Chapter 2 Phonology

Lecturer ： Qi xiaowen

2.1. The phonic Medium of Language

• Language is primarily vocal. Words are sound-meaning units.

• The phonic medium of language are composed of those meaningful speech sounds produced by speech organs or articulators（發音器官） .

2.2 Phonetics2.2.1 Definition and Classification• Phonetics deals with the study of the nature,

production, perception, and description of speech sounds.

• It is usually classified into three branches – Articulatory phonetics （发音语音学）– Auditory phonetics ( 听觉语音学 )– Acoustic phonetics （声学语音学）

2.2.2 Speech Organs

• Three cavities （腔）– oral cavity （口腔）– nasal cavity （鼻腔）– pharyngeal cavity （咽腔）– pulmonic cavity （肺腔）– esophageal cavity （食道腔）

2.2.3 Orthographic representation of speech sound• Spelling and Sounds --- [i:]– “Did he believe that Caesar could see the people

seize the seas? ”

• There is no one-to-one correspondence between spelling and pronunciation.

• a discrepancy between spelling and pronunciation in English:– to too two through threw clue shoe;– name dad father call village many ;– shoot, character, Thomas, either, physics, deal,

tough, nation, coat, theater;– lamb, knife, debt, write, ghost, whole, resign, mnemonic;

– Xerox /ks/

• Phonetic Transcription– In order to describe speech sounds we should use

phonetic transcription, or phonetic symbols.（音标）

• IPA– the International Phonetic Alphabet （国际音

标 ,1888 ） . – the International Phonetic Association

• IPA （国际音标）– a set of symbols and diacritics or diacritic marks

( 附加符号 )– / ： / to indicate that the sound is – the tilde （腭化符号） is a palatalized symbol,

such as the Spanish sound ñ.

• Broad transcription （宽式标音法）• Narrow transcription （严式标音法）

• Words Broad Narrow • pit [ pt ] [pt ]• bean [ bi:n ] [bĩ:n • feel [ fi:l ] [ fi: ]

2.2.4 The Classification of Speech Sounds

• Vowels– no obstruction in the air-stream – Vowels are also voiced (VD). （浊音）– Vowels carry pitch （音调；音高） and

loudness （音响） .– Vowels may be long or short, tense （紧元音）

or lax （松元音）– Vowels can be nasalized . （鼻化元音）– Vowels can form a syllable. （音节）

• Consonants– obstruction in the air-stream– Consonants may be voiced(VD) （浊音） or

voiceless(VL) （清音） .– There are also nasal consonants. （鼻輔音）– Some consonants may also be syllabic• / l / in little []• / s / in Manchester [].

2.3 Phonology

2.3.1 Phonology vs. phonetics– Particular vs. general– Prescriptive vs. descriptive– Higher lever vs. lower level

•Phonology is concerned with semantically relevant speech sounds and deals with the study of ways in which speech sounds form systems and patterns.

2.3.2 phone, phoneme, and allophone

• Speech or sound sequences can be segmented:

– Cat → /k////t/

• The phone( 音素 ) is a phonetic unit or segment used in speech. They themselves are meaningless.

1. sell --- [sel] tell --- [tel]•/s/ and /t/ are distinctive

2. still --- [sti:l] and [sti:l] •Aspirated [t] and unaspirated [t] cannot distinguish meaning in English. But they are distinctive in Chinese.

3. pill --- [pil] bill --- [bil]•Aspirated [p] and unaspirated [b] distinguish meaning in English and in Chinese.

• /s/ , /t/ and /p/ , /b/ are distinctive sounds. They are called phoneme.

• A phoneme( 音位 ) is defined as a smallest distinctive sound or a group of distinctive features( 区别性特征 ).

/p/ and /b/ have the following distinctive features:

/p/

/b/

+consonantal

+consonantal

-vocalic -vocalic+bilabial +bilabial-nasal -nasal -voiced +voiced-syllabic -syllabic -continuant -continuant

• Allophones( 音位变体 ) are the non-distinctive variant forms of the same phoneme.

Phonemes Allophones

– / p / aspirated [p] and unaspirated [p]– / l / clear [l] and dark []

• Free variation ( 自由变体 )

– exilic (流放 ) ： [] or [s]

• Here /s/ and /z/ cannot distinguish meaning. They are called free variation （自由变体） .

2.3.3 Phonemic Contrast , Complementary Distribution and Minimal Pairs

• Phonemic contrast ( 音位对立 ) – Phonetically similar sounds, like /p/ in [pit] and

/b/ in [bit], are two distinctive phonemes.

• Complementary distribution ( 互补分布 ) – Phonetically similar sounds, like aspirated [p] and

unaspirated [p], or clear [l] and dark [], are allophones of the same phoneme and occur in different phonetic environments --- complement each other in distribution.

• Minimal Pairs( 最小对立体 ): When two different forms are identical in every way except for one sound segment that occurs in the same place in the string, they are called minimal pairs, such as– beat [bi:t] - bit [bt] tip[tp] - dip[dp]– beat [bi:t] - neat [n i:t] right [rat] - light [lat]

– seed [si:d] and soup [su:p] – not[nt] and ton [tn]

2.3.4. Phonological Rules( 音位規則）

• Sequential rules （音位順序規則）• Assimilation Rule （同化規則）• Deletion Rule （省略規則）

2.3.5 Suprasegmental Features （超切分特征）

• Stress ( 重音 )• Tone ( 声调 )• Intonation ( 语调 )