Floating tones in autosegmental phonology this handout explains floating tone in anlo dialect of ewe, as presented in chapter 10 of odden 2005. In phonology, there is a subfield of segmental phonology that deals with the analysis of speech into phonemes or segmental phonemes, which correspond fairly well to phonetic segments of the analysed speech the segmental phonemes of sign language formally called cheremes are visual movements of hands, face, and body. The principal innovation of autosegmental phonology, as presented in goldsmith 1976, was the idea that tone mapping rules do not merge tonal and segmental representations, but associate their elements by means of formal entities known as association lines. Optimality theory, autosegmental phonology and linear phonology. Phonological theories autosegmentalmetrical phonology session 6 phonological theories. Albro submitted to the department of electrical engineering and computer science on october 18, 1993, in partial ful llment of the requirements for the degree of bachelor of science in computer science and engineering abstract. Ohala 1990, halle 1954 and a few other very notable scholars have suggested that phonetics and phonology should be unified, denying an interface between the two. Often, when doing this, people adopt a different voice quality, with high pitch register, and protrude their lips and adopt a tongue posture where the tongue body is high and front in the mouth, making the speech sound softer.
Phonology on the other hand is the functional classification of the sounds of a. There is, however, morris halle, who has written many things on the topic. On the next line, that h is associated to the vowel o of the second word. Merging phonetics and phonology linguistics stack exchange. While the formalism clearly is one of feature copying, tonologists intuitively conceptualized the process as one of spreading. Phonology is the study of the way sounds function in languages, including phonemes, syllable structure, stress, accent, intonation, and which sounds are distinctive units within a language. Lets look at the the case of nasal spreading in english. The autosegmental tier also skeletal tier contains the features that define the segments articulated in the phonological representation.
Autosegmental studies in bantu tone george n clements, john a goldsmith. This theory proposes that the primitive elements of phonology features are not grouped together in unordered bundles segments, but that they lead their own. Unsurprisingly, the wikipedia claim misstates the situation. Autosegmental phonology is the name of a framework of phonological analysis proposed by john goldsmith in his phd thesis in 1976 at the massachusetts institute of technology mit. Presenting autosegmental phonology1 volume 27 issue 1 steven bird, d. One therefore find many analyses conducted in ot which assume autosegmental representations, and ones which assume spestyle representations.
In pre autosegmental phonology, the rule was often written informally as in 4c. Phonological theories autosegmentalmetrical phonology. The autosegmental framework was originally used to describe tone in tone languages. We would claim these as basic operations also in phonology. Goldsmith i would like to thank peter avery for much helpful.
In support of autosegmental representations in this section i briefly consider tonal phenomena that appear to support the basic tenets of autosegmental phonology. If you did not understand oddens explanation, this should make it easier to understand. Autosegmental studies in bantu tone george n clements. In the past few years a great deal of attention has been paid to the representation of suprasegmental phenomena in phonology, with the resulting development of a number of partly competing theories and models of suprasegmental representation in particular, various versions of autosegmental phonology see, for example, goldsmith 1976.
Researchers report deep similarities of phonological structure in both modalities, such that sign language phonology. Phonology is the study of how sounds are organized and used in natural languages. Old contrasts may disappear, new ones may emerge, or they may simply be rearranged. The autosegmental approach in general metrical phonology is a part of a more general approach to language description which claims that different aspects or levels of language are structured in their own way but are associated with all the other levels. Chapter three chapter three phonology steven pinker, author of the language instinct, once pointed out that great strides in science often come about by devoting massive research efforts on isolated, apparently simple, yet representative. The expressivity of autosegmental grammars springerlink.
We begin with phonetics, a system for describing and recording the sounds of language. Such stops became nasals themselves, of the same point of articulation as the original stop, thereby increasing if only slightly the inventory of nasals, and creating a gap in the distribution of stops. Autosegmental phonology the lines that link segments on the tonal tier to the segments on the segmental tier are called association lines. Clements 1976 developed the theory involving vowel harmony and nasal harmony. Autosegmental phonology is a nonlinear approach to phonology that allows phonological processes, such as tone and vowel harmony, to be independent of and extend beyond individual consonants and vowels. The sound patterns of language there are only a dozen or so features needed to describe every speech sound in every human language all the languages in the world sound so different because the way the languages use speech sounds to form patterns differs from language to language. Autosegmental phonology is a framework of phonological analysis proposed by john goldsmith in his phd thesis in 1976 at the massachusetts institute of technology mit as a theory of phonological representation, autosegmental phonology developed a formal account of ideas that had been sketched in earlier work by several linguists, notably bernard bloch 1948, charles hockett 1955 and j. A unified model of cvmetathesis in nonlinear phonology. Optimality theory, autosegmental phonology and linear. The approach is called autosegmental its own segmentation. Kinds of phonological rules what to rememberunderstand. This system allows linguists to easily test autosegmental hypotheses against a large corpus of data. Goldsmiths book autosegmental and metrical phonology amp has two major purposes.
In other words, a language develops a new system of oppositions among its phonemes. A read is counted each time someone views a publication summary such as the title, abstract, and list of authors, clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the fulltext. Autosegmental phonology these rules correctly derive the observed data. It sees phonology as compromising several tiers, each tier consisting of a linear arrangement of segments. Dashed lines in a rule means insert this line, or, in a shorthand derivation, it means this line was just inserted. Autosegmental and metrical phonology represents the effort of one of the the books billing as a textbook, goldsmith often presents a consensus view of main. Here, we have a tonal tier where the segments are specified only for tones. Linguistics and languages final year complete project topics and materials tags. Sep 03, 20 phonology is the aspects of language related to the distinctive features of the representation and reception of sounds of language. Every language has a wide variety of speech sounds phonemes. Ot is a theory of derivational mechanics, and autosegmental phonology or linear phonology are theories of representation. Phonology can be described as an aspect of language that deals with rules for the structure and sequencing of speech sounds.
Group 2 autosegmental and metrical phonology slp3 youtube. The effect of suprasegmentals is easy to illustrate. Sep 01, 2017 this feature is not available right now. Autosegmental phonology treats phonological representations as multidimensional, having several tiers. Sound change may be an impetus for changes in the phonological structures of a language and likewise. Presenting autosegmental phonology1 journal of linguistics.
An association line between two segments on two tiers means they are articulated simultaneously. Ling 403603 introduction to phonology university of delaware. In essence, vowel harmony would be said to be prosodic just in case it marks off a continuous span of speech. For example in english, the ng sound, as in ring, will never appear at the beginning of a word. Autosegmental phonology is the name of a framework of phonological analysis proposed by john goldsmith in his phd thesis in 1976 at the massachusetts institute of technology mit as a theory of phonological representation, autosegmental phonology developed a formal account of ideas that had been sketched in earlier work by several linguists, notably bernard bloch 1948, charles hockett. In phonetics, the smallest perceptible segment is a phone. Autosegmental theories are motivated by the observation that articulatory gestures associated with features such as voicing and nasality phonation at the larynx, raising and lowering the velum. The system was designed primarily with tonal systems in. Autosegmental phonology marc van oostendorp september, 2005 background in this class, we present an overview of some of the basic principles of autosegmental phonology. Floating tone in anlo take note of the following tonal minimal triplets. Rules in autosegmental phonology though autosegmental phonology is nonlinear in its approach, it is still derivational in nature.
View autosegmental phonology research papers on academia. A computational model of autosegmental phonology by daniel m. The london school of phonology spearheaded by firth would give a prosodic analysis to whatever it could, and that use of prosodic is very similar to autosegmental. Autosegmental aims in surface optimizing phonology. Phonology is the study of the sound system of a given language and the analysis and classification of its phonemes. First of all, it is an introduction to autosegmental, metrical, and lexical.
A more entertaining example of conditioned merger is the behavior of stops in latin, voiced and voiceless alike, when they were immediately followed by a nasal. Autosegmental and metrical phonology goldsmith, john a. In historical linguistics, phonological change is any sound change that alters the distribution of phonemes in a language. Universitat tubingen seminar fur sprachwissenschaft. This paper extends a notion of local grammars in formal language theory to autosegmental representations, in order to develop a sufficiently expressive yet computationally restrictive theory of wellformedness in natural language tone patterns. Download citation on researchgate autosegmental and metrical phonology by john a. Recent minimalist syntax, however, assumes chomskys 1998 notion that move is a composit of agree and internal merge hence i merge. Spreading is an assimilatory process of the progressive or perseverative type, rather than of the. Autosegmental phonology oxford research encyclopedia of linguistics an early sign that tones required a separate tier of representation was the phenomenon of tonal stability. We cover the cv tier to see how it functions with geminates and arabic templatic morphology. The inadequacy of a linear model of segmental structure is clearly shown and in the process of arguing for an autosegmental model, the authors briefly cover such important concepts as tone melodies, contour tones, the tonebearing unit and tone spreading. As a result, the phonological processes may influence more than one vowel or consonant at a time. Jan 22, 2018 we cover the cv tier to see how it functions with geminates and arabic templatic morphology.
The main framework that vill be using is autosegmental phonology of anal sort, with the vocalic features used in the lexical phonology placed on tiers. I naively imagine there are three logical possibilities. In the example of oke okpa, the vowel e deletes and you have a floating tone as a result, as the part after the arrow indicates. In preautosegmental phonology, the rule was often written informally as in 4c. Publications in african languages and linguistics 3. Then john mccarthy 1979 built upon this theory extensively in the verbal derivation of classical arabic. The phonology of arabic features heavily in the work of the arab grammarians, most notably in the kitab of alsibawayh harun 1983. I conclude in 5 with some further difficulties for autosegmental representation of tone and discuss the implications of these findings concerning phonology in general. This book sets out to explain developments in the field of nonlinear phonology that have taken place since the mid 1970s. As a result, the phonological processes may influence.
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