University Abdelmalek Essaadi
Faculty of Letters and Humanities
S5 Phonetics and Phonology
2020-2021 Pr El Hadri
Data Analysis Sample 2
agble ‘farm’ agoŋglo ‘lizard’
aŋli ‘ghost’ akplɔ ‘spear’
sabulɛ ‘onion’ sra ‘strain’
alɔ ‘hand’ atitrwɛ ‘red billed wood dove’
avlɔ ‘bait’ blafogbe ‘pineapple’
drɛ ‘stretch arms’ edrɔ ‘dream’
exlɔ ‘friend’ exle ‘flea’
hlɛ ‘read’ ŋlɔ ‘write’
črɔ̃ ‘exterminate’ ̃rã ‘be ugly’
klɔ ‘wash’ tre ‘glue’
vlu ‘stretch a rope’ lɔ ‘like’
mla ‘pound a drum’ pleplelu ‘laughing dove’
wla ‘hide’ zro ‘fly’
esrɔ ‘spouse’ etro ‘scale’
eñrɔ̃ ‘spitting cobra’ ̌ro ‘hint’
1. No minimal pairs
2. Are the sounds phonetically similar? Yes
3. The environment ? (to be filled)
__e
__i
Which environment predicts the change ? The before environment or the
after ?
The after environment cannot predict the change from one sound to the other,
because there is an overlap. The two sounds can be found before
University Abdelmalek Essaadi
Faculty of Letters and Humanities
S5 Phonetics and Phonology
2020-2021 Pr El Hadri
It is the before environment that predicts the change :
is found after coronals
is found elsewhere
Since each of the two sounds is used in the environment where the other isn’t,
we can say that the two sounds are in complementary distribution, and hence
belong to the same phoneme.
4. Which one of the two do the speakers of this language store as the
phoneme ?
The answer is: [] Because it is found in the elsewhere environment
Mouth and mind representation :
/ / UR (the mind)
[ [] PF (the mouth)
[after coronals] [elsewhere]
5. Statement / Rule
/ / []/ CORONALS----
/ / becomes [] in the context after coronals
6. Derivation
Gloss ‘strain’ ‘spear’
UR akplɔ
PF akplɔ
