[Phonology] How to Solve a Phonology Problem

Learn how to solve a phonology problem using Korean s and sh sounds by analyzing data, environments, allophones, and phonological rules.

Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.

Generated from the transcript and can be wrong — check the timestamp.

Key Takeaways

Minimal pairs are essential but not always available; environment charts help analyze sound distribution.
Allophones occur in complementary environments and must be phonetically similar.
The phoneme is the more general sound; allophones are contextually conditioned variants.
Phonological rules describe how phonemes are realized as allophones in specific environments.
Feature notation can generalize phonological rules but is not always necessary.

What the video covers

The video demonstrates solving a phonology problem starting from a data set.
Focuses on distinguishing Korean sibilants: s and sh.
Explains the search for minimal pairs and the absence of minimal pairs for s and sh.
Introduces environment charts to analyze the contexts in which s and sh occur.
Determines that s and sh are allophones based on complementary distribution.
Identifies that sh occurs before the vowel E, while s occurs elsewhere.
Discusses the importance of similarity between sounds to be considered allophones.
Explains the concept of the phoneme as the more general sound (s) and allophone as the conditioned variant (sh).
Formulates a phonological rule: s becomes sh before E.
Mentions the possibility of using feature notation for more generalization.

What is the main phonological problem addressed in the video?

The video addresses how to analyze the Korean sibilants s and sh to determine if they are allophones or separate phonemes by examining their distribution and environments.

How does the video determine whether s and sh are allophones?

By checking for minimal pairs and then creating environment charts, the video shows that s and sh occur in complementary environments, with sh appearing before E and s elsewhere, indicating they are allophones.

Why is the phoneme considered to be s rather than sh?

The phoneme is the more general sound that occurs in the most environments, which is s. The allophone sh appears only in the specific environment before the vowel E, making s the underlying phoneme.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

Speaker A

In this video, I'm going to do a complete phonology problem, starting from a data set and then searching for allophones to phonemes, searching for the environments where the allophones may occur if there are any, and then making a formal rule for that phonological process.

Speaker A

There's a pretty systematic way to do things, so we're going to take a look at Korean S and sh, so in other words, we can call this the Korean sibilant problem.

Speaker A

And here is the data. Now, this might not be 100% accurate for Korean native speakers, there may be some slight alterations here, this is to simplify the data set to make it easier to work with.

Speaker A

And this is pretty standard practice in phonology, because in reality, data sets can be very messy.

Speaker A

And if we had these really messy data sets, there would be no way to start and learn.

Speaker A

So.

Speaker A

The first thing we do when we compare two sounds.

Speaker A

And usually we're told which sounds we're looking at when we have these data sets.

Speaker A

And we're looking at s and sh.

Speaker A

We're looking for minimal pairs with these sounds.

Speaker A

So, we can look and we can say, are there any minimal pairs with s and sh?

Speaker A

I see a minimal pair for n and m, but we're not working with that.

Speaker A

So, that's not going to help us too much.

Speaker A

In fact, I'm sure you've taken a look right now.

Speaker A

And you'll notice that there are no minimal pairs for s and sh.

Speaker A

So, when there's no minimal pairs, we have to resort to a more monotonous task.

Speaker A

And that is writing out environment charts.

Speaker A

So, an environment chart essentially pinpoints the sound.

Speaker A

And writes down one sound to the left of it and one sound to the right of it in all circumstances.

Speaker A

So, for instance, let's do s first.

Speaker A

The alveolar fricative.

Speaker A

And we'll go word by word.

Speaker A

So, in the first word, we see son.

Speaker A

So, the S O N.

Speaker A

And in this environment, it starts at the beginning of a word.

Speaker A

So, we can do the pound symbol on the left for the word boundary.

Speaker A

And then immediately after it is the O.

Speaker A

So, this would be one environment for S.

Speaker A

In the word shilsu, we see an L before the S.

Speaker A

And then an U afterwards.

Speaker A

In Isa, we see an E before it.

Speaker A

And an A after.

Speaker A

And we'll just continue going through this word by word.

Speaker A

So, shinho, there's none.

Speaker A

Shihap is none.

Speaker A

Shibsam, we have the P and an A after.

Speaker A

In som, we have S at the beginning of the word.

Speaker A

And an O after, but we already have that environment listed once.

Speaker A

So, if we want, we can just put another check by it to say, okay, this repeats again.

Speaker A

In soso, we see the same thing.

Speaker A

In sal, it's at the beginning of the word.

Speaker A

But there's an A after it.

Speaker A

In mashida, there's nothing.

Speaker A

In sek, the beginning of the word and an E is after.

Speaker A

And then an oship, there's nothing.

Speaker A

So, now we have all the environments for s.

Speaker A

Let's work on sh.

Speaker A

So, shilsu is at the beginning of the word.

Speaker A

And there's an E after.

Speaker A

In shinho, shihap, and shibsam, it's all the same story.

Speaker A

So, we see that three more times.

Speaker A

In mashida, I see an A before and an E after.

Speaker A

And then an oship, I see an O before and an E after.

Speaker A

So, what are the environments?

Speaker A

In fact, the first thing we have to ask is, are these allophones?

Speaker A

And in order to determine if they're allophones.

Speaker A

We have to make sure that there's no similar environments between the two sounds.

Speaker A

So, for instance, if I say, okay.

Speaker A

Maybe this is something to do with being word initial.

Speaker A

It can't be because there's word initial environments for both sounds.

Speaker A

In fact, it can't be between word initial and vowel.

Speaker A

Because again, we have a word initial followed by a vowel in both circumstances.

Speaker A

So, we need a tighter environment.

Speaker A

So, the, I think the very clear environment.

Speaker A

If we take a look at sh specifically.

Speaker A

Is that it occurs before E.

Speaker A

And if we take a look at the alveolar fricative.

Speaker A

There is no circumstance where it occurs before the sound E.

Speaker A

So, we can say that there's no overlapping environments.

Speaker A

Sh would be before E.

Speaker A

And s would be everywhere else.

Speaker A

Okay, so there's kind of one important thing that I should discuss.

Speaker A

Before we really drill down with the phonemes and allophones for this.

Speaker A

And that is in order for allophones to be connected to the same phoneme.

Speaker A

The sounds should be relatively similar.

Speaker A

So, for instance, if I was comparing something like sh and k.

Speaker A

These are unlikely to be allophones, even if there aren't any overlapping environments.

Speaker A

Simply because the properties of the sounds are so different.

Speaker A

Now, with s and sh.

Speaker A

What's really the difference between these?

Speaker A

Well, it's just anterior.

Speaker A

It's just the anterior features.

Speaker A

S is forward, sh is more backwards.

Speaker A

So, we have our allophones at this point.

Speaker A

We know one is sh and one is s.

Speaker A

And what's the environment?

Speaker A

Well, I said that sh is just before the sound E.

Speaker A

In fact, we saw that by listing all the environments.

Speaker A

And s is more general.

Speaker A

It is everywhere else.

Speaker A

So, which is the phoneme?

Speaker A

Well, the phoneme is the more general sound.

Speaker A

It's the sound that occurs in the most places.

Speaker A

And that would be s.

Speaker A

Now, you might be saying, why?

Speaker A

Well, we're about to form a rule for this.

Speaker A

And I have a question, would you rather make a rule that takes the alveolar to an alveopalatal sound?

Speaker A

Or would you rather take an alveopalatal sound?

Speaker A

So, the sh to a s.

Speaker A

Now, when you just say, oh.

Speaker A

One of these.

Speaker A

It doesn't really matter.

Speaker A

But when we consider the fact that we have to write a rule for the environment.

Speaker A

Which environment is easy to capture in a rule?

Speaker A

Before E.

Speaker A

Or everywhere else.

Speaker A

It's pretty easy to write an environment for before E.

Speaker A

But it's not so easy to write an environment for everywhere else.

Speaker A

So, that's why we take the elsewhere condition as the main phoneme.

Speaker A

And then these allophones are rules taking from phoneme to the allophones.

Speaker A

Okay, so the rule.

Speaker A

The rule will state that the phoneme S will be realized as the alveopalatal sh.

Speaker A

When before the sound E.

Speaker A

And you might be thinking, hold on a second.

Speaker A

Why aren't we writing this with features?

Speaker A

And the reason we don't need to write this one with features.

Speaker A

Is because these are very specific sounds.

Speaker A

We're not necessarily targeting a natural class of sounds.

Speaker A

It's not s and some other sound changing features together.

Speaker A

It's this one specific sound changing into this other specific sound before this very specific vowel.

Speaker A

So, because these are very specific changes.

Speaker A

We don't need to generalize to features.

Speaker A

However, as an exercise on your own, you could write the features.

Speaker A

So, for instance, if I want to be more general with features here.

Speaker A

I could say that S essentially becomes minus anterior.

Speaker A

Because that's what's happening.

Speaker A

The s on the alveolar ridge is moving backwards to the alveopalatal region.

Speaker A

And becoming sh.

Speaker A

And maybe this isn't just E that it's in front of.

Speaker A

But maybe all high front vowels.

Speaker A

So, if I want to target all high front vowels.

Speaker A

Then I could say something, this is like plus high.

Speaker A

Minus low, minus back.

Speaker A

Plus front.

Speaker A

And of course, we should definitely specify that this is going to be plus syllabic.

Speaker A

So, if we wanted to target E.

Speaker A

Then we could write these features.

Speaker A

This may include something like U.

Speaker A

Korean doesn't have U.

Speaker A

It might target E.

Speaker A

Which, not sure Korean has E.

Speaker A

But if it did, then we would expect these patterns.

Speaker A

So, essentially, the more we generalize like this, the bigger predictions we make.

Speaker A

So, that is a full phonology problem from the data set to listing environments, to finding allophones, to producing a rule.

Speaker A

Hopefully, this helped a little bit.

Speaker A

And if you have any questions, please leave them in the comments below.

Speaker A

And I will do my best to answer them.

Topics:phonologyphonological rulesallophonesphonemesKorean sibilantsminimal pairsenvironment chartcomplementary distributionalveolar fricativealveopalatal fricative

Get More with the SozAI App

Transcribe recordings, audio files, and YouTube videos — with AI summaries, speaker detection, and unlimited transcriptions.

App Store Google Play

Or transcribe another YouTube video here →

Free tools: TXT to SRT · SRT Validator · Merge SRT · Subtitle to Text · All tools