Note that all consonants except the glides and /h/ are [+CONSONANTAL]. Nasals, liquids, and approximants are [+SONORANT], while fricatives, liquids, and approximants are [+CONTINUANT]. The four major classes of consonants can be differentiated as follows: stops [–CONTINUANT] nasals [–CONTINUANT] [–SONORANT] [+SONORANT] fricatives [+CONTINUANT] approximants [+CONTINUANT] [–SONORANT] [+SONORANT]
Sounds that contrast “bat” & “cat” , “pen” & “pin”, “fine” & ”vine”
• The difference between phonemes are distinctive. • Substituting one for the other changes the meaning of a word.
Phoneme: (of French origin, means speech-sound) 音位
a phonological unit of distinctive value. It is an abstract unit. It’s represented or realized by a certain phone in a certain phonetic context.
(Note: N/A= not applicable, where the rule does not apply.) The Elsewhere Condition 剩余位置条件 The more specific rule applies first.
distinctive features
• Nasalization rule: [- nasal] [+ nasal] / _____ [+ nasal]
The rule reads:
An oral vowel is transformed into the corresponding nasal sound when it appears before a nasal consonant. e.g. can, came, bin, sound, etc.
• a hotel, a boy, a use, a wagon, a big man, a yellow rug, a white house • an apple, an honor, an orange curtain, an old lady • Epenthesis (Insertion) Rule:
The rule reads:
A voiced fricative is transformed into the corresponding voiceless sound when it appears before a voiceless sound. e.g. love to, has to etc.
context.
E.g. dark and clear [l] as in “kill”, “like” aspirated and unaspirated [p] as in “pink”, “speak”
• Apart from complementary distribution, a phoneme may sometimes have free variants （自由变体）. • Free variation e.g. economic [i], [e] either [ai] [i:] direction [ai] [i] 新闻[v, w] in Chinese
The arrow represents the devoicing process
Focus bar: indicates the position of the target segment.
e.g. voiced fricative → voiceless/_______ voiceless
The slash specifies the environment in which the change takes place
Minimal pair（最小对立体）:
a pair of words between which the phonological difference is minimal because they are identical in form except for one sound segment that occurs in the same place in the string.
e.g. sip/zip, pair/bare, bit/bet, full/fool, seed/soup, bar/rod?
The allophones: the variants of a phoneme 音位变体
They must be phonetically similar and in complementary distribution.
[p] voiceless bilabial stop [b] voiced bilabial stop [s] voiceless alveolar fricative [z] voiced alveolar fricative
Ex.[ð] [f] [h] [l] [m] [t∫]
ə
Vowels
Human language displays a wide variety of sounds, but not all the sounds that humans are capable of producing with the vocal tract in speech. The class of possible speech sounds is not only finite, but also universal. Any human is able to pronounce these sounds, regardless of racial or cultural background. In English, *[lbki], *[bkil], *[ilkb] and so on are not possible in the language. Our knowledge of English tells us that certain strings of phonemes are permissible and others are not. After a consonant like [b], [g], [k], or [p], another similar consonant is not permitted by the rules of the grammar. If a word begins with an [l] or an [r], every English speaker knows that the next segment must be a vowel.
binary features They can group the phonemes into two categories: one with this feature and the other without. Binary features have two values or specifications denoted by “+” “-”. (See p.46) E.g. [+/- voiced]: [p] & [b] [+/-nasal]: [b] & [m]
suprasegmental features: the aspects of speech that involve more than single sound segments. The principal suprasegmental features are syllable, stress, tone, and intonation.
• Phonological process:
a target or affected segment undergoes a structural change in certain environmental process must have three aspects to it:
Phonetics: the study of speech sounds, which is part of phonology and provides the means for describing speech sounds, and it studies how speech sounds are made, transmitted, and received. Phonology is concerned with the linguistic knowledge of speech and the ways in which these speech sounds form systems and patterns in human language.
(1) a set of sounds to undergo the process; (2) a set of sounds produced by the process; (3) a set of situations in which the process applies.