2024/2 PBI Introduction to Linguistics

This part will lead you to go deeper on some exercises as tool of phoneme identification. Phoneme identification is used to check whether certain sounds in different words are from single phoneme

or not.

This exercise laid on the two fundamental principles of predictability: 

doesn’t make semantic difference, then those two sounds must be allophones of a single phonemes; 

[2] if those two sounds can appear in the same environment, producing different words, then they belong to different phonemes. This way of identification can be completed through commutation test, involving placement of different sounds in particular context to see if minimal pairs result. Take a look on the following examples:

[a] The weather is so hot, you need to turn on the fan

[b] I go to the beach by my new van

In the above example, the word fan which contains phoneme [f] cant be interchangeably placed in the sentences with van even if both have similar sound of [f] and [v]. This is the proof that they belong to different phonemes. And this way of exercise is called minimal pairs. When a group of words can be differentiated, each one from the others, by changing one phoneme (always in the same position in the word), then we have a minimal set. For example, one minimal set based on the vowel phonemes of English could include feat, fit, fat, fate, fought, foot, and another minimal set based on consonant phonemes could have big, pig, rig, fig, dig, wig.

This type of exercise involving minimal sets also allows us to see that there are definite patterns in the types of sound combinations permitted in a language. In English, the minimal set we have just listed does not include forms such as lig or vig. According to the dictionary, these are not English words, but they could be viewed as possible English words. That is, our phonological knowledge of the pattern of sounds in English words would allow us to treat these forms as acceptable if, at some future time, they came into use. They might, for example, begin as invented abbreviations, like in:

[a] I think Bubba is one very ignorant guy. ~ Yeah, he’s a big vig!.

[Vig is abbreviation from very ignorant]

Until then, they represent “accidental” gaps in the vocabulary of English. It is, however, no accident that forms such as [fsɪɡ] or [rnɪɡ] do not exist or are unlikely ever to exist. They have been formed without obeying some constraints on the sequence or position of English phonemes. Such constraints are called the phonotactics (i.e. permitted arrangements of sounds) in a language and are obviously part of every speaker’s phonological knowledge. Because these constraints operate on a unit that is larger than the single segment or phoneme, we have to move on to a consideration of the basic structure of that larger phonological unit called the syllable.

Speakers certainly have an intuitive notion of how many syllables each word contains: for instance, speakers of English would generally agree that meadow, dangerous, and anti disestablishmentarianism (allegedly the longest word in the language) have two, three and twelve syllables respectively. It is less easy for speakers to reflect consciously on the internal structure of syllables, or to decide where one stops and the next

starts; but a wide variety of cross-linguistic studies have helped phonologists construct a universal template for the syllable, within which particular languages select certain options. A syllable must contain a vowel or  vowel-like sound, including diphthongs. The most common type of syllable in language also has a consonant (C) before the vowel (V) and is typically represented as CV. Technically, the basic elements of the syllable are the onset (one or more consonants) followed by the rhyme.