Talk:Phonological rule

LaTeX format
if it weren't for the fact WIkipedia LaTeX cannot display the flap character, this code could be used to display the rule:

$$ \left \lbrack \begin{array}{l} + stop \\ + consonant \\ + alveolar \end{array} \right \rbrack \to \left \lbrack 4 \right \rbrack \Bigg/ \left \lbrack \begin{array}{l} + vowel \\ + stressed \end{array} \right \rbrack \underline{\qquad} \left \lbrack \begin{array}{l} + vowel \\ - stressed \end{array} \right \rbrack $$

That looks a lot nicer than my crappy image from Paint. I don't know LaTeX, but people are welcome to mess with it. And I'm not married to the flap rule, it was just the first example I thought of off the top of my head. (And possibly not the best example, since the features for flaps are controversial...it's a good rule to use as an example in that I think it's something people can understand easily, but bad in that it doesn't allow you to illustrate features very well.) r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 22:26, 8 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Could we display the flap character as a small image in the rule? r ʨ anaɢ talk/contribs 22:26, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Not as far as I know. If a rule is to be displayed this way, it has to use only ISO-8859-compatible IPA characters. Circeus (talk) 18:48, 9 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The flap rule is a good example that people can understand easily (in America, anyway). The only thing I wonder about is whether it will make any sense on the written page if you don't already know what a flap is. Torgo (talk) 19:47, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Redirect here?
Should phonological process redirect here? ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 17:34, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * No reason not to, if you think it a term people might search for (I agree that it might be). There is no harm in having redirects (see WP:PERFORMANCE). I'll redirect it now. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 17:37, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * What I'm asking is if it's an appropriate redirect. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 14:53, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I think so, for the time being at least. Judging by the other articles that use "phonological process" (Special:WhatLinksHere/Phonological process), they are all using it in more or less this sense. Of course, there is a distinction between the theoretical construct attempting to formalize this change (e.g., the generative sort of "rules" described here) and the cognitive process that people supposedly undergo to actually compute the change....but for our purposes I think they can be considered one and the same. The key is just that a Wikipedia user who sees "phonological process" in the lede of some article can click the link and see from this article that that means something like changing [s] to [z] in the English plural. r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 15:02, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Right. And I couldn't find the cognitive process, so here we are. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 00:54, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Syllable
How do you indicate "at syllable end", or "at end of word"?

-- TimNelson (talk) 05:30, 26 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Syllable lists the things you could regard as features for replacement, though I don't know if it's common to use rewrite rules for them. Word boundaries don't usually factor directly into the pronunciation, see word. All examples I can think of are actually phonological and morphophonological processes (example rule in article). ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 03:58, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Use of #, $, and +
It seems to me that this article should also mention the use of the following:
 * "#" as a word boundary symbol.
 * "$" or "σ" as a syllable boundary symbol.
 * "+" as a morpheme boundary symbol.
 * C: Represents the features [-syllabic +consonantal]
 * V: Represents the features [+syllabic -consonantal]
 * Use of numbers in TRANSFORMATIONAL RULES FOR METATHESIS AND COALESCENCE.
 * Zero subscript C0 represents zero or more consonants
 * BRACE NOTATION "{ }":This notation combines two or more rules that have identical parts
 * ALPHA NOTATION: α If two rules are identical except for the values of the same feature, then the two rules can be replaced by a single rule. The values which are different in the two rules are replaced by a variable -- the Greek letter alpha -- in the new rule.
 * RULES WITH MULTIPLE VARIABLES: α, β

See: http://www.sfu.ca/~mcrobbie/Ling221/%236.pdf

Hugh Paterson III (talk) 04:23, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 one external links on Phonological rule. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090305064715/http://www.ling.udel.edu:80/idsardi/101/notes/phonology.html to http://www.ling.udel.edu/idsardi/101/notes/phonology.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090305064715/http://www.ling.udel.edu:80/idsardi/101/notes/phonology.html to http://www.ling.udel.edu/idsardi/101/notes/phonology.html

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Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 08:49, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

misidentification of stop features
Article say: "In the most commonly used feature system, the features to represent these sounds would be [+delayed release, +anterior, -distributed]" in reference to /t/ and /d/. Weird, as in my experience [+DR] refers to affricates. I'd expect [+cons, -cont, +ant] to define /t/ and /d/, though I'm not familiar with the exact feature system the article is referring to. 130.113.109.92 (talk) 21:59, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Types (and Example)
First, not Types. The link to Schramm produces this:

The web page requested is not here. You may have reached this page because of:

An out-of-date bookmark A search engine that has an out of date listing A mistyped address

And the narrowing to generative in the second sentence of the intro is puzzling.

That aside... This article is very nicely done, and I hesitate getting too deeply into the weeds for a general readership, but the wise strategy of KISS may have gone a bit too far. In Types the discussion in general is so consonant-specific that an uninformed reader might get the notion that allophony can be expected to apply mainly to consonants. Should be easy to include vocalic alternations such as, for AmE, reduction to schwa (memory [ˈmɛməri] or syncopation to null vs. memorial), or for Italian, vowel lengthening in stressed open syllable (mano [ˈmaːno] 'hand', manina [maˈniːna] 'little hand'); memory also provides the opportunity for illustrating variability, as in [ˈmɛməri] ~ [ˈmɛmri]. // Another worry, in Example, is that while the flapping rule is very accurate as it is, it can be interpreted as being exhaustive, excluding the variable flapping after non-stressed vowels that produces phonetic identity in AmE of comedy and comity. Including that also provides illustration of variability if the preceding vowel is not stressed, i.e. it's not unnatural, presumably just a slight step up in register, to produce comi[tʰ]y (ditto, nicely enough, variabili[ɾ]/[tʰ]y), whereas [tʰ] in AmE for the second /t/ of potato would be highly unnatural. // A final little worry is that readers could come away with the notion that allophony appears only word-internally. Easy to avoid that (Sp. vino [ˈbino], de vino [deˈβino], It. /kon/ 'with' but [koŋˈkarlo] 'with Carlo', [komˈpiːno] 'with Pino', [koˈnanːa] 'with Anna', and nice variability in AmE See ya tomorrow, with [tʰ] or [ɾ] both natural). // There are other quibbles, of course. The misleading bit on dissimilation -- teleological speculation, non-native -- is especially in need of review in light of Patrick Bye's chapter on the topic -- Chapter 60, pp. 1408-1433, in M. van Oostendorp, C. Ewen and E. Hume (eds.) The Blackwell Companion to Phonology. Volume III: Segmental Processes. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. 2011. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 16:05, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

intervocalic alveolar flapping rule error
The English intervocalic alveolar flapping rule does not work as written, failing to correctly account for nasal alveolar stop flapping. While the resultant [ɾ] correctly denotes loss of the ±voiced distinction, it incorrectly denotes concomitant loss of the ±nasal distinction. The resultant should be generalised to [+flap], to accommodate the nasal flap [ɾ̃] case. AndreasWittenstein (talk) 07:22, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Linking to or merging with "Alternation"
It's been a bit since I studied phonology, but the distinction between "phonological rule" and "alternation" seems minimal, and even if it is important, neither page addresses this distinction. I added a "see also" section just so I could link it somewhere in the main text of the article, but maybe there should be more explanation or possibly a merger.

SyntaxZombie (talk) 20:54, 10 March 2024 (UTC)


 * The distinction is in the fact that an alternation is a linguistic phenomenon, while a phonological rule is a notational convention for describing sound changes. Importantly, phonological rules are not exclusively applicable to alternations: any sound change can be denoted with a phonological rule. In short, these two articles should be kept separate. Aquikos (talk) 15:01, 22 March 2024 (UTC)
 * In its current state, this article seems to use the term "phonological rule" to mean both a notational convention and a linguistic phenomenon. For an example, see the section Phonological rule, which describes types of the phenomenon, not types of the notation. Goldsmith and Hayes are both cited in the second paragraph seemingly describing the phenomenon ("mapping," "generalization"), even the short description template at the top reads "concept in linguistics."
 * If the two articles do remain separate, I think large portions of this article would need to be moved to Alternation (linguistics) and both articles would need to be re-worked significantly. Both articles would need to make clear the distinction between the notational convention and the phenomenon so editors don't add information about the phenomenon to this article. I dunno, seems easier and clearer to merge them to me.
 * I'm certainly not married to the idea of merging the articles, just hoping to generate some discussion. Because either way both articles need a lot of work. I want to contribute to that work, I would just prefer to know what other editors think before embarking on that task.
 * Maybe there's a place in the linguistics portal where I should add a topic? SyntaxZombie (talk) 00:40, 24 March 2024 (UTC)