Chapter 2: An Introduction to English Phonology

What is phonology?

A major area of language change is sound change. As noted in Chapter One, all areas of the language change including the sound system (phonology). Some training in phonetics and phonology is essential for a study of the history of English. While this is not a text dedicated to phonetics and phonology, some basic principles are needed, and this chapter will provide the necessary tools to understand discussions about sound changes in the history of English.

The best place to start is to understand that spoken words have segments. When we listen to speech, we tend to think of words as whole units. This is natural because we are listening for word meanings. However, words have discrete (separate) units known as phonemes. And the study of phonemes and how these sounds form words is phonology.

The word cat registers the meaning of a furry four-legged animal in the English’s speakers mind when they hear this word. However, it actually consists of three discrete sounds: /k/ /æ / /t/. But these three sounds are “run” together and appear almost as one unit to the English speaker. Nonetheless, there are three separate sounds that the vocal apparatus produce. The mind registers three sounds and can interpret this combination to mean that furry animal. This is evidenced by the fact that if someone were to say the word sat, then the listener registers a different meaning in their mind. One of the three sounds was changed, and our minds decode a completely different meaning. It is our phonological ability that allows us to decipher these different words based on changing this one phoneme.

The classic definition of a phoneme is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. The /k/ sound and the /s/ sound can contrast meaning in English as shown in the words cat and sat. Therefore, they are phonemes in English. However, if a speaker were to add a lot of aspiration on the /k/ sound (something like a breathy sound attached to the /k/ and symbolized with a raised ʰ [kʰ]), this would not change the meaning of the word in English. [kæt] and [kʰæt] are the same word in English. Just imagine someone adding a lot of air after the /k/ on the second pronunciation. Speakers would ignore this and only register the /k/ sound.

Think of a phoneme in these terms: We all make sounds a little bit differently because we have different physical builds, mouth shapes, and dialectal backgrounds. However, a listener will decode the phoneme in their mind and essentially ignore small variations. In other words, a phoneme is a mental abstraction, almost an idealization of the contrastive sound. Put simply, our ears hears the true physical sound in the air. But our mind transforms that sound into an idealized phoneme, thus ignoring small differences and thereby increasing language efficiency and comprehensibility. If this were not the case, then we would have great difficulty in communicating with each other because everyone’s /k/ (along with everyone other phoneme in a language) would be slightly different, thus inhibiting communication.

Here is another example. Many toddlers have trouble with the /r/ phoneme as they learn English. It often comes out like a /w/. So, a toddler may say something like this: I love playing with my wobots. By context (if the child is playing with robots in front of us), our minds are able to insert the true phoneme /r/ for the /w/ sound that is actually produced by the toddler. The actual sound variation of a phoneme is called an allophone. An allophone (or slight variation of a phoneme) does not contrast meaning. In English, the [kʰ] sound and the [k] sound are allophones because they do not contrast meaning. However, in the Tai language / kʰ/ and /k/ are phonemic because these two sounds contrast meaning. /kat/ means ‘to bite.’ And / kʰat/ means ‘to interrupt.’ And note that phonemes are written in slashes / /. While allophones are written in brackets [ ].

Remember that a phoneme is something that exists in your mind: it’s like a shopping bag in which your mind stores memories of examples of phonetically similar sounds that are all members of one category. Not all the sounds that you store in one phoneme category have to be identical; in fact, your mental category has room for a lot of variation. Any variants that are not contrastive, that don’t lead to a meaning change, are members of that same phoneme category and are called allophones.

Some allophones appear in free variation, which means that it is random which variant appears in any phonetic environment. For example, speakers of different dialects pronounce these words differently: data and schedule.

• Data is often pronounced as /dætə/. The initial vowel is like the vowel in the word pat. Some speakers pronounce this word as /deɪtə/. In this case, the initial vowel is the same as the vowel in the word they.
• In British English schedule is pronounced with the initial sound as /ʃ/ (like the “sh” sound). While in American English, the initial sound is /sk/.

Both these variations are “free” in the sense that there is nothing in the word itself that conditions which pronunciation is used. Speakers choose one based on their dialect or personal preference.

But most allophones are entirely predictable: linguists say that allophonic variation is phonetically conditioned because it depends on what other sounds are nearby within the word. Recall the pen/pin merger in Chapter 1. This is predictable because what follows is an /m/ or an /n/. For many speakers of the southern American dialect, this merger is predicted by the /m/ or the /n/ that follows. Another example would be the aspiration on the phoneme /p/. If the /p/ appears in initial position and before a vowel, there is typically aspiration [pʰ]: pit, pin. But if the the /p/ appears after a consonant, there is typically no aspiration [p]: spit, spin. The underlying phoneme is the same for English: /p/.

Linguists often call this complementary distribution. In other words, allophones usually appear in complementary distribution, that is, a given allophone of one phoneme appears in one predictable environment, but the other allophones of that phoneme never appear in that environment. Figure 2 is a visual representation of this.

Figure 2: Complementary vs. Free Variation

Public Domain

Link for image of complementary distribution

One of the big things that phonology is concerned with is the distribution of allophones: that is, what phonetic environments each allophone appears in. The distribution of allophones is a key part of the mental grammar of each language — it’s something that all speakers know unconsciously.

So let’s sum up. If we have two phonetic segments that are related but different from each other, and we find some minimal pairs to show that this phonetic difference is contrastive, then we conclude that those two segments are two different phonemes. And if we have two phonetic segments that are related but different, and they’re not contrastive, then we look to see what the distribution of these segments is, that is, what environments we see them in. If they’re not contrastive and they’re in complementary distribution, then we conclude that they’re allophones of the same phoneme.

We will come back to the concept of phonemes vs. allophones momentarily. For now, let’s turn our attention to the International Phonetic Alphabet and an explanation of how consonants and vowels are classified by linguists. I have been using these symbols, so let me explain them in detail.

International Phonetic Alphabet

You might have already noticed that there’s a challenge to talking about speech sounds (phonemes) in English because English spelling is notoriously messy. Take a look at these words: say, weigh, they, rain, flame, lei, café, toupee, ballet All of them contain the same vowel sound, /e, but the sound is spelled with nine different combinations of letters. Some of them are more common ways than others of spelling the sound /e, but even if we take away the ones that English borrowed from other languages, that still leaves five different ways of spelling one sound. One of the problems is that English has only five letter characters that represent vowels, but more than a dozen different vowel sounds. But it’s not just the vowels that are the problem.

English has the opposite problem as well. Take a look at these words: bough, tough, cough, through, and though. Here we’ve got a sequence of four letters that appear in the same order in the same position in each word, but that sequence of letters is pronounced in five different ways in English.

Here is a clip from the I Love Lucy show in which bough, tough, cough, and through are discussed. It illustrates the problem that in English spelling, there is not always a one-letter-to-one sound correspondence.

Not only can a single sound be represented by very many different spellings, but even a single spelling is not consistent with the sounds that it represents. Even one letter can be pronounced in a whole lot of different ways. Look at: cake, century, ocean, and cello

The letter “c” represents four quite different sounds. Clearly, English spelling is a mess. There are a lot of reasons (mostly historical) for why that might be. The area where English first evolved was first inhabited by people who spoke early forms of Germanic and Celtic dialects. But then Normans invaded and brought all kinds of French and Latin words with their spellings. When the technology to print books was invented, there was influence from Dutch. So even the earliest form of English was influenced by many different languages. Modern English also borrows words from lots of languages. When we borrow words like cappuccino or champagne, we adapt the pronunciation to fit into English, but we often retain the spelling from the original language.

Another factor is that the English spelling system was standardized hundreds of years ago when it became possible to print books. A lot of our standard spellings became consistent when the Authorized Version of the Bible was published in the year 1611. Spelling hasn’t actually changed much since 1611, but English pronunciation sure has, so the way we produce the sounds of English has diverged from how we write the language.

Furthermore, English is spoken all over the world, with many different regional varieties. British English sounds quite different from American English, which is different from Canadian English, which is different from Australian English, and Indian English is quite different again, even though all of these varieties are spelled in nearly the same way. There’s even variation within each speaker of English, depending on the context: the way you speak is going to be different depending on if you’re hanging out with your friends or interviewing for a job or talking on the phone to your grandmother. The important thing to remember for our purposes is that everyone who knows a language can speak and understand it, and children learn to speak and understand spoken language automatically.

So here’s the problem: the English writing system is notoriously bad at representing speech sounds accurately. There’s a challenge to talking about speech sounds (phonemes) in English and how they change through the years because English spelling has been and continues to be notoriously messy. Take a look at these words: say, weigh, they, rain, flame, lei, café, toupee, ballet. All of them contain the same vowel sound, /e/, but the sound is spelled with nine different combinations of letters. Some of them are more common ways than others of spelling the sound /e/, but even if we take away the ones that English borrowed from other languages, that still leaves five different ways of spelling one sound. One of the problems is that English has only five letter characters that represent vowels, but more than a dozen different vowel sounds. But it’s not just the vowels that are the problem.

English has the opposite problem as well. Take a look at these words: cough, tough, bough, through, though. Here we’ve got a sequence of four letters that appear in the same order in the same position in each word, but that sequence of letters is pronounced in five different ways in English. Not only can a single sound be represented by very many different spellings, but even a single spelling is not consistent with the sounds that it represents. Even one letter can be pronounced in a whole lot of different ways. Look at: cake, century, ocean, and cello

The letter “c” represents four quite different sounds. Clearly, English spelling is a mess. There are a lot of reasons (mostly historical) for why that might be. The area where English first evolved was first inhabited by people who spoke early forms of Germanic and Celtic dialects. But then Normans invaded and brought all kinds of French and Latin words with their spellings. When the technology to print books was invented, there was influence from Dutch. So even the earliest form of English was influenced by many different languages. Modern English also borrows words from lots of languages. When we borrow words like cappuccino or champagne, we adapt the pronunciation to fit into English but we often retain the spelling from the original language. Another factor is that the English spelling system was standardized hundreds of years ago when it became possible to print books. A lot of our standard spellings became consistent when the Authorized Version of the Bible was published in the year 1611. Spelling hasn’t actually changed much since 1611, but English pronunciation sure has, so the way we produce the sounds of English has diverged from how we write the language. Furthermore, English is spoken all over the world, with many different regional varieties. British English sounds quite different from American English, which is different from Canadian English, which is different from Australian English, and Indian English is quite different again, even though all of these varieties are spelled in nearly the same way. There’s even variation within each speaker of English, depending on the context: the way you speak is going to be different depending on if you’re hanging out with your friends or interviewing for a job or talking on the phone to your grandmother.

The important thing to remember for our purposes is that everyone who knows a language can speak and understand it, and children learn to speak and understand spoken language automatically. So in linguistics, we say that speaking and listening are the primary linguistic skills. Not all languages have writing systems, and not everyone who speaks a language can read or write it, so those skills are secondary.

We need some way to be able to refer to particular speech sounds, not to English

letters. Fortunately, linguists have developed a useful tool for doing exactly that. It’s called the International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA. The first version of the IPA was created over 100 years ago, in 1888, and it’s been revised many times over the years. The last revision was fairly recent, in 2015. The most useful thing about the IPA is that, unlike English spelling, there’s no ambiguity about which sound a given symbol refers to. Each symbol represents only one sound,

and each sound maps onto only one symbol. Linguists use the IPA to transcribe speech sounds from all languages. When we use this phonetic alphabet, we’re not writing in the normal sense. We’re putting down a visual representation of sounds, so we call it phonetic transcription. That phonetic transcription gives us a written record of the sounds of spoken language. Here are just a few transcriptions of simple words so you can begin to see how the IPA works.

snake /snek/

sugar /ʃʊɡəɹ/

cake /kek/

cell /sɛl/

sell /sɛl/

Notice that some of the IPA symbols look like English letters, and some of them are probably unfamiliar to you. Since some of the IPA symbols look a lot like letters, how can you know if you’re looking at a spelled word or at a phonetic transcription? The notation gives us a clue: the transcriptions all have slashes around them. Whenever we transcribe speech sounds, we use slashes to indicate that we’re not using ordinary spelling. Recall that the slashes represent the phonemes and square brackets represent allophones (i.e. small variations). Another way to think about this is that the slashes are the general sound and the brackets are the very specific or much more narrow transcription. I want you to notice the one-to-one correspondence between sounds and symbols. Look at those first two words: snake and sugar. In English spelling, they both begin with the letter “s.” But in speaking, they begin with two quite ifferent sounds. This IPA symbol /s/ always represents the /s/ sound, never any other sound, even if those other sounds might be spelled with the letter “s”. The word sugar is spelled with the letter “s” but it doesn’t begin with the /s/ sound so we use a different symbol to transcribe it, /ʃ/ which is he “sh” sound. So, one IPA symbol always makes the same sound. Likewise, one sound is always represented by the same IPA symbol.

Look at the word cake. It’s spelled with “c” at the beginning and “k-e” at the end, but both those spellings make the sound /k/, so in its transcription, it begins and ends with the symbol for the [k] sound. Likewise, look at those two different words cell and sell. They’re spelled differently, and we know that they have different meanings, but they’re both pronounced the same way, so they’re transcribed using the same IPA symbols. The reason the IPA is so useful is that it’s unambiguous: each symbol always represents exactly one sound, and each sound is always represented by exactly one symbol. If you look at a dictionary, you will note that many dictionaries use the IPA while other dictionaries use some of the IPA but they may also “invent” some of their own symbols which are considered “easier” for most readers. In this text, I will use the regular IPA symbols as we describe the sound changes in the history of English.

Here is the full list of IPA symbols for PDE. The IPA symbol on the left represent the initial sound in the example words.

Table 1 A Phonetic Alphabet for PDE Consonants

Table 2 A Phonetic Alphabet for PDE Vowels

Phonetic Descriptions

To study the actually physical sound (allophone), we have another branch of linguistics. The field of phonetics studies the sounds of human speech. When we study speech sounds, we can consider them from two angles. Acoustic phonetics, in addition to being part of linguistics, is also a branch of physics. It’s concerned with the physical, acoustic properties of the sound waves that we produce. We’ll talk some about the acoustics of speech sounds, but we’re primarily interested in articulatory phonetics, that is, how we humans use our bodies to produce speech sounds. Producing speech needs three mechanisms. The first is a source of energy. Anything that makes a sound needs a source of energy. For human speech sounds, the air flowing from our lungs provides energy.

The second is a source of the sound: air flowing from the lungs arrives at the larynx. Put your hand on the front of your throat and gently feel the bony part under your skin. That’s the front of your larynx. It’s not actually made of bone; it’s cartilage and muscle. Figure 3 shows what the larynx looks like from the front.

Figure 3 External View of Larynx

By Olek Remesz via Wikimedia Commons Link for Larynx

Figure 4 is a view down a person’s throat.

Figure 4 View of Articulators

By OpenStax College [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

What you see here is that the opening of the larynx can be covered by two triangle-shaped pieces of skin. These are often called “vocal cords” but they’re not really like cords or strings. A better name for them is vocal folds. The opening between the vocal folds is called the glottis. Here is a 3-D view.

Key Concepts from Chapter 2Key Terms from Chapter 2

allophones complementary distribution free variation

International Phonetic Alphabet phonemes

Materials for Chapter 2 adapted from the following:

Anderson, Catherine. (2022). Essentials of linguistics. Open Educational Resources Collection. Available at https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/essentialsoflinguistics/

Phonology (Wikipedia contributors, 2022)

Works Cited for Chapter 2