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Blackwell I:extbooks in Linguistics Introductory Phonology

The books included in this series provide comprehensive accounts of some of the
central and most rapidly developing areas of research in linguistics.
Intended primarily for introductory and post-introductory students, they include
exercises, discussion points and suggestions for further reading.
Bruce Hayes
1. Liliane Haegeman, Introduction to Government and Binding Theory
(Second Edition)
2. Andrew Spencer, Morphological Theory
3. Helen Goodluck, Language Acquisition
4. Ronald Wardhaugh, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (Fifth Edition)
S. Martin Atkinson, Children's Syntax
6. Diane Blakemore, Understanding Utterances
7. Michael Kenstowicz, Phonology in Generative Grammar
8. Deborah Schiffrin, Approaches to Discourse
9. John Clark, Colin Yallop, and Janet Fletcher, An Introduction to Phonetics
and Phonology (Third Edition)
10. Natsuko Tsujimura, An Introduction to Japanese Linguistics (Second
Edition)
11. Robert D" Borsley, Modern Phrase Structure Grammar
12. Nigel Fabb, Linguistics and Literature
13. Irene Heim and Angelika Kratzer, Semantics in Generative Grammar
14. Liliane Haegeman and Jacqueline Gueron, English Grammar: A Generative
Perspective
15. Stephen Crain and Diane Lillo-Martin, An Introduction to Linguistic Theory
and Language Acquisition
16. Joan Bresnan, Lexical-Functional Syntax
17. Barbara A. Fennell, A History of English: A Sociolinguistic Approach
18. Henry Rogers, Writing Systems: A Linguistic Approach
19. Benjamin W. Fortson IV, Indo-European Language and Culture: An
Introduction
20. Liliane Haegeman, Thinking Syntactically: A Guide to Argumentation and
Analysis
21. Mark Hale, Historical Linguistics: Theory and Method
22. Henning Reetz and Allard Jongman, Phonetics: Transcription, Production,
Acoustics, and Perception
23. Bruce Hayes, Introductory Phonology
~WILEY-BLACKWELL
A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Publication
1 Phonetics

1.1 Phonetics and Phonology

There are two branches of linguistic SCience that deal with speech sounds:
phonetics and phonology.
Phonetics is primarily an experimental science, which studies speech sounds from
three viewpoints:

• Production: how sounds are made in the human vocal tract

• Acoustics: the study of the waveforms by which speech is transmitted through
the atmosphere
• Perception: how the incoming acoustic signal is processed to detect the sound
sequence originally intended by the speaker

Phonology is also, sometimes, an experimental science, though it also involves

a fair degree of formal analysis and abstract theorizing. The primary data on which
phonological theory rests are phonetic data, that is, observations of the phonetic
form of utterances. The goal of phonology is to understand the tacit system of
rules that the speaker uses in apprehending and manipulating the sounds of her
language (more on this in chapter 2).
Since phonological data are phonetic, and since (as we will see) the very nature
of phonological rules depends on phonetics, it is appropriate for beginning students
to study phonetics first. In particular, a phonologist who tries to elicit data from
native speakers without prior training in the production and perception of
speech sounds will be likely to have a hard time. The material that follows can
be taken to be a quick review of phonetics, or else a very quick introduction that
can be amplified with reading and practical training from materials such as those
listed at the end of the chapter.
In principle, a phonologist should understand all three of the areas of phonetics
listed above: production, acoustics, and perception" Of these, production prob-
ably has the greatest practical importance for the study of phonology. Since it is
also the simplest to describe, it is what will be covered here.
18 Phonetics

b. Same question as (a), but for the voiced counterpart of the glottal stop.
e. Find a pair of contrasting examples showing that we need to be able to tran-
scribe [1]] distinct from rtf]. Give IPA transcriptions for your examples. (Hint:
try stringing words together.)
d. Construct an unambiguous IPA symbol to depict a voiceless dental sibilant
2 Phonemic Analysis
affricate, explaining each diacritic that you use..
e.. Would it be sensible to use [<;>] in an IPA transcription? Explain your answer..
f. In articulating a velar nasal, the tongue body need not move as far to achieve
closure as in a velar stop. Explain why, referring to figure 1..3.
g. Give three ways to use the IPA diacritics to transcribe a low central
unrounded voweL
h. Find the errors in the following IPA transcriptions and correct them: sing [smg], 2.1 Phonology and Phonetics
threat [thn:t], table ['terble], exit ['exIt], ballad [b'xldd], heraldry ['heJ::lldri],
easy [izi], music ['musIk].
As noted in the previous chapter, there are two branches of linguistics that deal
with speech sounds. Phonetics studies speech sounds in ways that are close to the
speech stream, focusing on production, aCfVustics, and perception.. Phonology tends
Further reading to be more abstract, dealing not directly with the physical nature of speech sounds
(though that is of course quite relevant), but rather with the largely unconscious
rules for sound patterning that are found in the mind/brain of a person who speaks
Some important resources for the International Phonetic Alphabet are: a particular language. It could be said that a phonologist is a kind of grammarian,
and the area of grammar that she studies is the sound pattern of a language.
• The Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A Guide to the Use The rules studied by phonologists come in various kinds . First, phonetic study
ofthe International Phonetic Alphabet (1999, Cambridge University Press). shows that sounds vary with their context, often in complex ways; and phono-
• A website containing sound files for all the examples given in the Handbook: logists hypothesize rules to characterize this variation. Second, the sequencing
http://web.uvic . ca/ling/resources/ipa/handbook.htm.. and distribution of speech sounds is not arbitrary, but follows patterns also describ-
• The official IPA website (http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPNipa.html) . able with rules. Third, phonology is interfaced with other components of the
• The widely used free IPA fonts distributed by the Summer Institute of Linguistics grammar, particularly morphology and syntax, and there are rules that charac-
(http://scripts.siLorg/cms/scripts/page.php ?site_id=nrsi&id=IPAhome). terize the way in which sound patterning reflects information that arises within
these components.
An introductory phonetics textbook that I rely on in my own phonetics teach- The phonologies of many languages often show a level of complexity that make
ing is A Course in Phonetics, by Peter Ladefoged (5th ed., 2005, Heinle). This them a worthwhile intellectual challenge for the phonologist trying to understand
text is accompanied by downloadable sound files: see www.phonetics.ucla . edu. them.. It can take many years of careful research to fully explicate the sound pattern
A wide-ranging study of speech sounds is in Peter Ladefoged and Ian Maddieson, of a language. What is remarkable is that the same pattern is learned quite rapidly,
The Sounds of the World's Languages (1996, Blackwell). at the intuitive level, by humans when they are exposed to it in childhood.
The student who examines journal articles and other reference sources in phono-
logy will encounter, in addition to IPA, a bewildering variety of other phonetic
symbols . One also often finds the same symbol used in radically different ways..
A useful resource for navigating this thicket is the Phonetic Symbol Guide, by 2.2 Distinctiveness and Contrast
Geoffrey Pullum and William Ladusaw (2nd ed., 1996, University of Chicago Press).
A useful webpage on vocal tract anatomy is www.phon.. ox.. ac.uk/-jcoleman/
phonation . htm. The sounds of a language are intrinsically meaningless: their only purpose is to
form the building blocks of which words are made. For example, because English
has the sounds [t] and [d], the possibility exists of English having the word
 Text 2

Introductory Phonetics and Phonology

of English

By

Iyabode Omolara Daniel

 CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

1.1 Phonetics and Phonology – definition and distinction

1.1.1 Phonetics
Phonetics is a scientific description of what speech sounds exist in a
language. It represents how they are produced and perceived and what
acoustic properties they have. Thus, it can be put in the class of natural
sciences. Phonetics essentially seeks to trace the processes physiologically
involved in sound production. It describes the ways the sounds are
produced and the points at which they are articulated.

1.1.2 Phonology
Phonology is concerned with the regularities that govern the phonetic
realisations of sounds in words of a language. It looks at and tries to
establish a system of sound distinctions relevant to a particular language.
It then seeks to determine how the elements of this abstract system behave
in actual speech. Phonology actually delineates the functioning of sounds
in particular contexts.

1.1.3 The Distinction

From the above, it is obvious that phonology is not phonetics, neither
is phonetics phonology. They are however both subject to descriptive
details if proper instrument of analysis is applied. The question then is:
what is the difference?
From the definitions above, the difference should be somewhat
obvious. We have said that phonetics describes the physical realisation of
sounds. It studies the physiological processes involved in sound
production. Phonology on the other hand looks at the behavioural patterns
of sounds in actual speech, their realisations in different environments,
whatsoever these may be.
2 Chapter One

Phonetics is thus concerned with sound production while phonology

studies sound behaviour in realisation. Adeyanju (2003) expatiates on the
difference. This is in terms of phonetics being concerned with providing
the set of features which can describe the sounds of a language while
phonology provides the information that has to do with the functional
patterning of the sounds in the language. He thus views phonetics as
providing the raw materials for the description of the speech sounds
production while phonology is about the organisation of the sound patterns
in the language. Essentially then, we could safely say that phonetics
describes the production process involved in physical sounds while
phonology describes the environmental factors that shape these sounds in
particular points of occurrence.
To show this difference, let us look at the sound /t/.
/t/ is phonetically described as a pulmonic egressive voiceless
alveolar plosive. What this means is that the air stream coming out from
the lungs initiated the sound. The vocal folds did not vibrate in the course
of its production. The blade of the tongue had contact with the teeth ridge
(the alveolar). This contact created a total obstruction of the air stream
coming from the lungs. This air stream was suddenly released, thus
creating an ‘explosion’. These are the phonetic characteristics of the
sound. We will talk more about these later.
However, the environment in which this sound occurs in the course
of its production will influence the phonological description. These
environments are usually sounds, other sounds, that is, or the position of
the sound in relation to other sounds.
Thus, phonologically, /t/ can be realised with aspiration in the initial
position of a stressed syllable; that is, when /t/ comes before other sounds
in a stressed syllable. It can be realised as being lateralised when
immediately followed by the lateral /l/. It can also become nasalised if its
closest succeeding neighbour is a nasal, especially the alveolar nasal /n/,
which is actually a homorganic sound.
Thus, we see the phoneme /t/ realised phonologically as
/th/ in tape
/tL/ in kettle
/tN/ in kitten
/to/ in other positions as in Kate
Another example is /l/. /l/ is a lateral sound released after a partial
obstruction between the blade of the tongue and the alveolar. It is
voiced. Phonologically, this sound can become velarised before velar
sounds and when it occurs in the final position in words. It becomes
devoiced when it follows voiceless sounds. It becomes syllabic when
 Text 3

Chapter 1 – Phonetics and phonology: understanding the sounds of speech

Robert Kirchner, University of Alberta

Introduction
In most fields of study, language is thought of principally in terms of the written word,
for it is in this form that we usually make permanent records of important ideas. Rela-
tively little attention is spared for something as fleeting and unremarkable as spoken con-
versation. In linguistics, however, speech, rather than writing, is regarded as more central
to human language, for several reasons. First, humans have probably used spoken lan-
guages for 100,000 years, perhaps longer. Writing is a relatively recent development,
only a few thousand years old. Even today, most of the world's 5,000 or so languages
have no established writing system. But there is no society which communicates just by
writing, without a spoken language. Furthermore, children learn to speak long before they
learn to read and write; indeed, learning of spoken language takes place without formal
instruction.
But does ordinary speech really warrant scientific atten-
tion? Although we generally take the processes of speech pro-
duction and recognition for granted, they involve a range of
surprisingly intricate mental abilities – part of the knowledge
we have of the language(s) we speak. The words that we wish
to express seem to emerge inexplicably from our mouths, as
soundwaves. These soundwaves then hit the hearer's ear, send-
ing auditory signals to the brain, which are interpreted – again,
seemingly magic – as the words intended by the speaker. What
kind of mental system might underlie this capacity to produce
The Scream (detail),
and recognize speech? Which aspects of this system appear to by Edvard Munch
be common to all humans, and which aspects vary from lan-
guage to language? And what exactly goes on in the mouth and throat to produce speech?
These sorts of questions are the domain of phonetics and phonology (both from the
Greek root phon- 'sound'), the two subfields of linguistics concerned with speech sounds.
In the remainder of this chapter, we examine some basic observations, terminology, and
techniques of analysis used by phoneticians and phonologists to address these questions.

Phonetics, phonology – what's the difference?

Traditionally, phonetics deals with measurable, physical properties of speech sounds
themselves, i.e. precisely how the mouth produces certain sounds, and the characteris-
tics of the resulting soundwaves; while phonology investigates the mental system for
representing and processing speech sounds within particular languages. In recent years,
however, the two fields have increasingly overlapped in scope. For our purposes, the im-
portant point is that linguists (whether they're called phoneticians or phonologists) have
accumulated some basic observations about how the speech systems of human language
'work,' and these principles have a good deal to do with the physical properties of the
speech sounds in question.

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4 Phonetics and Phonology
key concepts
Articulatory phonetics, phonetic symbols
Consonants, approximants, vowels
Syllables, feet
Phonology, phonemes, allophones, phonological rules

i n t ro d u c t i o n
In this chapter we sketch the pronunciation system of English. We begin
with phonetics, a system for describing and recording the sounds of lan-
guage objectively. Phonetics provides a valuable way of opening our ears to
facets of language that we tend to understand by reference to their written
rather than their actual spoken forms. Phonology concerns itself with the
ways in which languages make use of sounds to distinguish words from each
other.
Teachers should be knowledgeable about the phonetics and phonology
of English because (1) the sound system is primary and the basis for the
spelling system; (2) they may have to teach English pronunciation to stu-
dents who are not native speakers of English; (3) they may have to teach
poetry, which requires that they teach about rhyme, alliteration, assonance,
and other poetic devices that manipulate sound; (4) it is important to un-
derstand accents and language variation and to react appropriately to them
and to teach appropriate language attitudes about them to students (see our
chapters on Language and Society and Usage in Book II); (5) we are so liter-
ate that we tend to “hear” the sounds of our language through its spelling
system, and phonetics/phonology provides a corrective to that; and (6) pho-
netics and phonology provide systematic and well-founded understandings
of the sound patterns of English.

articulatory phonetics
We have three goals in this section. First, we introduce you to the ways in
which the sounds of English are produced. Second, we develop a system for
classifying speech sounds on the basis of how they are produced. Simultane-
ously we introduce an alphabet approximating that developed by the Inter-
national Phonetics Association (IPA), which will allow us to refer to sounds
quite precisely. When we want to indicate that letters are to be interpreted
as phonetic symbols, we enclose them in square brackets, [ ], and when we
want to indicate that letters are to be interpreted as letters from an ordinary
spelling system, we enclose them in angled brackets, < >.

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Delahunty and Garvey

The phonetic alphabet uses many of the letters of the English alphabet, but
their pronunciations are very restricted and are not always the ones you might
expect. In this system, there are no “silent” letters—every phonetic symbol
represents an actual sound. Every letter always has the same pronunciation
regardless of its context, no letter has more than one pronunciation, and no
sounds are represented by more than one letter. To make fine distinctions,
phoneticians add special symbols, called diacritics, to the basic letters. For
some English sounds and for languages other than English, symbols not from
the English alphabet have been devised. (You might visit the IPA web site for
a full listing of the symbols.)
In the sections to follow, we describe the sounds represented by these
symbols and how these sounds are made. As we go through these sections,
pay attention to the ways in which individual sounds are ordinarily spelled
in English, as well as to the phonetic spellings.
To produce speech, air must flow from the lungs through the vocal tract,
which includes the vocal folds (popularly called the vocal cords, though
they are more like thick elastic bands than strings), the nose or nasal cav-
ity, and the mouth or oral cavity (See Figure 1). The vocal folds vibrate
for some sounds but not for others. Air flows through the nose for certain
sounds but not others. But the main creator of speech sounds is the mouth.
We will describe the roles that each of these elements plays in the following
paragraphs.

figure 1: vocal apparatus

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