Phonological rules

LING 200Spring 2006

Foreign accents and borrowed words

• Borrowed words– often pronounced according to phonological

rules of borrowing language• Foreign accents

– result from application of native language phonology to target language phonology

– especially if language learned as adult

Spanish loans into English

[sændiego]San Diego[sndjeo]

[bio]

[thko]

[phdez]

in English

burrito[burito]

taco[tko]

Padres[pres]

Spanish

[r] = alveolar trill

[] = voiced velar fricative

[] = retroflex approximant; [] = alveolar flap

The original shibboleth

• Judges 12:5-6

Some types of phonological rules

• Assimilation (cf. phonetic coarticulation)• Dissimilation• Deletion• Epenthesis

Examples of phonological rules• Assimilation

– Mohawk Voicing– Nasal Assimilation in Italian (and many other

languages)– Korean s-palatalization

Witsuwit’en

[plm’] ‘its ice’[nn] ‘it (cloth) is moving’

[tltm] ‘it’s pounding’

[tq’aj] ‘cutthroat trout’

[wepts] ‘it isn’t rolling’

[ip] ‘it’s flooding’

[ppt] ‘its abdomen’[tin] ‘it’s slithering’

[n] ‘dark birthmark’

[ns] ‘ahead’[nq] ‘uphill’[tilts] ‘she’s in a rush’

[tcho] ‘blue grouse’

[tz] ‘driftwood’[ntq] ‘up’

[] and [] after non-lowering consonants[q] = voiceless uvular stop; [q’] = uvular ejective; [ch] = voiceless aspirated palatal stop; [] = voiceless uvular fricative; [] = voiceless lateral fricative; [] = voiced uvular approximant; [m’] = glottalized nasal

Witsuwit’en consonant chart

llateral

wjapproximants

nmnasals

lateral

hxwçs zfricatives

t th t’lateral

ts tsh ts’affricates

q qh q’kw kwh kw’c ch c’t th t’p p’stops

glottaluvularlabio-velarpalatalalveolarlabial

Dissimilation• A sound becomes less similar to another sound• An example from Sanskrit• Phonetic background from Hindi

Sanskrit

Hindi

5 = retroflex

Laryngeal contrasts in Hindi• [] = voiced retroflex stop

– [l] ‘branch’• [] = voiceless retroflex stop

– [l] ‘postpone’• [h] = voiceless aspirated retroflex stop

– [hl] ‘wood shop’

• [] = (breathy) voiced aspirated retroflex stop– [l] ‘shield’

Dissimilation

Grassman’s Law (Sanskrit):

• Voiced aspirated stops/affricates are deaspirated before another voiced aspirated stop/affricate.

• C C / ___ ... C

Grassman’s Law in Sanskrit• [b] = voiced aspirated labial stop• Rightmost voiced aspirate survives

‘is awake’[budjte:]/budjte:/

‘was awake’[bubo:d]/bubo:d/

‘will be awake’[bo:tsjati]/bo:dsjati/

• Rightmost voiced aspirate devoices and deaspirates before [s] (a different phonological rule); leftmost survives

Deletion• Cree. An Algonquian language spoken in Canada

(B.C. to Ontario)

‘suns’[pi:simwak]cf. /pi:simwak/

‘sun’[pi:sim]/pi:simw/

• /w/ Ø / C ___ # (# = edge of word)

Epenthesis• Witsuwit’en

– No word can begin with //– [h] epenthesized– /tsh/ [htsh] (more narrowly, [htsh]) ‘he’s

crying’• Tsek’ene

– No word can begin with //– [] epenthesized– /tsh/ [tsh] ‘he’s crying’

Epenthesis

• English– No word can begin with a vowel– [] epenthesized– uh-oh /o/ [o]– apple /æpl/ [æpl]– the apple /ð/ # /æpl/ [ðæpl]

Phonetics vs. phonology

how do sounds form patterns, classes?what are the phonological rules?

what are articulatory, acoustic, perceptible properties?

sounds

what is contrastive?how is a particular contrast realized?

contrast

detail is predicted by rule system

explicitly represented as needed

phonetic detail

typically broad, streamlined

narrower as neededtranscription

phonologyphonetics

Final thoughts about spoken language phonetics and phonology

A clip from The Human Language, vol. 3