phonetic / phonological typology

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Phonetic / phonological typology Parameters of variation, principles of generalization Based on Maddieson 2010, 2015

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Components of typological study: a reminder Limits to variation Parameters of variation Correlations between parameters AKA implicational universals Explanatory approach

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Page 1: Phonetic / phonological typology

Phonetic / phonological typology

Parameters of variation, principles of generalization

Based on Maddieson 2010, 2015

Page 2: Phonetic / phonological typology

Components of typological study: a reminder

Limits to variationParameters of variationCorrelations between parameters

– AKA implicational universalsExplanatory approach

Page 3: Phonetic / phonological typology

Limits to elaboration (pulmonic consonants)

IPA Chart, http://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/content/ipa-chart, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License. Copyright © 2005 International Phonetic Association.

Page 4: Phonetic / phonological typology

Limits to elaboration (non-pulmonic and vowels)

IPA Chart, http://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/content/ipa-chart, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License. Copyright © 2005 International Phonetic Association.

Page 5: Phonetic / phonological typology

Attestedness vs. frequency

The idea behind IPA – a universal alphabet for transcription

Not all of these segments are equally frequent, and some are rare

Page 6: Phonetic / phonological typology

Attestedness vs. frequency

phoible.org (2155 lgs, unbalanced sample)– m present in 85 percent of languages, x in 18– u present in 87 percent, e present in 68, ø in 2

an example of rare sounds – glottalized (laryngealized) sonorants – individual systems attested in Mesoamerica, one

among Austronesian and one in Daghestan

Page 7: Phonetic / phonological typology

Consonant inventories: ‘size principle’

basic set ~ p, b, t, d, k, g, ʔ, tʃ, m, n, ŋ, f, s, ʃ, l, r, w, j, h

typically involve place of articulation x voicedness– though many lgs lack voicedness altogether

“consonants with places and manners of articulation outside those represented in this set … tend only to occur in inventories with a larger total number of consonants” Maddieson 2010– see below for why

Page 8: Phonetic / phonological typology

Vowel inventories

Basic set ~ i e a o u, which involve contrast in

backness, roundedness, height – but in what precedence?

Triangular (most common) … vs. vertical systems --- Northwest

Caucasian, Arandic, Chadic– height comes first

Page 9: Phonetic / phonological typology

Vowel inventories

No language contrasts roundedness alone A small minority of languages have front

rounded or back unrounded vowels

Height > Backness > (?) Roundedness additional properties – nasalization,

pharyngealization, length – are added to plain vowels – cf. ‘size principle’ for consonantal inventories

Page 10: Phonetic / phonological typology

‘size principle’: why?

Note that it is exactly the size principle effects that give rise to implicational universals

Various explanations: ontogenetic, philogenetic, system-internal etc.

Maddieson: “Pervasive pragmatic requirements for efficient communication”; “better balance between … relative ease of articulation and relative perceptual salience”

Page 11: Phonetic / phonological typology

Explanation: voiced fricatives

Maddieson 2010: out of 637 lg sample, 62% have voiced obstruents and only 35% have voiced fricatives. Why?

Generation of a high velocity airstream required for fricatives is in conflict with closure of vocal folds required for voicing

On the other hand, the airflow required for vocal folds vibration is impeded by the oral constriction

Page 12: Phonetic / phonological typology

Explanation: voiced fricatives (ctd)

Maddieson 2010: But why voiced fricatives are preferred in systems where there are already voiced obstruents? Cf.:

Plosive voicingFricative voicingYes No Total

Yes 177 218 395No 44 198 242Total 221 416 637

Page 13: Phonetic / phonological typology

Explanation: voiced fricatives (ctd)

Principle of economy – that system is more compliant to the principle of economy which uses less gestures.

“The use of a given feature in several different consonants reduces the number of distinct motor and perceptual patterns that must be mastered by a speaker, compared to a situation in which every consonant would have a set of features unique to itself”.

Page 14: Phonetic / phonological typology

Vowel harmony: types

Best known: front/back & rounding --- Altaic, Uralic and other – least attested

Also attested: height harmony --- Itelmen, some Bantu, Nez Perce

Most widespread: “cross-height” / ATR-harmony --- Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, probably Mongolian and Tungusic

Page 15: Phonetic / phonological typology

Vowel harmony: ATR

Most widespread: “cross-height” / ATR-harmony --- Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, probably Mongolian and Tungusic

Cf. standard Yoruba

ie

ɛa

ɔo

u “The size of pharyngeal cavity at the back of the mouth”; green vowels are produced “by pulling the root of the tongue forward and often also lowering the larynx”

Page 16: Phonetic / phonological typology

Consonants vs. vowels

“there is a balance between vowel and consonant size inventory”

Consonants VowelsSmall Average Large Total

Small 47 153 65 265Average 34 105 98 237Large 34 87 57 178Total 115 345 220 680

a widespread belief is false

a widespread belief

Page 17: Phonetic / phonological typology

Levels of pho-typology

Unlike morphology and syntax, and like semantics, phonetics relates to many levels of linguistic segmentation – syllable, word, utterance

Syllables are of course decomposed in smaller segments – but note the term!

Page 18: Phonetic / phonological typology

A prosodic typology: syllable

What syllables are more natural of a human language?– Not an easy question when starting from a relatively

complex language like Russian or English– strengths

Typologically, CV seems to be the default structure. What kind of arguments may be used?

Page 19: Phonetic / phonological typology

A prosodic typology: syllable

Typologically, CV seems to be the default structure. What kind of arguments may be used?

– types of syllables present in all languages --- CV– types of syllables readily absent from languages --- V, VC, CVC– (frequency) distribution of syllable types with individual

languages

The latter is an illustration of an important typological principle – typological patterns may sometimes be shadowed by variation within individual languages

Page 20: Phonetic / phonological typology

A prosodic typology: rythm

stress-timed– one syllable in the word is prominent, other are

reduced in duration, speech rhythm is determined by ‘beats’ – stressed syllables --- German or English

syllable-timed– syllables are near-equal in duration, speech rhythm is

determined by the total number of syllables --- French or Spanish

mora-timed– bi- vs. monomoraic syllables, the mean count of moras

per min is constant --- Japanese (CV 1 mora, CV: or CVC 2 moras)

Page 21: Phonetic / phonological typology

A prosodic typology: stress

stress – syllable prominence within word no stress --- 135 our of 461 --- Yoruba predictable position --- Korean, stress falls on

the second mora (?) --- 195 --- what is the function of the stress?demarcation

contrastive/lexical stress --- Russian --- 131

Page 22: Phonetic / phonological typology

A prosodic typology: tone

“pitch tied to particular lexical or grammatical forms” --- 153 lgs out of 461

level tone --- from 2 to 5 --- Africa (typically 2) and North / South America

contour tone --- South East Asia and Mesoamerica

Page 23: Phonetic / phonological typology

A prosodic typology: stress and tone?

Stress may combine with tone!

Tone StressLexical Predictable No stress Total

Tonal 18 34 101 153Non-tonal 113 161 34 308Total 131 195 135 461

Page 24: Phonetic / phonological typology

Conclusions