PHONTICS AND PHONOLOGY I
Phonetics and phonology are related, dependent fields for studying aspects of language. Phonetics is the study of sound in speech; Phonology is the study (and use) of sound patterns to create meaning. Phonetics focuses on how speech is physically created and received, including study of the human vocal and auditory tracts, acoustics, and neurology. Phonology relies on phonetic information for its practice, but focuses on how patterns in both speech and non-verbal communication create meaning, and how such patterns are interpreted. Phonology includes comparative linguistic studies of how cognates, sounds, and meaning are transmitted among and between human communities and languages.
What Is the Difference Between Phonetics
and Phonology?
Phonetics relates
to the sounds of language, while phonology studies
how those sounds are put together to create meaning. Phonemes, or units of
sound that are used in all languages to create words, are the focus of the
study of phonetics. Phonology studies the rules in any given language that
govern how those phonemes are combined to create meaningful words. Phonetics
and phonology study two different aspects of sound, but the concepts are
dependent on each other in the creation of language.
Each unit
of sound, regardless of language, is called a phoneme.
Phonetics attempts to understand how each one of these phonemes is physically
formed and produced by humans. These units can be categorized by how they are
produced and whether they are voiced or voiceless. This aspect of phonetics is
commonly used by linguists as well as speech specialists to understand how
humans create speech sounds and why speech problems sometimes occur.
The phonetic alphabet is a collection of
symbols meant to represent the actual sound of each phoneme as it is pronounced
in different situations. For example, a consonant may
have two different symbols because it has two different ways of being
pronounced depending on the word it is used in. These phonetic symbols are
commonly found in dictionaries as a guide to how to correctly pronounce
unfamiliar words. Each symbol can represent one letter or a group of letters
that combine to make one sound.
In order to produce sound humans use
various body parts including the lips, tongue, teeth, pharynx and lungs. Phonetics is the term for the description and classification of
speech sounds, particularly how sounds are produced, transmitted and received.
Phonology is the study of how phonemes are put together and how
they create meaning for the speaker of any given language. Some phonemes may
have slightly different meanings or uses in two different languages, and
phonology is an attempt to understand these changes in meaning. In addition,
historical or diachronic phonology studies how the phonemes of a word can
change over time and how this affects word meaning. Phonology also examines the
patterns of how phonemes are used in a language. For example, some of these
units are only used in the middle or at the end of a word but never at the
beginning.
Phonetics and phonology differ in that phonetics
studies the production of sounds, and phonology studies the combination of
sounds. Phonetics can be used to explore the sounds that are used in any
language, but phonology looks at only one language at a time. Both depend on
each other because without the production of sounds there would be no words,
but without the rules to put them together, sounds would have no meaning. They
work together in important ways, but both cover their own specific part of
language production.
BRITISH VS AMERICAN ENGLISH
While there are certainly many more varieties of English, American English and British English are the two varieties that are taught in most ESL/EFL programs. Generally, it is agreed that no one version is "correct" however, there are certainly preferences in use. The three major differences between between American and British English are:
- Pronunciation - differences in both vowel and consonants, as well as stress and intonation
- Vocabulary - differences in nouns and verbs, especially phrasal verb usage
- Spelling - differences are generally found in certain prefix and suffix forms
VOWEL AND CONSONANT SOUNDS
The words vowel
and consonants are very familiar
ones, but when we study the sounds of speech scientifically we find that it is
not easy to define exactly what they mean. The most common view is that vowels
are sound in which there is no obstruction to the flow of air as it passes from
the larynx to the lips. The most important difference between vowel and
consonant is not the way that they are made, but their different distributions.
English Phonetics and Phonology; fourth edition
by Peter Roach; Cambridge University Press 2009
ENGLISH SHORT VOWELS
English has a large number of vowel sounds; the
first ones to be examined are short vowels. As the name would imply, short vowels have a much shorter pronunciation than long vowel sounds. Short vowels produce only one sound and do not require the speaker to open his mouth very wide. The speaker's jaw is relaxed and barely moves during the production of short vowel sounds. The speaker's tongue is placed in different positions but is also usually relaxed. Short vowels can occur in stressed syllables, such as "o" in offer, or unstressed syllables, like the first "o" in tomato.
LONG ENGLISH VOWELS
Long Vowel Sound Rules
The long vowels make the same sounds in a word
as they do when pronounced alone. Each vowel has a few unique rules, but
generally, they all make a long sound when they are the last letter of a word
(examples: she, go; exceptions: to, bite). And if a word has two vowels next to
each other, the first vowel usually is pronounced long (examples: sail, bean,
soap, juice).
"A"
1. If the
"a" is followed by a "y," it makes the long vowel sound
(examples: play, Sunday). If the "a" is followed by one consonant,
followed by an "e," it makes a long vowel sound (examples: fate,
dare).
fade
made
page
"E"
2. If the letter "e" is paired with
another "e," it will make the long vowel sound (examples: sweet,
beef). If the "e" is followed by one consonant, followed by another
vowel, it makes a long vowel sound (example: evil, deplete), but the
"e" will not typically be long if there are two or more consonants
between the "e" and the other vowel (examples: end, elder, enter). If
an "e" is the last letter of a word, it is usually silent, but it
also signifies that the vowels that came before have a long sound (examples:
note, pride, derive, state).
fee
meet
seen
cheese
peel
seed
cheek
meek
"I"
3. If the "i" in a single-syllable
word is followed by two consonants, it will usually have the long vowel sound
(examples: bright, mind, child). Exceptions are when single-syllable words are
plural or contain a "th" or "sh" at the end (examples:
fifth, clips, fish, girth). The "i" has a long vowel sound if the
last letter in the word is an "e" (examples: bite, mine, slide).
bide
hide
ride
Mike
tide
nine
fine
line
like
bite
"O"
4. If the "o" in a single-syllable
word is followed by two consonants, it will have the long vowel sound
(examples: old, most, roll). Exceptions are when single-syllable words are
plural or contain a "th" or "sh" at the end (examples:
moth, posh). The "o" has a long vowel sound if the last letter in the
word is an "e" (examples: mole, rope).
lobe
robe
phone
hone
cone
smoke
"U"
5. A "u" long sound doesn't sound
exactly the same in a word as it does when pronouncing the letter by itself.
When pronouncing the letter by itself, it is "yoo" but as a letter in
a word it simply makes an "oo" sound (examples: costume, salute). The
"u" makes a long sound when it is followed by an "e"
(examples: cue, blue, flute).
fume
cute
mute
flute
rude
cute
prune
