What are minimal pairs? Minimal pairs are two words (a pair) that are identical in all sounds but one. We use them to show which phonemes are distinct, or contrastive in a language. Distinct phonemes are those of which a speaker is aware. We know that two sounds are distinct from each other if, when the sounds are exchanged, meaning changes. This applies to both consonants and … [Read more...]
A Closer Look at Flaps and Glottal Stops in Standard American English
Flaps (or taps) and glottal stops in Standard American English (SAE) are most often found as allophonic variants of alveolar stops, although their distribution is not limited to this alone. For the purpose of this tutorial, we will focus on the former. A flap, often referred to as “tap”[1] is defined as a voiced consonant produced with a single and brief motion in which the tip of the tongue … [Read more...]
Minimal Distinctions
Phonemes can be thought of as a bundle of features. Any sound you know, can be described by a list of distinctive features they bear such that if one feature is altered, the sound is altered. For instance, /s/ is a voiceless, alveolar fricative. By changing the voicing feature to ‘voiced’ we change the sound to /z/. Distinctive features enable us to: -classify phonemes into … [Read more...]
The Basics on Syllabic Structure
A syllable (σ) is a phonological unit of sonority. Sonority can be described by the degree of airflow obstruction and voicing that occurs during phonation. Sonority is inversely correlated with constriction of the articulators in the oral cavity. Sonorous sounds have a more ‘sing-able’ quality, that is they are more prominent in amplitude and length than less sonorous sounds. Sonority shows the … [Read more...]
Levels of Representation
What are UR and SF? Speakers in all languages possess abstract concepts about the sounds they articulate. In other words, they believe that they have an accurate awareness of speech sounds that they utter. Typically, though, there is a discrepancy between speakers’ own ideas about the sounds in their language use, and what they are actually articulating in practice. The underlying representation … [Read more...]
Features and Classes 101
Features Phonetic features The perception of natural speech sounds is based on phonetic features, the smallest units of distinction between any two phonemes. We use features such as voicing to differentiate between the words /kejm/ ‘came’ and /gejm/ ‘game’. The only distinguishing feature between these 2 sounds is that the vocal cords not do vibrate for during the articulation of /k/, and do … [Read more...]
An Introduction to Natural Classes
When studying phonology, it is fundamental to understand phonemes in terms of the features that they bear and share. Doing so allows us to group phonemes together into natural classes, which gives insight into how classes of sounds pattern together when undergoing various phonological processes. Natural classes are groups of phonemes that share one or a set of phonological features. Binary … [Read more...]
Redundancy and Underspecificity
Speech sounds are defined by distinctive phonetic properties or features that, when combined, distinguish these sounds from each other. We use the features [-syll, -cont, +ant, +cor, -vce] to represent the phoneme /t/. If any feature is altered, /t/ is no longer /t/, but a combination of the altered features. For example, changing [-vce] to [+vce] yields /d/. These are distinctive features. On the … [Read more...]
An Introduction to Phonology
Phonology is where you put into practice all you’ve learned in phonetics. It is the study of how sounds are strung together (phonotactics), how they interact with each other, and the rules that account for these processes. The focus of phonology at an introductory level course can be categorized into the following areas. 1. The Distribution of Phonemes Phonemes are individual sounds described … [Read more...]