Phonological processes

WHAT IS PHONOLOGY?
➤ Phonology has to do with the regulations that govern the occurrence of sounds in
particular environments
➤ Phonology describes the way sounds are produced in real terms
➤ It describes elements of the behavioral patterning of sounds beyond their phonetic
description
➤ It tries to account for the way sounds are produced in relation to their places and
manner of occurrence in particular languages
➤ It attempts to explain what happens to sounds in particular situations in which they are
produced
what differentiates it from the segmental phonetics
➤ Phonology goes beyond sound description

➤ It goes beyond the way sounds are produced

➤ It accounts for the ways sounds behave

➤ It tells us about what happens to sounds in relation to other sounds

➤ Phonetics is only concerned about that particular sound and its properties of
production, But phonology is about sound realization
➤ Take the sound /k/ for example
➤ phonetics will provide answer to the following questions:
➤ What articulators are involved in its production?
➤ What is the manner of the release of the airstream that produced
it?
➤ What is the state of the glottis in its production?
What will phonology then do to this same sound?

➤ It will tell you that if it is followed by a nasal, it will take on the colour of nasality as we
have in /𝛉ɪnkɪŋ/

➤ It becomes labialised or rather takes on a second feature of [+round] as we have in

/kᵂwɪk.li/
 it is aspirated in the initial position as we have in /kʰʌp/

➤ What this means in essence is that the same sound can behave differently, depending
on the actual environment of its realization.
WHAT ARE PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSES?

➤ Phonological processes are thus the operations that affect sounds when they are used
➤ The way environments affect the sounds that we produce
➤ The sort of environment is usually the sounds around the sound we want to produce and
the way our vocal organs now adjust to the sounds to produce the physical ones realised
➤ The many effects are due to the way the sounds are realised due to how their neighbours
affect them
➤ In this case, we can say that sounds that we produce in words are usually affected by
peer pressure while the sounds we produce in isolation may be able to stand and declare
their own individuality
 Single sounds
There are 2 main ways that pronunciation of an individual sound
can be affected.

1- Assimilation and dissimilation

2- strengthening and weakening (fortition and lenition)
Assimilation : when a sound becomes more similar to a neighboring sound.

1- place assimilation : when a sound takes on the place of articulation of a neighboring sound.
I live in brighton [imbraɪtən]
2- manner assimilation : when a sound takes on the manner of articulation of a neighboring sound.
Good morning [ɡʊmmɔːnɪŋ (place and manner)
3- voice assimilation : e.g English plural suffix –s and past tense –ed
When each suffix is added to a stem that ends in a voiced sound, the suffix is voiced, when it is
attached to a stem that ends in a voiceless sound, it is voiceless. [kæts], [dɒɡz]
Worked [wɜrkt]
loved [lʌvd ]
 Direction of assimilation:
1- Anticipatory Assimilation regressive: in this type of assimilation one or more consonants change so as
to prepare for/facilitate the pronunciation of the following one
good bye [gəbbaɪ] alveolar plosive ⇒ bilabial plosive
give me [gɪmmi] labio-dental fricative ⇒ bilabial nasal
good night [gənnaɪt] alveolar plosive ⇒ alveolar nasal
X Y / before Z
Perseverative Assimilation: (progressive)the feature of the earlier sound perseveres into the following sound.
dogs [dɒgz]
docks [dɒks]
the possessive marker, e.g. John’s [dʒɒnz]

z s / after voiced
z əz / after sibilant s, z, ʃ, tʃ, dʒ, ʒ
 Contact and distant assimilation

In case of contact assimilation (also called immediate assimilation) the sound undergoing assimilation and
the one causing it are immediately adjacent.

In case of distant assimilation the two sounds are not adjacent

When distant assimilation applies over an entire word it is called harmony

In Turkish, the vowels of a suffix that are [+high] assimilate to the vowel of the stem with respect to the
features [back] and [round]:

ev - evim 'my house‘ göz - gözüm 'my eye'

gul - gulum 'my rose'

https://www.laits.utexas.edu/phonology/turkish/harmony2.html
we often palatalize our sentences in casual conversations, especially words that
end with /d/, /t/, /s/, and /z/ sounds when the following word starts with a /j/

For example, when we say, ‘Did you eat?’, we automatically add a /dʒ/ sound
between ‘did’ and ‘you’ since ‘did’ ends with a /d/ and ‘you’ starts with a ‘y’=
/j/.

Similarly, we add a /ʃ/ sound between /s/ and /j/ when saying ‘I miss you.’
s ʃ / before j
Target post- palatal
Velar alveolar
Dissimilation
 Weakening
Any phonological change in which a segment becomes less consonant-like than
previously.

Weakening (or Lenition) – phonological process in which a sound becomes weaker

Ex. Flapping is a phonological process of weakening whereby the voiceless alveolar stop
consonant phoneme /t/ is pronounced as a voiced alveolar flap [ɾ], like in the word kitty.
This usually happens before a stressed vowel and before and unstressed vowel where the
sound is pronounced with articulation resembling a flap.
Voiceless voiced
The phonetic and phonological features of sonority is an articulatory
prosodic feature. It is a sound’s loudness relative to that of the other
sounds with the same length stress and pitch.

Weakness in sounds relates to how easy they are to pronounce or

how much effort is used in producing them.
Weakening : segment becomes less consonant-like
 Strengthening

Sounds become stronger or less sonorous

Final consonant devoicing: final voiced obstruent become voiceless

Both native and non-native English speakers systematically devoice their final consonants in normal speech.
Devoicing involves turning consonants that are supposed to be voiced (the final [b] in Bob, for example) into
either a voiceless [b] (indicated by a diacritic in the transcription) or its voiceless counterpart [p]. So when the
final consonant in Bob is devoiced, it will sound like "Bop.

pays /peɪz/
dies /daɪz/

plays /pleɪz/
Strengthening: Sounds become stronger or less sonorous
 Group of sounds

1- insertion
2- deletion
Insertion
 MSA: Modern standard Arabic

Epenthesis is the insertion of a sound or a syllable, usually to satisfy a phonological constraint. There are two
main reasons for epenthesis in loanwords used in MSA. The first reason is to resolve the onset-less syllable,
and the second is to avoid consonant clusters.

segment insertion Arabic loan words (e.g., ‘scrap’ > sikrāb)

?iskitš < sketch
?isti:riyu < stereo
?ista:ti:kiyyah < statics
H-dropping