Phonemes and Allophones, Part 2

When we deal with language, how do we know what sounds we hear match up to what categories? And how do we know what sounds to make ourselves? In the follow-up to our phoneme episode, this week, The Ling Space takes on allophones, the sounds that are driven by rules that define the way we hear our linguistic world.
This is Topic #5!
This week's tag language: Italian!
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Spanish subtitles by Federico Falletti
Looking forward to next week!

[@universalradio]

you're the best. these are super entertaining, AND incredibly informative, and they have a way of actually sticking in my head in a beneficial way.

[@joech.7775]

At 5:43, "But when you slice off the /s/ and listen again, it totally sounds like a /g/. This is because [g] is an allophone of /k/, that appears after an /s/." I think this part might be incorrect. The unaspirated [k] is both the allophone of /k/ and /g/. However, [g] is never an allophone of /k/. Voiceless consonants almost never become voiced in English, except for function words like "is" or "of". Instead, voiced (lenis) consonants are very often realized as unvoiced. The reason why [kup] is recognized as "goop" is because the difference of the counterpart /k/ and /g/ in word initial is the aspiration. /g/ is actually realized as an unaspirated [k].

[@ahmedfernani]

I watched the first video and had to subscribe. I continued to watch the second video and want to learn more from you. I am an ESL teacher and working on an endorsement. If you ask a colleague or a friend of mine, they will tell you that I enjoy asking "how", "why", and "Next step..." of learning professionally and personally which makes it fun for me. Thank you for clarifying and simplifying this material for me in a very entertaining way!!!!

[@seanmegumi]

"I'm not a ricecake!" HA! Very nicely done. I've taken copious notes of this and Part 1, and will be using it in class with Japanese students. Many thanks indeed!

[@dereke.b.1587]

These videos really gave me some different (and overall helpful) insight while I was taking syntax last semester. I'm taking principles of phonetics & phonology this summer and I've found myself back here once again. Thanks to you and your team for putting in the effort that makes this channel possible!

[@thelingspace]

Thanks so much for the comment! We're really happy to hear this kind of thing - I'll pass it along to the team. Best of luck with your phon stuff! ^_^

[@bymyspotfordreams9057]

These are amazing to complete my studies for my exam in linguistics! Thank you so much!

[@thelingspace]

Glad to be able to help! ^_^

[@teacherdkennedy]

I think you just explained a huge piece of my work with kids with dyslexia. I know of course that they have weak phonemic awareness, but I think one of the ways that presents is that they don't necessarily collect all the allophones into the same/right phoneme bucket. A ton of my kids, for instance, want to spell that middle /t/ in butter with a d, and I have to talk about how people get mushy-mouthed and it turns into a d but is really a t. I've often been puzzled by this and thought it represented better, or more nuanced phoneme discrimination than normal, rather than worse, but it seems from this episode that it is the phoneme unicorn, or the phoneme grouping, that they are not grasping. I wonder if there has been any research about explicitly teaching about allophones to help dyslexic people. Hm...I'm going to have to sit with this insight for a while. Thanks!

[@thelingspace]

Diana Kennedy Glad to be of help! I don't know about teaching dyslexics about allophones, but there's definitely a body of research suggesting that dyslexics are more sensitive to variation that's happening in the same phonemic category than the typical reading population. This continues down to the neurological level - in an experiment similar to the ta/da study talked about here, a 2013 study (Noordenbos et al. in Clinical Neuropsychology) shows that adult dyslexics show the characteristic response of noticing a change even in the same category, whereas the control group only showed the expected response when moving from one category to another. This suggests that there's a deep problem with maintaining the boundaries.I think this means that you're right - dyslexics are more nuanced than most people for noticing phonetic changes. But the ability to establish the right phonemic categories is what allows us to focus on what really matters for word building in our language.I'm going to answer to your question on Topic 4 about this, but this can also get mixed in problems of segmentation of sounds. For here, though, it's just looking too low, and using an allophonic mode of perception rather than a phonemic one. Thanks for the question!

[@dungletien4239]

wonderful.Thank you so much

[@adrin181]

one thing i didnt see mentioned is that scoop and goop in the example are pronounced exactly the same, [k], because goop is following an [s], which devoices the [g] or maybe you did say it but you said it was for a different reason? i honestly got confused by that part of the video

[@thelingspace]

It's not actually a matter of voiced vs. voiceless! If you look at the acoustics of scoop vs. goop, what you see is that they're actually both voiceless velar stops, or [k]s. But English speakers interpret them as parts of different phonemes - /k/ in the case of scoop, and /g/ in the case of goop. The distinction between /k/ and /g/ is basically one of aspiration vs. voiceless: the /k/ in "coop" is aspirated, like [kʰ]. Whereas in "goop", it's [k]. At the beginning of a word, we interpret a phonetic [k] as a /g/. With "scoop", the /k/ surfaces also surfaces as the plain voiceless [k], but in that environment (i.e. after [s]), we interpret the sound as a /k/ instead of a /g/. I hope that makes sense - I think basically we agree on this, but I'm just saying it's voiceless vs. aspirated, instead of voiced vs. voiceless. Hope this helps!

[@ilyakogan]

Thank you, Moti! As an amateur linguist, I love your very clear explanations. תודה :)

[@wentropy]

I remember my introduction to linguistic teacher gave us all a sucker and told us to pronounce KIT KAT. The stick moved back in forth has we said this, but our brain still heard the K.

[@ulysseyang9733]

what about for people who speak multiple languages ? how do they perceive phonemes ?

[@oOhecOo]

Hello! I am new at this channel, but I'm looking for "Complementary Distribution", did u make one of this one?

[@sadafkhan1679]

U make these concepts sooo easy.......n ur hilarious too

[@ellepeterson9992]

Thank you!!!

[@melopc]

I thought the c in scoop is an unaspirated [k], instead of the voiced [g], but perhaps in English [k] is an allophone of [g]?

[@thelingspace]

Ray Cui The c in "scoop" is the unaspirated [k], yeah. English doesn't really have a voiced/voiceless contrast for the most part, and definitely not in that position. So in a word like "coop," you get the aspirated [kʰ]. If you have the voiceless [k] there, it sounds like "goop." But when you put the [k] after the [s] in "scoop", it sounds like a [k] instead. There's a sense in which, then, [k] is an allophone of /g/ - that's what a /g/ is at the beginning of a word. Hope this makes sense! ^_^

[@melopc]

Yes, that is in native speech. But I'm wondering whether native English speakers can distinguish [k] and [g] when someone with a Romance/Indian accent pronounces English, where they tend to substitute [kh] with [k], [th] with [t] and [ph] with [p]. I previously thought that native English speakers can also hear the voicing differences.

[@thelingspace]

Ray Cui Hmmm. This is a good question. Anecdotally, I can say that this is something where I have mistaken people before in minimal-pair situation; I have, for example, heard "bot" instead of "pot" before from a native French speaking child talking about what they just saw in a shop. But off the top of my head, I don't know of any research that specifically looks at this question regarding accent. I do know a 1998 paper by Curtin, Goad, and Pater in Second Language Research, that looks at how English speakers deal with the three-way distinction in Thai, between [g], [k], and [kʰ]. They discuss that while previous research shows that in synthetic cases, aspirated/unaspirated is easier for English speakers to pick out, in Thai, they were doing better with voiced/voiceless. This is part of why we still describe English as having /k/ and /g/, and not /k/ and /kʰ/. It's a fairly easy paper to read, and you can find it linked to Heather Goad's webpage, if you're curious. Thanks again for the question!

[@Jcarr250]

Ray Cui I noticed his sounded like [k] here anyway

[@Zeupater]

I think I hear a difference between the [k] sound in scoop and the [g] in goop. Maybe the [s] is influencing my perception but I think the the [k] sounds aspirated while the [g] sounds voiced and slightly glottal. They are still considered allophones even if they sound a little different?

[@GregSanders]

So since we know about allophones and the linguistic alphabet and such, why does computer read text sound so weird?

[@thelingspace]

Greg Sanders This is a more involved question than you might think! So the easiest part of this at the outset is to say that the initial synthesized speech stuff was actually dealing with making different sounds by measuring in the phonetics of different sounds and putting them together. The thing is, though the hallmark parts of phonemes in terms of their acoustics are usually fairly constant, what actually makes it sound like a person is the higher levels of the acoustics that are shaped by the specific vocal tract of the person talking. And keeping those constant, so it sounds like the same person, is hard. So this is often the Speak and Spell kind of thing - you can hear what it's saying, but it's weird and not rich.So most of the speech synthesis stuff now is built off actual people's speech; for example, Siri's American female voice is based off of Susan Bennett's. For this, the speaker is recorded speaking a ton, and then those words are torn apart into their different phonemes and allophones, stored, and then put back together to make new speech. The more speech you have to begin with, the better this can sound. This is also behind what Roger Ebert had in the later years of his life, where he couldn't speak anymore.While clearly, this'll make the voice sound more human - after all, it was human at one point - this doesn't solve the bigger part of the problem. The really big problem is that we also really care about intonation patterns over larger sets of words. We need to understand the tone of a sentence (someone saying "It snowed all night" will probably feel differently if they now get a day off from school or they have to drive into work), and produce the right patterns. And that has to be layered on top of the actual sounds themselves - so all the individual sounds need to be shaded correctly, and they have to sound correct when put together. And you have to understand the environment it's being produced in.So you put that all together, and we're talking massive, stupendous amounts of processing necessary. Beyond which, we don't even have all the ideas in place for recognizing all that's potentially required in any situation - emotion, kind of sentence, words that could have multiple pronunciations, etc. But it's just so much information to sort through and put together quickly, it's too much of a task still. Having it sound more flat or degraded or otherwise unnatural is the price we pay for having the technology working at all for now. Thanks for the question! ^_^

[@SofiaRR1]

Thanks for these series! Great job explaining everything and great design. I loved the mental little unicorns thing :3 Greetings from Colombia!

[@Kenneth_the_Philosopher]

There is a better way to explain the phoneme - allophone relationship. You can use theory of the forms as a metaphor. Phonemes do not exist because it is the perfect pronunciation of a letter. It is the idea pronunciation of a letter. However, only allophones exist; they are little imperfections of the perfect phoneme. Get it!

[@adel2320]

thank you

[@thelingspace]

عادل المالكي You're welcome! ^_^

[@valydo3927]

Great job at making these videos. It can get pretty hard to understand all these sounds.

[@monomakes]

I understand and agree with your explanation at the beginning, however I've always thought of the difference between /g/ and /k/ as relying upon vibration from the vocal chords. BrE native here BTW.

[@thelingspace]

+mightlife Okay, so here's the thing: [k] and [g] are definitely differentiated by vocal fold vibration. Because they're both stops, there's no real air going out while you're talking - it's just a question of when the vocal folds get to buzzing, either while the closure is still intact for [g], or around when it's released for [k]. The thing is that what English actually has in that position isn't a difference between [k] and [g], it's between [k] and [kʰ], the aspirated k. At the beginning of a word like "coop", you get [kʰup], as opposed to the [k] sound you get in "scoop", which is [skup]. But that unaspirated [k] in that position without an [s], like [kup], is coded as a /g/ for us. Basically, /k/ and /g/ can be said to differ in voicing, but the difference between the actual use of the pair of sounds in that position is one between a voiceless [k] and an aspirated [kʰ]. They all do exist on the voicing spectrum, since aspiration is basically an extended period of time before vocal fold vibration begins. But that difference we're talking about in English isn't actually a voicing distinction. Hope this helps! ^_^

[@monomakes]

Thanks for the reply. I must admit ignorance when it comes to linguistics; hence my seeking out your videos. As I break down the two sounds, I can see what you mean - that there is a larger difference than that of solely use of vocal chords. However I find the proximity that, for me, still exists to be sufficient for use in the EFL classroom. There are many authours of EFL material who would use e.g. 'tuck' and 'tug' as a minimal pair. Cheers and greetings from Barcelona!

[@thelingspace]

+mightlife "Tuck" and "tug" still are a minimal pair! But phonetically, they're actually differentiated more by the length of the vowel than by any difference in the sound of the final consonant. Vowels in English get lengthened before they show up before an underlyingly voiced consonant like [g], and that's what we hear for "tuck" vs. "tug". There's an interesting question here about why we consider English to have a voiced vs. voiceless distinction for these, which would probably get too long for these comments, but we should probably write something up about it. ^_^

[@agnesvidal333]

My first language is English and the alveolar flap that you said sounded more like a d than a t. I think it's because I don't use it as an all allophone of my t.

[@thelingspace]

+Agnes Vidal The flap also is a voiced sound, whereas [t] is voiceless, and so it sounds closer to a [d] because of that, as well. But it can come from either! ^_^

[@leadpoisoning5898]

Going through those T examples in my head, I would say, as I speak with an RP English accent that they're all the same. Is this right? I definitely pronounce butter with the hard t, but am I right in saying that the t in star and tar are pronounced the same? If not I can't hear the difference.

[@thelingspace]

leadpoisoning This shouldn't be one of the places where there's variation between North American and RP English pronunciation. The difficulty may be more that both the aspirated and non-aspirated versions of the sound (so non-aspirated in star, aspirated in tar) both belong to the same phoneme, and they sound more alike than the flap you get in butter. Did you try putting your hand in front of your mouth and seeing if you can feel the puff of air for tar, and the lack of it for star? That puff is definitely a good sign of aspiration. ^_^

[@davidphilipsmusic]

Great videos, but I'm confused. You say that k and g are essentially the same sound, yet there is a huge difference, one is voiced and the other voiceless. One has the vocal folds vibrating and the other doesn't. Surely that makes them 2 very different sounding consonants and thus easy to tell apart?

[@alannarothell5185]

At 4:41 you say that /s/ only has one allophone in English, [s]. I don't quite understand this, as the /s/ in vision is pronounced [ʒ] and the /s/ in causation is pronounced [z]. Am I misunderstanding something?

[@thelingspace]

This is a good question! Here, you are confusing the IPA with the English spelling, is the thing. While both vision and causation are spelled with the letter "s", they're not the same phoneme. As you note, they're each pronounced differently. There's nothing about the environments in those words that's causing the /s/ to change to a different sound. So we wouldn't classify them as the same underlying phoneme. It just happens that English uses the same character to represent both sounds. English is overall pretty bad at sound to symbol (or symbol to sound) matching, though.

[@nvdawahyaify]

though voiced, i pronounce the c in scoop with aspiration, were as the g in goop is unaspirated.

[@seanleavey5347]

Is that an "L" doll from Death Note in the background? lol

[@thelingspace]

+Sean C. Leavey Yep! Nice catch. I think we've had that in the backdrop for a couple of other episodes, too. ^_^

[@hamzakeroum9808]

so .. allphone is the actual realization of a phoneme . Am i wrong ?

[@thelingspace]

+Hamza Keroum Yeah, this is a pretty good way to look at it. Allophones are the manifestations of the abstract phoneme when we say them out loud. ^_^

[@kingd04fails]

Thanks. Now I know, that behind stands "I

[@IslaDrummond]

I guess I've been saying Mochi wrong in Yo!Sushi :S I thought it was like Mocky

[@SimchaWaldman]

No need for hard allophone example, every person's voice in his language is one unique allophone which our brains ignore.

[@carlosemmanuel4778]

I, for one, welcome our acoustic overlords

[@stormshaman]

Is tone sandhi in Mandarin a related process to allophony?

[@thelingspace]

stormshaman Very good question! Because tones are phonemic in Mandarin (i.e. changing the tone and leaving the rest of the word the same changes the meaning), and because tone sandhi occurs in Mandarin as governed by particular phonological conditions. So like, the low-dipping tone turning to a low-level tone in front of rising, falling, or high tones definitely sounds like an allophonic change, right? 火 [huo], with the low-dipping tone, becomes just low when put before 车 [che], which has a high tone. There are different ways to characterize different kinds of sandhi, particularly as some of them change to tones that exist elsewhere in the language in the same position - so, like, low-dipping turning to rising in front of another low-dipping tone. Whether that should qualify as allophonic is more debatable; some phonology people view this as not pure allophony, but more like allomorphy, because you can't cleanly work back to what the original tone would have been. But definitely some sandhi processes are inarguably cases of allophony. Thanks for the question! ^_^

[@stormshaman]

The Ling Space So if English had a word "sgoop" that sounded the same as "scoop," that would be a case of allomorphy?

[@thelingspace]

stormshaman Well, to put it more precisely, let's say there's a word in English that always shows up as [skup], and another than sometimes shows up as [gup], but when you put an [s] before it, it turns to [skup]. Which isn't exactly the English case, but it's an equivalent problem. Then without looking at the context the word is showing up in, the words wound sound equivalent. In this case, there's an interaction between phonology and morphology that leads to an overlap in pronunciation, and without independent knowledge of the words, you can't tease apart which is which. Pure allophony really requires complementary distribution - each sound has its own defined environment. You should be able to formulate a rule that tells you when you'll get one or the toher. So you could make an argument for this (or for the tone sandhi case from your first question) to be allophony, or to be allomorphy (because it's basically something happening to specific morphemes rather than a global case). In some sense, this is saying which side you're looking at - once the change has happened, and either the low-dipping tone or the [g] is gone, you can't work back to what it was to begin with without independent knowledge of the morpheme and its properties - should it be [k] or [g]? Should it be regular rising or low-dipping? But if you start from the side with the [gup] or the low-dipping tone, it's clear what changes will occur. What term one wants to stick on that depends on where you're arguing from, more likely. Hope this makes sense! ^_^

[@Macieks300]

Is one allophone always connected to one phoneme or can there be one allophone (sound) that's the same in two phonemes?

[@Katethebush00]

thankyou mochi! haha

[@cerberaodollam]

Hungarian here. I hear the /t/ in "butter" as a [d]. Weird?

[@persuasiveeloquence6147]

Rice cake😂 Mochi in hindi means cobbler

[@MiMiBrokenbourgh]

I’m not cobbler!

[@fonya_thee3026]

I like mochi ^^

[@arlokarpelevitch3875]

cute lil ricecake

[@thelingspace]

🍡 🍡 🍡

[@allainnecruz411]

...is that L?

[@tabster6288]

I don't quite get why we don't ever hear the phonemes themselves even when there isn't any variation.

[@jacksonfakename685]

i now hate my parents for not raising me to know all the allephones

[@wiccanwanderer82]

Have you ever heard of a chicken coop? That word completely falsifies your example.

[@SumitKumar-tm1fb]

bad video.please upload when unvoiced and voiced sount at front center and end of the word.