pp5_featsprocs

Phonological Features and Processes

CONSONANT CLASSIFICATION

� consonants:

o relatively greater constriction of the vocal tract

o less prominence, sonority, (usually) not a syllabic nucleus

• describing place of articulation:– labial, labio-dental, dental, alveolar, postalveolar, palatal, velar, uvular, pharyngeal,

laryngeal, glottal (passive)

– apical, coronal, dorsal, radical (active)

• describing manner of articulation:– stop (complete closure in the vocal tract)

http://www.ifla.uni-stuttgart.de/~jilka/Pflichtmodul Sprachpraxis 2 Phonetic Practice

– stop (complete closure in the vocal tract)

– fricative (narrow constriction with turbulent airflow)

– approximant (greater constriction than in a vowel, but no turbulence)

– nasal (stoppage in the oral cavity, but airflow through the nasal cavity)

– trill (vibration of an articulator)

– tap (extremely short closure)

– flap (very brief contact of articulators in passing)

• describing voicing:– vibration of the vocal folds


IPA PULMONIC CONSONANTS



CLASSIFICATION EXERCISES



VOWEL CLASSIFICATION

� vowels:

o no audible obstruction in vocal tract

o sonorous, prominent, syllable peak,

potentially carries accent

� Defining features

� Height

- distance of tongue to roof of mouth

� Backness

Deriving the vowel trapezium


� Backness

- position of smallest distance

between tongue and roof of mouth

� Rounding

- lips rounded or not

� Tenseness

- overall tenseness of vocal tract

settings (advanced tongue root)


IPA VOWELS



• Phoneme = bundle of simultaneous units (phonological features)

• features are binary: +/- specification

[ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]Phoneme A Phoneme B Phoneme C Phoneme D

PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES

+ X

+ Y

+ X

- Y

- X

+ Y

- X

- Y


• Contrastive function: each phoneme must differ from the other in at least one feature

• Descriptive function: accurately describe the phonetic nature of a sound (may include redundant, non-contrastive features)

• Classificatory function: explain and allow generalizations and common phonological processes


MAJOR CLASS FEATURES

• [consonantal]: sound produced with a radical obstruction in the

vocal tract

• [sonorant]: sound whose phonetic content is predominantly made

up of the sound waves associated with voicing (high energy

output relative to effort)

• [continuant]: sound during whose production the air stream is not

blocked in the oral cavity


blocked in the oral cavity


VOWEL FEATURES

Tongue-body features:

• [back]: body of the tongue is retracted from neutral position

• [high]: body of the tongue is raised above neutral position

• [low]: body of the tongue is lowered below neutral position

Lip feature:

• [round]: the lip orifice is rounded

General vocal tract setting feature:


General vocal tract setting feature:

• [tense]: deliberate, accurate, maximally distinct gesture with relatively high

muscular effort

Quantity feature:

• [long]: long duration

Redundancy rule in RP and GA : [+tense] � [+long]; [-tense] � [-long]


FEATURE ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH VOWELS

Monophthongs

i Ǻ u Ț ǫ ǩ Ǭ Ȝ ǡ a Ǥ Ǣ

[consonantal] - - - - - - - - - - - -

[sonorant] + + + + + + + + + + + +

[continuant] + + + + + + + + + + + +


[continuant] + + + + + + + + + + + +

[back] - - + + - - - + + - + +

[high] + + + + - - - - - - - -

[low] - - - - - - - + + + - +

[round] - - + + - + + - - - + +

[tense] + - + - - - + - + - + -


CONSONANT FEATURES I

• use of major class features

• reduction of the excess of place features

• compatibility with vowel features

Place features:


Place features:

• [anterior]: obstruction in front of the palato-alveolar region

• [coronal]: blade of the tongue raised above its neutral position

Acoustic feature:

• [strident]: relatively noisy sound


CONSONANT FEATURES II

Original vowel features (largely redundant):

• [round] also covers /w/ and /ȝ/, distinguishes them from /j/, /x/ or /h/

• [back], [high], [low]: redundant, except to distinguish /x/ and /h/

Obstruent features:

• [voice]: glottal setting consistent with vocal fold vibration


• [voice]: glottal setting consistent with vocal fold vibration

• [tense]: competes with [voice], would help distinguish fortis/lenis differences in

only potentially voiced obstruents ([+ tense] � [- voice]; [- tense] � [+ voice]); problem: /x ȝ h/ have to be classified as [+tense] (phonetically untenable)

More redundant features:

• [+ sonorant, - continuant] � [+ nasal]

• [+ son, + cont, + ant, + cor] � [+ lateral]


ENGLISH CONSONANT FEATURES


(Includes redundant features [tense, nasal, lateral, low, high] and phoneme /x/)


EXCERCISES – FEATURES I

[ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]/m n/

/ǫ/

/l/

/ǡ/

/p b t d/

/h/

/u Ț/

/Ȣ/


/ǫ/ /ǡ/


EXCERCISES – FEATURES II

[ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]/ȉ/

/Ǻ/

/f v θ ð s z/

/Ǣ/

/y/

/x/

/ŋ/

/ tȓ /


/Ǻ/ /Ǣ/


PHONOLOGICAL VS. PHONETIC FEATURES I

example: laryngeal features of stops in English

[- vc, - sprd gl] /p t k/ ; [- vc, + sprd gl] /ph th kh/ ; [+ vc, - sprd gl] /b d g/

initial medial final

[ph]in [b]in ra[p]id ra[b]id la[p] la[b]

[th]ot [d]ot a[t]om A[d]am ma[t] ma[d]

[kh]ap [g]ap jac[k]et jag[g]ed pic[k] pi[g]

analysis:

feature specifications for voicing are in free distribution (many minimal pairs)


feature specifications for voicing are in free distribution (many minimal pairs)

→ Distinctive Feature � phonological function

feature specifications for aspiration (“spread glottis”) are in complementary distribution,

they follow certain distributional regularities:

1. all segments except for voiceless stops are [- sprd gl]

2. [ph th kh] only appear syllable-initially (in stressed syllables)

3. [p t k] do not appear syllable-initially when the syllable is stressed

→ Redundant Feature � phonetic function

preliminary

definition


PHONOLOGICAL VS. PHONETICFEATURES II

distinctive features:

• unpredictable from phonological context

• distinguish words, morphemes, phonemes (many morphemes differ in just one feature,

e.g. place features labial, coronal, velar in English stops: pin, tin, kin, bun, done, gun)

• these features must be learned/memorized in the course of language development

redundant features:

• for any given sound of a language these features are predictable by rule from the


• for any given sound of a language these features are predictable by rule from the

phonological environment

• speaker learns the rule, not the feature as part of the phoneme; the grammar does not list

the feature value individually for each lexical item

• often the source of persistent foreign accent

– e.g., English speakers apply the rule that syllable-initial voiceless stops are aspirated when speaking French, although this rule does not apply in that language system (“tas” as [tha]instead of [ta])


GENERAL AIMS OF PHONOLOGY

• looking for regularities that help to define a language’s inventory of

phonological elements (vowels, consonants, syllables, tones)

• determining patterns in the distribution of these elements in the language’s

representations

– may they appear in or are they banned from initial, medial, final positions in the

word, stressed/unstressed syllables?

– may an element of type A immediately precede/follow an element of type B?

• investigating alternations in the shapes of morphemes composed of these


• investigating alternations in the shapes of morphemes composed of these

elements within the word and variant pronunciations of words within the

sentence

discovered regularities are assumed to be the joint product of the principles and

parameters of Universal Grammar and the rules and representations that

develop through the course of language acquisition


SOME PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSES IN ENGLISH

Clear and dark /l/ /l/ /l/ /l/ in RP (“like” vs. “feel”):

Anticipatory assimilations:

- /n/ becomes dental before a dental consonant (“tenth”, “in theory”)

n � [+ dental]/ _ [+ dental]

- /k/ is labialized before a rounded segment (“quick”, “cool”)

k � [+ round]/ _ [+ round]

ǻ � l / $ ((C)C) _ l � ɫ / V _ (C(C)) $or


k � [+ round]/ _ [+ round]

- Yorkshire Assimilation (“bed-time”, “subcommittee”, “big piece”, “live show”)

[- sonorant] � [-voice]/ _ # [-voice]

Northern T-to-R Rule (“shut up”, “get off”)

t � ȉ/ [- cons, - long] _ # # V


COMBINATORY PHENOMENA (IN CONNECTED SPEECH)

• Assimilation (one segment takes over one, more or all features from another):

– Palatalization (“would you”, “what you”, “miss you”)

[- son, + alveolar] � [+ palatal] / _ j

• Unreleased stops (“captain”, “good dog”, “black cat”):

[- son, - cont] � [- release]/ _ [- cont]

• Vowel reduction / weak forms (“rather uneven”, “good as gold”)


[- cons, - stress] � ə

• Nasal place assimilation (“ten pounds/minutes”, “in Crewe”)

[+ son, - cont, + ant, + cor] � [α ant, β cor] / __ [- cont, α ant, β cor]

�� These phenomena occur in free variation !!


MORPHOPHONOLOGICAL RULES

Morphophonology: intermediate between phonology and morphology

- allomorphs of an underlying morpheme whose surface form is

controlled by phonological rules

[PLURAL] �{Ǻz /[-son, + cont, + cor, + str] #_

z /[+ voice] #_

s /[- voice] #_

(English plural suffix as in

“wishes”, “beads”, “beats”)


[IN_NEGPRFX] �{

vowel alternations: e.g., obscene – obscenity, convene - convention

Ǻm / _# [+ labial]

Ǻŋ / _# [+ velar]

Ǻn elsewhere

(“in”-prefix as in

“insolvent”, “improbable”,

“incorrect”)


Jane’s husband tends to always lose his keys in the wardrobe

tune [ȷu:n] shot [ȓǢȤt, ȓǢtȤ, ȓǢȤ]

PHONOLOGICAL RULES APPLIED: PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION


tune [ȷu:n] shot [ȓǢȤt, ȓǢtȤ, ȓǢȤ]

width [wǺdʮθ] pool

trial button

[phwu:ǻ]

[bȜtNnʐ]

°

[thȓȉaǺǩǻ]˚


TRANSCRIPTION EXERCISEI was born in the year sixteen hundred thirty-two, in the city of York, of a good family,

though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, named Kreutznaer, who

settled first at Hull.

bȉǫmǩn kȉǤǺtsnǡ:


Call me Ishmael. Some years ago, never mind how long precisely, having little or no money

in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a

little and see the watery part of the world.

ǺȓmȜǫl

pp5_featsprocs

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