Part Four PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSES. Speech sounds are by nature dynamic and flexible, and highly susceptible to the influence of the ‘environment’, i.e.

Part Four

PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSES

 Speech sounds are by nature dynamic and flexible, and highly susceptible to the influence of the ‘environment’, i.e. the influence of adjacent sounds and other factors like syllable-structure, stress, intonation, etc.

•One of the tasks of phonology is to discover and understand the phonological processes which govern the occurrence of sounds and the forms they take in different environments.

I. DISTRIBUTION:

The total set of phonological environments in which a given sound can occur in a particular language (given that no sound can freely occur anywhere)

Example: Distribution of [w]

(a) [tw, dw, kw, gw, sw] (as in twig, dwell, quit, Gwen, swear, etc.) (b) *[bw, pw, fw]

Generalisation: [w] cannot co-occur with another [+labial] consonant. OR:Two [+labial] consonants cannot co-occur

Distribution of [h]:

Generalization: [h] can only occur in ____________________________________________________

Distribution of obstruents ([-son]) in English:

Generalisation: Two adjacent [-son] sounds must agree in the feature [ ]

Generalisation: A nasal can only be followed by another consonant with the same _____________ (unless it is _____________).

Distribution of final nasals in Chinese:广东 厦门 潮州 普通话 福州

[+nas] [-cor] [-lab] [+back]

II. ALTERNATION

• Alternative surface forms (or variants) assumed by the same underlying form in different environments.

e.g. H2O ice water steam

Environment: <0 0-100 >100 degrees

Generalisation for the [d/t] alternation:

When analysing phonological alternation, we need to ask the following questions:

(i) What class of sounds undergo change?(ii) What is the nature of the change? (in terms of

features if possible)(iii) What environment triggers this change?

Steps in our analysis:

• What class of sounds undergo change?

Step 1: The sounds that undergo change are [s], [z], [t], [d]

Step 2: These sounds belong to the class [-son +cor] (or alveolar stops and fricatives)

(ii) What is the nature of the change?

Step 1: identify the changes that take place:

Step 2: What feature(s) are involved in all these changes?

(iii) What environment triggers this change?

Now put together a tentative hypothesis or ‘rule’ about this phonological process:

C[-son +cor] [+high +front] / ____ [+high +front](i.e. a [-son +cor] sound becomes [+hi +fr] when it is followed by a [+hi +fr] consonant)(or in plain English: Alveolar obstruents (i.e. stops and fricatives) become ‘palatalised’ when followed by a palatal consonant)

Check: (i) Does this sound like a natural rule? Does it make sense?(ii) Does it account for all the data?

(i) ASSIMILATION: the influence exerted by one sound on an adjacent sound, so that the two become more similar (in some way), or even identical

TYPES OF ALTERNATION

Is the previous example ([-son +cor] [+high +front] / ____ [+high +front]) a case of assimilation?

(ii) SYLLABLE-STRUCTURE PROCESSES: processes ‘triggered’ by constraints on the structure of the syllable in a particular language.

Observation: there is an alternation between ‘0’ and [k] in ask~asking, between ‘0’ and [t] in soft~softer, act~acting, etc.

Question: Do we need to assume that there is a [k] or [t] in the underlying representation (UR) of words like ask and act? Why?

Compare:

i) What class of sounds undergo change?[k, t, d, p], etc. – they belong to the class ______

ii) What happens to this class of sounds?They get deleted.

iii) In what environment do they get deleted?Note: Compare the above data with:

(Would it be true to say that ‘stops are deleted in word-final position’?)

[+stop –son] 0 / C ___ #(i.e. Stops are deleted at the end of a word (or syllable) if preceded by another consonant).

(iii) NEUTRALISATION: the loss of a contrast that normally exists between two sounds, in certain environments.

In the above example, the contrast between /t/ and /d/ is neutralised in a certain environment.What is that? __________________

NEUTRALISATION OF VOICING CONTRASTS IN FRICATIVES IN HK ENGLISH