Chapter 4

Defining distributions:

Consonant allophones

4.1 Phonemes revisited

That is to say if we are dealing with two allophones of the shame phoneme, the
two must occur in non overlapping sets of enviroments. On other hand, clear,
elveolar [l] and dark, velar [] occur in predictably different and enviroments :in
Standard Southern British English, the clear more front one appears word
initially or between vowels, as in lip, lot, mallow, and the dark, more back one
word finally or before a consonant, as in pill, tall, halt.

In doing so, we will also discover that certain phonemes form groups, in that they
have similar allpohones in similar environments. We must try identify what
members of such groups have in common, and what makes certain phonemes
work together.

4.2 Making Generalisations

In one case, we found that /k/ has two variant pronuciations, namely velar [k] in
cupboard and palatal [c] in kitchen. However, providing a list of words where the
relevant allophones appears is only our statring point. Phonologists are intrested
in generalisations about the language they are working on, and indeed in
generalisations about languange in general ; and generalisations are not best
expressed simply as lists, as these do not reveal the factors witch the forms in
the lists have in common. As an example, recall [c] and [k] allophones of /k/.
English speakers will have palatal and velar pronunciations distributed as in (1) :

Kitchen [cn] keys [ciz]

Cupboard [kbd] car [k:]

As the previous chapters showed , the vocal organs undergo very comples,
coordinated movements during speech, and anything that simplifies the
gymnastics involved while not jeopardising comprehension is understandably
very welcome to speakers.

We can test this hypothesis by finding lots of other examples where /p/, /t/ and
/k/ appear word initially, and checking whether there is aspiration. After a while
when we kept finding data that agreewith our observation and not finding data
that disagree, we can feel more confident that our generalisation is the right one,
and regard our hypothesis as confirmed.
4.3 Making statements more precise

Having established that certain sounds are allophones of the same phoneme,
and that they are in complementary distribution we might write a statement like
(2) to say what happens to the phoneme or phonemes in question, and where.

a. /k/ and /g/ become [c] and [] when they are followed by a front vowels.
b. /p/, /t/ and /k/ become[ ph , [ t h ] and [k h ] at the very beginning of a
word.

These statements express the main generalisation in each case. Similarly, we

can not see what /k/ and /g/ have in common, or indeed what the resulting
allophones have in common, simply by looking at the phonemes symbols.

Instead of voiced and voiceless, or oral and nasal, we can then write [+voice]
and [-voice], and [-nasal] and [+nasal]. This distinctive features allow each
segment to be regarded as a simultaneously articulated set, or matrix, of binary
features, as shown in (4).