? Complementary distribution: When two or more than
two sounds never occur in the same environment, they
h
=
_
are said to be in complementary distribution. [p , p ] [l, l ]
Phonological processes
? Assimilation: The process by which one sound takes on some or all the features of its neighboring sound, thus making the two sounds similar, the process is called assimilation. ? Regressive assimilation: There are two possibilities of assimilation: if a preceding sound is influenced by a following sound, making the two sounds similar, it is called regressive assimilation. ? Progressive assimilation: The converse process of regressive assimilation, in which a following sound is influenced by a preceding sound, making the two sounds similar, the process is known as progressive assimilation.
Phonemes and allophones
? Phone： phone, as a basic unit of phonetic study, is a minimal sound segment that human speech organs can produce.
? Phoneme : phoneme, as a basic unit of phonological study, is an abstract collection of phonetic features which can distinguish meaning.
Phonetics is the study of all possible speech sounds while phonology studies the way in which speakers of a language systematically use a selection of these sounds in order to express meaning.
Phonological analysis
? Phonetics and Phonology phonetics studies how speech sounds are made, transmitted,
and received. Phonology, on the other hand, is the study of the sound systems of languages. It is concerned with the linguistic patterning of sounds in human languages, with its primary aim being to discover the principles that govern the way sounds are organized in languages, and to explain the variations that occur.
? Phonemic contrast: It refers to two phonemes in a minimal pair occur in the same place and can distinguish meaning, these two phonemes are said to be in phonemic contrast.
? Allophones: the different realizations of the same phoneme in different phonetic environments are called
allophones. For example, [p , p ] are two
h
=
different phones and are variants of the phoneme /p/. Such variants of a phoneme are called allophones of the same phoneme.
Chapter 2
Speech Sounds
Study Contents
? Phonological analysis ? Phone, phonemes and allophones ? Phonological processes ? Distinctive features ? Syllable ? suprasegmental features
Phonemes s: When two different forms are identical
in every way except for one sound segment in the same place in the strings, the two words are said to form a minimal pair. beat—bit; bin—tin