Teaching some aspects of the phonological processes that are possible in English. It is prepared for 300 level class for the English Department, UG

1. ENGL 315:
PHONOLOGICAL
PROCESSES
Prof. I. O. Daniel

2. WHAT IS PHONOLOGY?
➤ Phonology has to do with the regulations that govern the
occurrence of sounds in particular environments
➤ Phonology describes the way sounds are produced in real
terms
➤ It describes elements of the behavioural patterning of sounds
beyond their phonetic description
➤ It tries to account for the way sounds are produced in relation
to their places and manner of occurrence in particular
languages
➤ It attempts to explain what happens to sounds in particular
situations in which they are produced

3. WHAT DIFFERENTIATES IT FROM WHAT WE HAVE LEARNT
BEFORE IN THE SEGMENTAL PHONETICS
➤ Phonology goes beyond sound description
➤ It goes beyond the way sounds are produced
➤ It accounts for the ways sounds behave
➤ It tells us about what happens to sounds in relation to other
sounds
➤ Phonetics is only concerned about that particular sound and its
properties of production
➤ But phonology is about sound realisation

4. LET US ILLUSTRATE OUR POINT HERE
➤ Take the sound /k/ for example
➤ phonetics will provide answer to the following questions:
➤ What articulators are involved in its production?
➤ What is the manner of the release of the airstream that
produced it?
➤ What is the state of the glottis in its production?
➤ All such questions can easily be answered by you, I’m sure…
➤ [Students provide the answers]

5. ➤ What will phonology then do to this same sound?
➤ It will tell you that if it is followed by a nasal, it will take on the colour
of nasality as we have in /𝛉ɪk.ŋ/
➤ It becomes labialised or rather takes on a second feature of
[+round] as we have in /kᵂwɪk.li/, /kwɔ.lɪ.ti/
➤ However, it is aspirated in the initial position as we have in /kʰʌp/
➤ What this means in essence is that the same sound can behave
differently, depending on the actual environment of its realisation
➤ Now contrast the production and realisation of the sounds and you
would have seen the difference between phonetics and phonology

6. WHAT ARE PHONOLOGICAL
PROCESSES?➤ Phonological processes are thus the operations that affect sounds
when they are used
➤ The way environments affect the sounds that we produce
➤ The sort of environment is usually the sounds around the sound
we want to produce and the way our vocal organs now adjust to
the sounds to produce the physical ones realised
➤ The many effects are due to the way the sounds are realised due
to how their neighbours affect them
➤ In this case, we can say that sounds that we produce in words are
usually affected by peer pressure while the sounds we produce in
isolation may be able to stand and declare their own individuality

7. SOME PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSES IN
OPERATION➤ These shall be grouped into major moulds for ease of
understanding
➤ Allophonic variations
➤ Morphophonemic alternations

8. ALLOPHONIC VARIATIONS
➤ Phones: These are the basic sound segments in the natural
language
➤ Phoneme: These are sounds that have been established as
meaningful units.
➤ How to determine phonemes
➤ The minimal pair test: When sound segments can replace
other sounds within the same environment, they are said
to be different phonemes. As such, meaningful segments
are seen as different phonemes.
➤ For example, the frame [__in] can produce:

9. ➤ pin
➤ bin
➤ sin
➤ tin
➤ din
➤ kin
➤ shin
➤ thin
➤ fin
➤ gin
➤ chin

10. ➤ in this way we are able to establish that all the sounds in the
initial positions are different phonemes. They all have
phonemic significance in that they change the meaning of the
words once they are inserted in the frame [__in]

11. ALLOPHONIC VARIATIONS CONT’D
➤ Allophones: This involves a situation where a phone has different
manifestations of the same phoneme in different environments.
➤ Unlike in the case of minimal pairs that have these occurrences
indicating different phonemes and thus able to replace one
another, allophonic variations have to do with the same phoneme
changing its form due to environmental factors such as the
sounds around it or the position it is occurring within the syllable.
➤ It is usually mutually exclusive. What this means is that where one
allophonic variant can occur, the other cannot occur there. This
shows that it is the same phoneme but variously realised. The
example of /k/ above.

12. EXAMPLES OF ALLOPHONIC
VARIATION OF THE PHONEME /L/➤ These exemplify the possible occurrences of the phoneme /l/ in
different environments
➤ life - basic
➤ million - palatalised in it occurs inter-vocalically between two vowel /i/
➤ milk, fill - velarisation before velars and takes on the colouration of dark
l in the final position in words
➤ play, slow - devoiced when it occurs after voiceless sound
➤ middle, little - becomes syllabic when it follows homorganic sounds (i.e.
sounds produced in the same place of articulation, alveolar)
➤ There are diacritics used to symbolise these different phonological
operations

13. PHONOLOGICAL OPERATIONS
➤ Nasalisation - when there is the nasal colouration due to the nasal
sound following or anticipated as we have in the vowels in [man],
[pant]
➤ Labialisation - when there is lip rounding or the involvement of the lips
in addition to the primary articulators involved in the production of the
sound, usually due to the immediately succeeding sound to the
phoneme e.g. quack, queen
➤ Velarisation - when a sound produced in another point in the vocal
tract takes on the secondary articulatory form of the velar sound due to
the nearness or anticipation of the velar sound following. E.g. the
velarised /l/ before the velar stops as we have in /milk/
➤ Devoicing - a normally voiced sound loses its [+voiced] status due to
its following a voiceless consonant. E.g. [play, slippers, trial, pure, etc]

14. PHONOLOGICAL OPERATIONS CONT’D
➤ Assimilation — a consonant starts sounding like another within the word. The can
become assimilated as in the word: handbag, hiccough. The sound /d/ has become lost in
the first instance while the last sound in the second word has become a bilabial sound /p/.
➤ The opposite of assimilation is dissimilation. Find out how this process operates
➤ Assibilation — it has to do with a sound change, with a sound becoming a sibilant. For
example, the second /t/ becoming /∫/ in attention /ǝten∫n/
➤ Reduplication — when sounds, syllables, or even words are repeated. Sometimes, it may
actually be performing communicative function such as intensification. Examples in
English include: hanky-panky, zig-zag, walkie-talkie, etc. In some African English, you
have now-now, so-so, etc.
➤ Weak syllable deletion — the syllable with a weak vowel, especially, the schwa /ǝ/ sound,
may get deleted. This is common with the syllable and in the middle of two stressed
syllables as we have in bread n butter. The syllable /ǝ/ has been totally replaced by the
nasal /n/.
➤

15. MORPHOPHONEMIC ALTERNATIONS
➤ This occurs when morphological operations are affected by the
phonology of the language
➤ Morphological operations are subject to phonological
conditionings
➤ Example:
➤ English plural morpheme /z/ base form realised as
➤ /s/ when it occurs after voiceless sounds like in shapes, looks,
➤ /z/ after voiced sounds as in boys, girls,
➤ /iz/ after alveolar and palate-alveolar fricatives and palato-aveolar
affricates as in buses, kisses, bushes, rouges, churches, judges,

16. MORPHOPHONEMIC ALTERNATIONS
CONT’D➤ The past tense morpheme /d/ base form realised as
➤ /t/ after voiceless sounds as in slapped, pushed, liked, danced
➤ /d/ after voiced sounds as in crowned, called, loved, scattered
➤ /id/ when it occurs after the sounds /t/ and /d/ as in shouted, sounded,
branded, slighted, painted,
➤ Other alternations include the genitive or possessive formations. wife’s and
wives’ differentiated by the final sound to indicate the form of the genitive
case
➤ The determiner ‘a’ affected by the initial sound in the word it precedes. If a
consonant, it is realised as /ei/ but if a vowel, it is realised as /æn/ or its
weak form
➤ The third person singular realisation follows the order of the plural
morpheme realisation in English. E.g. likes, loves, kisses, pushes, accepts,

17. EXCEPTIONS
➤ Zero morpheme realisations of the plural and past tense morpheme
or the internal structure modifications of the morphemes may not
necessarily be as a result of phonological conditioning but probably
due to etymological and diachronic reasons
➤ Plural:
➤ Internal modification: oxen, children,
➤ Zero morpheme realisation: salmon, fish
➤ Past tense:
➤ Zero morpheme realisation: cut, hit, burst
➤ Internal structure modification: ate, gave, came
➤ Total change: went

18. ALLOPHONIC VARIATIONS
EXEMPLIFIED➤ /t/ [tap, stop, try, late, little]
➤ /p/ [pat, pure,apt, stop]
➤ /a/ [apt, tan]
➤ /i/ [flit, fin]