Some words are possible and some are not, even those that use sounds that we have! Why?

Phonotactics

Such a word (ndela) violates the phonotactic constraints of english.

Phonotactic constraints: language-specific set of rules governing what combinations of sounds are licit.

Language-specific: “ndela” sounds right to Swahili speakers; “skrs” is right in Czech.

Examples

Positional restrictions:

• voiced velar nasal stop does not occur at the beginning of syllables;
• “h” does not happen at the end of syllables.
• In Hawaiian, consonants don’t happen at the end of syllables.

Sounds that simply aren’t part of the inventory.

• In German, “th” sounds aren’t part of the vocabulary.

Restrictions cannot appear adjacently.

• In English, stops cannot appear together at start of a syllable: “Ktak” is invalid.
• In Georgian, mix of stops at edges of syllables is allowed.

Presence

If a word that violates phonotactics it might be “repaired” to adhere to constraints.

• /qelb/ to /kelb/
• /ptak/ to /petak/
• Japanese: /tekst/ to /tekisuto/

Syllables

• Onset: Anything before the Nucleus
• Nucleus: most important part. (vowel)
• Coda: Anything after the nucleus
• Rhyme: the nucleus and coda together, as a unit; this “makes sense”.

There are usually no clear boundaries between syllables on a spectrogram: they are a mental construct. They are still part of phonotactics, since native speakers have a robust intuition about them.

Phonology & Phonetics

Phonology: Mental reality of sounds; the system of the sounds of a language. Uses categorical variables.

Phonetics: The physical reality of sounds, using continuous variables like time and fundamental frequency.

• Phoneme: unit of analysis in phonology
• Phone: Individual sound.

Phonemes