Phonology : the function and pattering of sound (Part 3)

1.      ABOVE THE SEGMENT : SYLLABLES

1. Defining The Syllable

·         The syllable is composed of a nucleus (usually a vowel) and its associated non-syllabic segments.

·         Internal structure of a syllable:

1.      the Nucleus is the syllable’s only obligatory member, it is a syllabic              element that forms the core of a syllable.

2.       the Coda consists of those elements that follow the Nucleus in the same syllable.

3.      the Rhyme is made up of the Nucleus and the Coda.

4.      the Onset is made up of those elements that precede the rhyme in the same syllable.

·         Native speakers of a language demonstrate their awareness of this unit of phonological structure whenever they count syllables in a word.

·         The existence of subsyllablic units for a number of reasons. One of them is the fact that speakers do not syllabify words in random or variable ways.

·         The word extreme /ekstri:m/  would never be syllabified as /e . kstri:m/. Instead, syllables comply with certain constraint that prohibit them (in English) from beginning with a sequence like kstr and so result in the syllabification /ek . stri:m/.

Some syllable-initial sequences in English:

/ə.plɔ:d/	Applaud
/di.klaɪn/	Decline
/ek.spleɪn/	Explain
/im.prə.vaɪz/	Improvise

B. Onset Constraints And Phonotatics

·         Phonotactics, the set of constraints on how sequence segments pattern, form part of a speaker’s knowledge of the phonology of his or her language.

·         Initial consonant clusters in English containing a voiceless stop

Labial + sonorant	Coronal + sonorant	Velar + sonorant
[pl]          please	[tl]              -----	[kl]            clean
[pr]          proud	[tr]              trade	[kr]            cream
[pw]         -----	[tw]            twin	[kw]          queen
[pj]          pure	[tj]              tune	[kj]            cute
[spl]        splat	[stl]            -----	[skl]           sclerosis
[spr]        spring	[str]             strip	[skr]           scrap
[spw]      -----	[stw]           -----	[skw]         squeak
[spj]        spew	[stj]             stew	[skj]           skewer

·       This table contains examples of the possible syllable-initial consonant sequence of     English that contain a voiceless stop consonant. These sequence are all illustrated in word-initial position to make them easier to pick out. (stress marking and phonetic detail such as liquid-glide devoicing which are not relevant to the present discussion are omitted here).

·       This table show that the first segment of a word-initial three-consonant cluster in English is always s, the second consonant is the series always a voiceless stop, and the third is either a liquide or a glide.

C. Accidental An Systematic Gaps

·         Some gaps in the inventory of possible English words include snool, splick, sklop, flis, trok, and criff, none of which violates any constraints on onset combinations found in English.

·         Accidental Gaps is a gap in a language’s inventory of form that correspond to non-occurring but possible forms.

·         Occasionally, an accidental gap will be filled in by invention of a new word. Borrowed word such as perestroika (from Russian), taco (from Spanish), and zen (from Japanese) are readily accepted by English speakers as long as their syllable structure conform to the phonetic patterns of the language.

·         Systematic Gaps is gap in the occurring syllable structures of a language that result from the exclusion of certain sequences.

·         For instance, certain onset sequence like /bz/, /pt/, and /fp/ are systematic gaps in the pattern of English and are outright unacceptable to English speakers. Such sequence will ordinarily be adjusted phonological when they are pronounced in spontaneous speech.

·         There are many other words that violate phonetic conditions and that nonetheless do commonly appear in spoken English, such as pueblo [pwebləʊ], Tlingit [tlɪŋɪt] and the common pronunciation in young children’s speech of ‘street’ as stweet [stwi:t]. this appears to be case because thee sequences are not absolutely exclude from the onset phonotactics of English as are such sequence as ps- and bz- .

·         A labiovelar glide does not usually occur in an onset after labial consonant, and an alveolar stop such as /t/ is not followed by /I/; in both cases there is a restriction (in English) on stop-sonorant onset sequences with the same place of articulation. Such restrictions are nonetheless relatively easy to overcome in pronounciation.

 D. Language-Specific Phonotactics

·         language-specific constraints, on the other hand, hold true for individual languages sush as English, and they may or may not be found in other languages.

·       Phonotactic constraints represent one kind of phonological knowledge. We might wonder what prevents English words like extreme, applaud, decline, explain, and improvise from being syllabify, since these divisions do not violate any phonotactic constraints either.

E. Setting Up Syllables

·         The process for setting up syllables in a given language involves the following steps. There are four steps to setting up syllables:

·       Step a : since the syllabic nucleus is the only obligatory constituent of a syllable, it is constructed first. Each vowel segment in a word makes up a syllabic nucleus.

·       Step b : onsets before codas : the longest sequence of consonant to the left of each nucleus that does not violate the phonotactic constraints of the language in question called onset of the syllable.

·       Step c : any remaining consonant to the right of each nucleus form the coda. This coda is associated with the syllable nucleus to its left in the rhyme. A syllable with a coda is called a closed syllable.

·       Step d : syllables that make up a single form (usually a word) , this step is frequently omitted from phonological representation to save space.

  F. Syllabic Phonology

·         One reason for treating syllables as units of phonological structure is that they are relevant to stating generalizations about the distribution of allophonis features.

·         Aspiration in English

The distribution of aspiration can be stated generally by referring to syllable structure.

Aspirated stops	Unaspirated stops
At the start of a stressed syllable	Elsewhere:  -   in a syllable onset preceded by s (whether  another Coda follows or not) -  before a conconant -  initially in an unstressed syllable -  in a syllable coda

·         The phonemic representations of three English stops are unaspirated, since aspiration is a predictable feature. The environments where aspiration occurs can be stated very generally by referring to syllable structure.

 G. Ambisyllabicity

·         Ambisyllabicity is accounted for by assuming that the voiceless stops in these forms are simultaneously in both syllables.

·         In words with ambisyllabic voiceless stops, it is assumed that the stress attracts the voiceless stop into the precending syllable.  This requires us to assume further that a word is resyllablified after stress has been applied to the appropriate syllable.

·         The now ambisyllablic consonant cannot undergo aspiration since it is (at least party) in the preceding syllable.

·         Ambisyllablicity is not as arbitrary as it might appear at first. Its presence not only accounts for the lack of aspiration in these forms, but also helps explain why the first syllables of upper, happy, and kicking might otherwise appear to end in stressed lax vowels, a distribution which is otherwise not normally allowed in English (except in expressive / onomatopoeic words like baa/bӕ/). The simultaneous presence of the voiceless stop in the coda of the first syllable and the onset of the second means not only that we do not expect aspiration, but also that the first syllable is closed and so the presence of a lax vowel is normal.

 H. Phonetic Length In English Vowel

·         Phonetic length (here shown using a macron ‘ – ‘ over a vowel, e.g. ē ) is predictable in English vowels.

·         Whatever their inherent length (or, to put it another way, regardless of wheter they are phonologically tense or lax) English vowels are phonetically some what shorter than they would normally be, when they occur before voiceless consonants, before sonorant consonant, and in word-final position.

Phonetic length in English

A	B
Bad                     [bǣd]	Bat                             [bӕt]
Wed                    [wēd]	Wet                             [wet]

·         Conversely, the vowels are relatively longer than they would normally be, when they occur before voiced non-sonorant consonant.

                 

Vowels shorter before voiced consonants in English

adept	[ӕ.dept]	/ӕdept/
negate	[ne.geɪt]	/negeɪt/

 

·         This table shows, the phonetics duration of vowels is determined by syllable structure. The firs-syllable vowels all precede voiced, non-sonorant consonants, but they are not lengthened since the voiced consonant is in the following syllable.

·         English vowels are lengthened when followed by a voiced obstruent in the same syllable. As the analyses of the distribution of aspiration and vowel length in English have shown, the use of syllabic representations in phonology permits us in some cases to make more general statements about allophonic patterns in language than if we use only statements that do not make reference to syllable structure.

 

I. Syllable And Stress In English

·         Stress is defined as the perceived prominence of one or more syllabic elements over others in a word. In some languages- English among them- the structure of individual syllables plays a role in determining which vowel is stressed.

A	B	C
Synόpsis	arόma	Cabinet
veránda	archipélago	América
agénda	hiátus	Cinema

·         The words in columns A and B are all stressed on the penultimate (next to last) syllable, while those in column C are all stressed on the third syllable from the end of the word (the antepenultimate syllable), as the form cabinet makes clear. Although the stressing of the words may seem arbitrary at first, reference to syllable structure makes clear that there is some system underlying the assignment of stress here.

1.      Words in column A: share correlation between their syllabification and their stress : the stressed penultimate syllable has a coda ( a syllable with a coda is said to be closed)

·         Words in column B: also share a syllable structure characteristic: their nucleus contains a tense vowel. Although the syllable is not closed, the nucleus vowel with two element in it (the [ǝ] and [ʊ] of the dipthongs [ǝʊ]) is now represented as branching. In other words, tense vowels have the same effect on stress assignment as consonants in closed syllables. So, closed syllables as well as open syllable with two rhythmic elements in the rhyme are referred to as heavy while syllables with just a short vowel are said to be light.

·         To put it differently, syllables with one rhythmic beat or mora are light and those with two are heavy. Note that the onset contributes nothing to syllable weight.

·         English nouns are stressed on the penultimate syllable when it is heavy; otherwise, they are stressed in the antepenultimate syllable.

2.      FEATURES

Features are the units of phonological structure that make up segments.

A.    Features As Independent And Coordinated Elements

Speech is produced by a number of coordinated articulatory activities such as voicing, tongue position, lip rounding, and so on. Features such as voice, high, round. The representation of a segments by features capture this coordinated activity by placing features in an array called matrix. Each feature of group of features defines a specific property of the segment.

B.     Features And Natural Causes

Each feature may represent a phonologically relevant characteristic of segments. In phonological terms, features capture natural classes, which are classes of sounds that share a feature or features, such as voiceless stops, glides high vowels, nasal consonants, and so on.

Because features define natural classes, we can now see their relevance to phonological analysis. It is not individual phonemes such as /p/, /b/, /k/, and /g/ that contrast in English; rather, the entire class of voiced stops contrast with the class of voiceless stops. It is the feature [voice] that is contrastive, not the individual segments, since we can define the contrast between each pair of segments with otherwise identical articulations as residing in the feature [voice]. Since this single feature is employed in all voiced-voiceless contrast, we say that [voice] is a distinctive feature of English


Bibliography: 
 

Giegerich, Heinz.J. (1992) English Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dobrovoslsky, Micheal and Francis katamba. (1992) page. Phonology : The Function and Pattering of sounds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

http://www.ic.arizona.edu/~lsp/Phonetics/ConsonantsI/Phonetics2c.html. Phonology: place of articulation. 2011.