What is language? The side of sound: Phonetics and phonology and the beginning of morphology

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What is language?The side of sound Phonetics
and phonologyand the beginning of morphology
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Linguistics

• The study of language may treat a language as a
  self-contained system or it may treat it as an
  object that varies over space, time, and social
  class.
• We will consider only the first (and ignore
  diachronic linguistics and sociolinguistics).

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Another distinction to bear in mind

• We can study the way in which language organizes
  thought and expresses statements about
  (perceived) reality or,
• We can study the internal structure of language
  systems.
• I'll focus on the second. We will aim to
  determine the distribution of items in particular
  languages and to establish any universal
  principles that can be extracted from those to
  simplify the entire process.

Language
Perceived reality
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Bear in mind...
English
that English is an outlier among languages...
(This is really because almost all of the
volume of a hypersphere becomes arbitrarily
close to the skin, as the dimensionality
increases so to speak)
Language
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• We humans manage to analyze an extremely complex
  acoustic signal and translate it into an internal
  representation linked to meaning with little
  conscious awareness of the intermediate steps or
  the complexity of the operation.

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Linguistics
Phonetics sound, described as an acoustic and
articulatory event Phonology the study of
systems of discrete sounds Morphology ... the
internal structure of words Syntax ...the
principles governing combinations of
words. Semantics...the relationship between
syntactic structures and meaning.
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Some false statements about speech

• The speech stream can be divided into words on
  the basis of short pauses between words.
• Words can be analyzed as a sequence of phones of
  roughly equal length.
• Words can be analyzed as a sequence of syllables
  of roughly equal length.
• Words (syllables) have the same duration
  regardless of their context.
• Words of two syllables are longer than words of
  one syllable.

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• dad 520 msec
• daddy 420 msec.

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Language is fast!

• Individual sounds can go by extremely fast (40 to
  200 msec) and yet be easily grasped by the native
  speaker. Theres nothing else that I know of that
  we can do anywhere near that fast that appears to
  be under conscious control.
• Native speakers reconstruct sounds from extremely
  degraded sensory input
• Jeetjet? Nah, juw?

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Fast?
The word text the k is 40 msec out of a total
of 480 msec.
Vowel
K
S
t closure burst
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But what is language?

• A system of great complexity
• Much of the complexity is learned (we know that,
  because it is language-specifïc)
• It still eludes our attempts to accurately model
  it on computers (witness continuous speech
  recognition products).

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1. Phonetics
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1. Phonetics

• We know more about how sound is produced than how
  it is perceived, generally speaking.
• Source-filter model Upon exhilation, the vocal
  cords vibrate freely if there is little blockage
  or obstruction through the mouth and nose. The
  frequency of that vibration is the fundamental
  frequency (50-200hz in males, double that in
  females).

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Articulatory apparatus
source Kevin Russell
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Vowels

• For vowels, the mouth/nose acts as an echo
  chamber, enhancing those harmonics that resonate
  there.
• These resonances are called formants. The first 2
  formants are especially important in
  characterizing particular vowels.

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Hi /haj/
FORMANTS
we were away a year ago
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/i/ green
/ae/ hat
/u/ boot
graphics thanks to Kevin Russell, Univ of
Manitoba
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Vowels, crudely

• To identify a vowel is to identify its location
  in a 2-dimensional F1-F2 space.
• Improvements
• in 3-dimensional F1-F2-F3 space
• normalized by

See e.g. Harvey Sussman, The Neurogenesis of
Phonology Phonological processes and brain
mechanisms 1988
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Consonants

• Stops p, t, k, b, d, g
• Fricatives, affricates ch, j, sh, th...
• Nasals m, n, ng (as in sing)
• Stops and fricatives create their own turbulence,
  and the oral shape determines what spectrum is
  enhanced.

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Spectral character of sounds

• Stops show rapid change of formant frequency from
  their position to that of the neighboring vowel
• Fricatives should wide band of noise
• Vowels show 3 (major) bands of formants whose
  energy is an enhancement of harmonics of the
  fundamental frequency (1st, 2nd, 3rd formant)

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3 aspects of the signal

• The linguistic signal can be divided into three
  parts
• The fundamental frequency (intonation in many
  languages, tone in others)
• The cues to the oral gestures energy and formant
  structure vowel and consonants
• Temporal (rhythmic) structure

Big point Simultaneous and co-organized
analysis of these aspects
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Fundamental Frequency

• Intonation languages
• Tone languages -- well get to them

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Cues to oral gestures formants, formant changes,
and spread-out noise

• Formants for vowels
• Long pauses inside of stops, followed by rapid
  formant transitions to the following vowel
• Spread out regions of noise for fricatives
• We recognize as many as 10 consecutive objects
  per second!

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Rhythm and timing

• Japanese based on moras (haku in Japanese
  )
• A mora is
• a CV ka zo ku family wa ta shi I
• the V in CVV ko-o-ko-o high school
• N at end of syllable o-ba-a-sa-n grandmother
• C at end of syllable cho - t - to a little
• The length of individual moras varies greatly in
  duration. BUT -- the length of an entire word
  varies linearly with the number of moras!

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English Syllables
Japanese Moras
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2 Phonology
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Main points

• Phonology of a language imposes highly and
  tightly structured organization.
• Languages differ greatly from one another, but
  there are many deep generalizations relating
  them. (That is, the range of possible phonologies
  is large but the range is also much smaller than
  it might be logically.)
• The main principle to bear in mind is
  simultaneous signals and simultaneous
  constraints.

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Sounds and sound inventories

• 1. The phonemic principle in languages
• 2. Categorization into vowels and consonants
• 3. More refined analysis along sonority hierarchy
• 4. Strong universal (anthropophonic) tendencies
  in selection of vowel and consonant inventories
• 5. Strong symmetry tendencies which means that
  sounds are composed of parts...

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1. The phonemic principle

• Humans perceive sound chunks (phonemes) in
  discrete categories hence ability to
  discriminate between exemplars is extremely good
  at the boundary between phonemes, and poor for
  within-category cases.

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Example

• Difference between /b/ and /p/ is voicing,
  realized phonetically as Voice-Onset Time

voiceless
voiced
Voice Onset Time length of time between opening
the mouth and the onset of vocal fold vibrations
50 msec
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Each language has its own inventory of phonemes

• English distinguishes /b/ from /v/
• Spanish does not

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3. Sonority hierarchy

• Vowels a gt i, u
• Liquids l, r
• Nasals n, m , ng (angma)
• Fricatives s, f, v, z, th, h
• Affricates ch, j
• Stops b,d,gp,t,k

SONORANTS
OBSTRUENTS
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Sonority plays a very important role in
determining what sequences of sounds are
permissible in a language

• Its not the case that a word is just a sequence
  of sounds permitted in a language.
• The set of permissible sequences is much smaller
  than the set of imaginable sequences...

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Syllables

• Words are sequences of permissible syllables, and
  in general,
• Syllables are waves of sonority

decreasing sonority
increasing sonority
peak the vowel
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Syllables

• The most basic syllable structure CV
• Most languages put very heavy restrictions on
  what consonants can appear after the vowel, in
  the coda

S
rhyme
onset
coda
nucleus
h e l p
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English syllable

• b l a c k is OK, but
• l b a c k
• l b a ck
• Not a permissible sonority sequence

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• b u m p is OK,
• but
• b u p m is not.
• b u p m

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Competition for sonority...

• All phonemes must be organized into syllables
• an segment will capture a less sonorous segment
  on its immediate left.

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Limitations on the syllable

• Many languages permit no more than three items in
  a syllable
• Consonant Vowel 1 thing
• C V
• C V V
• C V C

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Strong symmetry tendencies...
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Fundamental domains of phonology

• Theory of gestures (actions)
• Theory of rhythm
• Theory of information (contrasts, redundancies)
• Theory of audition not much here

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Prime effect synchronization

• Speech is not the linear concatenation of atomic
  units (phonemes)
• It is the organization over time of units on a
  large number (15) of independent tiers
• Just like the production of an orchestra each
  instruments production is autonomous vis-à-vis
  the other instruments...

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Orchestral score

• One instrument may be silent for a while
• Another may play 2 notes over the same period
  that a third plays only 1 note
• But all the instruments are locked onto a
  over-all guidance metronome-- the conductors
  baton

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pin pIn

• A labial gesture aligned with glottal widening
• A rise of the tongue body combined with a
  narrowing of the glottis, leading eventually to
  spontaneous vibration of the vocal folds
• a raising of the tongue to the top of the mouth
  together with a drop of the velum to permit air
  to flow through the nose.

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Lets focus on tone

• First, a simple system like that of English!
• English assigns a tonal melody such as HL or LH
  to certain specific syllables.
• This melody is then stretched out or squeezed
  into the time available, given the syllables of
  the utterance...

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Question versus statement

• Did you go to the store?

I went to the store yesterday.
I went to the store yesterday.
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But wh-questions are different

• When did you go to the store?

When did you go to the store?
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Hence

• The High-Low melody is a thing in itself -- an
  intonational melody -- but to understand the
  sentence, you must know how it lines up with the
  words.
• Tone and words separate, autonomous,
  interbraided. Good word symplectic structure.

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Tone languages

• Q Why look at something so exotic?
• Answer because its not exotic. More languages
  are tone languages than arent.
• Tone languages provide us with intricate details
  of how the brain can organize parallel streams of
  linguistic information.

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Tonga verb structure
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Flap (D) in American English

• We find the flap of water (waDer) under these
  conditions strictly inside a word

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But across words

• Word initial t never flaps, regardless of
  stresses before or after eat my tomato, see
  Topeka...
• Word-final t followed by a vowel-initial word
  normally does flap, regardless of stresses before
  or after. at all, sit on it...
• But in the words to, tonight, today, tomorrow,
  the to acts as if it were linked to the
  preceding word.

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Generalization

• English permits phonemes to belong simultaneously
  to two syllables ( be ambisyllabic) under
  certain conditions.
• Ambisyllabic t's convert to flaps.
• Generally speaking
• Within a word
• C becomes part of syllable with a following onset
  ("maximize syllable onset")

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...within a word
s
C
V
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This also applies across words --in English, and
in many languages, but not (e.g.) in German
s
V
C


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Within a word, ambisyllabification before an
unstressed vowel
e.g., atom
s
s
V
C
V
-stress
stress
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But not across word boundaries
we don't say my tomato my Domato
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Linguistics
Phonetics sound, described as an acoustic and
articulatory event Phonology the study of
systems of discrete sounds Morphology ... the
internal structure of words Syntax ...the
principles governing combinations of
words. Semantics...the relationship between
syntactic structures and meaning.
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Classic distinctions in morphology

• Analytic (isolating) languages
• no morphology of derivational or inflectional
  sort.
• Synthetic (inflecting) languages
• Agglutinative 1 function per morpheme
• Fusional more than 1 function per morpheme

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AgglutinativeFinnish Nominal Declension
talo 'the-house' kaup-pa 'the-shop' talo-ni 'my
house' kaup-pa-ni 'my shop' talo-ssa 'in
the-house' kaup-a-ssa 'in the-shop' talo-ssa-ni
'in my house kaup-a-ssa-ni 'in my
shop' talo-i-ssa 'in the-houses kaup-o-i-ssa 'in
the-shops' talo-i-ssa-ni 'in my
houses kaup-o-i-ssa-ni 'in my shops'
Courtesy of Bucknell Univ. web page
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Fusional LatinLatin Declension of hortus
'garden'
Singular Plural Nominative (Subject)
hort-us hort-i Genitive (of)
hort-i hort-rum Dative (for/to) hort-o
hort-is Accusative (Direct Obj) hort-um
hort-us Vocative (Call) hort-e hort-i Ablative
(from/with) hort-o hort-is
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Incorporation syntax inside morphology
lets play ball all night long
lets night-long ball play
example thanks to Bucknell web page
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Morphology

• The internal structure of words
• phonological characteristics
• interaction with syntax

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Most words in most languages are composed of
several morphemes

• Recall the case of Tonga (Bantu)
• tu - la - ba - bon a
• we Present them see - indicative.

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English

• Has a morphology most similar to that of the
  other Germanic languages and Germanic languages
  are similar to other Indo-European languages.
• A small number of prefixes, quite a few suffixes.

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Inflectional and derivational morphology

• I sing, you sing, he sings, we sang all
  different inflectional forms of the same lexeme
  sing. Different forms are required in different
  contexts (syntactic contexts, we say).
• Derivational morphology
• I read I am a reader. You out-wit me. You're a
  mind-reader.
• derivational morphology creates new lexemes.

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• That's one functional dimension along which
  morphemes differ they also differ with regard to
  the effects they have on the stem to which they
  attach.
• Some affixes leave the base unchanged, while in
  other cases, the base affix is modified so as
  to better satisfy the phonotactics
  (well-formedness conditions, high-frequency
  patterns) of monomorphemic lexemes.

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Two layers of morphology in English
Layer 1 causes change in stress pattern,
vowel-shortening, vowel-deletion, c-gts Layer 2
little change in the base. Catholicism the
religion versus Catholic-ism speech forms
particular to Catholics?
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Linguistics
Phonetics sound, described as an acoustic and
articulatory event Phonology the study of
systems of discrete sounds Morphology ... the
internal structure of words Syntax ...the
principles governing combinations of
words. Semantics...the relationship between
syntactic structures and meaning.
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Syntax

• The task of syntax is to
• account for word-order in a given language
• specify constituent structure in the language
• account for the alignment of syntactic and
  logical structure.

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Levels of syntactic structure

• Clause smallest proposition-like grouping.
• John thought the Earth was flat
• 2 clauses.
• Top level of structure in a clause
• Subject Verb Object John ate the bread.
• Subject Object Verb John the bread ate.
• Verb Subject Object Ate John the bread.
• Verb Object Subject Ate the bread John.
• Object Subject Verb The bread John ate.
• Object Verb Subject The bread ate John.

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These 6 don't exhaust the possibilities

• Very common is
• X inflected-verb everything-else...
• "Verb goes into the second position..."

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Structure within the phrase

• the golden apples det adjective noun
• les pommes dorées det noun adjective
• den bok the book (Norwegian)
• bok-en book-a

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Automatic syntactic analysis

• Assigment of words to categories
• determination of constituent structure.