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Unit 5 PR Linguistics

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11 views14 pages

Unit 5 PR Linguistics

Uploaded by

ankitha raksha
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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24VML1C205

Introduction to Linguistics Course

Unit 5

Phonology
Faculty Profile
Prof. Meghana v Goshi works as an English professional. She has a true passion for teaching
and has communicated with various universities and institutes. She has Seven years of
experience and has worked at various levels of higher education. Balancing her job with their
teaching duties like BOE, BOS, External Examiner and Reviewer she likes freelancing work in
research and consequently benefits from both roles. She holds a Master's degree in English
and is also a research scholar. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at Presidency University, with
an emphasis on Northeastern literature and it is an insurgency research project.

She is also a visiting faculty at RV Group of Institutions. Her areas of specialising include
European drama, poetry analysis, visual and graphic narratives, Linguistics, Indian literature,
and Cultural studies.
Today’s Focus

Definition
Difference between Phonetics and Phonology
Phonemes
Phones and Allophones
Minimal Pairs
Assimilation and elision
Languages Of The Day
What Is Phonology?
1. Phonology is the study of the patterns of sounds in a language and across
languages.
2. Phonology is the study of the categorical organisation of speech sounds in
languages; how speech sounds are organised in the mind and used to convey
meaning.
3. Phonology is typically defined as “the study of speech sounds of a language or
languages, and the laws governing them,” particularly the laws governing the
composition and combination of speech sounds in language.
4. All the languages in the world sound so different because the way the languages
use speech sounds to form patterns differs from language to language.
5. The study of how speech sounds form patterns is phonology.
6. Phonology tells us what sounds are in a language, how they do and can combine
into words, and explains why certain phonetic features are important to
identifying a word.
Continued…
• “a phoneme is the smallest unit that distinguishes meaning
between sounds in a given language.” EG: Puff: /pʌf/

• If we change the phoneme (not the letters) /f/ to the


phoneme /k/ we get another word.

• We get the word puck which looks like this in broad


transcription: /pʌk/

• This is a type of test that we can do to see if /f/ and /k/ are
different phonemes.

• If we swap these two phonemes we get a new word so we


can say that in English /f/ and /k/ are different phonemes.

1. Phones - human sounds


2. Phonemes - units which distinguish meaning in a
language
3. Allophones - non-distinctive units
Speech Sounds/ Phonemes
● Despite there being just 26 letters in the English language there are
approximately 44 unique sounds, also known as phonemes. The 44 sounds
help distinguish one word or meaning from another. Various letters and
letter combinations known as graphemes are used to represent the
sounds.
● The 44 English sounds fall into two categories: consonants and vowels.
● Note that there is no such thing as a definitive list of phonemes because of
accents, dialects and the evolution of language itself. Therefore you may
discover lists with more or less than these 44 sounds.
Vowels
A vowel is a particular kind of speech sound made by changing the shape
of the upper vocal tract, or the area in the mouth above the tongue.

A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in


the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech
sounds.
● Vowel Sounds are 20 in number.
● Monophthongs(12). /i:/ /ɪ/ /e/ /æ/ /a:/ /ɒ/ /ᴐ:/ /ʊ/ /u:/ /ʌ/ /ɜ:/ /ə/
● Diphthongs(8). /ɪə/ /ʊə/ /eə/ /eɪ/ /ɔɪ/ /aɪ/ /aʊ/ /əʊ/
Consonants
● International Phonetic Alphabet - There are 24 consonant sounds in English
● English has 44 speech sounds. Some consonants have voice from the voicebox and some don’t.
These consonants are voiced and voiceless pairs /p/ /b/, /t/ /d/, /k/ /g/, /f/ /v/, /s/ /z/, /θ/ /ð/, /ʃ/ /ʒ/,
/ʈʃ/ /dʒ/. These consonants are voiced /h/, /w/, /n/, /m/, /r/, /j/, /ŋ/, /l/.
● https://youtu.be/jtsvomse_4A
● An unvoiced consonant means that there is is no vibration or voice coming from the voicebox
when the sound is pronounced. Examples of unvoiced consonant sounds are /s/, /p/ and /t/.
● A voiced consonant means that there is voice or vibration coming from the voicebox when the
sound is pronounced. Examples of voiced consonant sounds are /v/, /b/ and /g/.
● https://www.speechactive.com/english-consonants-ipa-international-phonetic-alphabet/
Continued…
● A phoneme is really the mental representation of a sound, not
the sound itself.
● The phoneme is the part that is stored in your brain.
● When you actually produce a sound you are producing a phone.
● CAT: You see that phonemic representation of the word is /kæt/
● Use your vocal tract to produce the sounds [k], [æ], and [t] and
you get the word [kæt].
● Phones, the actual sound part that you can hear, are marked
with brackets ([]) and the phonemes, the mental
Phonemes Vs Phones
● Phonemes are the mental representation of the how a word
sounds and phones are the actual sounds themselves.
● Example: the word puff we can write out the phonemic
representation (with phonemes using slashes) and the phonetic
representation (with phones using brackets). /pʌf/ [pʌf]
So why do we need two different versions?
● Recall that the transcription that uses phonemes is called broad
transcription while the transcription that uses phones is called
narrow transcription.
● These names can give us a clue about the differences.
● By looking at the broad transcription, /pʌf/, we can know how to
pronounce the word puff. (I can pronounce the word, you can
pronounce the word, and a nonnative English speaker can all
Continued…
● However, what if we wanted more information about how the
word actually sounds? Narrow transcription can help us with
that.
● Narrow transcription just gives us extra information about how
a word sounds.
● So the word puff can be written like this in narrow
transcription: [pʰʌf]
● This narrow transcription of the word puff gives us a little more
information about how the word sounds.
● Here, [p] is aspirated.
● This means that when pronouncing the sound [p], we have an
Allophones
● We can pronounce the /p/ phoneme in at least two different ways: [p] and [pʰ].
● This means that [p] and [pʰ] are allophones of the phoneme /p/.
● The prefix -allo comes from the Greek állos meaning “other,” so you can think of
allopones are just “another way to pronounce a phoneme.”
● This really helps us when we talk about different accents.
● Take the word water for example. In American accent, phonemic representation for the
word water is:/wɑtəɹ/
● Many Americans don’t pronounce a [t] sound. • Most Americans will pronounce that [t]
similar to a [d] sound.
● It’s not pronounced the same was as a [d] sound is pronounced, though.
● It’s actually a “flap” and written like this: [ɾ]
● So the actual phonetic representation of the word water for many Americans is: [wɑɾɚ]
Recap

A phoneme is a mental representation of a sound, not necessarily a

letter.

Also, when we swap a phoneme we change the word.

A phone is the phonetic representation of a phoneme (the actual

sound).

Allophones are different ways to pronounce the same phoneme while

keeping the same meaning.

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