How do people understand and produce language?

What is phonology and what are the phonemes of English?

Express and receive ideas Sound travels Sound is functional in the dark

The brain sends messages (signals) to tighten and relax the muscles that control speech (lungs, vocal cords, tongue, lips)

Phonology-the study of speech sounds Phonemes-meaningful sounds of

language Linguistic-scientific study of language Phonetics-study of sounds across

languages

Air not constricted in pharynx; air flows freely for all vowel sounds

Movement of the tongue and lips change the shape of the oral cavity to produce different vowel sounds

Linguist may refer to vowels as syllabics-each syllable contains vowels

English consist of short (lax), long (tense), reduced vowels

All vowels are voiced 6 short vowels 7 long vowels (called diphthongs-2

sounds) 2 reduced vowels Other factors effecting vowels

Say the following words paying attention the position of the tongue. Pit, pet, pat, putt, put, pot

What did you notice? Now say the words again using the mirror

to see the position of the tongue. What did you notice?

• Air is constricted as it moves towards the lips (slowing down or stopping)

• Different consonant sounds depend on how and where air is slowed or stopped (voiced, voiceless)

• Air maybe constricted at lips, teeth, alveolar ridge, hard palate, soft palate or velum

• Generally appear in matched pairs one voiced and the other voiceless

• 24 consonant phonemes

Bilabial

Labio-dental

Inter-dental

Alveolar

Alveo-palatal

Velar

Glottal

Stops VoicelessVoiced

pb

td

kg

fricatives

VoicelessVoiced

fv

θð

sz

Šž

h

affricates

VoicelessVoiced

čј̆�

nasals Voiced m n ŋ

liquids Voiced r, l

glides Voiced y w

Formed by completely blocking the air for an instant and then releasing it

3 pairs of stops /p/,/b/ (bilabial) /t/, /d/ /k/, /g/

3 pairs of stops set apart in the vocal tract (front of mouth, middle of mouth, and back of mouth)

Constricting airflow through the vocal tract which causes friction; friction sets air molecules in motion as they pass through the narrow opening; this action produces sound

9 fricatives; in pairs except /h/

Briefly stopping air flow then releasing it with some friction

Combination of a stop and a fricative 2 affricates in English language /č/, /ј̆�/

3 nasal consonants /m/; mom /n/; Nan /ŋ/; ring

voiced

Smooth sound 2 phonemes called liquids

/l/, lull /r/, roar

2 consonant phonemes Sometimes called semivowels

/y/, yes /w/, wet

Only occur at the beginning of a syllable in English or as part of a blend (swing)

Try to say “Peggy Babcock” 5 times as fast as you can.

What did you notice? What did you notice when you said the

name the second time? Why might this occur?

Word Recognition view: sounds plays a central role Identifying words involves

recoding written marks into the sounds of oral language. To convert written marks into sounds, readers need to understand that words in oral language are made up of individual sounds this knowledge is referred to as phonemic awareness. In addition, readers need to learn how sounds correspond to the marks used in writing. Phonics rules attempt to capture these correspondences.

Sociopsycholinguistic view: sounds play a lesser role Readers use graphophonic

cues, a combination of visual and sound information, as they sample texts and make and confirm predictions. Graphophonics is just one of the three language cueing systems readers use to make meaning from written text. Graphophonic knowledge develops as children, who already can distinguish among sounds to make sense of oral language, combine their knowledge of sounds with their emerging understanding of written language to construct meaning from written text.

Phonemic Awareness: A Key to Word Recognition Stanovich (1986)

“Matthew Effect in Reading” Identified phonemic awareness as the key factor

that differentiated good readers from poor readers

Phonemic awareness appears to help children learn to read and reading helps build phonemic awareness

Adams (1990) identified 5 levels of phonemic awareness:1. rhymes and alliterations in nursery rhymes2. Do oddity task (picking out a word that starts with

a different phoneme from others in a series)3. Blend or split syllables4. Perform phonemic segmentation (count the

number of phonemes in a word like cat)5. Perform phoneme manipulation task (adding,

deleting, substituting phonemes) Items 1 and 3 appear to be phonological because they

involve working with units bigger than phonemes

The National Reading Panel Report (2000) Phonemic awareness and phonics important

Put Reading First (Armbruster and Osborn, 2001) Phonemic awareness can be taught and learned

Phoneme isolation (What is the first sound in van?) Phoneme identify (What sound is the same in fix, fall,

fun?) Phonemic categorization (Which word doesn’t belong-

bus, burn, rag?) Phoneme blending (Combine individual phonemes to

for words) Phoneme segmentation (Divide a word into its

phonemes and say each one)

Put Reading First: “phonemic awareness instruction is most

effective when children are taught to manipulate phonemes by using the letters of the alphabet.” (p.7)

Logical teaching sequence: Phonemic awareness skills Names and sounds of letters Phonics rules Sight words Structural analysis skill

Sociopsycholingustic Phonemic awareness is subconscious Phonemic awareness is a component of one of

the 3 cueing systems: graphophonemic system

For the purpose of reading, children do not need to be consciously aware of phonemes. However, to produce writing children need to be aware of sound and of how sounds convert to letters.

Neumann (1999) Read Aloud project

After the discussion today: What do you see as possibilities?