 Good evening, are you all right comfortable, shall we start, ok lovely. So, this evening we are going into or we have already started got into another module called phonology, how speech sounds are organized. Do you remember I told you phonetics is the study of sounds in isolation, single sound, one sound at a time, but phonology is the study of sounds in combination, sounds in use, sounds together. Actually none of us you know exceptional situations apart, there may be exceptional situations when we just say ah, ooh, when we are too tired, when we are too sick or when we shout to call somebody we say hey, you know, but ordinarily we do not speak one sound at a time. We have several sounds coming together and when these several sounds come together, I told you the other day, they no longer remain, please pay attention, the ideal or the idealized sound that I described all of last weeks please write, that is an idealization. Phonetics describes an idealized sound generally, when you describe it in isolation, of course there can be phonetics of sounds in use, you can take up one particular sound, study it in as great detail as you like, but whatever I told you last week is an idealized description. When I say is a bilabial, plosive, voiceless it is true only of pa in isolation, it is a, but we never say pa, we say pa, we say pa, we say p, we say poo, there is some other sound and when there is some other sound, it may or may not be the same, sounds vary. I told you the other day that because of sociological reason, because of social reasons and because of phonological reasons, speech sounds have great variants, so much so that we do not produce the same sounds alike on two occasions, correct? We do not produce the same sounds alike on two occasions, then the question we will be dealing with today. If speech sounds have such a great variety, how do we recognize them? People speak differently on different occasions, we know when I speak in class it is one kind of tone, tempo, when I speak at home with my wife or children it is another kind of tone and tempo, when I speak with you guys outside on the road, it is another kind of tone or tempo, same thing is true for you, none of us speaks alike in all social situations. Similarly, phonological context also change, coming before e is produced with spread lips, it is pin, but coming before o is produced with rounded lips, we say put, we do not say put, do we? Can you say put with a spread lips, try? Can you say pin with rounded lips? You cannot. Similarly, sounds lose gain values, actually every little sound that is produced in speech on each occasion it is different. If you take a spectrogram of speech sounds, you will find that they differ on different occasions, then there is a theoretical question and this theoretical question can be important for you if you do speech engineering and that sort of thing. If each sound is different each time, then how do we recognize them as k or k or g as the same sound? Isn't there a contradiction? Yes or no? Isn't there, you know if they differ every time, then how do we recognize them that this is x or this is y or this is a or this is b? Actually it is a larger question, it is a question of philosophy pertaining to nature. Each of us differ, each of us change. Look at your photograph when you were 10 year old, is there any similarity? There are some similarities but there are lot of differences. In spite of these differences, are you with me? In spite of these differences when you look at your photograph receiving the prize in your school when you were in class one, do you have a photograph like that at home? Do you have a photograph like that? You still recognize yourself, how do you recognize yourself? Come on tell me now, give me some answer please. How do you recognize? You did not have moustache, you did not look as villainous then as you look now, then you were sweet innocent little kid. Everyone felt like loving you, today everyone is frightened of you, your dean, your director, your professor. What similarity is there? Come on tell me, there is some similarity and the similarity is that it is not that you have entirely changed. The basic or what we call relative geometry is still the same, your eyes are still at the same distance from your nose as they were, your chin still makes the same triangle as it did, your jaws are still the same shape. In spite of the fact that you lose hair when you are 60, 65 like me, when I was your age, I look at those photographs and they look like me and I am surprised who is this young man. Even then you recognize yourself, right? How do you do that? You do that because that is an important point and that is where what computer science uses in artificial intelligence, in expert systems, in the speech recognition. Variation is there, please make a note, make a mental note, variation is there but it is not complete variation. It is not that it had changed entirely, it is not that a lion has become dog and dog has become lion, it is not that a beatek has gone into you know, studying some other things, some elsewhere. There may be some change but a lot of features remain, number one, number two, patterns remain, patterns of use remain. So, the question how do we recognize the same word when they are so distorted, same sound when they vary so much, how do we recognize them? We recognize them because number one, all features do not change, you know, all features do not change. Power may become sometimes bar, temple may become temple but it is still vilevial, it is still plosive, two thirds of the features are still there, it is only that voicelessness has gone and voicing has come in. Similarly, you know, when x, some front sound becomes back sound, when something which was rounded becomes unrounded, maybe one feature had changed, two, three, four, five other features still remain as they were. It is not that everything had changed, more over, more over and this is what is significant again in human behavior, in the behavior of natural elements, you know, in actually non-living things you can do a lot of engineering with finite element methods because you know, their behavior is predictable. A cement under water in eight hours at a particular temperature will behave everywhere alike but we cannot say that about human beings. A human being under water for one hour will behave in one way, if it is there with friend, another way if it is there with mother, yet another way if it is there with somebody else, human beings are more dynamic, much more dynamic. Therefore, statistics may not be the best way of predicting their behavior. However, please give me all your attention. However, it is not that our behaviors do not have patterns, our behaviors also have predictable patterns, when you greet another B. Tech, when you greet another B. Tech from another hostel, when you greet another B. Tech from another hostel, another gender, when you greet a teacher who is looking at your project report, the point is you know, I am trying to make it light for you. The point is our behavior is predictable to a large extent though not entirely. We cannot say, I can say that a large number of students after this class will go to football ground or go to Goranath. But maybe I cannot say nobody will go to the library, I cannot say nobody will go to the room and nobody will sleep. In the case of speech sounds also, these two things remain. Number one, a large, to a large extent features survive. Some features change and patterns remain, some sound occurs at the beginning of the word, some sound occurs at the end of the word, some sound occurs in the middle of the word and we know how it will look like in the middle of the word, we know how it will look like at the beginning of the word, we know how it will look like at the end of the word and that is how we recognize these words. By and large, these are the answers, there may be some variations, some changes. Let us look at the examples. See for example you know, look at pot and top in English. When you say in pot both your lips part, but when you say top lips do not part, they are not, in that sense you know there is no release, they are not plosive, they are definitely bilavian, they are definitely voiceless, but not plosive. One feature has gone, two features still remain, yet we know the pattern that unreleased, you can write on the notebook, you can write in your head, unreleased plosive will occur only at the end of the word, only before silence. It cannot occur at the beginning of the word, it is so obvious, on the other hand released you know and under pressure you can say pot, in English they do that. This occurs only at the beginning of the word, when you have the same sound in the middle of the word, it is in its neutral form, spot, sport, spear, there is neither paw nor paw, it is neither there is extra breath pulse, neither there is extra puff of air nor it is the case that it is unreleased. This kind of sound can only occur in the middle of the word and at the end of the word again you see this symbol, can you see this symbol, this diacritic looks like seven, this indicates that paw is unreleased, the plosion has not taken place, you have just said top and the lips are closed, it is not released, but this H here indicates extra puff of air, we call it aspiration. This can occur, aspirated plosive can occur only before a stressed vowel in English, similarly in English and unreleased similarly in English and unreleased bilabial plosive can occur only at the end of the word. So, we know the pattern, we know the features and therefore, we know how to predict, how to recognize, by and large you can write rules about them and we will, let us see how we go. Look at some more example, there are variations, but all are all variations equally important, equally significant whether you pronounce with a spread lips as in pen or with rounded lips as in put or push, how does it matter for consonants, we saw that rounded and unrounded lips are important only for vowels, do you remember, yes or no please write, for consonants other things are important, voicing is important, place of articulation is important, place of manner of release is important, manner of obstruction is important, the shape of lips is not important for consonant. Similarly, all variations do not change meanings, some variations do, but all variations do not change meaning, whether you come to the classroom in three piece suit or you come to the classroom in shorts, that is a very trivial kind of variation, but a significant variation will be when you come to class with a loud speaker, you speak and I talk then the class does not happen, the class will happen if only one person speaks at a time. So, you know there are variations in behavior as of human being, so of his speech sounds, but all variations are please note, all variations are not equally significant, there can be two kinds of speech variations or variants, there can be two kinds of variants, one kind can be significant, it changes meaning, the other kind be insignificant does not matter, you can ignore it, insignificant, look at the examples I have given you on the screen, say Paul for example, you know under stress when you emphasize, when you stress, when you say I am not talking of the bottom, I am talking of the peak, then you are aspirating it, but when it comes in the middle of the world as you say, well the book has been well kept or when it comes at the end are you going to keep these books, so keep and there is silence, then per has three variants, one is under stress when you add an extra aspiration, extra pop of air, the second is neutral form, third is unreleased form, these are three variants of per, voiceless, bilateral, plosive, usually units of a class behave in one kind, behave in one manner, that is why you can make generalizations, you can say all idioms will behave in this manner, all x will behave in that manner, all y will behave in that, all members of the class called y will behave in this manner, that is why you can make predictions about molecules, about variety of elements in nature from water to mountain, from sea to mountain, you can make predictions about human beings as well. Similarly, you know what is true of, is true of all voiceless plosive, also has three variants, you can say after all we pay tax, what you are doing is under stress in English, you are adding an extra pop of air, but you can have neutral thing, there are lots of cats on the campus and you can have a very neutral thing, are you going to appear at sat, there is an examination called sat, there you do not release it, because it comes at the end before silence, so all of these things you know per, per have variants, these are predictable, but look at the behavior of these variants, all of these variants cannot replace one another, released per cannot come at the end, unreleased per cannot come at the beginning, are you with me, okay, released per cannot come at the end, this, this per cannot come at the end, it can only come at the beginning of the word, similarly unreleased, this is unreleased, unreleased per cannot come at the beginning of the word, it can only come at the end, okay, this is how we indicate the end of the word and this is how we indicate the beginning of the word, okay, so this can come only at the beginning of the word, this can come only at the end of the word, the neutral thing can come anywhere else, so you know these are in a certain sense quote unquote, in a certain sense these are insignificant variations, why do we call them insignificant, because they are a predictable space, it can come only here, that can come only there, then they are bound by their contexts, okay, finally some variants may be free like per, but you know they make, they do not change meaning, where you say, whether you say tax, or you say tax, it is still remains in English, the same thing, on the other hand there may be significant variations, you try, you have a word called pit, change term with any other consonant, change it, if you change bring no meaning changes, if you bring l, meaning changes, you know if you bring k, meaning changes, if you bring p, meaning changes, if you bring ch, meaning changes, okay, so those variations are important, meaning will change, after all we communicate with meaning, for meaning, okay, so you have to pay attention and not only at the end of the word, middle of the word, change the vowel, we have pen, change the vowel a to a, what is the word now, pain, it is another meaning, change the vowel again, pen, it has yet another meaning, what is the meaning of the word, pen, where you, you know the, some kind of a tool, some kind of a utensil, you use in the kitchen, you cook, or it can be a verb, you pan, you know, satellite antenna, pan, the universe, you can say that, or you change another vowel again, it becomes pin, you change another vowel again, it becomes pun, so these changes are significant, okay, or you know change the last, or change the first consonant, so far we have changed the last consonant, we have changed the vowel in the middle, now change the first consonant, instead of pan, right, bam, is it the same word, yes or no, can, is it the same word, no, man, is it the same word, no, tan, is it the same word, no, ran, is it the same word, no, meaning changes, so some variations, the point is some variations are significant, some variations are insignificant, they are significant because significant variations are meaning changing. On the other hand, insignificant variations are, give me the word please, if this is meaning changing, this is come on make an effort, sorry not altering, yes meaning retaining, they retaining meaning, meaning unchanging, meaning not changing, feature keeping, you know you are right, we will use meaning retaining, minor changes, does not matter, yesterday he came in tie, today he is in t-shirt, does not matter, it is still the same person, it is still my friend, he has not seen. So, you know, significant variants are those which change meaning, insignificant variants are those which do not change meaning, what is another important thing here is, significant variations change meaning, in significant variations do not change meaning, let us make a table, significant variations have a technical name, these variants are called, please write, these variants are called phonemes, individual sounds, phonies sound, eam is discreet, discreet sounds, phonemes and in significant variants are called allophones, allo is like, phones like sounds, similar sounds matching, so you see a lot of scientific terminology in Europe, comes from Greek and Latin, just as we draw from Sanskrit, so you know that is why, in other words it says, these are discreet sounds and these are variants of the same sound, do you understand, yes or no please, are we together, am I speaking too rapidly or is it ok, shall we go on, the basic point is that all variants are not significant, only some variants are significant, when are they significant, when they change meaning, when they do not change meaning, they may be bilabial or rounded lips or etcetera, etcetera or released or unreleased, it does not matter, because they do not change meaning, so mind recognizes these patterns in speech, what are the differences between these two, phonemes that is significant variants are, they occur anywhere, wherever paa occurs, baa can also occur, taa can occur, gaa can occur, chaa can occur, saa can occur, laa can occur, ok, where one can occur, another can also occur, but in significant variant of a sound is context bound, paa can occur only in the beginning of the word, unreleased paa can occur at the end of the word, other things can occur only in the middle, ok, so there are differences, for phonemes we can say they can occur freely, they are in free distribution, beginning of the word, middle of the word, end of the word, ok, substitution changes meaning, we said that and third we said that their features are different, between paa and baa, voicing is important, between paa and taa, alveolar rich or baleval is in place of articulation is important, so significant variants are those, where can you can you say, can you listen to me, significant variants are those, number one, which change meaning, number two, which occur freely, number three, which have significant differences in features, on the other hand, insignificant variants are those, which do not change meaning, which do not occur freely and where there are minor differences of features, can we repeat, right, phonemes or significant variants are those, number one, which change meaning, number two, which occur freely, number three, which have significant differences in features, whereas, alophones are those variants, which do not occur freely, which do not change meaning, which do not differ significantly in features, very simple, you see, all you have to remember then is, to answer the question, how do we recognize, we will say we recognize phonemes as phonemes and we recognize alophones as, alophones in significant variants, alophones are in complementary distribution, which means one can occur at home, another can occur abroad, where one occurs, the other does not, that is complement, whereas, in phonemes, there is no such restriction, where one occurs, another can also occur, let us do some exercise, right. In English has three variants, you know, first is aspirated, extra puff of air, second is neutral, third is unreleased, please ignore this, you know, I made a mistake, we could use, you know, I usually write seven and then use a superscript to change it, the superscript can be found here, you can also use it in your term paper, you can also use it in your term paper, please, right. Similarly, you know, tau has as many variants, kau has as many variants, look at in English, do you remember, we said English has consonants like r and l, l is a glide, you know. Now, l has two variants in English, alophonic variants, one is clear, which comes before vowels, you say look, you say luck, but there is another l, which comes after vowels, such as or before back sounds, say look at compare your l before, in words like milk and in limp, look at these two words, limp and c, see here, pay attention, produce these two words and pay attention to this sound, please say first limp, now say milk, milk, do they come from the same point of tongue, say it again limp, limp, milk, milk, do they come from the same point of tongue, yes or no, once again limp, limp, milk, milk, is it the same point, no it is not, because of kau, this law goes backwards, because of e, law goes forward, the following sound, so in English we say, English has two kinds of l, phoneme is written within slanted bars and alophones are written within, alophones are written within square brackets, so phoneme curl l has two alophones, two variants, what are they, one is l, it comes at the beginning of the word, it comes before front vowels etcetera, you have luck, it also comes, you know it comes before vowel, luck, limp, like, late, letter, let, list, all of these are clear, but when you have luck coming before silence or before back sounds, look at this, this variant as in words like cool, cool, milk, silk, bulk, hulk, tool, you know, either before silence or before back sounds, this is back sound, or this is silence, after this there is no word, so either before silence or before back sounds, this moves backwards on the tongue, does not remain so clear, so phoneticians call it dark l, not dark l, dark l, so English has two kinds of l, if you go to Malayalam, Malayalam has five different kinds of l, you tell l, l, l, l, l, okay, I cannot have a pronounce it, okay, we call it l, l, l, that sort of thing, okay, Malayalam has five different kinds of, no, nasals, Tamil has five different kinds of nasals, these are variants of, so maybe they are in phonemic distribution in some languages, but these are also variants, so the point we are making now is the following, how many phonemes or earphones does a sound have, does a language have, is a language specific question, okay, because you know it changes meaning, in some languages meaning may change, in some languages meaning may not, for example, look at English, in English pa and fa are earphones, they do not change meaning, but in Hindi, can you replace pa with fa, pal is moment, okay, right, but pal is fruit, it is not like English, on the other hand or in Maitreya or in many Indian languages, in my mother tongue, I speak Maitreya at home, in my mother tongue, it does not matter whether you say slok or you say shlok, it does not matter whether you say sris or you say sris, it does not matter whether you say mahesh or mahesh, actually my villagers would say why are you doing shasha like a snake, why do not you speak like normal gentleman, okay, so these things are language specific, but in English it is important, in English whether you say sip or you say ship, very important, do you take a sip of tea or do you take a sip of tea, in English it is important, so how many phonemes or allophones we have is a language specific question, so second thing we learn about phonology, you know, all these big bridge I built for you to say only one thing, that phonology is please write, phonology is the study of language, speech sounds in use, in context, number one, number two, phonology quite often is language specific, though there are generalizations, I will come to generalizations in a minute, sorry not a minute or tomorrow, but you know there are generalizations even in phonology, remember phonology uses, phonology studies sounds in actual use, okay, and in actual use there may be variations, but all variations are not significant, some variations are significant, they change meaning, some variations are not significant, but what is significant or what is not significant is a language specific question, you cannot say that sir and sir are phonemes or allophones in Telugu unless you have studied the behavior of these sounds in this language, you cannot say whether sir or sir are phonemes in English unless you have studied it there, in many of our Indian languages, we do not have as many variants of sir, we have either one or two, we have sir and sir, but English has three, French has two or three, Urdu has three, okay, and it is important, you know, they have z, zh and in my mother tongue we have only one, we do not have, you know, we do not say, you know, once again people will tell you why are you behaving like uncivilized people, okay, these things are language specific, but please note the second thing, principles are not language specific, the principle that you apply to reach these conclusions, what are the principles you apply, number one, does it change meaning, where does it occur, what features does it retain or lose, please write, what are the principles where you decide, by which you decide whether it is phoneme or allophones, can you tell me, number one, does it change meaning, number two, where does it occur, number three, how many features does it retain or lose, okay, these principles are universal, let us do some exercise, let us see, well in all languages there are consonental phonemes, there are vowel phonemes, English has all together, 24 consonental phonemes, 20 by English I mean, standard British English, American English has fewer, London English has fewer, but standard British English has 24, how many do we have, that can be a good term paper for you, that can be, you know, you can study vowel phonemes in Telugu, consonant phonemes in Telugu, or only plosives in Telugu, or only fricatives in Telugu, and you know, or in monthly, or in the, in the, any other language you like, let us do some exercise, look at the variants of in English, you know, in words like lip, lid, live, let, belt, clip, flick, it is a clear, but when you have words like please pronounce it, and feel it on your tongue, you know, these subjects are practical subjects, you must feel them, say milk, it goes back on your tongue, okay, when you say bulk, or when you say sulk, or when you say cool, or when you say fool, or before silence, okay, then it is another kind of thing, so you have similar variants, not necessarily so in other languages as well, look at this variation in my mother tongue, okay, is it phonemic or allophonic, look at this variation, there is a vowel a, and it has a variant called a, okay, it has a nasalized variant, an unnasalized variant, oral variant, is it significant or insignificant? Significant, is it significant? Yes or no? Yes, yes, why? Meaning changing, because it changes meaning, everything else is the same, cart means cut, and cart means thorn, okay, in this language, you know, you, you know, that is the beauty of principles, you do not have to know the language, you apply the principles and you get the result, okay, bus means home, but bus means bamboo, okay, cart means blade, but cart means tremble, so obviously in this language, we can say, these vowels are, are they in allophonic distribution or in phonemic distribution? They are in phonemic distribution, they are phonemes, they stand for individual status, similarly look at a and a in mathili, okay, you have dhar, which is hold, but a long a, dhar, okay, pronounce it, how is it, dhar, you speak in mathili, you know, you can be a citizen of Nepal or India, you have a larger choice now, you know, as many people speak mathili in Nepal, as the number of people in India, okay, and this is the, you know, these distinctions are important there, okay, you can say car, which is do, but car, as you eat a morsel, or chur, okay, or chur, paddy field, you know, sun, which is as, or sun, which is, is it phonemic or allophonic? It is phonemic, obviously, you know, it is phonemic, but look at this now, tell me, is it phonemic, there are two kinds of r, is it phonemic or allophonic? Now comes some problem, okay, one is rug, the other is gir, the one is ras, the other is ser, okay, study the pattern, please, there are no words with minimal pairs, you know, a pair of, minimal pair of word is, where everything is changed except that particular sound, but their distribution, one occurs at the beginning of the word, and the other occurs at the end of the word, these are the things we have to look at, okay, the distribution, the meaning change, if we could have had a word, you know, where it made a minimal pair, like you know, pin and bin, make a minimal pair, only one feature differs, but meaning changes, you know, I have not been able to give you that kind of thing here, but even from whatever little we have, we find that these are in complementary distribution, where one occurs, the other does not occur, okay, they are not in free distribution, they do not occur anywhere you like, they occur in restricted context, and these are the things we have to look at, you can also do a paper with sounds in your mother tongue, look at this thing, now here we find that one rug, you know, the tap rug occurs even at the end of the word, but that retroflex, you know, written with capital R, occurs only in the middle of the word and only before, only before a vowel, you know, what I am trying to do is, trying to give you a window on phonology, that these are the things we look at, we look at features and we look at context, please write, in phonology, we look at only two things, what are those two things, context and feature, we look at context and we look at features, which features change or remain in which context, are they predictable, you write rules, your computer generates those words, etcetera, etcetera, and you know, you are doing phonology, I will stop, what I have tried to tell you is, that we are able to recognize variants, because all variants are not significant and all variants have patterns, some variants may be meaning changing, yet they have certain patterns, some variants are not meaning changing, they are meaning retaining, yet they have patterns, what we look at are the two things, number one, changes in features and number two, context where these feature changes occur, if we look at these two things, we can predict, we can write rules about them, we will look at some of these features in the next class, ok. Thank you, thanks, have a good evening, please.