Lecture 4 Sound System1

Free Powerpoint Templates Free Powerpoint Templates

Unit 4:

Speech System. The Phoneme.

Free Powerpoint Templates

(i) Speech (sound) system

Speech sounds – infinite number of different modulations and variations, In other words, we never produce identical sounds! Still, the listener is capable of categorizing sounds as a finite set of ‘speech units’. This is enabled by the existence of the system of speech sounds: the listener pays attention to some essential elements in the sound perceived, while disregarding other elements, and thus perceiving even different sounding ‘noises’ as one and the same category. For example, the different realizations [th], [?t] and [t] have rather different auditory characteristics, but are still perceived as one category, and that is the phoneme /t/.


Why the term ‘system’?

The term ‘system’ implies several essential characteristics. The sound system contains (1) a finite number of units and (2) the rules for combining the units.Minimal units?

phonemes, or speech sound types, traditionally defined as ‘the minimal phonological units’. each phoneme can be ‘broken into’ smaller units, i.e. properties: distinctive features.


Rules

The rules governing the occurrence of phonemes are called phonotactic rules. E.g. */St-/ is not acceptable at the beginning of an English word.Phonotactic rules govern the maximum number of consonants in the initial, medial or final position in words. Thus, the maximum number of consonants in English at the beginning of a word is

THREE – always /s/ + /p, t, k/ + /r, l, j, w/,and at a word ending it is

FOUR – different possibilities, but these sequencies are lways precisely structured. E. g. /prQmpts/, /teksts/, /sIksTs/, /twelfTs/

By applying the rules, we dramatically lower the number of

combinatory possibilities in a language.


Phonemic inventories of languages

The number of phonemes is language specificIt varies from 13 (in Hawaiian) up to 50. The difference in numbers does not mean that some languages are ‘poorer’ or ‘richer’ than othersNo language uses all its combinatory possibilities exhaustively! E.g. a language containing 30 phonemes can produce over 25 million morphemes consisting of 5 phonemes – no lg. needs such a high number of morphemes.The potential number of morphemes is dramatically reduced by applying the phonotactic rules.Every language has a sufficient number of sounds to express any, even the most complex, notions.


Speech of humans vs. ‘animal talk’• Some animal species produce up to 40 different

recognizable sound types. • Does it mean that some animals have a richer system of

communication?• Difference – the functioning of speech sound units. • Human speech sounds (phonemes) are meaningless! used as building blocks to create morphemes, which

express meaning. • So, although a phoneme signals the difference in, for

example /k&t/ and /s&t/, there is nothing in the phonemes /k/ or /s/ that has anything to do with the meaning, i.e. the semantic content of the two words.


Double articulation

In other words, phonemes are meaningless units, but they combine into higher-rank meaningful units – MORPHEMES. This phenomenon of human languages is referred to as DOUBLE ARTICULATION:

Phonemes – contrastive units (distinguish meaning), but are themselves meaningless – a sort of building-blocks of languagesMorphemes – the smallest meaning-bearing units

It is the basis for the economy and creativity of human language.


Some other properties of sound systems

Symmetry – a tendency of languages to employ differences in a systematic way.

E.g. the number of voiced and voiceless plosives, fricatives and affricates tends to be the same. Vowel diagram: every language has a similar number of front and back vowels, which are evenly distributed in the whole of vowel space (represented as the diagram).

Redundancy is the property of speech sounds to be abundant in many redundant signals.

Every speech sound carries the information on the other sounds surrounding it, which greatly contributes to the easier perception of sounds, even in the context of noise.


(ii) The phoneme

• In every language in the world some properties of speech sounds, i.e. some differences in pronunciation, are crucially distinctive.

these distinctions or contrasts are recognized by speakers of the language as ‘making different words’ and acknowledged by linguists as systematically functional.

• E.g. words leave, weave and reeve contain one different phoneme each, so do the words allay, array and away, or click, crick and quick.

the three consonants l, r and w are contrastive or distinctive.

• Speech sounds can get rather different realizations:• E. g. /r/ is articulated in different ways in red, train or

through. • In addition, not all speakers of English pronounce r in the

same ways, • Still, it counts as a single sound within the system, because

it remains a contrasting unit.


• Every language has its specific set of contrastive units, or phonemes.

• Phonemes are defined as contrastive phonological units of a language.

• Another common definition: phoneme is a minimal unit of linguistic analysis which has no meaning of its own, but brings about a difference in meaning.


Some clarifications:• To say that the phonemes of a language are the sounds

used in that language is not precise enough. • E.g., /n/ and /N/ are sounds used both in English and in

Serbian, but they do not have the same phonological status.

• English: Substituting /n/ for /N/ in /sIN/ and /sIn/ changes the meaning!

• Serbian: Substituting /N/ in the word banka with /n/ does not bring about a change in meaning, just sounds slightly odd.

• This is because [n] and [N] are two allophones of a single distinctive unit in Serbian – they never occur in the same context.

• Similarly, replacing the aspirated [th] with the unaspirated sound [t] in the English word tea /ti;/ does not cause a difference in meaning, but may simply sound inappropriate.

• Replacing the aspirated sound /th/ with the unaspirated /t/ in Hindi will lead to a difference in meaning, because these are two significant units in this language.


Different languages: similarities and differences

• There are many similar sounds in different, even unrelated languages of the world,

• but the sets of phonemes, or phonological systems, are rather unique, or language specific.

• Every language has its own set of distinctive units, and the number of those units is also language specific.

• The usage of phonological features, such as aspiration, voicing, etc. is also language specific.

• English may employ aspiration as a non-distinctive feature, signaling just a difference in the occurrence of the phoneme /t/, whereas Hindi uses aspiration as a significant clue, signaling phonemic difference.


Free phonemic variation • As a rule, substituting one phoneme with

another will lead to a difference in meaning. • However, there are some cases when the

substitution is acceptable without affecting the meaning.

• For example, the word cigarette can be pronounced as /sIg@ret/ or /sIg@r@t/, without a change in meaning. This is called free phonemic variation.

• In English, sounds /I/ and /@/ are very commonly in free phonemic variation in unstressed syllables, so that the words kitchen, beginning or longest can be pronounced either as /kItSIn/, /bI`gInIN/, /lQNgIst/ or as /kItS@n/, /b@`gInIN/, /lQNg@st/.


Positional phonemic variation • Sometimes, a phoneme may be replaced by another

phoneme without affecting the meaning, but only in specific phonological environments.

• This happens if one of the surrounding phonemes influences the phoneme in question, so we say that it is phonologically conditioned.

• E.g., the final consonant in the word miss /mIs/ may be changed if the following word begins with /j/, as in the expression I’ll miss you /aI l mIs ju/. The fricative /s/ may change into /S/ in this context, rendering the pronunciation /aI l mIS ju/.

• Since this kind of change is caused by the specific position of the phoneme in question (in this case /s/ in front of /j/), this is called positional phonemic variation.


Another clarification – notion of ‘minimalness’

• Phoneme – traditionally defined as the ‘minimal’ linguistic unit, it may be broken into smaller ‘particles’.

• E.g., English fricatives /v/ and /f/ are rather similar, with a tiny difference between them.

• of course /Qv kO;s/ - voiced sound /v/ occurs in front of the voiceless sound /k/, /v/ changes into its voiceless counterpart, and the expression is pronounced /@f kO;s/. In a way, we may argue, the sound has changed under the influence of the sound /k/.

• But then again, it has changed only slightly. What is it that triggered the change?

• Sound /k/ has the characteristic of being voiceless, so it changes the voiced fricative /v/ into its voiceless counterpart /f/.

• This example shows that it is not the whole phoneme that triggered a change, but one significant feature, let’s call it [-voice].


Distinctive features• There are ‘particles’ smaller than the phoneme, which

make up the phoneme distinctive features • Those are the characteristics that are perceived as

essential in phonemes. • E.g. what determines the phoneme /v/, is the following:

– it is produced with friction, – it is articulated by the upper teeth and the lower lip, – it is produced with vocal cord vibration.

• So, the phoneme /v/ can be described with the feature matrix [+consonant], [+fricative], [labiodental], [+voiced],

• Phoneme /f/ can be described with the features [+consonant], [+fricative], [labiodental], [-voiced].

• The two differ just in a single feature (voicing), which is why they are so similar, both in their articulation and in the way we perceive them.


A bit more on phonemes and some related issues

• Phonemes are therefore also defined as ‘bundles’ of distinctive features, or the characteristics which give them the recognizable audible form.

• Although the distinctive features cannot be uttered on their own, phonology still takes them to be the minimal units of phonological analysis.

• Another point important mentioning is that phonemes are abstract units of linguistic analysis.


Abstract vs. concrete• Although we refer to them as to the ‘sounds’ of

language, we still do not mean each physical sound in an utterance.

• The physical realization of a phoneme is always different, even if produced by one and the same speaker.

• This difference in realization may be predictable, so that we may know when /t/ will be uttered as [t], [th], [t˚] or [?t] on the basis of the context in which it occurs.

• In that case, we are dealing with predictable realizations of phonemes, called allophones, which are more concrete realizations of the phoneme.


… and even more concrete…• What is more, regardless of the position in the word, one

and the same speaker will never produce one phoneme in exactly the same way twice, however hard he/she may try.

• Saying, for example the vowel /A:/ will always result in differences in tone, height, openness, loudness, etc.

• Each of the different concrete modulations is called a ‘phone’.

• So the phone is the physical realization of a sound. • Each of the different above modulations, or phones, will

still be perceived as one and the same category, in this case the category of /A:/ – which is the abstract unit, or phoneme of the language.

• So, the phonological analysis of the physical sound heard implies parsing different phones into a limited number of phonemes, abstract units of the language.

Lecture 4 Sound System1

Documents

Transcript of Lecture 4 Sound System1