ffi

Uans appona taim uas tri berres; mamma berre, pappa berre, e beibi berre. Live inne contri nire
foresta. NAISE AUS. No mugheggia. Uanna dei pappa, mamma, e beibi go bice, orie e furghetta
locche di dorra.

Bai ene bai commese Goldilocchese. Sci garra natingha tu du batte meiche troble. Sci
puscia olle fudde daon di maute; no live cromma. Den sci gos appesterrese enne slipse in olle
beddse. Bob Belviso, quoted in Espy (1975)

ln the preceding chapter, we investigated the physical production of speech sounds in

terms of the articulatory mechanisms of the human vocal tract, That investigation was
possible because of some rather amazing facts about the nature of language. When we
considered the human vocal tract, we didn't have to specify whether we were talking about
a fairly large person, over six feet tall, weighing over 200 pounds, or about a rather small
person, about five feet tall, weighing less than 100 pounds. Yet those two physically
different individuals would inevitably have physically different vocal tracts, in terms of
size and shape. ln a sense, every individual has a physically different vocal tract.
Consequently, in purely physicalterms, every individualwill pronounce sounds
differently. There are, then, potentially millions of physically different ways of saying
the simple word me.
reThe study of Language

ln addition, each individual will not pronounce the word me in a physically identical
manner on every occasion. Obvious differences occur when that individual is shouting, is
suffering from a bad cold or is asking for a sixth martini. Given this vast range of potential
differences in the actual physical production of a speech sound, how do we manage
consistently to recognize allthose versions of me as the form [mi], and not [ni] or [si] or [ma]
or [mo] or something else entirely? The answer to that question is provided to a large extent
by the study of phonology.

Phonology
Phonology is essentially the description of the systems and patterns of speech sounds
in a language. It is, in effect, based on a theory of what every speaker of a language
unconsciously knows about the sound patterns of that language. Because of this
theoretical status, phonology is concerned with the abstract or mental aspect of the
sounds in language rather than with the actual physical articulation of speech sounds.
If we can manage to make sense of Bob Belviso's comic introduction to the story of
Goldilocks and the Three Bears quoted earlier, we must be using our phonological
knowledge of likely combinations of sounds in English words to overcome some very
unusual spellings of those words. (See the end of the chapter for a translation.)
Phonology is about the underlying design, the blueprint of each sound type, which serves
in different physical articulations of that sound
as the constant basis of all the variations
type in different contexts. When we tNnk of the [t] sound in the words tar, stor, writer and
e$lth asbeing "the same, " we actually mean that, in the phonology of English, they would
be represented in the same way. In actual speech, these [t] sounds are all very different.
However, all these articulation differences in [t] sounds are less important to us than the
distinction between the [t] sounds in general and the [k] sounds, or the lfl sounds, or the
[b] sounds, because there are meaningful consequences related to the use of one rather
than the others. These sounds must be distinct meaningful sounds, regardless of which
individual vocal tract is being used to pronounce them, because they are what make the
words tar, car, far and bcr meaningfully distinct. Considered from this point of view, we
. can see that phonology is concerned with the abstract set of sounds in a language that
allows us to distinguish meaning in the actual physical sounds we say and hear.

Phonemes
Each one of these meaning-distinguishing sounds in a language is described as a
phoneme. When we learn to use alphabetic writing, we are actually using the concept
of the phoneme as the single stable sound type which is represented by a single written
symbol. It is in this sense that the phoneme /t/ is described as a sound type, of which
 The sound patterns of language

all the different spoken versions of [t] are tokens. Note that slash marks are conven-
tionally used to indicate a phoneme, /t/, anabstract segment, as opposed to the square
brackets, as in [t], used for each phonetic or physically produced segment.
An essential property of a phoneme is that it functions contrastively. We know there
are two phonemes /f./ and /v / in English because they are the only basis of the contrast
in meaning between the words fat andDat, ot ftne andurne. This contrastive property is
the basic operational test for determining the phonemes that exist in a language. If we
substitute one sound for another in a word and there is a change of meaning, then the
two sounds represent different phonemes. The basic phonemes of English are listed
with the consonant, vowel and diphthong diagrams in Chapter 3.
The technical terms used in creating those charts can be considered "features" that
distinguish each phoneme from the next. If the feature is present, we mark it with a plus
sign (+) and if it's not present, we use a minus sign (-). Thus /pl can be characterized as
[-voice, +bilabial, +stop] and /k/ as [-voice, +velar, +stop). Becausethesetwo sounds
share some features (i.e. both are voiceless stopsJ, they are sometimes described as
members of a natural class of sounds. The prediction would be that sounds which have
features in common would behave phonologically in some similar ways. A sound which
does not share those features would be expected to behave differently.
For example,lv/hasthe features [+voice, +labiodental, +fricative] and so cannotbein
the same "natural" class of sounds as /p/ and /k/ . Although other factors will be involved,
this feature-analysis could lead us to suspect that there may be a good phonological reason
why words beginning with /p\-l and /kl-/ are common in English, but words beginning
with lvl-/ are not. Could it be that there are some definite sets of features required in a sound
in order for it to occur word-initially before /l/? lt so, then we will be on our way to
producing a phonological account of permissible sound sequences in the language.

Phones and allophones

While the phoneme is the abstract unit or sound-type ("in the mind"), there are many
different versions of that sound-type regularly produced in actual speech ("in the
mouth"). We can describe those different versions as phones. Phones are phonetic
units and appear in square brackets. When we have a set of phones, all of which are
versions of one phoneme, we add the prefix "allo-" (: one of a closely related set) and
refer to them as allophones of that phoneme.
For example, the [t] sound in the word far is normally pronounced with a stronger
puff of air than is present in the [t] sound in the word sfar. If you put the back of your
hand in front of your mouth as you say tar, then star, you should be able to feel some
physical evidence of aspiration (the puff of air) accompanying the [t] sound at the
beginning of rar (but not in star). This aspirated version is represented more precisely
ruThe study of Language

as [tt1. That's one phone. In the last chapter, we noted that the [t] sound between
vowels in a word like writer often becomes a flap, which we can represent as [D].
That's another phone. In the pronunciation of a word like eigltttt {/etO/), the influence
of the final dental [0] sound causes a dental articulation of the [t] sound. This can be
represented more precisely as [1]. That's yet another phone. There are even more
variations of this sound which, like [tt'1, [D] and [l], can be represented in a more
precise way in a detailed, or narrow, phonetic transcription. Because these variations
are all part of one set of phones, they are referred to as allophones of the phoneme /t/.
The crucial distinction between phonemes and allophones is that substituting one
phoneme for another will result in a word with a different meaning (as well as a
different pronunciation), but substituting allophones only results in a different (and
perhaps unusual) pronunciation of the same word.
Let's look at another quick example, using a vowel sound. In English, there is a
subtle difference in the pronunciation of /i/ in the words seed and seen. In the second
word, the effect of the nasal consonant [n] makes the [i] sound nasalized. We can
represent this nasalization with a small mark (-), called "tilde," over the symbol [i] in
a narrow phonetic transcription. So, there are at least two phones, [i] and [-r], used to
realize the single phoneme. They are both allophones of /i/ in English.
It is possible, of course, for two languages to have the same pair of phonetic seg-
ments, but to treat them differently. In English, the effect of nasalization on a vowel is
treated as allophonic variation because the nasalized version is not meaningfully
contrastive. Whether we try to say [sin] or [din], people will only recognize one
word seen. In French, however, the pronunciation [so] for the word seau ("pail")
contrasts with [s6] for the word son ("sound") and beau [bo] ("good-looking") con-
trasts with bon [b6] ("good"J. Clearly, in these cases, the distinction is phonemic.

Minimal pairs and sets

Phonemic distinctions in a language can be tested via pairs and sets of words. When two
words such as pot and. bat arc identical in form except for a contrast in one phoneme,
occurring in the same position, the two words are described as a minimal pair. More
accurately, they would be classified as a minimal pair in the phonology of English. (Arabic,
for example, does not have this contrast between /p/ and /b/.) Other examples of English
minimal pairs are fan-van, bet-bot, site-sidz. Such pairs have traditionally been used in
the teaching and testing of English as a second or foreign language to help students develop
the ability to understand the contrast in meaning based on the minimal sound conffast.
When a group of words can be differentiated, each one from the others, by changing
one phoneme (always in the same position in the word), then we have a minimal set.
The sound patterns of language

For example, one minimal set based on the vowel phonemes of English could include
feat, ftt, fat, fate, fought, foot, and another minimal set based on consonant phonemes
could have btg, pig, rig, ftg, dig, wtg.