TS 04 Phonology - Morphology PDF

3 Phonology Introduction to English Linguistics – Schleburg 3 Phonology Neutralisation of contrasts Functional contrasts that are distinctive most of the time can be neutralised in certain environments. In the following words it is difficult to say whether the pronunciation o...

3 Phonology Introduction to English Linguistics – Schleburg 3 Phonology Neutralisation of contrasts Functional contrasts that are distinctive most of the time can be neutralised in certain environments. In the following words it is difficult to say whether the pronunciation of the letters underlined should be assigned to the type or the type : ? ? happy, react The unstressed vowel that occurs in final position or in front of another vowel is neither as long as the typical in words like read nor as open as the typical in words like rid. The contrast between the two types becomes irrelevant in these positions, and what we typically hear is an intermediate vowel. 3 Phonology Neutralisation of contrasts In American English, two consonants that normally dis nguish meaning are not kept apart in certain posi ons: The contrast : made in pairs like me – dime is not usually upheld in pairs like la er – ladder. This t-flapping is characteris c of many US and Canadian varie es and indicated with the symbol in dic onaries: la er , winter clearly dis nct from ladder , winner la er , winter o en indis nguishable from ladder , winner 3 Phonology Neutralisation of contrasts German and most Slavic languages have a major neutralisation rule that we have to become aware of and ›unlearn‹ for pronouncing English. In German the opposition between and is contras ve neutralised at the end of a syllable, and we always use the voiceless sounds in this position (Auslautverhärtung, final devoicing). This is why e. g. Rat and Rad sound exactly alike, though the inflected forms Rades and Rates retain the contrast: Rat – Rad Rates – Rades English does consistently make a fortis/lenis-distinction in final position, so learners will need some practice to differentiate minimal pairs like cap – cab, wrote – road, pick – pig, safe – save, ice – eyes. 3 Phonology Lack of contrast Even though the most important function a sound type can have in a language is distinguishing meaning, not all of its words are actually distinct in sound. In English e. g. the sequence can represent two different words: seal₁ ‘stamp, signet’ and seal₂ ‘marine mammal’ are identical in pronun- ciation, or, as we prefer to say in Greek, homophones. They also happen to be identical in spelling, or homographs. If these two properties coincide and the words are indistinguishable in both the spoken and the written medium, we call them homonyms. 3 Phonology homo- homo- homo- phones nyms graphs same pronunciation same pronunciation same spelling (different spelling) same spelling (different pronunciation) him – hymn box – box bow – bow knight – night grave – grave lead – lead scene – seen light – light row – row to – too – two well – well tear – tear How can hearers or readers still keep homonyms apart? They will need a context: The queen put her seal on the envelope. 3 Phonology Basic notions In the lecture ›Phonetics and Phonology‹ you will hear more about … the functional status of sounds in the system: phonemes based on minimal pairs: – allophones realised in complementary distribution: – syllable structure and phonotactic restrictions suprasegmental features like stress and intonation weak forms occurring in unstressed position: sound change different accents of English phonological differences between English and German 4 Morphology Introduction to English Linguistics – Schleburg 4 Morphology Remember ›duality of pattern‹? We are now taking the giant leap … … from the limited set … to the open class of meaningless elements … of meaningful elements: 4 Morphology A new level of analysis Morphology studies the internal structure of words, segmenting them into morphemes: the smallest units of the language that carry meaning. phonological units morphological units teachers bookshelf unreliable Morphemes are often transcribed in curly brackets: + + 4 Morphology What something is and what something does … What is the morphological status of the sound sequence in the following words? inbox, inch, indoor, independent, injure, injustice, inside morpheme 1 morpheme 2 no morpheme inbox inch independent indoor inside injustice injure So once again, what is the ›same thing‹ at one level of description, can have a different functional status at another level. 4 Morphology The classification of morphemes Morphemes come in different types, defined by their distribution. + + criterion: autonomy prefix or free bound suffix simple content words derivational affixes lexical book, small, write anti-, -less criterion: meaning function words inflectional affixes grammatical as, the, will -ed, -’s 4 Morphology Lexical vs. grammatical in semantic terms »All human beings are born free and equal content words in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should lexical meaning: concepts in act towards one another in a spirit of extralinguistic reality brotherhood. Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this function words Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, grammatical meaning: relations religion, political or other opinion, between linguistic expressions national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Everyone has the right to But the plural { } does life, liberty and security of person.« express a contrast in (Universal Declaration of Human Rights) extralinguistic reality! Lexical and grammatical elements can both be contained in one word-form: { } lexical { } grammatical { } lexical 4 Morphology Lexical vs. grammatical in structural terms vocabulary size grammar number Expressions like huge, gigantic, The markers for singular and plural enormous, large, big, medium-sized, form a closed system of discrete small, little, tiny, minute, microscopic … values (grammatical category), and do not form a closed system and are one of them is obligatory wherever entirely optional: an English noun is used: a Ø stone that stone -Ø falls smallish those -s fall colossal tiny wee The choice of a marker can have implications for other systematic … choices in the construction. 4 Morphology Lexical vs. grammatical in structural terms Which contrasts a language expresses by grammatical rather than lexical means is another arbitrary feature. Physical properties (like size) are grammatically relevant in Bantu contrastive languages, e. g. Swahili: nyumba yangu ‘my house’ – chumba changu ‘my room’ (smaller) – ulimi wangu ‘my tongue’ (elongated shape) Number is not a grammatical category (but expressed lexically where needed) in many languages, e. g. Japanese: gengo ‘language(s)’ – ōku no gengo ‘many languages’ yama ‘mountain(s)’ – yama-yama ‘many mountains, mountain range’ On the other hand, Japanese verbs systematically encode formality: ōku no gengo wo hanasu ‘I/you/(s)he/we/they speak(s) many languages’ ōku no gengo wo hanashimasu (+ respect for situation or listener) 4 Morphology Lexical vs. grammatical in morphology Morphological analysis can be applied to both lexical and grammatical elements: morphology process: word-formation inflection morphemes: lexical grammatical result: lexemes word-forms system: open closed predictability: lower higher ›words‹ as abstract elements 4 Morphology I knew it! Morphemes (like all -emes in our terminology) must be viewed as abstract elements of langue. Just as in phonology phonemes are realised by phones at the level of parole, morphemes are physically realised by … morphs, i. e. sequences of sounds in which speakers recognise meaningful elements. In some cases, a morpheme is realised by morphs of different (but similar) subtypes. One example is the regular plural marker { } in English nouns: boxes, years, kisses, months, dogs, trees, hedges, jokes, rights 4 Morphology Types of morphs morpheme { } realisation / / / / / / condition after after other after other / / voiced sounds voiceless sounds boxes, hedges, dogs, trees, beliefs, jokes, examples kisses, matches wives, years months, rights The English plural marker { } has three variants whose choice is … phonologically conditioned (dependent on a sound in the environment). This means their uses do not overlap. They occur in what we call a … complementary distribution. Variants of one morpheme that are distributed like that are called … allomorphs.