Linguistics Question about Pronunciation
Hi everyone,
This is my first question here. I am taking a Spanish linguistics course and we have our first midterm at the end of the week. I had a question about one of the sections on our study guide. It is a question about different pronunciations based on the allomorphs of a word. It's been a while since I took the prerequisite course that goes more into detail about pronunciations, so I was wondering if anyone could give me a brief explanation of this topic because I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed! Thanks for your time and I look forward to everyone's insights!
(i) Write a list of allomorphs based on the different pronunciations using the phonetic symbols in the brackets. (ii) Explain the distribution of each allomorph
[ile?al] ilegal
[irasjonal] irracional
[inope?an?te] inoperante
[imposi?le] imposible
[in?tole?an?te] intolerante
[i?komoðo] incomodo
[i?fjel] infiel
[inse?u?o] inseguro
4 Answers
I think you mean allophones, right? Roughly, this is what it means:
The phoneme in linguistic is the minimal unit of sound that can be used to differentiate between words and meanings. For example, the sounds of the words "par" and "car" are differentiated by their initial phonemes (/p/ and /k/ using the IPA); if you replace the phoneme, you have a different word.
A phoneme can have several variants called allophones, which although they sound slightly differently, replacing one for another only makes the same word sound slightly different (or odd). An example in English can be found in the /t/ sound of the words "top" and "stop", which I mistakenly pronounce the same way (since the distinction does not exist in Spanish).
There are many allophones for most sounds if you analyse the sounds in detail for both vowels and consonants, and the number of allophones grows dramatically if you consider regional and personal variations. However, in Spanish it is worth mentioning the allophones of b, d and g.
The b is pronounced as /b/ after a pause, l or m. Its allophone /?/ is used in all other cases. Similarly, for /d/ you have /ð?/ and for /g/ you have /?/ respectively. Both pairs share most features, but they are slightly different. A similar thing can be found in English in pairs like "die" /da?/ and "thy" (/ð?a?/).
Other allophones like /?/ (labiodental pronunciation) in "infiel" can be explained because the teeth need to be placed on the lower lips in order to pronounce the f that follows the n, so the latter changes slightly its sound due to the proximity of both sounds.
An observation about your question, rather than an answer:
You speak of differences of pronunciation (which is usually concerned with allophones, rather than allomorphs). However your list of words all seem to relate to the use of "in" as a negative prefix (as pointed out by Cbruegge). The prefix is certainly subject to phonetic conditioning (as shown in your list of words [and, as happens in English]) but I wouldn't call them examples of allophones (nor of allomorphs).
Looking (this time) not at the phrasing but, rather, the intent of the question, let me try to start you off on the path to the answer. As cbruegge said, you have a bunch of words with the negative prefix "in". However, pronouncing a sequence of sounds can range from easy to practically impossible, depending on the sounds involved (and which combinations are viewed as difficult can vary from one language to another although there can also be substantial agreement among languages).
In your list of words, /n/ before any vowel and some consonants (e.g. /s/ and /t/) presents no problem. On the other hand, /n/ before a bilabial (such as /p/) is moderately difficult and the /n/ has a strong tendency to be replaced by /m/ (the most closely related bilabial nasal).
So you need to go through the list and determine what characteristics of the sound after the /n/ cause the /n/ to be replaced/modified and how is that accomplished. Naturally, since it's an academic setting, you shouldn't just name the letters. You should throw around a lot of the fancy terms used for phonetics (as I did with "bilabial" and "nasal").
Hope this helps (more than my earlier response).
That's a doosy of a question for your first!!! This is the first time I have heard the word allomorphs, so I'm no help. Wikipedia defined allomorph as a variant of a morpheme -- which didn't help since I never heard of a morpheme. At last, this youtube video came to my rescue:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRkXC9YhbYI
Aha --- I now understand your question and await the professor to enlighten us all with a proper answer!!
Obviously all of these prefixes mean "not" or "opposite" and have the same meaning as in English (due to a shared Latin base). Each of the words in your question can be broken down into their negative and positive "morpheme"
imposible (not possible), posible (possible)
inoperante (not operating) operante (operating)
irracional (not rational), racional (rational)
Thanks for the interesting question.
