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LINGUISTICS: scientific study of language. It’s divided into several areas. ● Phonology/phonetics: are the bases because every language has it. It’s the study of sounds which allows us to understand different meanings. They’re also called phonemes. ● Morphology: studies the shapes of words. There are two types of morphology: -Inflectional morphology: it’s the study of words that always have the same meaning. -Derivational morphology: which analyses the combination of words with different meanings that create other words. ● Syntax: phrases that change the orders of words. Grammar is made of syntax+morphology. ● Lexical semantics (meaning of words): same meaning but different words. PRAGMATIC: study of the use of language in context. PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY Phonetics: It’s the study of speech sounds (in general). Is divided into:
- ARTICULATORY phonetics: it’s the study of how sounds are made (production).
- AUDITORY phonetics: it’s the study of how sounds are heard (perception).
- ACOUSTIC phonetics: it’s the study of the PHYSICAL properties of the speech waves that constitute speech sounds. Phonology: it’s the study of the speech sounds in a particular language, how sounds behave when they’re combined together. Ex. MANO and MANCO The N is pronounced in different ways: one is dental /n/ the other is a velar /n/. The symbol (sounds) of the phonetic alphabet are called PHONEMES. English has two types of sounds of I and U: FILL[i] FEEL[i;]
FULL[ʊ] FOOL[u;]
Same test can be used with consonants. Ex. PET and BET /p/ /b/ are two phonemes. Phonemes are usually put in between two slashes. For transcribing words there’s an alphabet: the IPA International Phonetic Alphabet. Everybody has an accent. The accent marks the sounds, we don't have to confuse it with DIALECTS , which are actually proper languages with a grammatical basis and vocabulary. There are different prestigious English accents : Received Pronunciation (RP), BBC English, King’s/Queen’s english. ↳They are defined by a social variety , not a geographical one. Standard Scottish english→ quite different, because of the accent. Estuary english→ called this way because the accent was born in the estuary part of the Thames. General American it’s the standard form of North American. (RP=GenAm)
THE PRODUCTION OF SPEECH SOUNDS
English, like other languages, uses the egressibìve pulmonic system. Air from the lungs travels up the trachea through the larynx then into the vocal tract. Anatomy→ the articulators: larynx, pharynx, velum of soft palate, hard palate, alveolar, tongue, teeth,lips. Nose and mouth are also important. VOWEL, DIPHTHONG, TRIPHTHONG. Vowel: involves no abstraction to the flow of the air as it passes from the larynx to the lips. Exception: H and W sounds do the same thing because they’re followed by a vowel, not a consonant. Looking at how sounds behave is called PHONOTACTICS. VOWELS→ they are described in the articulatory system, and the vowels of the IPA vowel chart are “ideal” vowels, they’re a set of reference points. Different type of vowels: ● Tongue height (close, close-mid, open-mid, open) ● Tongue backness (front vs. central vs. back) ● Lip-rounding (roundes, spread, natural) LIP-ROUNDING There are three possible shapes of the lips: Rounded → the corners of the lips are brought towards each other and the lips pushed forward. Spread→ the corners of the lips moved away from each other. Neutral→ not noticeably rounded or spread. Vowels are different also in terms of length→ they can be SHORT (lax) or LONG (tense). In the transcription we use the DIACRITIC, that marks the length of the sound. The length of vowels is more important in BrE than in AmE. SHORT/LAX VOWELS ● The vowel in “bit, bridge” → ɪ is: a close vowel (tongue eight→vertical criterion), a front one (tongue backness→ horizontal criterion) and the lip rounding is slightly spread. ● The vowel in “bed, bed” → e is: mid to open mid vowel, front vowel and the lip rounding is slightly spread. ● The vowel in “act, bat” → æ is: an open vowel, a front one, and the lip rounding is slightly spread. ● The vowel in “blood, club” → ʌ is: a more open than open mid vowel; it’s central and the lip rounding is neutral. ● The vowel in “cloth, cough” → ɒ is: a between open mid and open vowel, it’s not fully back and the lip rounding is slightly rounded. ● The vowel in “book, bull” → ʊ is: a close to close mid vowel, it’s near the back and the lip rounding is rounded. ● The schwa → ə : the weak vowel in “leisure, preface, pressure”. It’s a mid vowel, central and the lip rounding is neutral. It covers the majority of sounds.
TRIPHTHONGS
Can be thought of as diphthongs + the schwa (but remember that the middle vowel is hardly pronounced). Triphthongs are difficult to pronounce and difficult to recognise because vowel movement is very limited in present-day English. The central element can hardly be heard: this is called SMOOTHING , it takes place in rapid spoken RP. CONSONANTS The larynx: the articulator that starts it . The glottis and the vocal ligament are also important on the aspect of production of the consonant sounds. Four positions:
- Wide apart (p, f, s), they are voiceless sounds.
- Narrow glottis (h).
- Position for vocal fold vibration (voiced sounds, including “normal” vowels, you can hear it if you press your larynx).
- Tightly closed (pressed one against the other). Three parameters:
- Manner of articulation (> how the stricture in the production is realised).
- Place of articulation (> where the stricture obtains).
- Voicing: fortis (voiceless) vs. lenis (voiced).
PLOSIVES (or stops) They involve three stages in the production:
- Closing stage: the air travels and the articulation closes.
- Compression stage: air is moving towards the lips and is compressed.
- Release stage: if we have a full explosion we have a released stop, if there is no explosion at all we have an unreleased stop. LENIS (or voiced-sonora) STOPS : /b/ >bilabial, it starts from the lips /d/ >alveolar (but dental in Italian!), it means that the sound starts from the tongue towards the alveolar bridge. /g/ >velar, it starts in the back part of the palate ending with the jugular. Initial: It happens sometimes that you can pronounce the initial sound of a word partially voiced. B with a dot underneath means that it is devoiced. Medial: Rubber > the sound is fully voiced. Final: Rib> is fully devoiced. (also possible with no audible release: [rIb̚]) Final clusters : Rubbed [rʌb̚d̥] (NB. no audible release in stop clusters) The transcriptions on the previous slide are phonetic transcriptions rather than phonemic transcriptions, i.e. additional details are offered through the use of diacritics (such as devoicing). Compare: /rIb/ (phonemic transcription, between slashes) [rIb̥] (phonetic transcription, in square brackets) Phonemic (or broad) transcriptions provide a minimal (i.e. distinctive) amount of information while phonetic (or narrow) transcriptions add details to the minimal (i.e. phonemic) transcription which are predictable. FORTIS (or voiceless-sorda) STOPS /p/> bilabial: play, pick /t/> alveolar (dental in Italian!): top, rat /k/> velar: Initial: pill is “aspirated”, in the transcription there's a small h that indicates the aspiration. Initial clusters:
Problem Initial (i.e. both word initial and syllable initial) “voiced” and “voiceless” plosives are both voiceless (although, acoustically, the “voiced” or lenis ones are only partially devoiced). Still, we can distinguish between the two because of lack vs. presence of aspiration. But what about final plosives? Since the final /b/ in rib and the final /p/ in rip are both devoiced, how can we distinguish between the two words? We could of course rely on the context and/or on the lenis vs. fortis distinction (i.e. final /p/ is stronger than final /b/, see above). But the latter distinction does not help for example when the plosives are unreleased, of course. So, is there any way we can distinguish between rib and rip even if they are uttered out of the blue? Yes, there is! There is an important difference which has to do with the length of the preceding vowel, i.e. so-called pre-fortis clipping to clip = to cut pre-fortis = before a fortis consonant hence: reduction in (‘cutting of’) the length of a vowel, or vowel + nasal, or vowel + liquid, preceding a fortis consonant (not necessarily a plosive!)
Another type of clipping is rhythmic clipping Lead>i: Leader >i: Leadership >i: Teacher I: undergoes both pre-fortis clipping and rhythmic clipping Dental stops in English /d/ is an alveolar plosive in English. However, if a dental stop follows , /d/ has a dental articulation (this is an example of regressive assimilation (of place of articulation)): Wide [waid] vs. width [wid̪θ] Nasal and lateral release Nasal release: when a nasal follows a homorganic plosive, the plosive is released directly into the nasal. This happens with the combinations /tn/ and /dn/. Examples: Britain, fitness, Whitney, kidney, goodnight. Lateral release When a lateral follows a homorganic plosive, the plosive is released directly into the lateral. This happens with the combinations /tl/ and /dl/. Examples: sadly, fiddler, butler, cutlass, atlas. The glottal stop [ʔ] Apart from the cases mentioned above, [ʔ] is used when the initial sound is a vowel: She’s [ʔ] awfully good. NB. [ʔ] is not a phoneme in English. Why? It’s a plosive, but it's not a phoneme cause it's not something that has a distinctive value. FRICATIVES
Affricates can arise in connected speech. (this phenomenon is an example of coalescence ) E.g. don’t you, do you, would you. (they're kind of connected and make one sound) NASALS Bilabial: /m/ mud. Alveolar: /n/ nut. Velar: /ŋ/ sing. /ŋ/ sound never occurs initially. It can follow only: /ɪ/, /e/, /æ/, /ʌ/, /ɒ/, /ʊ/. /ŋ/ never occurs with /g/ at the end of a morpheme in RP. Sing [siŋ] Singer= sing+er [‘siŋə] Singing= sing+ing [‘siŋɪŋ] An important exception: comparatives and superlatives. Long [lɒŋ] Longish [‘lɒŋɪʃ] Longer [‘lɒŋgə] Longest [‘lɒŋgɪst] Dental allophone: ten [ten] vs. tenth [ten̪θ] APPROXIMANTS Lateral /l/: (lenis) complete closure between the centre of the tongue and the alveolar ridge (air escapes along the sides of the tongue) /l/ has two allophones in complementary distribution: clear [l] (lip) and dark (or velarised) [ɫ] (pool) Dark [ɫ] is only found syllable finally and before consonants. When an affix beginning with a vowel is added or the next word begins with a vowel (ex. fiddling), the lateral may become clear (in which case it is usually non-syllabic.) In Estuary english [ɫ] is realised as a [ʊ] (ex. ball). In GenAm, standard scottish english, australian and new zealand english, large parts of the north of england and north wales, [ɫ] may occur in all positions. /r/ is a post-alveolar approximant. The tip of the tongue does not make contact with any part of the roof of the mouth. The tongue is slightly curled backwards; the itp is raised; the lips are slightly rounded. Note that /r/ is actually a voiceless fricative in words like pray. /r/ occurs only before vowels in non-rhotic accents. Italian /r/ can be either a lingual trill, a rapid succession of taps by the tip of the tongue on the alveolar ridge, as in carro, or a tap (or flap ), [ɾ] as in caro. In some english dialects the degree of retroflexion of the tongue for ɹ may be greater than in RP, as in the speech of the south-west of england and in some varieties of american english. This is indicated by the symbol ɻ. RHOTICITY In RP /r/ only occurs before vowels. Many accents of English pronounce /r/ also in different positions: accents with /r/ in final position and before a consonant are called rhotic, while others (such as RP) are called non-rhotics.
The voiced palatal approximant /j/ and the voiced bilabial approximant /w/ are phonetically vowels but consonants phonologically (i.e. they are followed by vowels). Their behaviour as consonants is manifest when they are preceded by the definite and indefinite article (e.g. a way, a year, the way, the year). They are slightly fricative when they are preceded by /p/, /t/, /k/ at the beginning of a syllable (e.g. pure, tune, cure, twin, quit, see also above). MORE PHONETIC PROCESSES
Lenis plosives, lenis fricatives and lenis affricates in initial and final position Pre-fortis clipping reduction in the length of a vowel or a vowel + nasal or a vowel + liquid preceding a fortis consonant Pre-fortis clipping The diacritic [‘] indicates that the preceding sound is not as long as that followed by [:]. The diacritic is used when the reduction in length involves a sound that is not followed by [:]. Nasalization Vowels preceding nasals are regularly nasalized: Clear vs dark l /l/ has two allophones in complementary distribution: clear [l] and dark (or velarised) [ɫ]. Dark [ɫ] is only found syllable finally and before consonants in RP.
Examples: lull [lʌɫ], hill, ball, bulb, milk. Dental allophones THE SYLLABLE The syllable is a bigger unit that forms a word. It can be defined both phonetically, where syllables are associated with peaks of sonority (i.e. every syllable corresponds to a single sonority peak). The sonority of a sound is its relative loudness compared to other sounds. Syllables are associated with peaks of sonority (i.e. every syllable corresponds to a single sonority peak). The sonority of a sound is its relative loudness compared to other sounds. Problems with the sonority theory:
- Where do we place syllable boundaries?
- sticks: Why does it have a single syllable (it contains three sonority peaks)? An alternative approach is to look at syllables phonologically , by considering phonotactics , i.e. the study of the possible phoneme combinations of a language. What is a minimum syllable? A minimum syllable is a single vowel in isolation: /ɑ:/ /ɔ:/ Syllable = [Onset [Nucleus (or Peak) [Coda]]] e.g. [b[i:[k]]] (check diapositives when studying) The coda is not a compulsory element. Stressed syllables in English are always heavy , which means that the rhyme contains at least two X’s in the tree diagram. In English: Onset: max. 3 consonants Coda: max. 4 consonants
Maximal Onset Principle (MOP) Within words, syllable boundaries are placed in such a way that onsets are maximal (in accordance with the phonotactic constraints of the language). Divide better and carry into syllables. In the first one the “t” is the problem, because it’s ambisyllabic. AMBISYLLABICITY An alternative analysis views /t/ and /r/ in the previous two words as belonging to both syllables (i.e. they are said to be ambisyllabic ). An ambisyllabic consonant belongs to both the coda of the first syllable and the onset of the second. STRESS - STRONG AND WEAK SYLLABLE What is stress? It’s considered from a perception and production point of view. Stress from a perceptual point of view: prominence
- pitch (most important; it is the perceptual correlation of the fundamental frequency of vibration of the vocal folds).
- length (second most important).
- loudness of the vowel sound.
- quality: ə, i, u, syllabic consonants. Stress from a production point of view: more muscular energy (→ higher subglottal pressure) Three levels of stress: primary, secondary, unstressed. Is it possible to predict English stress placement? English doesn’t behave like languages such as French (last syllable), Polish (penultimate), Czech (first). Warning : Section 10.3 is based on a circular argument. It says that it’s possible to ‘predict’ stress placement by inspecting syllables (i.e. whether they are strong or weak) but in order to know whether a syllable is strong or weak, one must know where stress is placed in the first place! However, we can identify some general tendencies.
Words of two or three syllables: Primary stress on first syllable, e.g. "culture, "hesitant, "motivate. Longer words (more than three syllables): Primary stress on the antepenultimate syllable, e.g. credi"bility, com"municate, methodo"logical. COMPLEX WORDS
- words derived from a basic form (base or stem) with the addition of an affix person > personality (suffix) pleasant > unpleasant (prefix) 77 impossible > im-bloody-possible (infix)
- compound words (words usually made of two independent words, e.g. ice-cream, armchair) Derived words Suffixes (prefixes are less regular, so we’ll ignore them) (1) stress on the suffix; (2) stress on the last syllable of the base; (3) stress not affected.
(vedi slides che tanto non servono) Words with identical spelling belonging to two different word-classes: Remember that there is a lot of variation! The list on the previous slide shows instances of idiolectal variation , see also: "ice-,cream, ,ice-"cream Further, there’s variation due to connected speech: a "bad-tempered "teacher; a "half-timbered "house; a "heavy-handed "sentence.
- /ə/, /i/, and /u/ don’t occur in strong syllables, nor do syllabic consonants like /l /, /n /.
- Weak syllables have a small number of possible peaks and they can have no coda.
- The ə vowel (‘schwa’) is a mid, central, lax vowel (the lips are in neutral position).
- It corresponds to many different spellings: , , , , , , , , , .
- /i/ and /u/ are close front and close back vowels respectively.
- It is difficult to distinguish between /i:/ and /ɪ/ and /u:/ and /ʊ/ in unstressed syllables. Still, they are more like /i:/ and /u:/ when they precede another vowel , less so when they precede a consonant or pause. rising (or crescendo) diphthong: 2nd element more prominent than 1st one falling (or diminuendo) diphthong: 1st element more prominent than 2nd one NB /je/ in yes /jes/ could be analysed as a crescendo diphthong (rather than semi consonant
- vowel) Where do we find u? i) you, to, into, do (all unstressed and not immediately preceding a consonant) ii) through, who (all unstressed) iii) within a word: before another vowel (e.g. ‘mju:.tʃu.əl) Notice that /u/ and /ə/ in "In.flu.@ns can be compressed into a single syllable, producing a crescendo diphthong: "In.flu.əns (slower) > "In.flwəns (faster) Syllabic l̩
- It occurs after another consonant.
- It is dark.
- In less common words or more technical words /@l/ can be used instead: e.g. "bɒt.l̩ vs. ə"kwIt.əl̩ or ə"kwIt.l̩ Syllabic n̩
- More restricted than l̩ , n̩ is most common (medially and finally) after alveolar plosives and fricatives : e.g. "θret.n̩ and "sev.n̩
- A sequence of two consonants + n̩ is unlikely: London is normally "lʌnd.ən Syllabic m̩ and ŋ̍ They occur only as a result of processes such as elision and assimilation : "hp.m̩ (also: "hæp.n̩ , "hp.ən)
