16 Lesson 16: How Do We Know Which Sounds Are Meaningful? (has activity)

Activity! Phonological Patterns

Purpose: 
To practice identifying the phonological patterns that indicate whether a set of target sounds are phonemes, not phonemes, or allophones.

Background Knowledge:
Sounds in a language can be phonemes or not phonemes. Phonemes are sounds that make a difference in the meaning of a word if they are swapped with another phoneme. One way to tell if sounds in a set of target sounds are independent phonemes (contrastive) in a language is to look at the environments the sounds occur in. If they occur in the same environment (same sounds before and after the target sounds in the data set you are provided AND the meaning of the words changes, the target sounds are in ‘analogous environments. This means the target sounds are phonemes. One special type of analogous environment is called ‘minimal pairs’. Minimal pairs are words that have exactly the same sounds, in the same order, (and the same number of sounds), with the only difference being the target sounds. The target sounds must also be in the same place in the word. If the target sounds make a difference in the meaning of the word, the words are minimal pairs (or minimal sets). We often look for minimal pairs first because they are easiest to find.

Some sets of sounds can be variants of a phoneme, meaning they don’t change the meaning of a word, but are alternative sounds to the sound we think we are making. These sounds show up in specific environments (they are ‘conditioned’ by that environment). They never show up in the same environment as another sound in the target sound set. This means they are in ‘complementary distribution’. These sounds are allophones, variants of one phoneme. The tricky part is that a sound could be a phoneme in one context and an allophone of another phoneme. For example, the sound <m> is a phoneme in English, but it is also an allophone of the phoneme /n/ when the /n/ is before a bilabial consonant. In this environment (before a bilabial consonant), the phoneme /n/ becomes more like the place of the bilabial consonant, taking on the feature [+bilabial] while retaining the feature [+nasal]. So, it becomes [m] instead of /n/. We can see this in the word ‘grampa’ for ‘grandpa’ (first the ‘d’ drops out of the word, then we have a /n/ next toa /p/ and the /n/ becomes [m]) or the words input and inbox.

Sometimes sets of sounds can occur in free variation in a word, meaning if you swap out the sound for another (usually similar) sound, it doesn’t change the meaning of the word. In this case, the target sounds in the set are not phonemic. They are also not allophones. They are simply in free variation. These are easy to see because the words have the same meaning.

When we are trying to determine whether a set of sounds are phonemes or not (or allophones), we look for patterns in their environments. First, we look for minimal pairs. Then, we look for free variation. These are the two easiest patterns to identify. After that, we look for analogous environments and if we don’t find that, we check to see if the sounds are in complementary distribution.

Patterns:

• Free Variation                                 Same meaning, all other sounds the same
• Minimal Pair                                    Different meaning, all other sounds the same (order, number)

• Analogous Environment               Different meaning, same sounds around target sounds
• Complementary Distribution       Different meaning, different sounds around target sound triggering                                                            the change

• None of the above