Phonetics: How sounds are produced acoustically (physical properties)

Phonology: How the sounds are represented and stored in the brain (abstract representations)

Underlying Representation: /slashes/ - abstract representation in phonemes

Phonological Representation: [brackets] - exact pronunciation, addressing allophones

Aspiration

Aspiration: Delay of voicing after voiceless stops occurring before stressed vowels (except [s]). (e.g. pʰ, tʰ, kʰ in pill, tall, cool)

• No aspiration after voiceless stops in other contexts (e.g. spill, happy, nap)

Complementary Distribution: Variants that cannot appear in the same phonetic context (e.g. p, pʰ, p̚ )

• Predictable, not independent from each other
• Allophones of the main phoneme (e.g. /p/)

Phonemes

Phonemes: Distinguish word meaning, represented differently in the brain

• Contrastive: Changes the meaning of a word (e.g. pet vs bet)

Allophones: Variants of phonemes, predictable, occur in specific contexts

• Not represented differently in the brain
• (e.g. long vowels [i:] vs [i], nasalization [ ĩ ] vs [ i ])
• No change in meaning

Minimal Pairs: Words that differ only in one segment (e.g. pet vs bet)

• Best evidence to distinguish between phonemes

Different languages have different phonemes & allophones!

• e.g. Hindi: [pal] “nurture” vs [pʰal] ”knife blade”

Phonological Analysis

Phonological Analysis: Determine the phonemic status of segments in a language (separate phonemes or allophones of the same phoneme)

Rule Ordering: Different orders of applying two phonetic rules result in different pronunciations