tópicos avançados em fonologia - introdução

Professor: Fabio Nunes

Aula 1: Introdução

Tópicos Avançados em Fonologia

Content

1. Acquisition / learning of the phonological system of English

2. Interference of the phonological system of English and Portuguese, on a theoretical level

3. Interference at the level of pronunciation

4. Other possible reasons to explain deviations

#1 Acquisition /

learning of the phonological

system of English

The process of learning English as a foreign

language for speakers of Portuguese in Brazil,

requires, for proper understanding of the

messages, the memory retention through study,

observation and experience in the target

language, grammar, lexicon, morphology,

culture and also the correct pronunciation of

words. However, we must consider that the

interference of the mother tongue on the

target language is very frequent.


Learning by adults and children

An adult has cognitive maturity and

control of the mother tongue. An adult

may rely on the use of grammar to learn a

foreign language, for instance;

A child will make generalizations by

inference.


Learning by adults and children

To become fit in a foreign language can

occur at any age, in different ways, with

different purposes and at different stages

of learning.


Importance of phonology The structure of a language consists traditionally

in phonology, grammar and semantics. The

requirements, however, are greater in the case of

phonology, because it would be an absolutely

central problem for a foreign language, a

phoneme or group of phonemes were pronounced

incorrectly by the learner, because communication

with native people could be affected.


Importance of phonology

The “errors” serve to show that students

are developing the linguistic system of the

foreign language and one of the ways to

learn is making mistakes, because at

the time the student recognizes the error,

the own student tries to overcome it.


#2 Interference of the phonological

systems of English and Portuguese, on a theoretical level

There are similarities and differences

between the two systems. The student

will hear, at the beginning of the

learning of English language, only the

phonemes of their own language,

Portuguese.

2. Interference of the phonological system of English…

The teacher has to discern which

technique should be used to introduce,

first, the auditory recognition of

phonemes and then guide the student

to a conscious reproduction that allows

him to overcome the possible

difficulties.


The articulatory proximity can be one of the

first difficulties of the student when he tries to

imitate the sounds that are strange to their

mother tongue. This means that, upon hearing,

the student does not realize that a particular

phoneme does not belong to the phonological

system of his native language; when trying to

pronounce it, he uses the phonemes they know

in their own language.



Examples The phoneme /ŋ/ may be pronounced

by Brazilians as /n/, in words like going or thanks.

Some phonemes, such as /p t k b d /, do not occur in the final position in Portuguese, while they can appear in the final position in English words. So, Brazilians may add a vowel sound to such words, like cap (pronoucing /kœpi/ - ‘quépi’ - instead of /kœp/)

#3 Interference at the level of pronunciation


Acquiring the phonological system of the

target language involves not only to

recognize, but also internalize, reproduce

and control the sounds of the language

and their combinations. Thus, when

learning a foreign language, the

interference of the mother tongue is

absolutely inevitable.


Among the features of the mother

tongue causing phonological deviations,

we can mention the phonological

particularities of the target language,

the different allophony, and the

phonetic proximity.


Phonological particularities

The phonological particularities are

those which are part of the

articulation system of the language

specifically compared with one

another.


Example

Regular verbs in the English language (those

with termination -ed) have three possibilities

for pronunciation, according to phoneme

before the addition of the -ed:

/t/ (voiceless)

/d/ (voiced)

/ɪd/ for verbs with the ending in /t/ and /d/.


Different allophony

The different allophony between the

two languages can lead the student to

pronounce the different realizations of

some English phonemes the way he is

used to do it in his own language


Example

In English, the phonemes /tʃ/ and /dʒ/

can cause problems for students who do

not utilize them in their own language.

In Portuguese, such phonemes are

allophones of the phonemes /t/ and /d/,

only in some regions of Brazil.


Examples

Tia /tʃiǝ/ (Fortaleza) or /tiǝ/ (Juazeiro do

Norte)

Dia /dʒiǝ/ or /diǝ/

DJ /dʒidʒei/ or /didʒei/


Phonetic proximity

The phonetic proximity, as the word says,

a phoneme is of the mother tongue which

has a very close articulation to the

phoneme of the foreign language that is

not realized in the mother tongue.


Example

The English phonemes /θ/ and /ð/

(which are not part of the articulatory

system of the Portuguese language),

are replaced by /t/, /f/ and /s/, for the

voiceless phoneme /θ/, and /d/, /v/

and /z/, for voiced phoneme /ð/.


Examples

Thanks /tæŋks/ instead of /θæŋks/

Three /fri/ instead of /θri/

Mother /mʌdər/ instead of /mʌðər/

#4 Other possible reasons to

explain deviations

Writing

A kind of interference that seems to be

quite obvious is the writing. Both

English and Portuguese languages use

the Latin alphabet and, at first glance, it

seems easy to read the words in both

languages .


Extralinguistic aspects

The extralinguistic aspects inform about

the speaker: if the speaker belongs to our

relations, if his speech is formal or

informal, whether it is female or male,

whether child or adult, what is his

education and even what is the

socioeconomic level to which he belongs.


SourceSANT’ANNA, M. As interferências fonológicas no

inglês como língua estrangeira para os falantes

do português do Brasil. In: Dialogia, v. 2,

Outubro/2003.

tópicos avançados em fonologia - introdução

Education

learning of english

foreign language

english phonemes

target language

english words

process of learning

phonological deviations

native language