LING550 : CLMS Project Milestone 2

Thibaut Labarre

The phonology of Polish

The Polish phonology has a complex phonemic inventory that consists of 36 contrastive consonnants and 6 contrastive oral vowels. Polish also has 2 nasal vowels.

Polish vowels

Polish has 6 contrastive oral vowals and 2 nasal vowels. The oral vowel inventory consists of the monophtong forms of the high front unrounded vowel /i/, the high central unrounded vowel /1/, the mid front unrounded vowel /E/, the low front unrounded vowel /a/, the mid back rounded vowel /O/ and the high back rounded vowel /u/. The length of vowels is not phonemic in Polish, the vowels are lax vowels. Two of these have allophones only in the presence of palatalized consonants (Cavar, 2005). In this case /E/ is pronounced as a higher variant [e] and /a/ as a fronted variant [a]. Polish also has two open-mid nasal vowels, the nasalized back rounded vowel // and the nasalised O front unrounded vowel // Jassem (2003:105). Gussman, (2007:2) describes these two vowels as E in fact the open-mid vowels [E] and [O] followed by a nasalized labio-velar glide [w ] or sometimes by a nasalised palatal glide [j ].

Polish consonnants

Polish is very rich in terms of consonants since it has 36 contrastive consonnant phonemes. Palatalization plays an important role in Polish. For the purpose of my study, I will only distinguish bilabial palaticized consonnants since according to Gussmann 2007, palatalized non-labials appear primarily in loan words. Among the sonorants we nd 5 nasal stops, 2 liquids and 2 approximants. They tend to be devoiced after a voiceless obstruent. The 4 non palatalized nasal stops distinguish between places of articulation and palatalization for the bilabial nasal stop : a bilabial /m/, a dental /n/, a palatal // and a velar /N/. Before a fricative or at the end of a word, the dental nasal will be pronounced as a nasal glide [ j]. The 2 liquids are distinguished by their manner of articulation : a lateral alveolar consonant /l/ and an alveolar trill /r/. The 2 approximants are distinguished by their place of articulation : a bilabial /w/ and a palatal /j/.

Among the obstruents, each unvoiced consonant has its voiced counterpart except for the fricative velar /x/. The 8 stops are differentiated by voicing and their place of articulation : a bilabial unvoiced /p/ and voiced /b/, a dental unvoiced /t/ and voiced /d/, a palatal unvoiced /c/ and voiced //, a velar unvoiced /k/ and voiced /g/. The 9 fricatives are differentiated by voicing and their place of articulation : a labiodental unvoiced /f/ and voiced /v/, an alveolar unvoiced /s/ and voiced /z/, a postalveolar unvoiced /S/ and voiced /Z/, a palatal unvoiced /C/ and voiced // and nally a velar /x/ that has no voiced counterpart. When /x/ is followed by a voiced obstruent, it has a voiced allophone [G]. The 6 affricates are differentiated by voicing and their place of articulation : an alveolar unvoiced / / and voiced /dz/, a postalveolar unvoiced // and voiced //, a palatal unvoiced /tC/ and voiced /d/. We have to add to this set the palatalized consonant variants that are described by Gussmann 2007 : the bilabial plosives that can be unvoiced /pj / or voiced /bj /, the labiodental fricative that can either be unvoiced /fj / or voiced /vj / and the nasal stop /mj /.

4
4.1

Other aspects of the phonology of Polish

Prosody

In Polish the main stress is on the next to nal syllable. There can also appear secondary stress on words of 4 syllables or more. Secondary stress will then be on the even syllables counting from the last syllable : the second syllable will have primary stress, the fourth, the sixth, the eighth will have secondary stress. Some loan words are exceptions to this rule as are some verbs with conditional endings.

4.2

Phonotactics

Polish allows for complex consonant clusters. In some cases it leads to allophonic devoicing or voicing of obstruents. In Sobolewski 2007, it is stated that obstruents are always devoiced when nal in a word. This rule doesnt apply when the word is followed by a word starting with a voiced consonnant. There are phonotactic constraints where a certain consonnant selects for a vowel. For example a postalveolar unvoiced fricative /S/ can be followed by a high central unrounded vowel /1/ and a palatal unvoiced fricative /C/ by a high front unrounded vowel /i/ whereas the opposite is not possible as noted by Cavar 2005. 2

Examples of allophonic changes

Example of allophone of /x/ before a voiced obstruent (Grzegorz 2008) chleb /xlEp/ bread [xlEp] dach domu /daxdOmu/ a roof of a house [daGdOmu] Example of devoiced obstruent when nal (Sobolewski 2007) r b /rub/ do (imperative) [rup] o

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6.1

IPA Charts
Vowels

This chart of the Polish vowels is largely inspired by Cavar 2005 with the addition of the 2 nasal vowels (on the right when they exist). Front i E E a Central Back 1 u O O

High Mid Low

6.2

consonnants

This chart of the Polish consonnants is largely inspired by Jassem 2003 with the addition of the bilabial palatalized consonnants as shown in Cavar 2005 and as described in Gussmann 2007. Bilabial Palatal. Labial Labiodental Dental Alveolar Postalveolar Palatal Plosive pb pj bj td c j j Fricative f v fv sz SZ C Affricate dz tC d Nasal m mj n Lateral l Trill r Front Back Approximant j w Velar kg x N

References

Gussman, Edmund (2007), The Phonology of Polish, Oxford University Press Jassem, Wiktor (2003), Polish Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 3

Malgorzata E. Cavar (2005) ATR in Polish. Indiana University Linguistics Club Working Papers Vol. 5. Nawrock, Grzegorz (2008) Laryngeal articulations of /x/ in Southern Polish, ZAS Papers in Linguistics 49 Sobolewski, Dorota (2007) De la prononciation du Franais Langue trangre par une locutrice sudoise et une locutrice polonaise