phonetics and phonology a presentation

7/29/2019 Phonetics and Phonology a Presentation

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A Presentation

Mentor

Irina Petrovska Liljana

Biljanovska

Phonetics and Phonology



The English Language

English is a widespread language spoken allover the world

The English language is the mother tongue inBritain, America, Australia, Canada and South

Africa, as well as the second language in several

countries in Asia and Africa and is being learnt as

a foreign language in almost every country.



Phonetics, Phonology and RP

Phonetics is a linguistic science which studies and

describes the sounds of speech in a language. Wewant to know what these sounds are, how they fallinto patterns and how they change under differentcircumstances. The English language has differentaccents, pronounced differently by people from

different geographical places, social classes, agesand educational backgrounds.

The accent that we concentrate on is the one that ismost often recommended for foreign learnersstudying British English, known as ReceivedPronunciation (RP). It is the most widespread andunderstood by well-educated people and higher society.

Phonology studies how sounds function in relation to

each other in a language, i.e. studies the soundsystems of a language. It studies the way speech



The Phoneme

Before presenting an inventory of English speech

sounds and ways of producing them, we must

clearly understand one basic concept:

THE PHONEME

is an abstract, minimal, contrastive unit that signals a difference in meaning of words

example: heat, feet, cheat – minimal pairs - they

differ in respect to only one sound /h/ /f/ ʧ/

respectively and in this case in initial position.These sounds, or phonemes have contrastive

significance as they distinguish one word from

another.



The Speech Organs



Vowels

We establish two distinct groups of sounds: vowelsand consonants

Vowels differ from each other by their length, and the

position and shape of the mouth and tongue when

they are articulated

short vowels : ɪ, e, æ, ʌ, ɒ, ʊ, ə

Long vowels : i:, ɜ:, ɑ:, ɔ:, ʊ:, ə:



Characteristics

EV#1 /i:/ -front, close, long, tense, unrounded

EV#2 /ɪ/- front, close, short, lax, unroundedEV#3 /e/ - front, half-open, short, lax, unrounded

EV#4 /æ/- front, open, short, lax, unrounded

EV#5 /ʌ/- front, half-open, short, lax, unrounded

EV#6 /ɑ:/- back, open, long, lax unrounded

EV#7 /ɒ/ - back, open, short, lax, rounded

EV#8 /ɔ:/- back, half-open, long, lax, rounded

EV#9 /ʊ/- back, close, short, lax, roundedEV#10 /ʊ:/- back, close, tense, long, rounded

EV#11 /ə:/- central, half-open, long, lax, unrounded

EV3#12 /ə/- central, half-open, short, lax, unrounded



Diphthongs

/ɪə/ /eə/ /ʊə/ /eɪ/ /aɪ/ /ɔɪ/ /əʊ/ /aʊ/

are sounds which consist of a movement or glide

from one vowel to another, in terms of length are

long (first part much longer and stronger that the

second).

there are 8 diphthongs in English and they fall

into three groups:



Consonants

are classified according to :

place of articulation

p,b,m -bilabials

f,v -labiodentals

ð, θ -dentals

t,d,n,l,s,z -alveolars

r -post-alveolar ʃ, ʤ, ʧ,ʒ -palato alveolar

j -palatal

k,g, ŋ -velar

w -labial-velar h - glottal

manner of articulation

complete obstruction at the mouth passage entirelyblocking the air flow for a moment

f,v, ð, θ, s, z, ʃ, ʒ, r - fricatives -articulated by narrowing the mouth passage so as tomake the air-flow turbulent, while allowing it to passcontinuously

ʤ, ʧ - affricates -articulated with first a

complete obstruction and then a narrowing of themouth passage

m,n, ŋ - nasals- complete obstruction of themouth passage allowing the air to pass through thenose

l - lateral - partial closure of the breath

passage allowing the breat h stream to escapefreely out of the mouth

j,w - semi-vowels –articulatory like

vowels, but function like consonants because theyare not syllabic



The Syllable

a fundamentally important unit in both phonetics andphonology.

“The syllable is an element of speech which acts asa unit of rhythm, consisting of a vowel, a syllabic consonant or vowel/consonant combination” ~Crystal

“The syllable is a group of one or more sounds with a peak and a nucleus” ~ Hancock

Phonetically speaking, the air pressure is mostnoticeable in the nucleus and therefore the hearer

may distinguish the central part of the syllable easier



The Syllable

example:

bitter [b' ɪtə] may be heard as bi-tter, bit-ter or bitt-er

Phonologically speaking, a syllable is defined as the way inwhich vowels and consonants combine to form varioussequences

example:bed [e] in [b' ed] where we see that a vowel can form a syllableon its own or it can be the centre/nucleus of a syllable.

syllabic consonants - some consonants may function as syllables

in final position /m,n,l, ŋ/ example: bottle, little, button



Stress

a relative force with which a given sound,syllable or word is pronounced.

the stressed sound, syllable or word will have agreater degree of loudness than unstressedwords, syllables or sounds.

There are three degress of stress:

main (primary stress) - the stress is on prominentsyllables or words or on important words in a

sentence

secondary stress - found in words of severalsyllables in addition to main stress.

unstressed- absence of any recognizable amount

of prominence



Stress

There are two kinds of stress: Word Stress

In English, one or more of the syllables in each

content word are stressed. In some words, where

more than one vowel is stressed, one vowel receivesgreat stress or accent (primary/main) marked with ’

where the other stress vowel gets secondary stress

marked with ‘

example: rèsignátion lìnguístics stress is contrastive in English and essential in cases

where it is used to distinguish between nouns and

verbs

example: súbject (noun) subjéct



Stress

Sentence StressWhen words are combined into phrases and

sentences, one of the syllables receives greater

stress than all of the others, only one of the vowels

in a sentence/phrase receives primary stress (or accent ). All the other stressed vowels receive

secondary stress.

Primary stress is placed on an adjective followed bya noun when the two are combined in a compound

noun, but when they are not joined in this way it is

the noun that receives the main stress

example: tíghtrope tight rópe



Intonation

it is important because it shows syntactic differencesexample: Josh is going. (statement) Josh is going?

(question)

a written sentence which is ambiguous may be

unambiguous when spoken by use of intonationexample: Josh left direction for Ana to follow.

- if Ana is to follow Josh, the rise in pitch would be on

the first syllable of the word “follow”, followed by a fall

in pitch

follow

- if Ana is to follow the directions Josh left, then the

pitch comes on the second syllable of the word“directions”



Aspects of Connected Speech

When a word occurs in a phrase or sentence its

pronunciation may sometimes be different from thepronunciation used when it is said in isolation

Elision- is the omission of a sound that wouldotherwise be present. It is characteristic of rapid,

casual speech.examples: grandmother /græn(d)mʌðə/

windmill /wɪn(d)mɪl/

/h/ is omitted when in initial unstressed position if the

preceding word ends in a consonantexample: give him ['gɪvɪm]

/t/ in cases like Christmas, whistle, hustle is notpronounced even in slow, formal speech. This type of

elision is called historical




Similitude- when a sound changes some of its

ordinary phonetic features under the influence of a

neighbouring sound but still remains the same

phoneme, it is said to show similitude with the

neighbouring sound in question

examples:

/t/ post-alveolar position in try under the influence

of /r/

/p/ non-aspirated in spy under the influence of /s//r/ devoiced in cry under the influence of /k/

/p/ spread lips in people under the influence of /i:/,

but

rounded lips in pool under the influence of




Assimilation- is the simplification of the pronunciation

of two consonants with different articulation; it is the

change in adjacent sounds to resemble each other

more closely

examples:

ten pence /tempens/

fine girl /f aɪŋgə:l/

horse shoe /hɔ: ʃ ʃʊ:/

The assimilation can be complete (one sound is

completely assimilated by the other) or partial (when

two sounds differ in more than one phonetic feature)




Juncture- it is sometimes difficult to distinguishbetween two phonetically similar words in

connected speech. When this is the case, it is the

type of juncture (joint) which helps to recognise

the distinctive features of the phonemes at the joint.

there are two kinds of juncture:

open-used at word boundaries, and close- occurs

within a word

example:

I scream [ ‘aɪskrɪ:m] - open

Ice cream [aɪskhrɪ:m] - close

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