Understanding Phonology

• The study of phonology investigates regularities that define phonological units in a language.
• The core units of phonology include features, sounds, syllables, stress, tone, and intonation.
• Phonology accounts for patterns of segment distribution and morpheme alternations.
• Phonological analysis considers morphological units (morphemes, words) and syntactic units (phrases, sentences).

Key Elements in Phonology

• Segment: Broadly refers to phones.
• Features: Characteristics of segments.
• Syllables: Units of speech sounds.
• Tones, Stress, and Intonation: Suprasegmental features.
• Pitch: Determined by the rate of vibration in the larynx and vocal folds, influenced by the glottis's shape and space.
• Faster vocal fold vibration results in high pitch; slower vibration results in low pitch.
• The opening and closing of vocal folds at the front and back contribute to pitch facilitation.
• Tonemic Languages: Use tone to differentiate word meaning, such as Akan (Pápá, pápà, pàpà).

Foundation of Speech

• Daily utterances begin with distinctive features.
• Features form segments, segments form syllables, syllables form words, words form phrases, phrases form sentences, and sentences form a discourse.

Terms Involved

• Stress: Relative emphasis on a syllable or word.
• Tone: Pitch used to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning.
• Intonation: Pitch variation over an utterance to communicate meaning beyond the literal.

Prosody

• Syllables, stress, tone, and intonation are part of prosody, a subfield of phonology.
• Prosodic Units: Consist of more than one segment or are associated with more than one segment (e.g., stress, tone, intonation).
• Stress, tone, and intonation are also called suprasegmental features.
• Segmental Analysis: Analysis of speech sounds (vowels and consonants) as individual segments.
• Considers articulation, air streams, vocal tract area, vocal organs, and type of articulation.
• Prosodic Analysis: Analysis based on stress, intonation, and tone patterns in context.
• Focuses on the effect of multiple sounds on communication in a language.

The Role of Meaning in Linguistic Analysis

• Meaning is a key element in every stage of linguistic analysis.
• Language's primary motive is to facilitate meaning.
• Linguistics is the science that studies languages.
• Analysis must consider the meaning of elements, which can vary across languages.

Differences Between Segments & Words

• Phonological segment differences are grounded in meaning contribution, not just articulation, manner, or features.
• Phonology views segments as mental objects contributing to meaning.
• Languages show preference levels in linguistic units/distinctive features.
• Preferred (unmarked) units are less marked; dispreferred (marked) units are marked.

Distinctiveness and Redundancy in Phonological Features

• Some segmental features are distinctive, while others are redundant.
• Redundant features are naturally part of certain segments, so they don't need to be explicitly included in descriptions.

Vowel Description

• For vowels, voicing is redundant, but height and frontness are distinctive.
• For consonants, labial, coronal, and dorsal features are distinctive in many languages.
• Distinctive features are phonemic and contribute to meaning, while redundant features don't.
• Changing a vowel's voicing won't change a word's meaning, but changing height or frontness will.
• Changing the articulation place of voiceless consonants can change the word's meaning.
• Distinctive features contribute to meaning, while redundant features do not.

Summary of Distinctive Features

• Separate phonemes have at least one distinctive feature.
• Minimal word sets have one or more distinctive features responsible for meaning differences.
• Redundant features are predictable and don't lead to meaning change, so they don't need to be specified.
• Language-specificity determines distinctiveness and redundancy.

Levels of Representation

• Underlying Representation (UR): Captures distinctive features required for meaning, cannot be predicted.
• Surface Representation (SR): Captures non-distinctive features that surface in specific, predictable environments.
• English vowels become nasal before a nasal sound in the same syllable, describable via rule.
• The original segment form is UR, its changed form in the new environment is SR in this representation.

Language Typology in Feature Specifications

• Typology studies types and systems of dividing things, including similarities and differences across languages.
• Some features are learned as part of language knowledge.
• Language-universal tendencies exist.
• Certain features ([high], [Coronal]) are distinctive in all languages.
• Some features are more likely to be distinctive.
• Distinctiveness implies that another feature will also be distinctive.
• Language typology is key in phonology.

Typology Perspectives

• Which features/patterns/observations are universal?
• Which are specific to certain languages/families/regions?
• How do various languages treat features?
• Focus shifts to distinctive and redundant features within a specific language.
• Examines how languages treat feature sets, such as voicing and aspiration.

Example Language Types

• Type 1: Voicing and aspiration are contrastive, exemplified by Hindi.
• Type 2: Voicing is distinctive, aspiration is redundant, exemplified by English and French.
• Type 3: Aspiration is distinctive, voicing is redundant, exemplified by Mandarin Chinese.
• Type 4: Neither voicing nor aspiration is distinctive, exemplified by Finnish.
• Type 5: Voicing and aspiration are distinctive, but aspiration is only distinctive with voiceless sounds, exemplified by Thai.
• Type 6: Never attested, aspiration is distinctive only when combined with voiced sounds.
• Language-specificity in distinctiveness and redundancy is constrained or limited.

Concept of Markedness

• Explores whether feature values have equal status/preference across languages.
• Unmarked Value: The feature with a higher value is called.
• Marked Value: The one with a lower value is called.
• Unmarked values are more common across languages, more natural, and the default.
• Languages with a marked value also have the unmarked value, but not vice versa.

Analysis of Voicing and Spread Glottis

• [-voice] is unmarked, [+voice] is marked.
• [-spr glottis] is unmarked, [+spr glottis] is marked.
• All languages have [-voice] obstruents, but some lack [+voice] obstruents.
• Lack of voicing is fundamental.
• Phonetically, unmarked units are easier to articulate, acquired first, and more salient.
• Nasality in vowels: [-nasal] is unmarked, and [+nasal] is marked (they become nasalized for a reason).
• Glottalisation in obstruents: [-constricted glottis] is unmarked, [+constr. Glottis] is marked.

Phonological Process

• Every process produces at least one phonological rule, reflecting a process.

Realisation of English

• Plain [t]: stem [stem]
• Aspirated [t]: ten [then]
• retroflexed [t]: strip [stţip]
• flapped [t]: atom [arəm] (in North American dialects)
• nasal flapped [t]: panty [parĩ] (in North American dialects)
• glottalised [t]: hit [hit²] (in some British and North American dialects)
• glottal stop: bottle [bo?l] (in some North American dialects)
• zero: pants [pans]

Assimilation Defined

• A sound becomes more like a neighboring sound.
• The sound adopts a new feature, while the neighboring sound retains its original feature.
• Virtually every feature can be involved.
• When an alveolar consonant precedes a non-alveolar, a POA assimilation is likely.
• Dentalisation: An alveolar consonant [t, d,n,1] becomes dental before a dental consonant like /0, ð/
• Labial articulation: In many native dialects, an alveolar becomes labial before a labial in casual speech.
• Velar articulation: Before velar consonants, alveolars become velar in casual speech.
• Palatalisation: Before [J] and [j], [s] and [z] become [J] and [3]. Velar and labial consonants (k, g, p, b) also become palatalised before [i].
• Labialisation: Before round vowels consonants of different places of articulation, are rounded.
• Nasal place assimilation/homorganic nasal assimilation: Nasals assume the same place of articulation as following consonants.
• Stop articulation: Sometimes a fricative is produced as a stop when following/preceding a stop, especially in casual speech.
• Laryngeal Assimilation: Assumes the feature of the adjacent segment.

Key Concepts on Assimilation

• This related co -articulation that included adjustments to a sounds place of articulation, manner of articulation and voicing.

Co-Articulated Sounds

• The two are co-articulated - the two sounds are produced with one articulatory gesture, instead of two different articulatory gestures.

Assimilation Elements.

• The processes can divided into the feature involved, trigger and target, direction of assimilation, domain of assimilation.

Assimilation Features

• Assimilation can be total or where assimilated sound has a feature of the adjacted segment, or where it partail where a feature is adjest but sound s retain its origin.

Harmony

Harmony is a form of assimilation that central to harmonic features.

Summary of Harmony

• Harmony a is not a phonetic sounds or co -articulation because triggering sounds are adjacent.
• Harmonic features involves not the triggers and targeet.
• Harmonic alignment focuses on route controlled verses dominant-recessive, vowel harmony.

Phonological Rules

Phonological and writing rules are a focus of theories in linguistics.

Rule Specifications

• Rules can be either segmented or features.
• Linear rules are applied to linearing of segments where affects sound.
• Rules are informative in state rules in features not sediments where similarity and surface are the enviorment.

Other types of rule:

This covers insertion, epenthesis, where there can be rule boundaries or units such as syllables, unit or words triggered and marked using "Word" subsript letters.

Derivational forms.

Phonological analysis has different treatments known under different rules the form.

The main phonological

• The interactions between morphology, and phonology with emphasis s that domain is a phonetic process.

Other considerations

• Are feeding where the environment helps and a set of conditions is created for another, verses bleeding where conditions occurs where another rule follows but is unable to occur.

###Linear process v phonology. Linear direct theory has concepts of phonological theory relating linguistic understanding and a masrters view of how they work. This is done by Universalitu and Markedness that are expanded for sake of OT.

Unity in linguistics acquisition

From different pieces of eidence there is set of universal properties or that Human language the world is created, which is innate.

Grammar in Generality

Where is expressed into rewright and how the ordered.

Markedness.

Linguisic are marked/unmarked, from that which a linguistic can be universal, they are not a set rule if those are in violation. Also helps form word/sentences where more options and diversity is created from the language.

Optimality.

Optimality helps turn from those marked statement where statements help into that of substinance where rules are made. Violations of are no direct cause for the rules but the output helps create least cost in violatino of the constrains.