Stress placement; phonemes vs. allophones

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Stress in Arabic • In Arabic dialects, stress placement is predictable (with a few exception words, as you should expect), and it does not cause any difference in meaning. • Stress placement in Arabic dialects is sensitive to syllable structure. • We focus here on stress placement in Egyptian Arabic. Applying the algorithm: Step 1 • (Note: The IPA symbol to mark stress is ˈ.) • Stress is on a final superheavy syllable. نيملسم [mus.li.ˈmi:n] تبتك (‘I wrote’) [ka.ˈtabt] تيرفع (‘ghost’) [ʕaf.ˈri:t] Applying the algorithm: Step 3 • Stress is on the penultimate or the antepenultimate, whichever is separated by an even number of syllables from the closest preceding heavy syllable if there is one (case A), or the beginning of the word if there are none (case B), where zero separation is counted as even. • Penultimate stress: ةسِّردُم [mu.dar.ˈri.sah] (case A) هُتِبتَك [ka.ta.ˈbi.tuh] (case B) • Antepenultimate stress: تعطقنا [ʔin.ˈʔa.tˁa.ʕit] (case A) ت ِس َرَد [ˈda.ra.sit] (case B) 7 9 11 Stress placement algorithm in EA • Stress placement algorithm in Egyptian: 1. Stress a final superheavy syllable, if available. 2. Otherwise, stress a penultimate heavy syllable, if available. 3. Otherwise, stress is on the penultimate or the antepenultimate, whichever is separated by an even number of syllables from the closest preceding heavy syllable if there is one (case A), or the beginning of the word if there are none (case B), where zero separation is counted as even. Applying the algorithm: Step 2 • Stress is on a penultimate heavy syllable. كتيب [ˈbe:.tak] كتنب [ˈbin.tak] سِّردم [mu.ˈdar.ris] Stress in Classical Arabic • See homework assignment. 8 10 12 3/12/2012 2
Phonology Phonology: Introducing phonemes • Let’s look at some examples from English first. • Given English [l] and [ɹ] (retroflex ‘r’), can we predict which one would occur in the blank slot in the following transcription? [ait] • We really cannot. Either sound would give us a possible English word with its own meaning. [lait] ‘light’ [ɹait] ‘right’ Aspiration in English • Now, let’s consider the voiceless stops in English: [p, t, k]. • When these sounds occur initially, they are typically pronounced with an extra puff of air. This property is called aspiration. The way we mark aspiration in the IPA is by a superscripted ‘ h ’. pan [pʰæn] vs. span [spæn] team [tʰim] vs. steam [stim] cool [kʰul] vs. school [skul] • The question now is: Are aspirated and unaspirated voiceless stops phonemes of English? 13 15 17 Phonology • While phonetics studies how speech sounds are articulated, what their physical properties are, and how they are perceived, phonology studies the organization of speech sounds in a particular language. • Among the questions phonologists discuss are: ‐ Which sounds are predictable and which ones are unpredictable in a particular language? ‐ What is the phonetic context that allows us to predict the occurrence of these sounds? Phonology: Introducing phonemes • The same thing is true of the vowels [i] and [ɪ] here: [st] • Again, either vowel would give us a possible English word with a different meaning: [sit] ‘seat’ [sɪt] ‘sit’ • Sounds that are unpredictable and lead to difference in meaning in a language are called the phonemes of this language. Phonemes are contrastive in a language. Phonology: Introducing allophones • In other words, suppose we pronounce tar as *[ta®], rather than [t h a®], would we get a difference in meaning? • Similarly, suppose we pronounce star as *[st h a®] rather than [sta®], would we get a difference in meaning? • The answer is NO. That means that [t h ] and [t] are not contrastive in English. We say that [t h ] and [t] are two allophones of the same phoneme, which we might represent here as /t/. (Notice the slash, rather than the square bracket, notation.) 14 16 18 3/12/2012 3
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Stress placement; phonemes vs. allophones

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