 How do we produce sounds? What is the mechanism involved in that? And then what is the role of air flow, extra air voicing that is vibration in the vocal chord and things like that, right? That was the idea, we can, that was the idea of that discussion and sound. So now we will begin with words, go ahead. What might be the reason that some languages have adopted more sounds as part of their languages while others have not? Is there a, is justified by some reason? Why do languages differ in the number of sounds? It's, say it again, why do, it's question is why do languages differ in number of sounds? Why do some languages have more sounds, some have less sounds, some have certain specific sounds and others don't have? You were saying something? It has the same number of sounds. No, not true, approximately same. For example, you will not find a language with 20 and the other with 50, see that. So they will have approximately similar numbers like 42, 46 or 48. No language will have 20 or 25 and then others will have 50 or 70, okay? They do not have same number, at the same time the differences are not too wide. Right, sounds. They can't remember the name of the language but they have unique sounds like they also have that part of their language. Right, right, right, right. They are called clicks, right, right, right. So what might be the reason that? See, first of all, there aren't 100, okay. Second, some of those are called, some of those things are suprasegmental features, okay. For example, in our languages we too have something called nasalization. It's part of many, many languages but to give you one example from our languages, we have nasalization, which is different from nasals, okay. For example, we have a sound called ma, right, like mama, ma. But then we have something else, which is called nasalization. Now, what's nasalization? It's something like, let's say when we say a word, aak, aak, aak is the word for I, it's a Hindi word for I. Now the first sound of this word is aak. It's not aak, what is it? Aak. The first vowel is nasalized, right. That moon and the dot thing is the marker in writing system for nasalization. Now, you may have noticed, I don't have it on my schedule to talk about written system but you may have noticed in some words you just see a dot and in some you see moon and the dot. There is a difference between the two. I hope we get some time to talk about that. However, we need to get to principles in more details. Nonetheless, they represent two different things. Moon and the dot is representing nasalization, which is a feature on a particular sound. The dot is simply representing another sound, which is nasal. Now, how they do those things? I'll show you some other time and if I find some space for that. Important thing with reference to your question is nasalization is something which is called suprasegmental feature. Now, it comes on a sound. It's not a sound by itself. Therefore, several of such things may not be, I'm not denying because I don't know which language you're talking about. I don't know the sound inventory of that language to deny anything outright but some of them are suprasegmental features. That's number one. And those are the things which are responsible for when someone says accents. Accent most of the time is used as a derogatory word to mark the language low. It said your language has an accent. However, the technical term accent also means differences caused by suprasegmental features. So that's also another aspect of that. There is one more thing which we need to discuss before we move to words because now we are moving from sounds to words. When we look at words, we know that they are not just random collection of sounds. That's well established. We may not know each and every rule, each and every pattern which is responsible for the strings of sounds that we get in a particular word or what are the strings that are allowed and what are the strings that are not allowed, we may not know all of them. However, we know that they are not random collection of sounds. They have an underlying pattern in it. We are going to see some patterns today which is going to answer the question, how do we make words? There is another element which is larger than sounds and a smaller than word. This thing is called a syllable. Have you heard this word syllable? What does it mean to you when you hear the word syllable with reference to sounds? Actually what it is, is the following. It is more than sound. It is larger than sounds and smaller than a word. For example, a word may have 2 to 3 syllables or may be 4 syllables. However, one sound may also constitute one syllable. But the question of syllable comes in only when we are talking about words. There are, if we cut the words in different parts, then we get several syllables. There is a process called salivification and we know that a word may be divided into 2 syllables. Then they are called bisyllabic or disyllabic word or a monosyllabic word. If we cannot divide them into 2 or 3, then they are called monosyllabic words. So please keep this thing in mind. There is something called syllable which is larger than sounds but smaller than words. Cellables do not extend beyond the word boundaries. They stay within words. So now let us very quickly look at these things. My idea is to get to sentences by tomorrow. So we have been looking at these things off and on. Where these things simply mean consonants and vowels. Now the first pattern that you see, CV, CV, which tells you several things. Probably we have referred to these things while discussing other aspects. But for once again, let me say this thing. The first pattern simply tells you, first and second, that the most common pattern for the formation of word is CV, CV. Nobody knows how many words can we make with this pattern. That simply means a lot. A lot of words. There is no restriction on how many of them can be made. Also it means we must have a vowel in a word. When we say most common pattern, we mean if we have a proper alternation or at a regular interval, consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel, then we probably get more. Which also means that we can have a vowel, consonant, vowel, consonant alterations. Which will mean the same thing. We can also have simply words with two to three vowels. And again, the underlying thing is no word with only consonants in any language. These are the underlying things. The third thing when you see, what does this tell you? When you see, there are two consonants in the beginning. That is a cluster. It means when two of them are together, they not necessarily, but they will form a cluster. Does anybody understand what a cluster means? Cluster is not just the juxtaposition of two sounds. What does it mean? Somebody? Exactly. No overlap. A part of the previous consonant disappears. It is important to know which part of that previous consonant. We are talking about a sound and again we are talking about a part of that sound has to disappear in order to make a cluster. What a microscopic look it becomes when we look at words. So, which part of that sound do we cut or gets disappeared? The vowel part. We know that every consonant comes with a vowel which is called an inbuilt vowel which is just one particular vowel. This vowel is a short a. It is shorter than a or definitely way shorter than a. A is a completely different sound. We do not find that anywhere in any consonant. When you see a in a consonant, that is an additional sound. In a word like ma ma or ka ka, ka and a are two different sounds. So, the sound like ka comes with an inbuilt vowel a which is a small vowel. It is called a schwa but let us call it a vowel. In order to make it a cluster that goes away. That vowel disappears and then we get the following consonant forming cluster with that one. We have seen examples like school, station, scooter and many more. This cluster is possible in the beginning of a word, in the middle of a word also at the word boundary. However, there are couple of things that work as constraint and that are important for us to keep in mind. Only the first sound is responsible for forming the cluster. That is in a cluster the first sound that is first consonant will lose its inbuilt vowel. The second one will not. The second one loses its vowel then it is going to form cluster with the following one. See that and this can happen at any position in a word. Beginning, middle and end with the break of a vowel. If there is no break then they are going to form cluster with three consonants. If we say there are some words which have cluster of three consonants in the beginning of a word. You get this question? If we say there are some words which have three consonants forming a cluster in the beginning of a word. What do we mean? What are the two consonants that are losing their vowels? First and second. Third one is not going to lose its vowel. Now, before we see some more examples of the first, second, third, fourth one let us look at the third one again. The difference between first and second put together and the third is striking which is remember what I told you about the first one? The total number of words that we can make with this possible pattern is a lot. That is infinite. We do not know how many therefore we do not even count. However, the presence of a cluster in a word reduces the number of words way too low. That is the number of total words in any language with clusters is very few. This very few may not be handful that you can count. But when we say very few we mean compared to the first one way too low. What is the meaning of this thing? If you can elaborate this thing in little bit more what does it mean? Which one is more common? Which one is easier? We get unlimited number of words with a pattern. Definitely that pattern has to be an easier pattern. Only then we are getting so many of them. Now, we are getting very few that is way too fewer with clusters. Which simply means that is a heavy word. And for the vocal apparatus, for the word formation process and generative mechanism that is a expensive word. That is a tough one. Therefore, we have very few of them. I am very well aware we did not completely answer your question. Why differences in number of words? But this will tell you something. But one more thing I want to add to your question not necessarily as an answer is this question is like why do we have so many languages? Which we do not have a clear answer of. It is just that we have so many of them. Similarly, it is an empirical fact that languages differ in terms of number of words. And get this thing? There were no civilizations if you go long back. But different groups because there was geographical isolation. So, one group they developed their own languages. Each group developed their own languages. They did not communicate earlier. So, they were not exposed to new sounds or different sounds which can be produced. Some groups explored their vocal apparatus more compared to other groups. Can we say that? Probably yes. But you can say the same thing in a different way also. Which is or similar things in a different way. See we have talked about language continuum event today. We have seen the continuum of Assamese, Bangla, Odia and Telugu. Definitely Telugu has some sounds which Bangla does not have and Bangla has some sounds which Assamese does not have or Odia may not have. Still they form a continuum. It is possible for us to see that continuum today because we are aware of the geography. Now as you said long, long time ago and that is possible. It is just a speculation. Long, long time ago when people started moving. That movement was probably permanent. We are also familiar with what we know as Big Bang theory. That was way too big and I do not want to go that far. We do not have evidence of that time if we had language or not or if it was there in what shape and all we do not know. But when people started moving they probably never met with one another again. So they had one way of communicating. Again they separated and then moved to some other place. Then they had one some other way of communicating. So we see a common ground but when people separated and they were communicating among themselves they came up with another few sounds which were specific only to them and then as they moved probably some of them were retained, some of them were lost. We do not know how many sounds may have been lost even in the languages that we have today because sound change is one of the big process of language change. Sound change is one of the big indicators. Remember I was trying to show you the distinction between three kinds of sa, dental sa, that is dental fricative, palatal sha and then there was a retroflex. And I told you that retroflex sha has some languages have lost that one and what we have we only have palatal sha and even between palatal sha and dental sa some languages have one and some languages have other. Which means in language A we may not have both palatal sha and retroflex. In language B we may not have palatal dental sha and retroflex sha. And this loss is recent therefore we can even put our fingers on them. Some of the losses may not have been recorded. So we do not know what has happened to sound. However we do know sounds have played a great role in language change and therefore some languages in the present form when we see them have a particular set of sounds. Some languages have another set of sounds. Nobody says that they are going to stay that way. They are going to change too. However what is predictable is the following and which will probably not change is all the languages will keep sharing sounds. There will not be a language which does not share sound with other one. That will probably not change. I am very well aware this does not completely answer that question. That question does not have an answer. You can think, you can read, one can speculate, one can write something else but can never be a complete answer to a question like this. Get it? Coming back to our discussion. First and second patterns they give us lot of words. The moment we start with clusters we start getting, we start seeing reduced number of words which simply means the clusters are heavy. Now the evidence of a cluster being really very heavy is coming from the fourth pattern. Can you think of some words with fourth pattern where we have three sounds, three consonants forming a cluster to make a word? Loud. String. String. So what are the sounds here? I suggest please keep writing these words. String and underline the sounds that are part of cluster. You will see a magic in this thing. The sounds are sa, ta and ra. True this is a cluster it is string. Sa, ta and ra. More stray. So what are the sounds here? Sa, ta and ra. All right. More? Spray. Spray. And sounds here are sa, pa and ra. More? Screw. Screw. Sounds here are sa, ka, ra. I can stop but for your fun part can you tell me more? So the sounds are sa, ka and la. More? Sorry? Prawn. Prawn. Sounds are we are talking about three. So you are right in a word like prawn we have pa and ra. Probably you thought of this example because you were looking at the written writing system where you see a doubloon or something right. But it has only two. Two sounds pa and ra right. We are talking about three. Throw. What are the sounds are? Ta, ra and after that you get a vowel. So that is not three. That is only two. We are talking about three. Can you be more imaginative? Just give me a word. Give me a word sorry. Stroke. Stroke all right. So the sounds are sa, ka and ra. Now while you are thinking and I am still waiting for few more examples, let me say the following. We are talking about some of these words from English clearly right. You are not coming up with words from our languages. What we are going to see as generalization applies to our languages also. It is just that you are not giving those sounds, those words okay. So generalizations derived from English words are applicable to all languages. So do you see anything common in what you have given so far? Anything common in the examples that you have given so far? That is very nice. True. But look at the sounds. What is the first sound in all of them? Sa. Do you see this cannot be a coincidence. That the moment you want a word with three clusters, you cannot have one beginning with any other sound. Any sound other than sa okay. And this is no big time discovery or anything. It is just pretty obvious we speak these words every day. We learn these things the way I am telling you. It is just that we are, this is the process that is called reinventing. We are not inventing anything new. It is called reinventing or making something little bit more obvious alright. It is not that these words you did not know. These are your examples. It is just that we did not pay attention to this thing. Sa. This is like chicken and the egg story. Yes. Sa. Good question though. You are saying did we have first sounds and then we made words? Definitely. The words based on bunch of rules that we created. No. We have words. Okay. Let me put it the following way. These things that I am trying to show you. When somebody came up with these rules, definitely they looked at huge data set. and then they came up with this pattern. It must have been very exciting at the time when someone figured out that you cannot have a word without a vowel. Sounds very, very generic and a matter of general knowledge today, but must have been very exciting for them. Sir, is it that we cannot have it or is it difficult to pronounce it? That answer, that I can give you, but let me talk about the question that you raised before. It is very interesting question. So, these patterns were made explicit definitely on the basis of large dataset, where the claim is not this fun. The claim is there is an underlying pattern of word formation. Now, these patterns are part of principles and parameters which are part of universal grammar and which are part of language acquisition device that we are born with. We trigger them with these examples and therefore, we speak the way we do. See this thing? So, it is not that we have a set of sounds in one compartment and then rules in the other and rules apply to sounds and then we get words. So, all together and definitely the generative process is that we need to trigger those rules to get these things. That is the answer I can give you for that. Now, let us look at more and then you will see why they all begin only with sound. What is the second sound in these clusters? Second sound is they are either pa or ta or ka. You can come up with hundred words, but they all are going to have sounds like second one can only be pa, ta, ka. One of the three. Now, what is common in one of the three? We are going to look at that in a moment and the third one, third one can only be either ra or la. The again underlying idea is this constraint is very strict. The stricter the constraint, the heavier the word. By heavy, you understand what we mean by heavy. The heavier the word for the apparatus. Therefore, fewer in number. Now, these words with three consonants, if you compare them with the words with cluster of two consonants are again way too few in number in any language. They could be a handful of them. These things being handful, I am not concluding on the basis of you not giving more examples. We do not come up with more examples have nothing to say that we have established well before. They are very few in number. You can count them. I mean, if you would not be too wrong if you say English may not have let us say more than hundred or hundred fifty words like them. By hundred fifty, I am not trying to put a number on that. It could be two hundred. But or even for that matter is five hundred. What is the big deal about that? Which is not true? Definitely five hundred is not true. But the point is, if you can come up with five thousand with one pattern and then the third pattern which just makes another another string little bit tighter and gets reduced to ten percent. And if you look at the previous one, which were millions and you added one more constraint on that and got reduced to let us say five five lakhs or for that matter one lakh. That is too heavy a constraint. Just put one small constraint. It gives you it becomes such a heavy that it has dramatic change in total number of words. That is the constraint we are looking at. I am coming to this in a moment to conclude this thing. I am coming to that in a moment. I am coming to that slide in a moment again. See the last one, four consonants as a cluster DC star in the beginning of that for your information this star means not possible. Four consonants as part of the cluster not possible. And this answer could be simple for you. Answer must be simple for you why? Extremely heavy not possible will become too heavy for for processing therefore not possible. And this is not possible in any language. No language gives you four clusters of consonants. Now for you and in the interest of time I should add in the beginning of the word there are few words in English where at the end of the word a cluster of four consonants is possible. I think the word sixth has has probably four clusters or there are a couple of couple more. Again not a not a significant thing very significant to this thing to discuss. However the point is even if it is possible at the end it is possible only for few words not more than five definitely and five I am being generous. In the beginning of a word definitely not possible in any language. Now the the point for us to take from here is see the weight of these constraints and see the patterns involved in the formation of some of the word. These are called phonetic rules by no means I am giving you all the possible patterns and all the possible rules of word formation I am just giving you a flavor of these things. Yes sir. If it has a cluster of three consonants the first consonant must be sa not s sa F-C-R-O-N F-C-R-O-N. What is how is that pronounced? So the first one is sa no but you I the way I hear you saying is strong. I am I am I am not familiar with that word what I am asking you is, you tell me what is the first sound? Fa. So, the word is fron. So, how do we say this word? Tell me. Kron. Kron. You cannot say this thing. Fokron. Fokron. Something like that? Fokron. You can do that. Is there a word like that? No, no, no. You are artificially creating one, where the problem is, like someone said, in the, in the sound fa, the shua is not deleted. The sound a is not deleted. Therefore, you are having difficulty saying this. I am having difficulty saying that. And imagine we drop that. We would not be able to say that. I invite you to say that word. So, you are, you are right. On the paper, we can do anything, but that is not going to be word. And definitely that word is not going to be available in the inventory of words to be assigned meaning. See this, see the, see the point. See the formation of words is one part. And how such words, if they are legitimate word based on these patterns, get meaning is a completely different process. And that, that also I have, I have, I think I have told you that the relationship between a word and its meaning is arbitrarily matched, is arbitrarily put together. Why this thing is called a pointer has got no rational behind it. We could have called it aeroplane. What would still mean the same thing? I mean, it would, if in the beginning, if everybody called it aeroplane, we will call it an aeroplane, would not make any difference. It is, it sounds ridiculous today, because the moment we say aeroplane, we have something else in our mind, because we know the word aeroplane is assigned for something else. Yet this thing, so that, that is a different process. Coming to this, you can do it on paper, but you would not be able to say that. In order to be able to say a word, this is what has been derived. This is not a prescriptive rule that you must say saw. This is, if you happen to say three clusters in a word, the first one must be saw. Our first one appears to be only saw. Let us put it that way. That is the point. So, now, yeah. So, tell me now, what is the word in accreditation? So, that is the power. Accreditation. Because when you say C, C, C, B, C, that means, it means only two five letter words or any kind of. Again, it takes long time to get out of this thing. When we say five letter words, we are not talking about letters. We are talking about sounds. Does this arrangement generally mean only for words with five sounds or words that start with these five sounds? No. First of all, we are talking about this, this word, this cluster of three in the beginning of a word. That is the thing that I am trying to show you. But I am saying something more than that also. What I am saying is, when we look at a word, we are talking about looking at sounds involved in the word, not the letters involved in the word. No, no, no. It could be any number of sounds in a word. So, what is the type of patterns that means, starting of a word, you can generalize it to starting of a word, they can meet a single word also. For example, if you say string, you can say stringing. The same rules apply to stringing. Sure, sure. Definitely true. That was... I heard your question as a different one, and that is important to clarify. When you say word like accreditation, right, what are the sounds involved in that? The first sound is a vowel. So, that is out. Second one is ka and ra. So, that is the cluster of only two sounds. The following sound becomes a vowel, krpa. So, what is that? Tell me. Before you say pa, there is an intervention of a vowel, right? Before you say the third one, ka, ra and pa, before the first, there is a vowel. See that? True. So, you must get three of them. If you have a break, then you can have any, because we are not talking about words with two clusters, words with cluster of two sounds. If we are talking about two sounds in a cluster, then we can get any two sounds. We are talking about a cluster of three sounds. In that three, you must have first one sa. Please think about more words. I invite you. This is not the only 50 minutes where we can talk about this. Think about more words, but just keep in mind that we are talking about sounds, not letters. So, the first one must be sa. Second one can only be either pa, ta or ka. Yes, sir. You said second sound can only be pa, ta or ka. It could be possible in English, but it is possible in English. See, this is why we discussed both retroflex and dental. And then we have also discussed something called alveolar, the English ta. So, they are all from the same reason. Therefore, I am saying ta. So, in our language, it could be either ta, which is complete dental or in other languages, it could be an alveolar ta, softer. In a word like, let us say string. It is not a retroflex ta. Ta. It is ta. Therefore, I am putting it that way. This is the reason why we discussed the differences between, remember, do people remember here the difference between ta as a dental, ta as a retroflex and then the intermediate alveolar one, which are the sounds that we get in English. Very nice. Now, what is the common between these three sounds? Pa, ta and ka. It is not all of them are from the front of the vocal apparatus. Ka is veelam. See that? What is common between all three of them is they are all stop sounds. Stop sounds mean total closure and then release of air. Pa, ta, ka. The common in the manner of articulation in all three of them is they are all stop sounds. And the common between ra and la is these two sounds are called liquid sounds. Now, liquid does not mean much. Liquid is not something like physical liquid, water or oil. However, it is something of that sort in nature. Do not have much to say about them at this moment, but I can simply give you one generic example that you may find some people who interchange these two sounds. When they would want to say ra, they would end up saying la or the other way around. Some of such things are also attributed to some kind of a speech disorder and some of these things are very commonly known as metathesis or something like that. But the point is whether it is a speech disorder or not is not our job to hint at. Our thing is this even in the speech disorder the alternation is between only these two sounds. So, some people can you think of some examples? I have found instead of saying rael, I have found some people saying lael. And where they are supposed to say la, for example, lal, the instead of la, they put ra. Now, this may not give you the answer, but this is just an application of what I am saying, which is these two sounds are liquids, therefore this interchange. Now, the third one of this cluster must only be either one of the two. Therefore, you get sounds like spring, string, screw, splash and many other words that you gave. Most of them have been seen in the beginning of it, yes. Beginning of a word, it is difficult to get a cluster of three sounds somewhere else. However, that is not denied, somewhere else it is quite common. Come up with some of the words, probably there also it will be saapa, sorry, again you are talking about written things, written, written letters. If you say those sounds and pay attention to them, there will be a break with the vowel, yes. And if at all that count, that is one consonant, which is na, weeler nasal, na, na, okay, alright. That is all, that is what I had to say to tell you today. There are couple of other things about words, which I do want to bring to your attention, because this is the, so far we have seen some patterns. Now, we are going to see some additional rules applicable for formation of words and then we go to sentence right away from there, to see more rules of why and how sentences are not simply cluster of words, okay. They will make more sense when we look at those things through the intermediate rules that are applicable information of words and then a better understanding of sounds is definitely going to help us what we see little later, alright. We stop here.