NOTAS DE CLASE. El porcentaje asignado para la evaluación de este apartado será el 30

Here is a set of words from Spanish (simplified from Luraghi, Thornton and Voghera 2003: 42). How are the alveolar voiced stop [d] and the inter-dental voiced fricative [ð] distributed? The left column shows orthogra-phy; forms in square brackets are the pronunciations.

(14) (a) dedo [deðo] ‘finger’ Spanish

(b) Madrid [maðrið] ‘Madrid’

(c) andar [andar] ‘to go’

(d) padre [paðre] ‘father’

(e) dos [dos] ‘two’

(f) alcalde [alkalde] ‘mayor’

(g) sed [seð] ‘thirst’

(h) aduana [aðwana] ‘customs’

The two sounds are in complementary distribution: each occurs in a con-text where the other does not. In particular, [ð] appears only right after a vowel; [d] in turn never shows up postvocalically: it occurs in other contexts, such as following a consonant or in the beginning of the word. Since both [d] and [ð] are voiced obstruents formed roughly in the same area of the mouth, we can take them to be the very same sound in two different

“guises”: their small phonetic difference is attributable to the context

where each occurs. Given that the mouth is relatively open when forming a vowel, it makes sense that a sound immediately following a vowel would be pronounced with only a partial closure – i.e., as the fricative version [ð]

of the dental-alveolar obstruent rather than the stop version [d]. [d] and [ð]

are thus analyzed as variants of the same sound with their difference attrib-utable to their environment. They are allophones of the same phoneme.

This example of allophonic variation illustrates a very common type of contextual modification: a sound becomes somewhat like a neighboring one. This pattern is labeled assimilation .

In the Spanish example, it is the manner of articulation of the dental-alveolar obstruent that is at issue. Assimilation may also affect various other properties of sounds, such as voicing, place of articulation, and oral versus nasal articulation.

The example given in the first section of this chapter (5.1) is of voice assimilation . As we saw, English word-initial pre-tonic voiceless stops and affricates are aspirated (as in put [p ^h Ut]). Although it may not look like it, this is actually an instance of assimilation: the voicelessness of the plo-sive preceding the vowel spreads to the beginning of the following vowel.

The delayed voice onset time – the late start of the vibration of the vocal cords – results in the devoicing of the initial portion of the vowel, which is perceived as a puff of air and heard as the aspiration of the voiceless stop. Since aspirated and unaspirated voiceless stops and affricates occur under distinct conditions – they are in complementary distribution – the aspirated-unaspirated pairs, such as [p] and [p ^h ], and [č] and [č ^h ], etc., may be analyzed as contextually altered variants of the same sound, or allo-phones of the same phoneme.

This example shows how the voice status of a vowel may be affected by a neighboring consonant. The opposite also occurs: the voice status of a consonant may depend on the presence or absence of vowels in its neigh-borhood. In several languages, all stops and fricatives are voiced between vowels. Korean is an example. (15a) illustrates lax stops and affricates occurring word-initially as voiceless. In (15b), these sounds are in intervo-calic position and they are voiced. The voiceless and voiced varieties are in complementary distribution everywhere in the language: they are allo-phones of the same phoneme.

Thirdly, in addition to assimilation in manner of articulation and in voice, context may affect the place where a sound is articulated in the mouth. (16) is an example of assimilation in place of articulation : in Korean, the voiceless sibilant is alveolar ([s]) in all contexts except immediately Intervocalic

preceding /i/, where it takes on the palatality of the following vowel result-ing in [š].

(16) alveolar [s]: palatal [š]: Korean

[say] ‘bird’ [ši] ‘poem’

[sul] ‘alcohol’ [šil] ‘thread’

[sucun] ‘level’ [šido] ‘trial’

[somang] ‘hope’ [šiksa] ‘supper’

[sesang] ‘world’ [šin] ‘new’

[seron] ‘introduction’ [šinggepta] ‘to be unsalted’

In Korean, a neighboring vowel affects the place of articulation of a consonant. In the Spanish example below, it is an adjacent consonant that influences the place of articulation of a consonant. Note the distribution of the four nasals: bilabial /m/, alveolar /n/, palatal /ɲ/, and velar / ɳ /.

(17) tambor /ta mb or/ ‘drum’ Spanish

puente /pue nt e/ ‘bridge’

enfermo /e mf ermo/ ‘sick’

rancho /ra ɲ −č o/ ‘ranch’

mangas /ma ɲ −g as/ ‘sleeves’

As these examples show, the nasal and the following obstruent agree in their place of articulation: both are bilabial, or both are alveolar, or both are palatal, or both are velar. Using standard terminology, the nasals are homorganic with the following obstruents.

This particular pattern, illustrated in (17) with Spanish with word-internal clusters, is crosslinguistically widespread. In his study of nasal-obstruent clusters in word- final positions, Greenberg found the following (1978b:

253):

GEN-6: “ In final systems, the existence of at least one sequence consisting of a nasal (voiced or unvoiced) followed by a het-erorganic obstruent implies the existence of at least one sequence consisting of a nasal (voiced or unvoiced) fol-lowed by a homorganic obstruent.”

Of the 61 languages that Greenberg based this observation on, 33 have both homorganic and heterorganic nasals before obstruents, 20 have only homor-ganic ones, and 8 had neither kind. The fourth possibility – languages with only heterorganic nasal-obstruent sequences – is not attested in his sample.

One of the 33 languages that Greenberg lists as having both types of clusters is English. The examples in (18) show homorganic word-final nasal-stop clusters.

(18) li mp English

sla nt ki nd

tank /tӕ ŋk /

While the English homorganicity pattern holds in monomorphemic words, such as those in (18), it does not hold across morpheme bounda-ries. For example, in screamed /skri:mt/, the morpheme-final /m/ is bilabial even though the suffix is an alveolar stop; and in hanged /hӕŋd/ , the morpheme-final /ŋ/ is velar preceding the alveolar suffix. Thus, English has both homorganic and heterorganic nasal-obstruent clusters word-finally.

A language listed by Greenberg – one among 20 – as having only homor-ganic nasal-obstruent clusters at the ends of words is Hindi. Here are a few examples (cf. M. Ohala 1975 : 318).

(19) [ča nd ] ‘moon’ Hindi

[mə ɲč ] ‘platform’

[si ηg ] ‘horn’

Greenberg’s statement above pertains to word-final nasal-obstruent clusters. He also studied such clusters in word-initial position and con-cluded as follows ( 1978b : 253).

GEN-7: “A similar statement for initial systems holds in almost all cases, but a number of Slavic languages (e.g. Russian, Polish, Czech) are conspicuous exceptions in that they contain ini-tial heterorganic combinations such as /mg/ without having homorganic sequences.”

A Russian example of the initial heterorganic cluster /mg/ is /mgla/ ‘fog.’

John Ohala offers an explanation for the crosslinguistically predomi-nant homorganicity of nasal-obstruent clusters. He suggests that nasal consonants that differ only in place of articulation – [m], [n], [ɲ], and [η] – are acoustically very similar and the resulting auditory ambiguity makes them subject to articulatory re-interpretation under the influence of the adjacent obstruent (J. Ohala 1975 : 196).

The conformity of nasals to following obstruents has much in common with the patterns that we saw above: fricativization in Spanish, aspiration in English, intervocalic voicing and palatalization in Korean. In all five instances a sound is assimilated to a neighboring sound. However, there is also a difference. In Spanish fricativization, English aspiration, and Korean intervocalic voicing and palatalization, the alternative forms – plosive versus fricative forms of voiced obstruents in Spanish, aspirated and unaspirated voiceless stops in English, voiced and voiceless lax stops in Korean, and alveolar and palatal fricatives in Korean – occur in comple-mentary distribution everywhere in the language. In other words, there is a perfect “division of labor”: members of these pairs of sounds occur in different environments with no overlap at all. Given a context, only one member of the set can occur. It is for this reason that they may be viewed as being the very same sound in different “clothing”: allophones of the same phoneme.

This is not so for the nasals in Spanish and English. They, too, exhibit complementary distribution but only under certain conditions: preceding

obstruents (see (17) and (18). Otherwise, each nasal can occur in any envi-ronment. In English, for example, the three nasals /m/, /n/, and /ŋ/ all occur word-finally in To m , so n , and song /so ŋ /; it is only preceding an obstruent that the nasals are willing to give up their own place of articula-tion in favor of that of the following sound. In Spanish, too, /m/ and /n/ are independent phonemes; cf. mi ‘mine’ and ni ‘neither.’ This kind of restrict-ed complementary distribution is labelrestrict-ed neutralization : the difference between the bilabial, alveolar, (palatal in Spanish) and velar nasal pho-nemes is said to be neutralized, or suspended, in front of an obstruent:

preceding an obstruent, only one of the nasals – the homorganic one – can occur. Thus, what is involved is not a choice between alternative forms of a single phoneme but a choice between different phonemes, such as in the cases discussed in Section 5.2.1.

The difference between allophony and neutralization can be clearly seen if we compare the Korean data in (16) with the Japanese data in (20a) and (20b).

(20) (a) alveolar [s]: palatal [š]: Japanese

[kasu] ‘lend’ [šinu] ‘die’

[isogu] ‘hurry’ [muši] ‘insect’

[arimasu] ‘is’ [booši] ‘hat’

[isu] ‘chair’ [hikidaši] ‘drawer’

[sara] ‘saucer’ [omoširoi] ‘interesting’

[sensei] ‘teacher’ [širu] ‘juice’

At first blush, the two patterns seem to be the same: palatal sibilant preceding /i/ and alveolar sibilant elsewhere. But here is additional data from Japanese.

(20) (b) alveolar [s]: palatal [š]: Japanese

[sakai] ‘boundary’ [šakai] ‘society’

[so:kai] ‘general meeting’ [šo:kai] ‘introduction’

[sɯ:kai] ‘several times’ [šɯ:kai] ‘assembly’

As seen in (20b), the palatal fricative is not restricted to occurrence before /i/: it occurs in front of other vowels as well. The constraint has to do only with the alveolar sibilants: they cannot precede /i/. That is to say, the dif-ference between alveolar and palatal place of articulation is neutralized before /i/ in favor of palatality. In Korean in turn, there are no such mini-mal pairs: the occurrence of [s] versus [š] is contextually conditioned throughout the language: they are allophones.

Another crosslinguistically common neutralization pattern has to do with the voice status of word-final (and more generally, syllable-final) obstruents. Consider German alveolar stops, of which German has both the voiced and the voiceless variety: /d/ and /t/. They are separate pho-nemes of full rights: each can occur in most environments. (21) shows that they both occur word-initially and word-medially.

(21) d ie ‘the’ German T ier ‘animal’

Bün d e ‘societies’

bun t e ‘colored’

However, word-final position is a different story: /t/ occurs but /d/ does not.

Thus, the singular form of Bünde ‘societies,’ spelled Bund , is pronounced as /bunt/. This neutralization pattern, referred to in the literature as termi-nal devoicing , also holds for the other German obstruents and it is a pervasive pattern in Slavic languages as well as in languages as genetically different as Catalan, Turkish, and Thai. Word-final terminal devoicing may perhaps be viewed as an instance of regressive assimilation: the obstruent takes on the voicelessness of the pause that follows the word when it is pronounced in isolation.

Allophony and neutralization are diagrammed below. The squares enclose the sets of all phonological environments in the language; the rectangles are different environments. On the left, [t] and [d] are allo-phones: they occur in mutually exclusive environments (e.g. [t] before consonants and [d] before vowels). On the right, /t/ and /d/ are neutralizing phonemes: normally, they can occur in any environment but in some contexts (e.g. syllable-finally in German) only /t/ occurs.

(22)

Allophones: Neutralizing phonemes:

t *t t t

*d d d *d

In addition to manner of articulation, voice, and place of articulation, a fourth phonetic property type that may spread from one sound to another is orality versus nasality . English exemplifies a very common subtype of this: the nasalization of vowels preceding a nasal consonant.

(23) boot [bu:t] boom [bû:m] English

bead [bi:d] bean [bî:n]

bore [bo:r] bong [bõ:η]

The nasalization of vowels next to, and especially before, nasals has been found to be a universal feature of languages (Ferguson 1975 : 181).

In this section, we considered the ways in which sounds take on differ-ent shapes depending on their environmdiffer-ent, whether as allophones of a phoneme or as separate phonemes in a neutralization pattern. In all of the examples considered, the influence of the context was assimilatory:

the different shapes that sounds take on mimic adjacent sounds. As was seen above, assimilation may involve various types of sounds and various types of properties, and the spread may go “forward,” from left to right (called progressive assimilation) or “backwards,” from right to left (regres-sive assimilation). Here is the summary of eight of the examples sorted by the assimilation feature, by direction, and by the distribution pattern involved (allophonic or neutralizing).

In sum, here is a set of crosslinguistic generalizations to complement GEN-1 through GEN-7 stated above:

GEN-8: Assimilation may involve consonant–vowel pairs or consonant–consonant pairs.

GEN-9: In assimilation involving consonant–vowel pairs, the consonant may affect the vowel or the vowel may affect the consonant.

GEN-10: The features involved in assimilation include place of articulation, manner of articulation, voice, and nasality.

GEN-11: Assimilation may be progressive or regressive.

GEN-12: Vowel nasalization is predominantly regressive.

GEN-13: Nasal homorganicity is predominantly regressive.

GEN-14: The devoicing of obstruents at the edge of words or syllables is generally word-final or syllable-final. Word-initial or syllable-Word-initial obstruent devoicing has not been observed in any language.

GEN-15: The conditions for allophonic assimilation and phonemic neutralization are of the same kinds.