Chapter 2: An Introduction to English Phonology

Video Lecture What is phonology?

A major area of language change is sound change. As noted in chapter one, all areas of 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 understanding is 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 recognize 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 speaker’s 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 produces. 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 mat, 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 /m/ sound can contrast meaning in English as shown in the words cat and mat. 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 as part of the word cat.

Think of a phoneme in these terms—we all produce phonemes 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 hear 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 every other phoneme in a language) would be slightly different, thus inhibiting communication.

Here is another example of phonological processing. 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 Thai language, / kʰ/ and /k/ are phonemic because these two sounds contrast meaning. /kat/ means ‘to bite.’ And /kʰat/ means ‘to interrupt.’ 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 phonetically similar sounds that are all members of one phoneme.

Figure 2.1: Visual of several allophones of one phoneme

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 or allophonic variants.

Some allophones appear in free variation, which means the variant that appears in any phonetic environment is random. For example, speakers of different dialects pronounce these words differently: data and schedule. Think of accents as perceptible phonological variants among dialects (Curzan and Adams, 2012, p. 64).

• 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 an initial position and before a vowel, there is typically aspiration [pʰ]: pit, pin. But if the /p/ appears after a consonant, there is typically no aspiration [p]: spit, spin. The underlying phoneme is the same for the 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 2.1 is a visual representation of this.

Figure 2.2: How to Determine Complementary Distribution vs. Free Variation

Source: Wikipedia

Attribution: AnonMoos

License: Public Domain

Link: here

Phonology is concerned with 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 is 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 (cat/mat, sit/bit) to show that this phonetic difference is contrastive, then we conclude that those two segments are two different phonemes. A minimal pair are two words that differ in only one sound in the same location and are different words. The following are minimal pairs: kite/sight, bit/bite, kiss/kid. Each of these pairs differ in only one sound. Thus /k/ /s/, /ɪ/ /ɑɪ/, and /s/ /d/ are phonemes because alternating them changes the word.

If we have two phonetic segments that are related but different and they’re not contrastive (i.e., there are not minimal pairs), 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, and they don’t change the meaning of the word. We’ve seen that pin with aspiration ([pʰ]) and pin without aspiration ([p]) are the same words in English. Thus, they are not minimal pairs. [pʰ] and [p] are allophones of one phoneme /p/ in English. I will continue to refer to the issue of phonemes and allophones throughout this text. Let’s add a few final important points about phonemes to help clarify the concept.

• Phonemes are not letters. Letters are the basic elements of a writing system, which may or may not have been designed to represent the phonemes of a language. But the phonemes of a language such as English are represented very imperfectly by the English alphabet, as we will see, and other languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, have writing systems that do not even pretend to represent phonemes. Equally important is that many languages are not written at all.
• Each phoneme is a category—that is, it represents a cluster of possible consonant or vowel instances centered on a prototype.
• Speakers can produce differences that contrast, or represent, different phonemes and make a difference in meaning, and differences that do not contrast, or represent, different ways of producing the same phoneme and do not change the meaning.
• The way the space of possible sounds (consonants and vowels) is divided up into phonemes is to some extent arbitrary. That is, it can be expected to vary from language to language; the phonemes that a given language has are conventions. What is important is that the phonemes are distinctive enough to be distinguished by hearers. Thus, one language might have five vowel phonemes, while another might have eight vowel phonemes.

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, and 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 spellings of 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 that are phonemic.

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. Figure 2.2 shows the iconic I Love Lucy logo.

Figure 2.3: I Love Lucy Logo

Source: Wikipedia

Attribution: JBarta

License: Public Domain

Link: here

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 many different spellings, but even a single spelling is not consistent with the sounds it represents. Even one letter can be pronounced in multiple ways. Look at these: 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 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 with 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 friends, interviewing for a job, or talking on the phone to your grandmother.

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 different 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 doesn’t begin with the /s/ sound, so we use a different symbol to transcribe it, /ʃ/, which is the “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 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.

Table 2.1 Phonetic Alphabet for PDE Consonants

Table 2.2 Phonetic Alphabet for PDE Vowels

Phonetic Descriptions

To study the actual, 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 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 2.4 shows what the larynx looks like from the front.

Figure 2.4: External View of Larynx

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Attribution: Olek Remesz

License: CC-BY-SA ver. 2.5, 2.0, 1.0

Link: here

Figure 2.5 is a view down a person’s throat. This is important due to the vestibular fold. As we

see, this allows for voicing. I will explain more in a minute, but for now voicing is the vibration

in these folds. The “true” vocal folds (the white area) allows for certain vibrations.

Figure 2.5: View of Articulators

Source: Essentials of Linguistics

Attribution: Catherine Anderson

License: CC BY 4.0

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. It might help to visualize how the air passes through the area between the vocal folds. Here are two videos.

• Vocal folds video
• Vocal folds animation
• Here is a 3-D view

Figure 2.6 shows the main articulators used when we produce speech. Linguists use these articulators to classify and describe sounds. This will be useful as we discuss the sound changes in the history of English.

Figure 2.6: Articulators

Source: Vowels

Attribution: Michael Gasser

License: GNU General Public License 3.0

Link: here

Consonants

Let’s look more closely at the class of sounds we call consonants. Consonants have some constriction in the vocal tract that obstructs the airflow, either partially or completely. We can

classify consonants according to three pieces of information.

The first piece of information we need to know about a consonant is its voicing—is it voiced or voiceless? Voiced consonants are produced by having the vocal folds vibrate. Voiceless consonants are produced by having the vocal folds pulled about and, thus, they do not vibrate. If you place your hand over your throat and produce the sound /d/, you will feel a vibration. If you place your hand over your throat and produced the sound /t/, you will not feed a vibration. Be careful not to add a vowel after the /t/. All vowels are voiced, but for now we are only interested in the /t/ sound. So, we can say that /d/ is voiced and /t/ is unvoiced. Here are the voiced and voiceless consonants in PDE:

• voiced consonants: /b d g m n ŋ v z l r ð dʒ j ʍ w ʒ/
• voiceless consonants: /p t k f s h θ tʃ ʃ ʍ/

The second thing we need to know about consonants is where the obstruction in the vocal tract occurs—we call that the place of articulation. If we obstruct our vocal tract at the lips, like for the sounds /b/ and /p, the place of articulation is bilabial. The consonants /f/ and /v/ are made with the top teeth on the bottom lip, so these are called labiodental sounds. Move your tongue to the ridge above and behind your top teeth and make a /t/ or /d/; these are alveolar sounds. Many people also make the sound /s/ with the tongue at the alveolar ridge. Even though there is quite a bit of variation in how people make the sound /s/, it still gets classified as an alveolar sound. If you’re making an /s/ and move the tongue farther back, not quite to the soft palate, the sound turns into a /ʃ/, which is called postalveolar, meaning it’s a little bit behind the alveolar ridge. You also sometimes see /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ called “alveo-palatal” or “palato-alveolar” sounds because the place of articulation is between the alveolar ridge and the palate. The only true palatal sound that English has is /j/. And if you bring the back of your tongue up against the back of the soft palate, the velum, you produce the velar sounds /k/ and /ɡ/. Some languages also have uvular and pharyngeal sounds made even farther back in the throat, but English doesn’t have sounds at

those places of articulation. And, of course, English has a glottal fricative made right at the

larynx, the sound /h/.

In addition to knowing where the vocal tract is obstructed, to classify consonants we also need to know how the vocal tract is obstructed. This is called the manner of articulation. If we obstruct the airflow completely, the sound is called a stop. When the airflow is stopped, pressure builds up in the vocal tract and then is released in a burst of air when we release the obstruction. The other name for stops, therefore, is plosives. English has two bilabial stops, /p/ and /b/, two alveolar stops, /t/ and /d/, and two velar stops /k/ and /ɡ/.

It’s also possible to obstruct the airflow in the mouth but allow air to flow through the nasal cavity. English has three nasal sounds at those same three places of articulation: the bilabial nasal /m/, the alveolar nasal /n/, and the velar nasal /ŋ/. Because airflow is blocked in the mouth for these, they are sometimes called nasal stops, in contrast to the plosives which are oral stops. Figure 2.7 shows the articulators forming the bilabial nasal /m/. Note that the velum lowers, which allows air to pass to the nasal cavity.

Velum (soft palate) is lowered allowing air to pass to the nasal cavity.

Figure 2.7: The phoneme /m/

Source: Wikimedia

Attribution: Tavin

License: CC-BY-SA-4.0

Link: here

Instead of blocking airflow completely, it’s possible to hold the articulators close together and allow air to flow turbulently through the small space. Sounds with this kind of turbulence are called fricatives. English has labiodental fricatives /f/ and /v/, dental fricatives made with the tongue between the teeth, /θ/ and /ð/, alveolar fricatives /s/ and /z/, post-alveolar fricatives /ʃ/ and /ʒ/, and the glottal fricative /h/. Other languages also have fricatives at other places of articulation.

If you bring your articulators close together but let the air flow smoothly, the resulting sound is called an approximant. The glides /j/ and /w/ are classified as approximants when they behave like consonants. The palatal approximant /j/ is made with the tongue towards the palate, and the /w/ sound has two places of articulation—the back of the tongue is raised towards the velum and the lips are rounded, so it is called a labial-velar approximant. The North American English /ɹ/ sound is an alveolar approximant with the tongue approaching the alveolar ridge. If we keep the tongue at the alveolar ridge but allow air to flow along the sides of the tongue, we get the alveolar lateral approximant [l], where the word lateral means “on the side.” The sounds /ɹ/ and /l/ are also sometimes called “liquids.” Look at (Figure 2.8) for IPA symbols for American English consonants. The places of articulation are listed along the top, and they start at the front of the mouth, at the lips, and move gradually backwards to the glottis. Down the chart’s left-hand side are listed the manners of articulation. The top of the chart has the manners with the greatest obstruction of the vocal tract, the stops or plosives, and moves gradually down to get to the approximants, which have the least obstruction and therefore greatest airflow. The shaded areas are voiced sounds.

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols for English consonants

Shaded = voiced Unshaded = voiceless

Example words

p pat [pæt] θ thick [θɪk] ʤ judge [ʤəʤ]

b bat [bæt] ð the [ðə] m mat [mæt]

t pat [pæt] s sat [sæt] n gnat [næt]

d pad [pæd] z zip [zɪp] ŋ sing [sɪŋ]

k cat [kæt] ʃ wash [waʃ] l last [læst]

g get [gɛt] ʒ garage [gəraʒ] r rat [ræt]

f fat [fæt] h hat [hæt] w what [wət]

v vat [væt] ʧ match [mæʧ] j yet [jɛt]

(also ʔ, as in ‘uh-oh’ [ʔəʔo]; the symbol is called a ‘glottal stop’)

Figure 2.8 The IPA Symbols for American English Consonants

A flap (or tap) is a very short sound that is a bit like a stop because it has a complete obstruction of the vocal tract, but the obstruction is so short that air pressure doesn’t build up. Most people aren’t aware of this flap, but it’s actually quite common in American English. You

can hear it in the middle of these words metal and medal. Notice that even though they’re spelled with “t” and “d,” they sound exactly the same when we pronounce them in ordinary speech. If you’re trying hard to be extra clear, you might say /mɛtəl/ or /mɛdəl/, but ordinarily, that “t” or “d” in the middle of the word just becomes an alveolar flap, where the tongue taps very briefly at the alveolar ridge but doesn’t allow air pressure to build up. You can also hear a flap in the middle of words like middle, water, bottle, kidding, needle. The symbol for the alveolar flap /ɾ/ looks a bit like the letter “r” but represents that flap sound.

When we’re talking about English sounds, we also need to mention affricates. If you start to say the word cheese, you’ll notice that your tongue is in the position to make a /t/ sound. But instead of releasing that alveolar stop completely, like you would in the word tease, you release it only partially and turn it into a fricative, /tʃ/. Same thing for the word jam: you start off the sound with the stop /d/, and then release the stop but still keep the articulators close together to make a fricative /dʒ/.

To sum up, all consonants involve some obstruction in the vocal tract. We classify consonants according to three pieces of information:

• The voicing: Is it voiced or voiceless?
• The place of articulation: Where is the vocal tract obstructed?
• The manner of articulation: How is the vocal tract obstructed?

These three pieces of information make up the articulatory description for each speech sound, so we can talk about the voiceless labiodental fricative [f] or the voiced velar stop [ɡ], and so on.

Vowels

In the history of English, changes in vowels have caused considerable change in English. Even today, shifting vowels are responsible for dialect changes throughout the English-speaking world. Understanding vowels is essential to understanding sound changes in English. The best place to start is with three fundamental aspects of vowels:

1. First and most important, vowels are essential to syllables. All syllables have to have a vowel. Consonants are not essential to syllables. In other words, some syllables only have a vowel. But there are no syllables with only consonants.
2. All vowels are voiced. Thus, vowels can be shouted and sung.
3. Vowels do not have a clear place of articulation. That is to say, as air passes through the oral cavity, there is no place of contact with articulators.

With these three fundamental aspects in mind, let’s discuss how linguists classify vowels. Vowels are made without an obstruction in the vocal tract, so they are quite sonorous. The body of the tongue moves in the mouth to shape each vowel, and for some vowels, the lips are rounded as well. Linguists classify vowels according to four pieces of information: tongue

height, tongue backness, lip rounding, and tenseness. The difference between consonants and vowels is that consonants have some obstruction in the vocal tract, whereas, for vowels, the vocal tract is open and unobstructed, which makes vowel sounds quite sonorous.

Take a look at the IPA chart for American English vowels in Figure 2.7. Instead of a nice rectangle, it’s shaped like a trapezoid.

Figure 2.9: American Vowels

Source: Wikipedia

Attribution: Moxfyre

License: CC BY-SA 4.0

Link: here

We classify vowels according to four pieces of information—the high/mid/low distinction has to do with how high the tongue is in the mouth. Say this list of words: beet, bit, bait, bet, bat.

Now do the same thing but leave off the “b” and the “t” and just say the vowels. You can feel that your tongue is at the front of your mouth and is moving from high in the mouth for [i] to fairly low in the mouth for [æ]. We can do the same thing at the back of the mouth. Say the words boot, boat. Now do it again with just the vowels, [u], [o]. Your lips are rounded for both of them, but the tongue is higher for [u] than it is for [o]. The lowest vowel at the back of the mouth is [ɑ]. We don’t round our lips for [ɑ], and we often drop the jaw to move the tongue low and back. We also classify vowels according to whether the lips are rounded or unrounded. In American English, there are only four vowels that have lip rounding, and they’re all made with the tongue at the back of the mouth:

• [u] as in boot
• [ʊ] as in book
• [o] as in boat
• [ɔ] as in bore

The final piece of information that we use to classify vowels is a little trickier to explain. English makes a distinction between tense and lax vowels, which is a distinction that a lot of other languages don’t have. Tense vowels are made with greater tension in the muscles of the vocal tract than lax vowels. To feel this difference, say the two words sheep and ship. And now make just the vowel sounds, [i], [ɪ]. The [i] sound in sheep and the [ɪ] sound in ship are both produced with the tongue high and front, and without lips rounded. But for [i], the muscles are more tense than for [ɪ]. The same is true for the vowels in late and let, [e] and [ɛ]. And also for the vowels in

food and foot, [u] and [ʊ]. It can be hard to feel the physical difference between tense and

lax vowels, but the distinction is actually an important one in the mental grammar of English. When we observe single-syllable words, we see a clear pattern in one-syllable words that don’t end with a consonant. There are lots of monosyllabic words with tense vowels as their nucleus, like:

day, they, weigh

free, brie, she, tea

do, blue, through, screw

no, toe, blow

But there are no monosyllabic words without a final consonant that have a lax vowel as their nucleus. If we were to try to make up a new English word, we couldn’t do so. We couldn’t create a new invention and name it a [vɛ] or a [flɪ] or a [mʊ]. These words just can’t exist in English. So, the tense/lax distinction is an example of one of those bits of unconscious knowledge we have about our language—even though we’re not consciously aware of which vowels

are tense and which ones are lax, our mental grammar still includes this powerful principle that governs how we use our language.

Key Concepts from Chapter 2

• Phonemes are the contrastive sound units in a language.
• The International Phonetic Alphabet was developed to have a one-sound to one-symbol correspondence for all the sounds in the world’s languages.
• Phonetics descriptions allow linguist to classify and group phonemes by their articulatory features.
• Consonants have an obstruction to the air flow.
• Consonants are classified by voicing, place of articulation, and manner of articulation.
• Vowels do not have an obstruction of air flow.
• Vowels are necessary for syllable. Syllables have a sonority peak.
• Vowels are classified by height and position of the tongue.

Key Terms from Chapter 2

• allophone
• complementary distribution
• free variation
• International Phonetic Alphabet
• minimal pair
• phoneme
• phonology
• voicing
• consonant
• vowel

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

Curzan, Anne and Adams, Michael. (2012). How English works: A linguistic introduction. Boston: Longman.