LINGUIST 1A03 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Vocal Tract, Sonorant, Lax Pair

• School: McMaster University
• Department: Linguistics
• Course: LINGUIST 1A03
• Professor: Catherine Anderson

Document Summary

Sounds can vary in many ways e. g please with voiced l or voiceless l, however this is the same word either way. Some sound variation is meaningful and some are not. Phonetics - how sounds are made and what they sound like, is physical. Phonology - how sounds are organized in mental grammar of each language, is mental ( therefore cant be directly observed. However we can observe language behaviour, and draw conclusions about the mental grammar) Which ones are predictable, which are possible and impossible. Phonology is language specific - other languages use sounds differently. Phoneme - mental category of phonetically similar sounds, a bucket that collects sounds that are similar. / / is for the general form, phonemic form. [ ] is for the allophones, phonetic form o o o o. This is read as /ae/ is pronounced/realized as [ae nasalized] before a nasal consonant. And implies that it is pronounced as [ae] everywhere else.