LING2002 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Complementary Distribution, Phoneme, Free Variation
Wednesday, 29 March 2017
LECTURE 10
PHONEMIC ANALYSIS
-Doing phonemic analysis
•Phonemic analysis uses methods which establish whether phones are in contrast in a specific
language
-Examine the words of the language to identify the distribution of each phone
•= Phonetic contexts it occurs in in words of the language
-Evidence of contrast
-NOT speaker judgement
•Words that are minimally different in phonetic terms
-Minimal pairs/triples/sets
•Evidence of non-contrast
-Free variation
•But not idiosyncratic variation between phonemes: /i:ðə/~ /ɑeðə/
-Occurs within only a few words in a language
-Complementary distribution
-Complementary distribution
•If two phones are in complementary distribution, they never occur in the same phonetic context in
words
-Then logically the difference between the two phones cannot be the only difference between
words
•If phone X only occurs at the beginning of words: XAB
•And phone Y only at the end of words: DEY
•Then X vs Y can never be the only difference between words
-Because there can’t be a word *YAB vs XAB, or *DEX vs DEY
-Which means that the difference between the phones is not used to encode different meanings at
word level
•= They are not contrastive
-Important phonetic contexts in analysis tend to be closer to the phone in question
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Document Summary
Doing phonemic analysis: phonemic analysis uses methods which establish whether phones are in contrast in a speci c language. Examine the words of the language to identify the distribution of each phone: = phonetic contexts it occurs in in words of the language. Not speaker judgement: words that are minimally different in phonetic terms. Free variation: but not idiosyncratic variation between phonemes: /i: /~ / e / Occurs within only a few words in a language. Complementary distribution: if two phones are in complementary distribution, they never occur in the same phonetic context in words. Because there can"t be a word *yab vs xab, or *dex vs dey. Which means that the difference between the phones is not used to encode different meanings at word level: = they are not contrastive. Important phonetic contexts in analysis tend to be closer to the phone in question.
