Page 154 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Linguistics

Notes h
written as, i (or ‘ . .. ‘), while [p ] is written Q (or ‘ . . . ‘) and so on.
There are many other allophonic processes in English, like lack of plosion, nasal plosion, partial
devoicing of sonorants, complete devoicing of sonorants, partial devoicing of obstruents, lengthening
and shortening vowels, and retraction.
• Aspiration — strong explosion of breath. In English a voiceless plosive that is p, t or k is aspirated
whenever it stands as the only consonant at the beginning of the stressed syllable or of the first,
stressed or unstressed, syllable in a word.
• Nasal plosion - In English a plosive (/p, t, k, b, d, g/) has nasal plosion when it is followed by
a nasal, inside a word or across word boundary.
• Partial devoicing of sonorants — In English sonorants (/j, w, l, r, m, n, ŋ/) are partially devoiced
when they follow a voiceless sound within the same syllable.
• Complete devoicing of sonorants — In English a sonorant is completely devoiced when it follows
an aspirated plosive (/p, t, k/).
• Partial devoicing of obstruents - In English, a voiced obstruent is partially devoiced next to a
pause or next to a voiceless sound, inside a word or across its boundary.
• Retraction — in English /t, d, n, l/ are retracted before /r/.
Because the choice of allophone is seldom under conscious control, people may not realize they exist.
English speakers may be unaware of the differences among six allophones of the phoneme /t/,
namely unreleased [t] as in cat, aspirated [t ] as in top, glottalized [?] as in button, flapped [ ] as in
h
American English water, nasalized flapped as in winter, and none of the above [t] as in stop. However,
J
they may become aware of the differences if, for example, they contrast the pronunciations of the
following words:
• Night rate: unreleased [‘n ∧ I t . r w e I t ] (without word space between . and ) r

• Nitrate: aspirated [‘na I .t h ° r eit ] or retracted [‘na I .t ∫ r w e I t ]
If a flame is held before the lips while these words are spoken, it flickers more during aspirated
nitrate than during unaspirated night rate. The difference can also be felt by holding the hand in front
of the lips. For a Mandarin speaker, to whom /t/ and /t are separate phonemes, the English distinction
h
is much more obvious than it is to the English speaker who has learned since childhood to ignore it.
Allophones of English /l/ may be noticed if the ‘light’ [l] of leaf [‘li: f] is contrasted with the ‘dark’ [ 1 ]
of feel [fi: 1 ]. Again, this difference is much more obvious to a Turkish speaker, for whom /l/ and /
1 / are separate phonemes, than to an English speaker, for whom they are allophones of a single
phoneme.
Allophony of “v-w” in Hindi-Urdu
A reverse example is that of [v] versus [w] in Hindi-Urdu. These are distinct phonemes in English,
but both allophones of the phoneme /o/ (or/ /) in Hindi-Urdu. Native Hindi speakers pronounce
/o/ as [v] in vrat (‘ozr’, fast) but [w] in pakwan idoku (food dish), treating them as a single phoneme and
without being aware of the allophone distinctions they are subconsciously making, though these are
apparent to native English speakers. However, the allophone phenomenon becomes obvious when
speakers switch languages.
When non-native speakers speak Hindi-Urdu, they might pronounce /o /in ‘ozr‘ as [w], i.e. as wrat
instead of the correct vrat. This results in an intelligibility problem because wrat can easily be confused
for aurat, which means woman instead of fast in Hindi-Urdu. Similarly, Hindi-Urdu speakers might
unconsciously apply their native ‘v-w’ allophony rules to English words, pronouncing war as var or
advance as adwance, which can result in intelligibility problems with native English speakers.
Representing a Phoneme with an Allophone

Since phonemes are abstractions of speech sounds, not the sounds themselves, they have no direct
phonetic transcription. When they are realized without much allophonic variation, a simple (i.e.

148 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY