Block-1 What is Language?

The theory of language which came to be

associated with the shift in 'orientation'
Unit 1 - The Nature of Language- In has been referred to as generative
Notebook
grammar.
Unit 2 – Looking at Data- 1- In
Notebook
Generative grammar- It is the theory of
NOTES language proposed by Chomsky in his
Syntactic Structures (1 957).
Unit- 3 Looking at DATA 2
It provides a set of finite rules that
1. In the early 1950fs, signs of defines the unlimited number of sentences
restiveness began to disturb the of the language and associates each with an
calm of structuralism, and by the appropriate grammatical description.
end of the decade new ideas
Generative grammar has its roots firmly
emerged in a big way.
grounded in the structuralist tradition.
2. Chomsky, a student of Zellig Harris
Generativists share with structuralists the
was concerned with discovering a
idea that "the grammar of a language is a
general theory of grammatical
statement of'the systematic structural
structure.
interrelationships holding between
3. He believed that an adequate
linguistic elements.
grammar should provide a basis for
explaining how sentences are used
and understood.
I. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously
4. He reproaches the Bloomfieldeans
for "their satisfaction with 2. Furiously sleep ideas green colorless
description [and] their refusal to
explain" - For an English speaker, while both (1) and
(2) are nonsensical, the first is
According to him, as other 'developing
grammatical and the second is not.
sciences, linguistics should also endeavour
Chomsky did not suggest "meaningful" to
to establish a more ambitious goal than be the criterion for identification because
mere description and classification. he believed that "semantic theories have
not been made sufficiently exact to justify
An utterance may be well formed but not proposing a notion of meaning that could
acceptable, for acceptability involves give us a practical way of deciding on the
wellformedness together with grammatical status of pairs of sentences
appropriateness to context-linguistic or [given above]" From such considerations
situational, e.g. an utterance colorless Chomsky notes that "we are forced to
conclude that grammar is autonomous and
green ideas sleep furiously, is completely
independent of meaning"
nonsensical but grammatically correct.
Chomsky also devoted himself to looking GENERATIVE GRAMMER- 1. A particular
into the highly abstract theory capable of grammar of a particular language which, in
finding universal formalism valid for all a purely mechanical way, is capable of
languages "with no specific reference to enumerating all and only the grammatical
particular languages" sentences of that language.Generative
grammer in this sense was introduced by
He looked at grammar more as a theory of
Noam Chomsky in the 1950s. 2. Any theory
la langue leading to a "condition of
of grammar which has as its goal the
generality" and less as an eimpirical
construction of such grammers. 3. The
description.
enterprise of constructing such theories of
He believed tbat the "grammar of a given grammar.
language must be considered in accordance
with the specific theory oflinguistic
UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE: Any property
structure in which terms like 'phoneme'
which is present in all languages or in
and 'syntagm' are defined independently
nearly &l languages example: all languages
of any particular language"
distinguish nouns & - verbs.
KEY WORDS

INTUITION :- A judgement which you COMPETENCE: An idealisation of a

make about your own language (whether speaker's knowledge OF HIS/Her
something is grammatical or not), what it language, excluding such factors such as
means, whether it is ambiguous or not, how slips of tongue, memory limitations or
it is related to something else, and so on. distractions.

WELL FORMED:- The state of being PHONOLOGY: Pertaining to the sound

grammatical. A well formed sentence in a system.
language is a sentence which is consistent
MORPHOLOGY: Pertaining To Word-
with all the grammatical rules of that
Formation '
language. However, well formedness
includes acceptability and appropriacy. SEMANTICS: Pertaining to meaning

BEHAVIOURLISM:- An approach to PERFORMANCE: The actual linguistic

psychology which holds that psychologists behaviour of particular individuals on
should study only observable and particular occasions, . including any
measurable phenomena, and should not hesitations, memory lapses, !. slips of the
appeal to unobservable things like 'minds' tongue or processing difficulties ' arising
and 'intentions'. from long,or complty 'structures.

Leonard Bloomfield and the American

structuralists were much influenced by Difference between the Generativists and
behaviourist ideas, but ever since Noam the Structuralists?
Chomsky's devastating critique of B.F.
Structuralist- By “Structural Linguistics” I
Skinner's behaviourist account of language
take you to mean the Structuralist
acquisition, linguists have generally
tradition that arose out of Saussure, the
rejected behaviourism in favour of
Prague Circle, and the Americanist
mentalism.
anthropologists.
Generativist- By “Generative Linguistics” I an object in the ether makes no
take you to mean the Generative/UG psychological sense (and didn’t then). But
tradition that arose out of Chomsky, the we can kinda tell what he was getting at.
Optimality Theorists, and formal It’s difficult to talk about language as a
semanticists. ‘thing’, because it exists as a system. You
can compare what the noun language
Numerous differences can be
describes to other things like an outfit. If
ascertained, but the biggest one is that
you have 5 pairs of pants and 5 shirts, you
Structuralism is a theory about
can make 25 outfits. But what is this
language, while Generativism is a theory
“thing” called outfit? Where does it ‘exist’?
about people.
It’s hard to pin that down, because the
For Structuralists, a language (une langue outfit is a system, and comes into
in Saussure’s term) can be seen as a existence through the relationships
system. The parts of the system work between the pants and the shirt. The same
against one another, and can be put into goes with a langue.
various classes as a result.
Ques2 - "The relationship between the
Phonemes are classes of sounds signifier and the signified is arbitrary".
(allophones) that the language lumps Are there any exceptions to this rule?
together. Two sounds can be in the same Think of some words in English and your
class in one language, but in different mother tongue in which the relationship
classes in another. between the signifier and the signified is
not arbitrary, but is based an some
Generativists adopt a lot of the similarity between them.
structuralist notions of system, but their
goal is distinct: Not merely to understand Signified and signifier is a concept, most
linguistic systems, but to use linguistic commonly related to semiotics, that can be
systems to understand how human minds described as "the study of signs and
work and develop. symbols and their use or interpretation."

So the generativist asks questions like Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, one
“What does a speaker know?” and “How of the two founders of semiotics,
does the speaker come to know it?” introduced these terms as the two main
For example, in English, vest and best are planes of a sign:
distinct ‘words’, so we can tell that /b/ and
signified pertains to the "plane of
/v/ are distinctive sounds in the English
content," while
language system. So what kind of “thing” is
this system? What is a language? Saussure signifier is the "plane of expression."
proposed that the language system (the
langue) sort of existed outside of our A good example is the word 'cool'. If we
consciousness, and we could each access it take the spoken word 'cool' as a signifier,
to varying extents. In essence, the what might be the signified? In one
language system is a social object. context or situation, cool might refer to
Saussure directly compared systems of temperature. But in another, it might refer
this sort to systems of customs like table to something as 'stylish' or 'popular'.
manners. So is there such a thing as a
language? Saussure’s idea of a language as
 1. Semantics: Relations between 6. What docs modem linguistic theory
signs and the things to which they say about it?
refer to. It focuses on the 7. Do animals think?
relationship between signifiers, 8. Do they have a language in some
like words, phrases, signs, and sense?
symbols, and what they stand for;
Some people believe that language is
ie their denotations. For example,
primary and makes thought possible. It is
young can mean a colt, filly, piglet,
absolutely central to our thought
baby, puppy or kitten.
processes. It not only helps us to
2. Syntactics: Relations among signs
understand the thoughts of other people
in formal structures. An example
and express our own but also structures
is the arrangement of words and
our thoughts in a variety of complex ways.
phrases to create well-formed
We see what our language tells us to see
sentences in a language (eg
and we express our thoughts in ways that
grammar).
are allowed by our language. Language in
3. Pragmatics: Relationship between
this sense is constitutive of thought and
signs and the effects they have on
defines the limits of our thought.
the people who use them based on
their context, pre-existing The concept of the linguistic sign was given
knowledge, inferred intent, and by the farnous lipgujst Ferdinand de
other factors. Saussure (1857-1923).

According to him, the pairing of word-

Unit- 4 labels and meaning concepts produce a
system of sign. Signifier- A LABEL and a
Language & Thought Signified – THE CONCEPT

Primary objective of this unit is to examine - it is impossible in a language to

the relationship between language and separate sound from thought, or
thought. thought from sound.

1. Are languages and thought two

SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS
completely independent entities?
2. Do you think without language also? The relationship between language
Is all thought ultimately language and our perception of reality and
dependent?
its representation in the human
3. Is it the case that we have language
at some abstract level which is mind was explored by the famous
completely independent of thought? anthropological linguist
4. What is really involved when we for
EDWARD SAPIR (1884- 1939) AND HIS
example use the word 'chair'?
STUDENT BENJAMIN LEE WHORF
5. What does the Sapir-Whorf
(1897- 1941).
hypothesis say about the
relationship between language and The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, also known
thought? as the linguistic relativity hypothesis,
refers to the proposal that the particular
language one speaks influences the way one Benjamin Whorf was an insurance agent.
thinks about reality. He developed the interest in correlation
between language and
According to this hypothesis, our language
thought/understanding while investigating
influences and shapes our cultural reality
a claim for settlement of the insurance
by limiting our thought processes. ...
amount for an accident caused by fire.
An example of the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis is how sexist language While investigating the potential cause for
influences the way in which our society fire in the firm he found out interesting
views men and women. For instance, we use correlations between structure and the
words like 'fireman,' 'policeman,' and 'male meaning of language and how they shape
nurse. speakers‘ thought.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis named This interest brought Whorf to Sapir, a

after them has two aspects: well-known structural linguist of his time at
“LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY AND Yale.
LINGUISTIC DETERMINISM.”
Later, Whorf took up a whole project to
“LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY- The study some American Indian languages to
principle of linguistic relativity says that examine the validity of his initial
different people see the world in different hypothesis.
ways; some people see only one kind of
An output of his field work was presented
water, others may see five different kinds
to the world and that came to be known to
of water and therefore feel the need for
people as Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
having five different words for different
kinds of water. One community may be The hypothesis states that the way people
happy with 'uncle' and 'aunt' while another think is strongly affected by their native
may have ten different words in this languages.
domain of kinship words. There is thus no
natural or absolute way of labelling the In other words, the Sapir-Whorf
world around us. hypothesis is a theory that states that a n
individual's thoughts and actions are
LINGUISTIC DETERMINISM.”- determined by the language or languages
Language provides the framework for our that an individual speaks.
thoughts and it is impossible to think
outside this frame, Sapir felt that people The stronger version of the hypothesis
were at the mercy of their language. states that all human thoughts and actions
are related to the language that an
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis states that individual speaks. That is our world is
language determines our thoughts and our constructed by our language and we see
world view. the world through our language. If our
language tells us to see five colours, we see
For Whorf, language is basic and thought
the world only in terms of those five
and culture are built by it.
colours. If it tells us to see our family
We see the world as our language dictates network in terms of say four different
us to see it. names of our uncles, that‘s the way we
would see our family.The weaker version of
the hypothesis says that language only
somewhat shapes our thinking and
behavior. According to the weaker version, 1.2 ORIGINS OF ENGLISH
human beings are capable of thinking and
A language is the speech of a people. The
behaving beyond the language in which they
history of a language is, therefore, the
are born. That is how normal human beings
history of a people.
are capable of learning more than one
language. English perhaps started as the speech of
some Germanic tribes in Europe and
through a series of changes brought about
Whorf s claim was largely based on his
by migrations, invasions, 6 conversions,
experience as a fire prevention engineer
settlement and colonisation assumed its
and the analysis of some American Indian
present avatara.
languages, in particular, Hopi. As a fire
engineer, he noticed that the behaviour of What is the meaning of a family of
fireworkers was conditioned by their use languages?
of the words 'empty' and 'full'. They
regarded drums 'full' only when they had What is this Indo-European family of
liquid in them. They would happily smoke languages?
beside 'empty' drums, which were actually Languages which show some common
'full' of gas vapour, thus causing fire. features, some shared properties, are said
Wharf felt that the world is seen, to belong to 'one family'.
understood and analyzed in terms of the
linguistic patterns of the speaker's It is assumed that such systematic
language. His work on Hopi showed that the similarities cannot be accidental; these
structure of typical European languages similarities are there because the
such as English, French or German was concerned languages have 'descended'
completely different from Hopi and this from a common 'parent'.
explained the different ways in which the
That is, at some point of time, there was a
two communities saw the reality around
language spoken over a given geographical
them.
area which over a period of time broke up,
Block-2 History of English fragmented, into a number of 'sibling'
varieties. With the passage of time these
Language varieties become sufficiently different
from each other to be considered as
There are two ways of looking at the
separate language.
'incidents', at the events and
changes, that happened in the past in For example- the modern Indo-Aryan and
the Dravidian group of languages of India.
relation to the English language :
The Indo-Aryan languages of the great
(a) internal
northern plains: languages such as Punjabi ,
(b) external Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali and even Pushto
have many features in common - sounds,
words and even elements of grammar. So
they are all said to belong to the Indo- still lives in various developments in Italian,
Aryan family. French, Spanish and the other romance
languages and Sanskrit in Hindi, Punjabi,
The same holds true for Tamil, Telugu,
Marathi and other Indo-Aryan languages.
Malayalam, and Kannada as members of the
Dravidian language family.
STANDARD VARIETY- the variety of
In this sense Indo-European is the language which has the highest status in
'ancestor' of a very large number of the community or nation, and which is
languages spoken today in Asia and Europe. usually based on the speech and writing of
educated native speakers of the language.
An interesting question is - why do A standard variety is usually described in
languages continuously break up and dictionaries, grammars, taught is schools
fragment into different dialects, sub- and universities, and used in media.
dialects, varieties and other languages?

The reason lies perhaps in the fact that so INTERNAL HISTORY- here, language is
many persons, millions, in fact, speak a considered an autonomous system subject
language under varying conditions and in to change and evolution. The changes are
different situations. sounds, words and structure is seen
according to linguistic laws and not with
This is the cause of what may be called
reference to external causes.
natural change. Languages also start
changing when they come in conflict with EXTERNAL HISTORY-
each other.
The record of events that fall on the
The third reason of language change is spellers of a language and the effect or
geographical division or separation. As a those events on the sound, vocabulary and
result of all this, the most self-evident structure of that language.
fact about language is that people talk
differently. This synchronic variation
(existing at a given time) leads to historical FAMILY OF LANGUAGES this refers to a
change and change leads to split, a process set of languages deriving from a common
which produces a number of languages ancestor, or 'parent' e.g. the Indo-
related to each other in different degrees European family consists of the 'daughter'
of closeness or affinity and constituting a languages Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, etc.which
family. all developed out of Proto-Indo European.

However, when we "discuss the so-called Unit- 3 Changes in Vocabulary

language families ... we must bear in mind
The English language, in its not-so-long
that a language is not born, nor does it die
history of 1500s years, has constantly
except when every single one of its
borrowed words from different sources.
speakers dies , as has happened to
Contact with other cultures through
Etruscan, Gothic, Cornish, and a good many
conquest, and collaborations, the socio-
other languages.
political circumstances, the need to explain
[When we speak of Latin or Sanskrit as a new ideas have been the main reasons of
dead language, we are referring to the borrowing words from various sources.
literary textual language; but spoken Latin
 (a) COMPOUNDING: This process
involves combining two or more
For instance, external factors in the
existing words in order to form
history of England like
a new word. This process has
- the Christianizing of Britain in flourished at every period of
597A.D, the English language.
- the Scandinavian invasions, Compounding, even today, is the
- the Norman conquest, most poteat means of adding to
- the Hundred years' war, the vocabulary
- the rise of the middle class,
- the Renaissance, (b) DERIVATION: In this process,
- the expansion of British Empire, a new entity is derived not
etc from independent ,words (as in
compounding) but from a single
Have all contributed immensely to the full word plus a prefix or
growth of English vocabulary. suffix.

Suffixes and prefixes, known

It is customary (as you are now well collectively as affixes, may not stand
aware), for the sake of convenience, to alone as words; they occur only in
divide 26 the history of English language combination with a word.
into three main periods:
In the Old English vocabulary
1. Old English Period 450 A.D. 1150 generous use is made of prefixes and
A.D. suffixes like -ig, -full, -leas, -lice,
2. Middle English Period 1150 A.D - -nes and -ung to form new words.
1500 A.D.
3. Modern English Period - 1500 Thus in Old English we have words
onwards. like modig (Old Englisl~ mod,meaning
mood)

Skipping borrowing in English Literature (c) Back-Formation-

- By means of compounding and
Google it.. derivation longer words are
added to the vocabulary.
1. Celtic Borrowing
But there are several processes
2. Latin Borrowing- In Old Middle
which form new words by
and Modern
shortening.One of these is
3. Greek Borrowing
'back-formation'.This process
4. French Borrowing
involves the removal of affixes.
5. Scandinavian Borrowing
- Thus the new verb edit has been
6. Other Borrowing- From Dutch,
produced by back-fonnation from
German, Italian, Spanish,
the noun editor.
Portuguese, Arabic, Hebrew,
- The probable etymology of
Persian, India, America, Africa.
beggar is that it comes from the
WORD FORMATION French Beghard, the name of a
mendicant order. Thus the word-
 beg is a back-formation, and a fence (from defence).
very early one.
As is evident, this process has sometimes
- In the some way peddle is a back-
enriched the vocabulary by adding a
formation from pedlar, and
shorter word which neither supersedes the
- Burgle from burglar.
longer one nor is synonymous with it. For
- Other examples are diagnose
instance there is a useful differentiation in
from diagnosis, rove from rover
meaning or use between tend and attend,
and grovel from groveling.
mend and amend, and lone and alone.
- There are many jocular, slangy
and colloquial words that are
actually products of back- d. CONVERSION
formation: jell, (from jelly), orate e. BLENDING
(from oration), peeve (from f. AUTHOR’S CONTRIBUTION
peevish), etc.
UNIT – 4
Shortening: The most common form of
word-formation by shortening is that of CHANGES IN GRAMMER- Nahi pdhna,
simple abbreviation. This process is also kyuki smjh nhi aa rha.
known as 'clipping'. In this process a word
Q. Define Inflectional language and
may be lopped at either end: what remains
Synthetic language.
over is the new word; and both the old and
the new may then subsist at different A. Don’t know yet. Leave..
levels of the language, or they may
compete against each other for sole
acceptance.

Examples include

 fridge for refrigerator,

 pram for perambulator,
 curio for curiosity,
 fad for fadaise, etc
 Photo for photograph,
 gym for gymnasium
 and trig for trigonometry.

Examples of such words where the

shortening is done by lopping the earlier
part of the word are

wig (fromperiwig),

drawing-room (from withdrawing-room),

still (from distillely),

sport (form disport),

spite (from despite) and

 which comprises of certain organs of the
body, such as the muscles of the chest, the
BLOCK- 3 (A) PHONETICS &
tongue, the lips and so on.
PHONOLOGY (I)
The movement of these organs causes
UNIT-1
some disturbance which travels to the ear
THE SPEECH MECHANISM of the listener in the form of sound waves.

Structure The organs of speech and their speech

functions can be described with reference
Objectives to three systems:
 The Speech Mechanism the Respiratory System,
 Introduction
 The Respiratory Systc~n the Phonatory System and
 The Phonatoy System
the Articulatory System
 The Articulatory System
UNIT- 2
Passive and Active Articulators
THE DESCRIPTION AND Classification
Describing and Classifying Speech Sounds
OF CONSONANTS AND VOWELS
1.3.1 'Vowel and 'Consonant'
Structure
Let Us Sum Up
2.0 Objectives
Key Words
2.1 Description and Classification of
Suggested Reading Consonants

Exercises 2.1.1. Introduction

Answers to Exercises 2.1.2 Criteria for the Detailed

Description and Classification of
13 Pages- THE SPEECH MECHANISM Consonants
One of the chief characteristics of human 2.1.3 Place of Articulation
beings is their ability to communicate with
their fellow beings. They convey complex 2.1.4 Manner of Articulation
messages concerning every aspect of life.
2.1.5 A Brief Phonetic Description of
A child even at a very early age learns to
Consonants
communicate by imitating the recurrent
sound pattern. 2.2 Description and Classification of
Vowels
S/he has become familiar with is only later
that s/he learns the visual representation 2.2.1 lntroduction
of speech i.e, writing.
2.2.2 Criteria for the Description of
Vowels
Phonetics is the study and science of
speech sounds. When we produce speech 2.2.3 The Part of the Tongue Raised
sounds we use the Speech Mechanism
2.2.4 The Height of the Tongue
2.2.5 The Different Lip Positions UNIT- 3

2.2.6 Cardinal Vowels PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION &

PHONOLOGY
2.3 Monophthongs and Diphthongs
Phonetic transcription is the visual
In this unit, we discuss in detail, the
representation of speech sounds
criteria for describing and classifying
(or phones) by means of symbols. The most
consonants and vowels. We also understand
common type of phonetic transcription
the concept of monophthong and diphthong.
uses a phonetic alphabet, such as
We saw that the two broad categories of the International Phonetic Alphabet.
sound - 'vowel' and 'consonant' can be
A phonetic transcription looks quite unlike
produced with the air passage free
a regular (‘orthographic’) transcription.
(vowels) and with the air passage
The transcriber notes the way the spoken
completely blocked or narrowed so as to
words are pronounced, using a special
cause friction (consonants).
alphabet of phonetic symbols. The most
Monopthongs- We have so far described common is the International Phonetic
vowels assuming that the position of the Alphabet (IPA).
tongue remains unchanged throughout the
process of their production. These sounds, You have probably seen IPA symbols in
in other words are called MONOPTHONGS dictionaries. Printed between a word and
or PURE vowels. its definition, you’ll find something like
this:
In addition to vowels that are produced by
a single position assumed by the tongue, it ˈɔː.di.əʊ
is possible for the tongue to change its
position during the production of a vowel. This is a phonetic spelling of “audio.” Like
The change in position of the tongue also many English-language words, it is not
brings out a change in the quality of the obvious how to say “audio” if you are not a
vowel. The movement of the tongue from native speaker. But, when transcribed
one position to another is so gradual & phonetically, each sound in the word is
smooth that it may be called a glide. represented by a symbol. Non-English
speakers who know how to read IPA can
DIPTHONGS- The vowels produced as a read back a phonetic transcription with
result of such glides arc called diphthongs. the correct English pronunciation, even if
They are not the same as a sequence of they don’t know the meaning. In fact, IPA
two monopthongs example, the vowels in works for every spoken language, not just
the English word SEEING are a sequence
English.
of two monopthongs, whereas the vowel in
the English word FEAR is a diphthong. Here is an example of what the phonetic
transcription of a full sentence looks like:

hi ˈhæd‿ɪz ˈfɑːðəz‿ˈɪəz‿ ǀ ‿ənd‿ɪz

ˈmʌðəz‿ˈəʊpn ˈhɑːt ǁ
Can’t make head nor tail of it? Here’s the IPA symbols are composed of one or more
orthographic transcription of the same elements of two basic types,
sentence: letters and diacritics.
For example, the sound of the English
“He had his father’s ears and his mother’s
letter ⟨t⟩ may be transcribed in IPA with a
open heart.”
single letter, [t], or with a letter plus
As you can see, they are very different diacritics, [tʰ], depending on how precise
texts that have very different uses. one wishes to be.[note 1] Slashes are used to
signal phonemic transcription; thus /t/ is
With phonemic transcription, two similar more abstract than either [tʰ] or [t] and
sounds may share the same symbol if the might refer to either, depending on the
difference between the sounds does not context and language.
change the word’s meaning. Thus, a
phonemic transcription is less nuanced THE PHONEME
than a phonetic one.
In phonology and linguistics,
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). a phoneme /ˈfoʊniːm/ is a unit of sound
that distinguishes one word from another
The International Phonetic in a particular language.
Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system For example, in most dialects of English,
of phonetic notation based primarily on with the notable exception of the West
the Latin script. It was devised by Midlands and the north-west of
the International Phonetic Association in England,[1] the sound patterns /sɪn/ (sin)
the late 19th century as a standardized and /sɪŋ/ (sing) are two separate words
representation of speech sounds in written that are distinguished by the substitution
form.[1] The IPA is used by lexicographers, of one phoneme, /n/, for another
foreign language students and teachers, phoneme, /ŋ/. Two words like this that
linguists, speech-language pathologists, differ in meaning through the contrast of a
singers, actors, constructed language single phoneme form a minimal pair. If, in
creators and translators.[2][3] another language, any two sequences
The IPA is designed to represent those differing only by pronunciation of the final
qualities of speech that are part of lexical sounds [n] or [ŋ] are perceived as being the
(and to a limited extent prosodic) sounds in same in meaning, then these two sounds are
oral language: interpreted as phonetic variants of a single
phones, phonemes, intonation and the phoneme in that language.
separation of words and syllables.[1] Phonemes that are established by the use
To represent additional qualities of speech, of minimal pairs, such as tap vs tab or pat
such as tooth gnashing, lisping, and sounds vs bat, are written between
made with a cleft lip and cleft palate, an slashes: /p/, /b/. To show pronunciation,
extended set of symbols, the extensions to linguists use square brackets: [pʰ]
the International Phonetic Alphabet, may (indicating an aspirated p in pat).
be used.[2] There are differing views as to exactly
what phonemes are and how a given
language should be analyzed in phonemic
(or phonematic) terms.
However, a phoneme is generally regarded
as an abstraction of a set (or equivalence
class) of speech sounds (phones) that are
perceived as equivalent to each other in a
given language. For example, the English
k sounds in the words kill and skill are not
identical (as described below), but they are
distributional variants of a single phoneme
/k/.
ALLOPHONES- In the English language, Unit- 4 Syllabus
some letters are pronounced differently
depending on their position or placement in The Consonants of English
a word. For example, the /l/ sound is Objectives
pronounced differently in the two words:
love and wool. We call these different Introduction
sounds allophones. Therefore, allophones
 The Consonant Phonemes of English
can be defined as phonetic variations of
the same phoneme. In other words, it is a 4.2.1 The choice of a model
type of phoneme that changes its sound
4.2.2 The phonetic symbols
depending on the spelling of the word.
4.2.3 Classification of consonants on n
chart.

 Detailed Description of Consonants

4.3.1 Plosives

4.3.2 Affricates

4.3.3 Nasals

4.3.4 Fricatives

4.3.5 Lateral Approximants

4.3.6 Approximants

Consonant Clusters

4.4.1 Introduction

 The Syllable

4.5.1. Division of words into syllables

4.5.2. The structure of the syllable

4.5.3. Types of the syllable

  Placement of stress on
the word
 Initial and Final Consonant Clusters
 Patterns of stress in
4.6.1 Initial two consonant clusters, Englisll words
 Functions of word
4.6.2 Initial three-consonant clusters stress in English
 Some rules for
4.6.3 Final two-consonant clusters
placement of primary
4.6.4 Final four-consonant clusters stress on words

Let Us Sum Up 6.3. Stress and Rhythm in Connected

Speech
Key Words
6.3.1 Introduction
Exercises
6.3.2 Rhythm
Answers to Exercises
6.3.3 Influence of stress on rhythm
Unit- 5 Syllabus
in English
The Vowels of English
6.3.4 Wenk forms in English
5.0 Objectives
6.3.5 Contracted forms
5.1 Introduction
6.3.6 Use of strong forms of grammatical
5.2 The Vowel Phonemes of English words

 5.2.1 The Phonetic Symbols 6.4 Let Us Sum Up

 5.2.2 The Pure Vowels of English
6.5 Exercises
 5.2.3 A Detailed Description of the
Vowels of R.P. 6.6 Key Words

5.3 Let Us Sum Up 6.7 Answer to Exercises

5.4 Key Words Unit- 7

5.5 Exercises UNIT 7 INTONATION

5.6 Answers to Exercises Structure

Unit 6 WORD ACCENT, STRESS AND Objectives

RHYTHM IN CONNECTED SPEECH
Introduction

The form of Intonation

6.1 Introduction
7.2.1 Tone Group
6.2 Word Accent
7.2.2 Tonic Syllable
 Dividing a word into syllables
 Degrees of prominence 7.2.3 Nuclear Tone
 Levels of stress
The Function of Intonation
7.3.1 Grammatical function

7.3.2 Accentual function

7.3.3 Attitudinal fbnction

Uses of Tones

7.4.1 Falling Tone

7.4.2 Rising Tone

-7.4.3 Falling Rising Tone

7.4.4 Rising Falling Tone

Let Us Sum Up

Exercises

Key Words

Answers to Exercises