LING2002 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Obstruent, Phoneme, Phonological Rule
Wednesday, 3 May 2017
LECTURE 18
RULES AND DISTINCTIVE FEATURES
-Rule notation
•The focus/target of the rule here is interpreted as:
-“All segments in any words that have both the phonetic properties [-son] and [+voi]”
•By not specifying any other features…
-We can express a class of sounds,
-And focus on the features that seem central to the process
-The rule above in Spanish: Given the inventory of the language, this targets only the voiced
obstruents
•The structural change here is interpreted as:
-For the targeted segments, set their value for the [cont] feature to [+]
•i.e. Add to or change the specification of the targeted segments
•We don’t need to repeat any features that don’t change from the target
-The rule above specifies that a voiced obstruent must be a fricative (rather than a stop) in that
context
•The conditioning context here is interpreted as:
-Do this only and always where such a target segment occurs between two segments that are
both [-cons, +cont]
•i.e. between vowels/glides
-[+cont] is not necessary to select vowels/glides in Spanish
•But it makes explicit the likely basis in assimilation
!1
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Wednesday, 3 May 2017
-This is a context-dependent rule:
•Only where the voiced obstruent is between vowels/glides
-Rules affecting non-contrastive features: Examples
•Inuktitut
-A high vowel /i u/ is realised as a mid vowel [e o] where it precedes a uvular consonant
•Any features that stay the same do not necessarily have to be specified ex/ [-low]
-Rules affecting contrastive features: phonemic alternation
•The underlying representation of the English Plural is /z/
•The surface representations = the allomorphs
-/s/ as in cats
-/z/ as in dogs
-/əz/ as in horses
•Phonological rules derive the surface representations from the underlying representation of Plural
and other morphemes
-Informally,
•Change /z/ to /s/ after a [-voi] segment
•Insert /ə/ before /z/ after certain consonants
-Specifying the target segment
•Only need to distinguish the relevant segments and classes from all other contrastive segments in
English
-i.e. From other phonemes
•The phoneme inventory = the contrastive segments of English
-The segments which make up the underlying representations of morphemes in English
!2
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Document Summary
Rule notation: the focus/target of the rule here is interpreted as: All segments in any words that have both the phonetic properties [-son] and [+voi] : by not specifying any other features . We can express a class of sounds, And focus on the features that seem central to the process. The rule above in spanish: given the inventory of the language, this targets only the voiced obstruents: the structural change here is interpreted as: For the targeted segments, set their value for the [cont] feature to [+: i. e. add to or change the speci cation of the targeted segments, we don"t need to repeat any features that don"t change from the target. The rule above speci es that a voiced obstruent must be a fricative (rather than a stop) in that context: the conditioning context here is interpreted as:
