Phonology resources

FAQ

• When there are no minimal pairs, exactly what kind of environment constitutes evidence for separate phonemes?
• What does the book mean by “conditioning environments for allophones”?
• What does “showing a derivation” mean?

When there are no minimal pairs, exactly what kind of environment constitutes evidence for separate phonemes?

Please see these messages in the email archive.

What does the book mean by “conditioning environments for allophones”?

Please see these messages in the email archive.

What does “showing a derivation” mean?

A derivation just means running words through the rules using a certain format (for more explanation, see our textbook pp. 98–99 or the partial answers for section handout 5.5). The following video demonstrates derivations by running ‘Patty’, ‘cat’ and ‘beauty’ through two phonological rules of English previously discussed in lecture.

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A word of explanation: The UR (Underlying Representation) in the top tier is what speakers memorize in their mental lexicon, and PR (Phonetic Representation) in the bottom tier is what people actually say. The lines in between show the output of each rule (Aspiration and Flapping in this case). If the rule doesn’t apply, i.e. doesn’t change anything, then there is just a dash like this —.

Other resources

• Wordprocessing for linguistics – Phonology. I wrote this page for those of you who plan to be kind to your TAs by typing your phonology homework. Thanks in advance!
• Conventions for writing rules, based on SPE notation (Chomsky & Halle, 1968, Sound Pattern of English). A very useful summary, but you can stop paying attention from angled brackets onwards.
• The Speech Internet Dictionary (SID) is an excellent glossary of 585 phonetic and phonological terms (as of 23 Jan 2011). Nice clear explanations of terms that are too advanced or unusual for our textbook. I must admit though that you might also try Wikipedia, which is not bad for linguistics.
• FeaturePad (Windows only) is like a live-in TA: it’s a tiny program which warns you when you’re defining natural classes using features (see textbook pp. 96–97) which are redundant or contradictory in the language of your choice. A great tool if you are interested in advanced material, but differs from our textbook: for instance our book considers fricatives to be [- delayed release].

Any suggestions for other links?