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First course of the degree Estudios ingleses (English studies or philology) - Universidad de La Laguna Subject: English pronunciation 1.1. PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY: two branches of the Linguistic Sciences. ● Phonetics and phonology are both concerned with the way humans produce and hear speech. ● Phonetics is the scientific study of speech sounds/phones / phonic substances (any speech sound a person is able to produce). ● Phonetics deals with allophones, realizations, or variants of the abstract units called phonemes. ● Phonology is the scientific study of the selection, function, and organization of speech sounds into a given system. ● Phonology studies how the distinctive sounds of a language interact, how they combine and contrast in the system to produce differences in meaning, and how they can be neutralized. ● Phonology deals with phonemes “the smallest contrastive phonological unit which can produce a difference in meaning” ● The difference between a letter and a phoneme is that a letter is a symbol that represents a sound and a phoneme is an abstract unit that allows us to distinguish meaning. Exp: mesa-pesa/ kilo-caja
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
1.1.1. PHONETICS
● Phoneticians are only interested in sounds that are used in meaningful speech, and in discovering the range and variety of sounds used in this way in all the known languages of the world. ➢ The central concerns in phonetics are:
- The discovery of how speech sounds are produced
- How they are used in spoken language
- How we can record speech sounds with written symbols
- How we hear and recognize different sounds
- In 1, when we study the production of speech sounds, we can observe what speakers do (articulatory observation) and we can try to feel what is going on inside our vocal tract.
- In the second area, phonetics overlaps with phonology since in order to know how sounds are used you need to understand how they function and how they can be organized.
- Thirdly, phonetics needs agreed conventions for using phonetic symbols that represent speech sounds.
- In 4, phonetics deals with the auditory aspect where it is shown that the ear is capable of making fine discriminations between different sounds. ● Phonetics look at human speech as a speech chain that starts in the speaker’s brain (where a psychological activity drives the speaker to arrange his/her thoughts into a linguistic form) and ends in the listener’s brain (where a psychological activity stimulates the hearer to decodes the linguistic message in order to recognize it). ➢ Within these two ends of the speech chain, a physiological activity takes place. In it, the speaker’s vocal tract, the transmission of sound through the air, and the listener’s ear will constitute stages of primary importance:
- The articulatory stage: where muscles are activated in order to produce the sound.
- The acoustic stage: where the movement of these muscles produces sound waves that must reach the listener’s ear.
- The auditory stage: where the vibration of these sound waves reaches the listener’s ear muscles, whose movements must be interpreted by the listener’s brain.
The allophones of a phoneme can be: ● In complementary distribution: When they are mutually exclusive and they can never occur in the place of another. One occurs under condition A but never B, while the other occurs under condition B but never A. ➢ (E) [丨] in / [十] in ➢ (E) [t] in and [t ] (aspirada) in areʰ allophones of the phoneme /t/ ➢ (Sp) [d] and [ ♁] in ● In free variation: When they are not conditioned by the context and they may occur in the same environment without being in contrast: ➢ (Sp) /s/ →[s]/[h]/[Ø] unpredictable in Andalusian/Canarian speeches. ➢ (E) in either can be pronounced as /i:/ or /a /, even by the same speaker.ɪ ● One can go beyond phonemes and look at the way in which they can combine in a language. This is studied in phonotactics (“phono”=sounds; “tactic” = arrangement, how the sound can be arranged). ● Phonotactics can go beyond with the analysis of syllable structure; the rules and restrictions that govern the sound sequences of a language. These constraints are not random but a predictable part of its structure. ● In phonology, the study of stress, rhythm, and intonation has also led to new approaches to functional suprasegmentals (pronunciation and intention of the phrase) ● For some phonologists, the most important area is the relationships between the different phonemes – how they form groups, the nature of the oppositions between them, and how those oppositions may be neutralized (elimination of a phonemic distinction in a particular phonological context). Phonotactics: every syllable is made up of (at most) three parts: ● Onset: the consonants (C) that begin the syllable. ● Nucleus: the sound in the middle of the syllable (usually a vowel (V)). ● Coda: the consonants that end the syllable.
Languages differ in permissible syllable structures. Here are those of English: ● English does not allow words to start with [ Ƞ] ● English may have up to three consonants in onset position (as in `[spre ] ). In thisɪ case the first C (consonant) has to be [s], the second has to be a voiceless stop (i.e. [p], [t], or [k]) and the third has to be a liquid or a glide (i.e. [I], [r], [j] or [w]). ● Impossibility of words where two stops occur initially. ● Knowledge of phonotactics is a part of the subconscious knowledge of one's native language 1.2. ARTICULATORY PHONETICS Within Articulatory phonetics two basic segments of speech are differentiated:
- Consonants
- Vowels The production of consonants involves some sort of obstruction to the airstream in the vocal tract. The classification of consonants is along 3 criteria:
SYLLABLE STRUCTURE
Syllable onset rime nucleus coda
SYLLABLE STRUCTURE EXAMPLES
syllable syllable syllable rime C rime CCC rime V V C V CCC
ENGLISH
V CV CCV CCCV
VC CVC CCVC CCCVC
VCC CVCC CCVCC CCCVCC
VCCC CVCCC CCVCCC CCCVCCC
- Affricates: Complex phonemes in which there is a sequence of a stop followed by a homorganic fricative. It is homorganic (same organ of speech) and there are two stages, plosives and fricatives.
- Nasals: Characterized by a complete closure in the oral cavity. The air escapes through the nose. Exp: mmm
- Approximants: Characterized by an approximation (narrowing, not close contact) of the articulating organs with no production of friction or turbulent airstream.
- Laterals: Characterised by the way in which the air escapes through one or both sides of the tongue. Exp: L
- Taps: An active articulator taps against a passive one (i.e. Sp. faro). , water
- Rolls: It is produced by a rapid succession of taps where intermittent closures are technically occur (i.e. Sp. perro). ➢ According to the state of the glottis/voicing, consonants are regarded as:
- Voiced
- Voiceless ● The production of vowels involves less obstruction than that of consonants as the flow of air passes from the larynx to the lips. ● In order to be able to express graphically the different vocalic phonemes we can use a quadrilateral (usually referred to as Hellwag’s triangle since it started being an isosceles triangle designed by this author) representing the space that the tongue occupies in the mouth when we produce vowels (vowel diagram). ● The diagram below represents D. Jones’s Cardinal Vowel Chart, which relates to: ii. The manner of articulation (according to which we can classify vowels into close, half-close or close-mid, half-open or open-mid, and open) iii.The point of ● articulation (according to which we can classify vowels into front, central and back)
● Cardinal vowels are abstractions, that is, they do not belong to any particular language, and therefore their quality is invariable. For example the sound [i] (CV1) is produced by raising the tongue as close as possible to the palate without causing friction. ● They are situated on the limits of the vowel diagram and are used as reference points. The vowel sounds of any language can be identified by comparing them with the system of cardinal vowels. Consonants and vowels as the basic segments of speech form syllables, then larger units such as words, and later complete utterances. ● Superimposed on these segments are a number of additional features known as suprasegmental features, which will be developed later in this course. ➢ Applications of phonetics include:
The quality of an existing sound also depends on the cavities or resonators (hollow spaces containing air) in the speech chain. The human speech mechanism has three resonators:
- The pharynx
- The nasal cavity
- The oral cavity The oral cavity is the most important resonator, due to the great mobility of its organs (changes of size and shape) In the vocal tract (the long tubular structure formed by these cavities), the airstream is modified by means of several organs called articulators:
- Active articulators: They can actively affect the airstream. Exp: tongue, soft palette
- Passive articulators: They serve as contact positions for the active articulators. Exp. hard palate ● Voicing is the term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants) ● Phonation is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. 1.4. THE PHONETIC SYMBOLS ● Since the orthography of the languages is only imperfectly phonetic and since the number of speech sounds exceeds the number of characters in the Roman alphabet, the IPA alphabet was designed as a separate system to represent the actual sounds of the human language. ● This alphabet has a distinctive symbol for every sound in human speech and is applicable to all languages. ➢ For the purpose of accuracy in phonetic detail, phoneticians have developed systems of transcriptions which are:
- Narrow: It makes use of allophones. Here details are taken into account, and the symbols are enclosed between [square brackets].
- Broad: It makes use of phonemes. Here details are not taken into account and the symbols are enclosed between /slant bars/. 1.5. ENGLISH ACCENTS: RP and GenAm as International Languages ● There are two main accents used as reference accents for the teaching of English pronunciation: “RP” (Received Pronunciation) and “General American” (GenAm). ● Broadly, you can say that RP is a standard form of British pronunciation accepted as a reference in England and Wales. GenAm is the standard pronunciation in the USA. ● Especially in the British Isles, there is a huge variety of accents, and a vast majority of speakers speak some type of a local accent; currently, these can be heard from the broadcast media, and are widely accepted. Speakers of RP are a minority. Names of English symbols
- Vowels
- No. 1 Lower-case i /i:
- No. 2 Small capital i /I/
- No. 3 Lower-case e /e/
- No. 4 Ash /æ/
- No. 5 Script a / ᵅ:/
- No. 6 Turned script a / ᶛ/
- No. 7 Open o / :/ᴐ
- No. 8 Upsilon / Ʊ/
- No. 9 Lower-case u /u:/
- No. 10 Turned v / Ʌ/
- No. 11 Reversed epsilon /3:/
- No. 12 Schwa / ə/ English phonetic symbols
- Consonants:
- Lower-case p /p/
- Lower-case b /b/
- Lower-case t /t/
- Lower-case d /d/
- Lower-case k /k/
- Lower-case g /g/
- Lower-case f /f/
- Lower-case v /v/
- Theta / θ/
- Eth /ð/
- Lower-case s /s/
- Lower-case z /z/
- Esh/Long s / / or Wedge s /ʃ sU/
- Yogh/Long z / Ʒ/ or Wedge z /zU/
- Lower-case h /h/
- T-Esh ligature / ʧ/ or T-Wedge s ligature /tsU/
- D-Yogh liature/ ʤ/ or D-Wedge z ligature /dzU/
- Lower-case m /m/
- Lower-case n /n/
- Eng / Angma / ŋ/
- Lower-case l /l/
- Lower-case r /r/
- Lower-case j /j/
- Lower-case w /w/
➔ In the RP goat diphthong, there is no initial lip rounding, thus / ɡəʊt/. ➔ The tapping of /t/ is practically obligatory in GenAm. ➔ There is a distinct clear-dark distribution for /l/ in RP. ➔ Glottalization of /t, t / and (less often) /p, k/ is much more common in all accentsʃ of British English.
