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Phonetics 1

phonetic and phonology
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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
18 views

Phonetics 1

phonetic and phonology
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Introduction to

English Phonetics and Phonology


Lecture 1
Four core areas of Linguistics
• ( 1 ) Phonetics and phonology deal with pronunciation,
or, more precisely, with speech sounds and the sound
system.
• (2) Morphology covers the structure of words.
• (3) Syntax explains sentence patterns. (Morphology and
syntax, often combined into morphosyntax, have
traditionally been referred to as grammar.)
• (4) Lexicology and semantics describe the vocabulary,
or lexicon, and explore different aspects of meaning.
Phonetics and Phonology

• Phonetics is concerned with how sounds


are produced, transmitted and perceived.
• Phonology is concerned with how sounds
function in relation to each other in a
language (System).
• Phonetics is about sounds of language,
phonology about sound systems of
language.
English Phonetics
What is ‘Phonetics’?
• The study and description of concrete
utterances and concrete, individual speech
sounds.
• Phonetics first of all divides, or segments,
concrete utterances into individual speech
sounds. It is therefore exclusively
concerned with parole or performance.
Phonetics can then be divided into three
distinct phases:
• (1) articulatory phonetics, (production of
sounds),
• (2) acoustic phonetics (transmission of
sounds), and
• (3) auditory phonetics (perception of
sounds).
5
English Phonetics
• (1) Articulatory phonetics describes in
detail how the speech organs, also called
vocal organs or articulators in the vocal
tract are used in order to produce, or
articulate, speech sounds.
English Phonetics
• (2) Acoustic phonetics studies the
physical properties of speech sounds, i.e.
the way in which the air vibrates as
sounds pass from speaker to listener. A
spectrograph is a machine that measures
the soundwaves and depicts them as
images, called spectrograms or
sonograms, showing the duration,
frequency, intensity, and quality of the
sounds.
English Phonetics
• (3) Auditory phonetics investigates the
perception of speech sounds by the
listener, i.e. how the sounds are
transmitted from the ear to the brain, and
how they are processed.
Let’s start by looking at the Speech Chain
which may be diagrammed this way:
• Sounds can be divided into consonants &
vowels. The former can be characterised
according to 1) Place, 2) Manner of
Articulation, and 3) Voice (Voiceless or
Voiced).
• For vowels, one uses a coordinate system
called a Quadrangle with which actual
vowel values are located.
Consonants & Vowels

• Sounds

Sounds

Consonants Vowels
Obstruction of airflow Free flow of air
Consonants Categorization
• Manner of articulation
closure made by the articulators and the degree
of the obstruction of the air stream by those
articulators.
• Place of articulation
Position of the articulators e-g: tongue, lips etc.
• Status of glottis
Voicing : vocal cords are vibrating
Voiceless: vocal cords do not vibrate
Human Anatomy
Human Anatomy
Voicing

• Voicing occurs in the larynx where the


vocal folds are.
– When the vocal folds are held together, they
start to vibrate when air passes through them
→ a voiced sound.
• E.g. zzzzzzzzzzz vvvvvvvvvvvvv
– When they are held apart, they cannot
vibrate; air passes freely through them → a
voiceless sound.
• E.g. ssssssssssssss ffffffffffffff
Places of articulation- English

• Where in the vocal tract the airflow is


restricted.
– Bilabial- two lips [b, p, m]
– Labiodental- upper teeth & lower lip [f, v]
– Dental- between the teeth [θ, ð ]
– Alveolar- front part of the tongue on alveolar ridge
[s, z, n, t, d, l]
– Palatal- front part of the tongue on the hard palate
[ʃ, ʒ, tʃ, dʒ, j]
– Velar- the back of the tongue on the velum [k, g, ŋ]
– Glottal- through open glottis [h]
Manners of articulation

• Stops → complete blockage [p, t, k, b, d,


g] (also plosives)
• Fricatives → partial blockage [f, v, s, z…]
• Affricates → stop + fricative [tʃ, dʒ]
• Nasal → through nasal cavity [m, n, ŋ]
• glides [j, w] → take the shape of the vowel
(also semi-vowels, approximants)
• Liquids → lowering both sides of the
tongue [l , r]
Consonants
Redouane Boulguid 19 12/06/24
Safi_Morocco
Vowel Chart
English Phonology

What is Phonology?
• The study and description of the sound
system of a language.
Phonology
• Language dependent subject
• Phonological rules
• Other topics might involve
– Script to phonemic conversion
– Stress analysis
– Syllabification
– Intonation
English Phonology
• Phonology deals with the speakers'
knowledge of the sound system of a
language. It is therefore exclusively
concerned with competence. Phonology
can be divided into two branches: (1)
segmental phonology and (2)
suprasegmental phonology.

23
• Speaker’s Brain = Phonology.

• Speaker’s Mouth = Articulatory Phonetics.

• Transmission of sound via air = Accoustic Phonetics.

• Listener’s Ear = Auditory Phonetics.

• Listener’s Brain = Phonology.


THE SPEECH CHAIN
English Phonetics & Phonology
• Phonetic transcription
• If we want to write down speech sounds as accurately
as possible, we cannot depend on traditional spelling.
We need a method that relates sounds to letters or
symbols more systematically: Each sound must be
represented consistently by the same symbol, and,
conversely, there must be a separate symbol for each
distinctive sound. Such a one-to-one correspondence
between speech and writing is referred to as a
phonographic relationship.
English Phonetics & Phonology
• The symbols that we use to represent speech sounds
in this manner are phonetic symbols. A whole set of
them form a phonetic alphabet.
• Narrow transcription: captures as many aspects of a
specific pronunciation as possible and ignores as few
details as possible. Using the diacritics provided by the
IPA, it's possible to make very subtle distinctions
between sounds.
• Broad transcription (or phonemic transcription):
ignores as many details as possible, capturing only
enough aspects of a pronunciation to show how that
word differs from other words in the language.
Broad vs. Narrow Phonetic
Transcription
“I went to the store and bought a nice bottle
of wine.”

/aɪ wɛnt tə ðə stɔɚ ənd bɔt ə naɪs bɑɾɫ əv


waɪn/

/a:ɪ wɛnt tə ðə stɔɚ ən bɑ?t ə næɪs bɑɾɫ ə


wa:ɪn/
Phonetic Transcription

• The best-known system:


– The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
• IPA has been developing since 1888.
• The system represents each sound of
human speech with a single symbol.
• The symbol is enclosed in brackets [ ].
Benefits of Phonetic Transcription
• We can use IPA transcription across
languages, there is one symbol for EVERY
possible human sound
• English spelling does a poor job of showing
how words are pronounced
• There is a 1-1 correspondence of sound to
symbol
• Cat [kæt]
• Cell [sel]
• When we talk about English spelling,
each unit is called a letter. When we talk
about phonetic transcription, each unit is
called a symbol.

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