Linguistics 401, section 3Phonology: syllables

September 27, 2007

1 Syllables

Syllables have a powerful psychological effect that can be of great use if you are writing asong, a poem, or memorizing a spoken passage. Often in linguistic theory, the lowercaseGreek letter σ (sigma) stands for “syllable.”

Two notations:

1. periods divide broad transcription into component syllables (typically but not always,each contains a vowel) and a

"

diacritic marks unexpectedly syllabic sounds e.g.:[baRl

"], [wô

"k]

2. tree diagram differentiates constituents: onset, nucleus, coda, rhyme

• presence or absence of a coda determines open vs. closed syllable

• all constituents except the nucleus optional

Syllable (σ)

Onset (O)

s p r

Rhyme (R)

Nucleus (N)

I

Coda (Co)

n t

2 Systematic gaps

The phonotactics of a language lead to systematic gaps in the inventory of possible onsets.

some illegal English syllable onsets: vz, vn, dv, kt, pt, kp, zm, zr

All of these clusters are legal onsets in Polish. For English speakers, perhaps knowing ∗[σgmrules out the syllabification ∗[se.gment] favoring instead [seg.ment]. Likewise, ∗[σpt mightrule out [helico.pter].

For foreign words involving illegal clusters (like the Russian name Dmitri) something’s gotto give. A typical response is schwa epenthesis, e.g.

schwa epenthesis ∅ → [9] / [+consonantal] [+nasal] (exceptions: /sm/, /sn/)

The ∅ symbol indicates the lack of any underlying phoneme.

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Schwa epenthesis often happens when attempting to pronounce foreign words containingphonotactically illegal sequences in the speaker’s native language. In a production experi-ment, monolingual English speakers were asked to pronounce various illegal Czech consonantclusters.

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Results from production experiment highlight a graded cline of consonant cluster weirdnessfor English speakers.

Lisa Davidson, Paul Smolensky and Peter JusczykThe Initial and Final States: Theoretical Implications andExperimental Explorations of Richness of the Base.In R. Kager, W. Zonneveld, J. Pater editors.Fixing Priorities: Constraints on Phonological Acquisition.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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3 A syllabification algorithm

Syllabify /ImprInt/

1. Vowels are typically nuclei – the only obligatory part. Create nucleus, rhyme andsyllable nodes for each vowel.

2. Onsets before codas: the longest sequence of consonants to the left of each nucleusthat does not violate the phonotactic constraints of the language is the onset. MakeO the first child of σ.

3. Any remaining consonants to the right of each nucleus form the coda. A C nodedominates them, and is a child of the rhyme.

how about slim, decline and scrimp?

4 Structure-sensitive phonological rules

Lets re-formulate last lecture’s vowel-shortening rule to accomodate the additional datagiven ub table 3.33 of your book. These English examples all involve vowels right in frontof a voiced consonant.

Shorter V Before Voiced C Longer V Before Voiced C

“obey”

Wd

σ

N

ow

σ

O

b

R

N

ej

“redo”

Wd

σ

O

ô

R

N

i

σ

O

d

R

N

u

“Abe”

Wd

σ

R

N

e:j

Co

b

“brogue”

Wd

σ

O

b ô

R

N

o:w

Co

g

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V lengthening

+ syllabic− consonantal+ sonorant− long

→ [+ long

]/

σ

− syllabic+ consonantal− sonorant+ voice− nasal

“Vowels that are not ordinarily long surface as long when they preceed a voiced obstruentin the same syllable.”

Flapping

{/t//d/

}−→ [R] / [+vowel] [+vowel,-stress]

/rajt/ + “-er” /rajd/ + “-er” underlying forms

— [ra:jd@r] V lengthening[rajR@r] [ra:jR@r] Flapping (schwa is definitely unstressed)[rajR@r] [ra:jR@r] surface forms

Vowel lengthening must apply before the neutralization rule Flapping. If the rules wereordered the other way round, V lengthening would apply in both cases to the voiced flap [R]predicting, falsely, that both initial vowels should be long – but only rider ’s actually is.

Feeding

This data is only slightly simplifies the facts of Karok (spoken along the banks of theKlamath River in NW California)

[axyar] ‘fill’ [nixjar] ‘you fill’ [Puxjar] ‘he/she fills’[si:tva] ‘steal’ [niSi:tva] ‘you steal’ [Pusi:tva] ‘he/she steals’[skak] ‘jump’ [niSkak] ‘you jump’ [Puskak] ‘he/she jumps’

V truncation V → ∅ / V

palatalization [s] → [S] / [i] (C) NB can cross a consonant

What do the following words show about the ordering of the two rules?

[uksup] ‘point’ [nikSup] ‘you point’ [Puksup] ‘he/she points’[ikSah] ‘laugh’ [nikSah] ‘you laugh’ [Puksah] ‘he/she laughts”

V truncation must be ordered before palatalization. In [nikSup] for example, the unin-flected form [uksup] has a [u] rather than an [i] sound to the left of the intervening conso-nant [k]. This [u] needs to be destroyed by the V truncation rule to create a context wherepalatalization can apply. This is a ‘feeding’ relation.

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5 Homework

1. Try the interactive quiz on the major class features of [i], [m] and [t] athttp://bedfordstmartins.com/linguistics/phonology. Click on Links then clickon Exercises. This is optional and nothing needs to be handed in per se.

2. problem # 5 (Swampy Cree) on page 103 of the O’Grady book

3. problem # 11 (Canadian French) on page 105 of the O’Grady book

4. problem # 12 (English) in page 106 of the O’Grady book

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