-devoiced [l] after a voiceless consonant, aspirated [p] initially-unaspirated finally
• Phonemes音位: distinctive speech sounds • minimal pairs最小对立体: pairs of words that differ in only
one sound, e.g. pit-bit, bet-bat, cat-cap
• contrastive distribution对立分布: the two different sounds in a minimal pair are in contrastive distribution. Normally sounds in contrastive distribution are different phonemes.
3.2 Phone, Phoneme, and Allophone
• 1. Phone: a phonetic unit or segment, some distinguish meaning, some don’t