I

1- FEATURE HOMOGANIC
Sharing one or more of the articulating vocal organs: articulated with the same basic closure
or constriction but differentiated by one or more modifications \p\, \b\, and \m\
are homorganic, contact of the two lips being common to all three homorganic
consonant (from homo-"same" and organ "(speech) organ") is a consonantsound that is
articulated in the same place of articulation as another. For example, [p], [b] and [m]are
homorganic consonants of one another since they share the bilabial place of articulation.
Consonants that are not articulated in the same place are called heterorganic.

Homorganic nasal rule

A homorganic nasal rule is the point of articulation of the initial sound being assimilated by
the last sound in a prefix ]. An example of the rule is found in Yoruba in which ba "meet"
becomes mba "is meeting", and sun, "sleep" becomes nsun "is sleeping".

Homorganic Consonant clustering

Two or more consonant sounds may appear sequentially linked or clustered as either identical
consonants or homorganic consonants that differ slightly in the manner of articulation, as
when the first consonant is a fricative and the second is a stop.
In some languages, a syllable-initial homorganic sequence of a stop and a nasal is quite
uncontroversially treated as a sequence of two separate segments; and the separate status of
the stop and the nasal is quite clear. In Russian, the stop + nasal sequences are just one of the
possible types amongst many different syllable-initial consonant sequences that occur. In
English, nasal + stop sequences within a morpheme must be homorganic.

2. ALLOPHONIC SOUNDS
In phonology, an allophone is a set of multiple possible spoken sounds – or phones – or signs
used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language.[1] For example, in
English, [t] (as in stop [stɒp]) and the aspirated form [tʰ] (as in top [ˈtʰɒp]) are allophones for
the phoneme /t/, while these two are considered to be different phonemes in some languages
such as Thai. On the other hand, in Spanish, [d] (as in dolor [doˈloɾ]) and [ð] (as
in nada [ˈnaða]) are allophones for the phoneme /d/, while these two are considered to be
different phonemes in English.
A simplified procedure to determine whether two sounds represent the same or different
phonemes. The cases on the extreme left and the extreme right are those in which the sounds
are allophones.
The specific allophone selected in a given situation is often predictable from the phonetic
context, with such allophones being called positional variants, but some allophones occur
in free variation. Replacing a sound by another allophone of the same phoneme usually does
not change the meaning of a word, but the result may sound non-native or even unintelligible.
Native speakers of a given language perceive one phoneme in the language as a single
distinctive sound and are "both unaware of and even shocked by" the allophone variations
that are used to pronounce single phonemes.

An allophone is one of the phonetically distinct variants of a phoneme. The occurrence of one
allophone rather than another is usually determined by its position in the word (initial, final,
medial, etc.) or by its phonetic environment. Speakers of a language often have difficulty in
hearing the phonetic differences between allophones of the same phoneme, because these
differences do not serve to distinguish one word from another. In English the tsounds in the
words “hit,” “tip,” and “little” are allophones; phonemically they are considered to be the
same sound although they are different phonetically in terms of aspiration, voicing, and point
of articulation. In Japanese and some dialectsof Chinese, the sounds f and h are allophones.

3- PHONEMIC SOUNDS
Phonemic sounds, in linguistics, smallest unit of speech distinguishing one word (or word
element) from another, as the element p in “tap,” which separates that word from “tab,”
“tag,” and “tan.” A phoneme may have more than one variant, called an allophone (q.v.),
which functions as a single sound; for example, the p’s of “pat,” “spat,” and “tap” differ
slightly phonetically, but that difference, determined by context, has no significance in
English. In some languages, where the variant sounds of pcan change meaning, they are
classified as separate phonemes—e.g., in Thai the aspirated p (pronounced with an
accompanying puff of air) and unaspirated p are distinguished one from the other.
Phonemes are based on spoken language and may be recorded with special symbols, such as
those of the International Phonetic Alphabet. In transcription, linguists conventionally place
symbols for phonemes between slash marks: /p/. The term phoneme is usually restricted to
vowels and consonants, but some linguists extend its application to cover phonologically
relevant differences of pitch, stress, and rhythm. Nowadays the phoneme often has a less
central place in phonological theory than it used to have, especially in American linguistics.
Many linguists regard the phoneme as a set of simultaneous distinctive features rather than as
an unanalyzable unit
Phonemic sounds are into two types; Consonant sounds and vowel sounds. English for
instance have 44 sounds; 24 consonant sounds and 20 vowel sounds.
Phonetically, it is easy to give definitions: a vowel is any sound with no audible noise
produced by constriction in the vocal tract, and consonant is a sound with audible noise
produced by a constriction.

However, this definition forces us to identify as vowels many sounds which function as
consonants in speech. For example, in the English word "yes", the initial [j] is phonetically a
vowel according to the definition above. In the phonological system of English, however, the
[j] is in a typical consonant position (compare "yes" with "mess", "less", "Tess" etc.).
Similarly, there are sounds which are phonetically consonants which under some
circumstances do act as syllable nuclei; a typical example would be the use of "syllabic [l]" in
English "little" [lɪtl̩] (cf. litter).

4- DELETION
Deletion is a linguistic process by which a sound present in its underlying phonemic form is
removed from the phonetic form in certain environments. For instance, the word infrared is
often pronounced [ɪnfərɛd] . Deletion is similar to the process
of dissimilation or assimilationbecause the pronunciation is made easier. However, only in
deletion is the segment or sound entirely removed. It is the exact opposite of epenthesis the
addition of a sound into a word for more clear pronunciation.
In Informal English
In "infrared" the "r" is deleted and the word is often pronounced [ɪnfərɛd]

More discussion inside material

5- INSERTION
Insertion – phonological process in which a sound is added to a word
Ex. Voiceless stop insertion where, between a nasal consonant and a voiceless fricative, a
voiceless stop with the same place of articulation as the nasal consonant is inserted. In
English, many add a /p/ to hamster and say “hampster”.

When an extra sound is added between two others. This also occurs in the English plural rule:
when the plural morpheme z is added to "bus," "bus-z" would be unpronounceable for most
English speakers, so a short vowel (the schwa, [ə]) is inserted between [s] and the [z].

More discussion in our material

II

1- Epenthesis
We need to understand the meaning of the word “Epenthesis”. In simple words, the insertion
of sound or letter in the middle of a word is Epenthesis.

Vowel epenthesis is often motivated by the need to make consonant variations very different.
Epenthetic sound is not always a vowel. For example, consider two unknown articles “a” and
“an”. We know that “a” is used before consonant sounds and “an” is used before vowel
sounds. We see this as an epenthetic sound that breaks the sequence of two vowels: an
“apple” – an “apple”.

Epenthesis occurs many times, both in the official language and in one language. The
addition of ‘i’ before ‘t’ in “speciality” is an example.

According to some linguists, "vowel epenthesis is often motivated by the need to

make consonant contrasts more distinct" (The Handbook of Speech Perception, 2005).

In certain varieties [of English], a vowel breaks up the cluster (epenthesis): filmbecomes
[filəm] in Ireland, Scotland, and South Africa.

The history of English provides examples [of epenthesis] like the development
of aemtig into empty, with epenthetic p, and of þunor into thunder, with epenthetic d. Non-
standard pronunciations include 'athalete' for athlete and 'fillum' for film,' with epenthetic
vowels."

Fambily for Family

"She were gentle an' sweet, an' the mos' beautiful creetur in all--in--in the place where we
lived. An' her fambily was that proud an' aristocratic thet no one could tech 'em with a ten-
foot pole."

Athalete for Athlete

"'That's the thing,' said McCloud plaintively. 'A athalete has to keep up appearances. Sure,
people think a athalete makes plenty, and he do on paper. But people never stop to think he's
allus gotta keep up a expensive front.'"

There is also in Yoruba that we include vowels between consonant clusters in borrowed
words and when consonants end borrowed words

Bread – Buredi

Create – kireti

The production of clusters is a complex procedure. It requires rapid movements of the vocal
apparatus to ensure smooth transitions from one consonant to another. For the very young
child, sequences of consonants may be too difficult to pronounce in rapid
succession. Consequently, a vowel – typically a schwa – may be inserted to break up a two-
consonant cluster. An example of this would be the word grow /grəʊ/ being realized as
/gərəʊ/ where the schwa vowel /ə/ is inserted between the two consonants that form the initial
/gr-/ cluster of the word. Once inserted, the vowel is referred to as the epenthetic vowel. The
effect of this insertion is to create a slight hiatus between the two consonants of the cluster,
thereby easing the pressure on the vital rapidity of movement. Further examples of epenthesis
include the following.

play /pleɪ/ → /pəleɪ/

brick /brɪk/ → /bərɪk/
snow /snəʊ/ → /sənəʊ/

As in the above examples, epenthesis typically affects clusters that occur in syllable-
initial position. However, clusters in syllable-final position can also be affected but this is
much more limited, e.g.

film /fɪlm/ → /fɪləm/

milk /mɪlk/ → /mɪlək/

2- Elision

In phonetics and phonology, elision is the omission of a sound (a phoneme) in speech. Elision
is common in casual conversation.More specifically, elision may refer to the omission of an
unstressed vowel, consonant, or syllable. This omission is often indicated in print by
an apostrophe. Elision is a process where one or more phonemes are ‘dropped’, usually in
order to simplify the pronunciation. It may occur for both vowels and consonants, although it
is much more common for consonants. Where it occurs for vowels, we have extreme cases of
vowel reduction or weakening to the point that the vowel is no longer pronounced at all,
such as in words like police, correct or suppose being realised as [pliːs], [kɹɛkt] or [spəʊz]. In
rare cases, such as in some realisations of the word perhaps, both consonant and vowel
elision may even occur at the same time, e.g. yielding [pɹaps]. We will focus our elision on
vowels

Standard cases of vowel deletion in Yoruba

owó kí owó -> owókówó
money any money 'any money at all/bad money'
omo ki omo > omokomo “any child at all/bad child'
child any child
se olú > solú 'cook mushrooms'
e edé -> jedé 'eat shrimp'
ra ogède > rogede 'buy bananas'
ní oko -> lóko 'at the farm'
si ojà -> sójà 'to the market'

III
- What is Assimilation
Assimilation is a sound change in which some phonemes (typically consonants or vowels)
change to become more similar to other nearby sounds. A common type of phonological
process across languages, assimilation can occur either within a word or between words.
It occurs in normal speech but becomes more common in more rapid speech. In some cases,
assimilation causes the sound spoken to differ from the normal pronunciation in isolation,
such as the prefix in- of English input pronounced with phonetic [m] rather than [n]. In other
cases, the change is accepted as canonical for that word or phrase, especially if it is
recognized in standard spelling: implant pronounced with [m], composed historically
of in + plant.
English "handbag" (canonically /ˈhændbæɡ/) is often pronounced /ˈhæmbæɡ/ in rapid speech
because the [m] and [b] sounds are both bilabial consonants, and their places of
articulation are similar. However, the sequence [d]-[b] has different places but similar manner
of articulation (voiced stop) and is sometimes elided, which sometimes causes the
canonical [n] phoneme to assimilate to [m] before the [b]. The
pronunciations /ˈhænbæɡ/ or /ˈhændbæɡ/ are, however, common in normal speech.
In contrast, the word "cupboard", although it is historically a compound of "cup" /kʌp/ and
"board" /bɔːrd/, is always pronounced /ˈkʌbərd/, never */ˈkʌpbɔːrd/, even in slow, highly-
articulated speech.
Like in those examples, sound segments typically assimilate to a following sound,[note 1] but
they may also assimilate to a preceding one.[note 2]Assimilation most commonly occurs
between immediately adjacent-sounds but may occur between sounds that are separated by
others.[note 3]
Assimilation can be synchronic, an active process in a language at a given point in time,
or diachronic, a historical sound change.
A related process is coarticulation in which one segment influences another to produce an
allophonic variation, such as vowels becoming nasalized before nasal consonants (/n, m, ŋ/)
when the soft palate (velum) opens prematurely or /b/becoming labialized as in
"boot" [bʷuːt̚] or "ball" [bʷɔːɫ] in some accents. This article describes both processes under
the term assimilation.
2 – varieties consonant-consonant assimilation and others are in our material
(Phonological Processes)

IV
- Vowel harmony
In phonology, vowel harmony is an assimilatoryprocess in which the vowels of a given
domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus
"in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, meaning that the affected vowels
do not need to be immediately adjacent, and there can be intervening segments between the
affected vowels. Generally one vowel will trigger a shift in other vowels, either progressively
or regressively, within the domain, such that the affected vowels match the relevant feature of
the trigger vowel. Common phonological features that define the natural classes of vowels
involved in vowel harmony include vowel backness, vowel height, nasalization, roundedness,
and advanced and retracted tongue root.
Vowel harmony is found in many agglutinativelanguages. The given domain of vowel
harmony taking effect often spans across morpheme boundaries,
and suffixes and prefixes will usually follow vowel harmony rules.
 More explanation about the examples from any language of our choice is in our
material

V
- Syllable and syllabification
Syllabification
Syllabification refers to the process of division of words into smaller parts, known
assyllables - based on the sounds they produce. The method involves splitting of words into
units of sounds or sounds of vowels. A syllable is an unit of pronunciation having one vowel
sound.
Example:
1. Run - "U" is the vowel that produces a syllable. Therefore, the word had one syllable.
2. Acting - Act-ing: "A" and "I" are the vowels that produces two different sounds. Therefore
there are two syllables in this word.
3. Australia - Au-stra-lia: has "Au" producing a sound, "stra" producing a sound, "Lia"
producing a sound; therefore there are three syllables in this word.

Syllable and 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 resonance of one sound segment in relation to another.

The structure of a syllable represents sonority peaks and optional edges, and is made up of
three elements: the onset, the nucleus, and the coda.
SyllableStructure
When we represent syllable structure, the nucleus and coda are right-branching forming the
‘rime.’ This type of branching is the most common across languages. However, there are
some languages, such as Japanese and Korean, for which a case has been made for a left-
branching structure in which the onset and nucleus would form a ‘body.’
Despite the differences in branching, both of these syllable structures account for onsets,
nuclei, and codas. Not all of these elements are required in every syllable.
All languages require syllable nuclei. In fact, the nucleus is the only universally obligatory
component of a syllable. In most languages onsets are preferred yet optional – although they
are required in some languages. No language requires codas. In most languages codas are
optional, and they are restricted or even prohibited in others.
According to the SSP, the nucleus is the peak of sonority. The nucleus is usually filled with a
vowel (V), because vowels are the most sonorous sounds. To then allow the nucleus to be the
peak of sonority, Consonants (Cs), being less sonorant, flank the nucleus in the onset and
coda positions. There are exceptions, which will be discussed later. However, this is why we
represent syllables as V, CV, CVC, etc.
The most common structure across languages consists of an onset and a nucleus (CV). CV is
known as canonical structure because it is universally the most prevalent structure, and the
first to be acquired by children. Although syllabic structure is language-specific in terms of
form and the types of phonemes that are permitted in any of the three positions, the canonical
structure exists in all languages and is preferred in most.
Onset
CVC
The onset is the beginning of a syllable boundary, and is the strongest consonantal position.
The onset is required in many languages and is optional or restricted in others. Onsets are
almost always preferred to codas; when a C is found intervocalically it will be parsed to the
subsequent onset rather than the previous coda. For instance, a CVCV structure would be
syllabified as CV.CV, and not as CVC.V.

Nucleus
CVC
Nuclei are generally filled by vowels.
A vowel cannot fill any position of a syllable besides the nucleus. If a vowel were to be in
either the onset or coda position, the nucleus would be required to contain a sound more
sonorous than a vowel in order to not violate the SSP. However, there are no sounds more
sonorous than vowels. If a vowel is present, it must be in the nucleus of the syllable.
Coda
CVC
The coda is optional in most languages. In some languages, it is restricted or even prohibited.
Old Bulgarian does not permit codas, and will therefore syllabify (parse) a structure such as
CVCCCV to CV.CCCV. On the other hand, some languages such as Persian do not permit
complex onsets but do allow complex codas. Persian speakers would most likely syllabify
CVCCCV as CVCC.CV.
Syllables without codas are referred to as open syllables, and syllables with codas are referred
to as closed syllables.
- More explanation on our notes