Phonology

Phonology

1. It is essentially the description of the systems and patterns of speech sounds in a language.

2. Phonology is concerned with the abstract or mental aspects of the sounds in language rather than with the actual physical articulation of speech sounds.

   • Phoneme
     • It is the smallest meaning-distinguishing sound unit in the abstract representation of the sounds of a language.
     • An essential property of a phoneme is that it functions constrastively.
       • In English, 2 phonemes /f/ & /v/ contrast: -fat = vat
     • Phones
       • A physically produced speech sound, representing one version of a phoneme.
     • Allophones
       • They are a kind of phoneme that changes its sound based on how a word is spelled
         • Phones and Allophones
           • A group of several phones (versions of one phoneme) = allophones (of the phoneme.
             • Each phoneme may have different versions depending on the context in wich it is found.
               • On the other hand, if changing the allophone in the same word seen by producing it with rounded lips, the word would sound a bit strange, but still comprehensible.
           • Minimal pairs and sets
             • Four golden rules:
               • They must have the same number of sounds.
               • They must be identical in every sound except for one.
               • The sound that is different must be in the same position in each word.
               • The words must have different meanings.

3. Phonotactics

   • In phonology, phonotactics is the study of the ways in which phonemes are allowed to combine in a particular language. (A phoneme is the smallest unit of capable of conveying a distintc meaning.) Adjective: Phonotactic.
   • Consonant clusters
     • There are many CC onset commbinations permitted in Englis phonotactics: e.g. black, flat, bread, trick, throw, twin.
   • Assimilation
     • It is a common phonological process by whicch the features of a sound becomes more like that of an adjacent sound.
   • Normal speech
     • Assimilation and elision occur in everyone's normal speech.
       • They should not be regarded as sloppiness or laziness in speaking
         • Constantly avoiding the regular patters of assimilation and elision would result in extremely artifical-sounding talk.

4. Syllables

   • It is a unit of sound consisting of a vowel and optional consonants before or after the vowel.
   • Open vs. Closed Syllables
     • Closed syllables = the coda is present e.g. up, at, cup, hat, Sam, dip.
     • Open syllables = an onset + a nucleus (but no coda) e.g. me, to, no.

5. Morphology

   • It is the field of linguistics that studies the internal structure of words.
   • Morphones
     • Consist of (one element 'talk' + other ' -s, -er, -ed, -ing')
       • All these elements are described as morphemes.
     • A morpheme: A minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function.
   • Free and Bound Morphemes
     • Morphemes that can stand by themselves as single words.
     • Morphemes that can not normally stand alone and are typically attached to another from.
     • All affixes (prefixes and suffixes) in English are bound morphemes
     • When free morphemes are used with bound morphemes, the basic word forms are known as "stems"
   • Free morphemes: Lexical
     • Ordinary nouns, adjectives and verbs.
       • Carry the 'content' of the messages we convey.
         • E,g. girl, man, house, tiger, sad, long.
           • New lexical morphemes can easily be added to the language, so they are treated as an open class of words.
   • Free morphemes: Functional
     • Functional words (conjuctions, prepositions, articles, pronouns.
       • E.g. and, but, when, because, on, near, above.
         • Because we almost never add new functional morphemes to the language, they are discribed as a closed class of words.
   • Bound morphemes: Inflectional
     • Not used to produce new words in the language
       • Used to indicated aspects of the grammatical funtion of a woed.
         • In English, all the inflectional morphemes are suffixes.
           • English has only 8 inflectional morphemes.
   • Bound morphemes: Derivational
     • We use themto make new words or words of a different grammatical category from the stem.
       • They include suffixes and prefixes.
   • Morphs and allomorphs
     • Morphs are the actual forms used to realize morphemes.
     • When we find a group of different morphs, all versions of one morpheme, we can use the prefix 'allo-" and describe them as allomorphs of that morpheme.

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