Phonology
involves two studies: the study of the production, transmission and reception
of speech sounds, a discipline known as ‘phonetics’, and the study of the
sounds and sound patterns of a specific language, a discipline known as
‘phonemics’.
PHONETICS
When we speak we produce a stream of
sound, which is extremely difficult to examine because it is continuous, rapid
and soon gone. The linguist has therefore to find a way to break down the
stream of speech so that the units may be studied and described accurately. In
studying speech we divide these stream into small pieces that we call segments.
The word ‘man’ is pronounced with a first segment [ m ], a second segment [ æ ] and a third segment [ n ]. it is not always easy to decide on the
number of segments. To give a simple example, in the word ‘mine’ the first
segment is [ m ] and the last is [ n ] , as in the word ‘man’
discussed above. But should we regard the [ ai ] in the middle as one segment
or two? We will return to this question.
Human beings are capable of producing an
infinite number of sounds but no language uses more than a small proportion of
this infinite set and no two human languages make use of exactly the same set
of sounds. When we speak, there is continuous movement of such organs as the
tongue, the velum (soft palate), the lips and the lungs. We put spaces between
individual words in the written medium but there are no similar spaces in
speech. Words are linked together in speech and are normally perceived by one
who does not know the language (or by a
machine) as an uninterrupted stream of sound. We shall, metaphorically, slow
the process down as we examine the organs of speech and the types of sound that
result from using different organs.
PHONETIC
TRANSCRIPTION
Linguists use a phonetic alphabet for
the purpose of recording speech sounds in written or printed form. A phonetic
alphabet is based on the principle of one letter per sound, so that people know
which sound we are referring to when we use a certain letter. Such an alphabet
provides a quick and accurate way of writing down the pronunciation of
individual words and of showing how sounds are used in connected speech. It must
be remembered, however, that a phonetic alphabet does not teach sounds, nor is
it necessary to use phonetic transcription in teaching pronunciation.
Many systems of phonetic transcription
have been invented. The International Phonetic Association (IPA) transcription
represents British pronunciation, the discussion is based n the Received
Pronunciation, (RP), while the Trager-Smith
transcription represents American pronunciation.
Figure
1 shows the main organs of speech: the jaw, the lips, the teeth, the teeth
ridge (usually called the alveolar ridge), the tongue, the hard palate, the
soft palate (the velum), the uvula, the pharynx, the larynx and the vocal
cords. The mobile organs are the lower jaw, the lips, the tongue, the velum,
the uvula, the pharynx and the vocal cords and although it is possible to learn
to move each of these at will, we have most control over the jaw, lips and
tongue.
The Organ of Speech:
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Bilabial
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Labio-dental
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Dental
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Alveo-
lar
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Post-alveolar
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Pala-
tal
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Velar
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Glottal
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Stop/ plosive
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p. b
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t. d
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k. g
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Affrica-te
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t∫.ʤ
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Nasal
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M
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n
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ŋ
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Lateral
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l
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Fricati-ve
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f. v
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Θ . ð
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s. z
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r
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∫.ʒ
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h
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Semi-vowel
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W
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J
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Fig.1:
The organs of Speech and English consonants
The
tongue is so important in the production of speech sounds that, for ease of
reference, it has been divided into four main areas, the tip, the blade (or
lamina), the front and the back as shown in Fig. 2
2 3
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Fig. 2: Subdivisions of the tongue
KEY:
1. Tip
3. Front – lies opposite the hard palate
4. Back (or dorsum) – lies opposite the soft palate
Sounds
could not occur without air. The air required for most sounds comes from the
lungs and is thus aggressive (‘going out’). Certain sounds in languages can, however,
be made with air sucked in through the mouth. Such sounds are called ingressive
(‘going in’). The sound of disgust in English, a click often written ‘Tch!’, is
made on an ingressive air stream. Coming from the lungs the air stream passes
through the larynx, which is popularly referred to as the ‘Adam’s apple’.
Inside the larynx are two folds of ligament and tissue which make up the vocal
cords.
VOWEL
AND CONSONANT
Sounds can be divided into two main
types. A vowel is a sound that needs an open air passage in the mouth. The air
passage can be modified in terms of shape with different mouth and tongue
shapes producing different vowels. Consonant is formed when the air stream is
restricted or stopped at some point between the vocal cords and the lips. The
central sound in the word ‘cat’ is a vowel. The first and the third sounds are
consonants. More will be said about vowels and consonants in the course of this
chapter but these rough definitions will serve our purpose temporarily.
ARTICULATION
The sounds of speech can be studied in
three different ways. Acoustics phonetics
is the study of how speech sounds are transmitted. Auditory phonetics is the study of how speech sounds are heard. Articulatory phonetics is the study of
how speech sounds are produced by the human apparatus. This approach in speech
analysis is the one most useful for a language teacher, since he/she needs to
know how individual sounds are made in order to help her students produce the
desired sounds.
In
the production of speech sounds, the organs in the upper part of the mouth may
be described as places or points of
articulation and those in the lower part of the mouth as articulators. When we produce speech
sounds, the airflow is interfered with by the articulators in the lower part of
the mouth. The resulting opening is called the
manner of articulation of the speech sound.
ARTICULATORY
SETTING
Just as each language uses a unique set
of sounds from the total inventory of sounds capable of being made by humans,
so to each group of speakers has a preferred pronunciation. In English, the
most frequently used consonants are formed on or near the alveolar ridge; in
French, the favored consonants are made against the teeth; whereas in
CLASSIFICATION
OF CONSONANTS
The answers to the four questions can tell us
how the consonants are produced and also help us to classify or describe them.
1.
Are
the vocal cords vibrating? The answer to this question tells us whether the
sound is voiced or voiceless.
2.
What
point of articulation is approached by the articulator? The answer gives the
adjective in naming the consonant. For example, if the upper lip is approached
by the lower lip, the sound is bilabial, e.g. [m, b]. If the upper teeth are
approached by the lower lip, the sound is labiodental, e.g. [f, v].
3.
What is the manner of articulation? The answer
supplies the noun in naming consonant, e.g. stops, fricatives, affricates.
4.
Is
the air issuing through the mouth or nose? The answer tells us whether it is an
oral or a nasal sound. This may be taken with (3) as another manner of
articulation as it supplies another noun in the naming of consonants, i.e.
nasal
We will group the consonant sounds of
English according to their manner of articulation in the following discussion.
MANNER
OF ARTICULATION
The ears can judge sounds very
precisely, distinguishing the pure resonance of a tuning fork from the buzzing
sound of a bee or the sharp report of a gun. More important for speech,
perhaps, we can also distinguish between the voiceless sounds like ‘p’ and ‘t’
in ‘pat’ and the voiced sounds like ‘b’ and ‘d’ in ‘bad’ or between the
voiceless ‘p’ in ‘pat’ and the nasal ‘m’ in ‘mat’. Speech exploits all these
abilities and many more and scholars have devised ways of classifying sounds
according to the way they are made.
The
first obstacle the air meets in the vocal cords may be open, in which case the
sound will be voiced. The vocal tract is resonance chamber and different sounds
can be produced by changing the shape of the chamber. If you study the various
types of closure below, it will help you to describe the different types of sound
you can make.
Plosives:
These involve complete closure at some point ion the mouth. Pressure
builds up behind the closure and when the air is suddenly released a plosive is
made. In English, three types of closure occur resulting in three sets of plosives
/p/* and /b/; it can be made by the tongue pressing against the alveolar ridge,
producing the alveolar plosives /t/ and /d/ and it can be made by the back of
the tongue pressing against the soft palate, producing the velar plosives /k/
and /g/.
Fricatives: These sounds are the result of
incomplete closure at some point in the mouth. The air escapes through a
narrowed channel with audible friction. If you approximate the upper teeth to
the lower lip and allow the air to escape you can produce the labio-dental
fricatives /f/ and /v/. Again, if you approximate the tip of the tongue to the
alveolar ridge, you can produce the alveolar fricatives /s/ and /z/.
Trills: These involve intermittent closure.
Sounds can be produced by tapping the tongue repeatedly against a point of
contact. If you roll the /r/ at the beginning of a word saying.
… r.r.r.roaming
…
You are tapping the curled front of the
tongue against the alveolar ridge producing a trill which is, for example,
characteristic of some Scottish pronunciations of English.
Lateral: These sounds involve partial closure
in the mouth. The air stream is blocked by the tip of the tongue but allowed to
escape around the sides of the tongue. In English, the initial /l/ sound in
‘light’ is a lateral; so is the final sound in ‘full’.
Nasals: These sounds involve the complete
closure of the mouth. The velum is lowered, diverting the air through the nose.
In English, the vocal cords vibrate in the production of nasals and so English
nasals are voiced. The three nasals in English are /m/ as in ‘mat’, /n/ as in
‘no’ and /ŋ/ as
in ‘sing’.
Affricates: Affricates are a combination of sounds. Initially there is complete
closure as for a plosive. This is then followed by a slow release with
friction, as for fricative. The sound at the beginning of ‘chop’ is a voiceless
affricate represented by the symbol /t∫/.
We make the closure as for /t/ and
then release the air slowly. The sound
at the beginning and end of ‘judge’ is a voiced affricate, represented by the
symbol /ʤ /.
Semi-vowels: The sounds that begin the words ‘you’
and ‘wet’ are made without closure in the mouth. To this extent, they are
vowel-like. They normally occur at the beginning of a word or syllable;
however, and thus behave functionally like consonants. The semi-vowels are
represented by the symbols /j/ and /w/.
All sounds can be subdivided into continuants,
that is, sounds which can be continued as long as one has breath: vowels,
fricatives, laterals, trills, frictionless continuants; and non-continuants, that
is, sounds which one cannot prolong: plosives, affricates and semi-vowels.
PLACE OF ARTICULATION
The eight commonest places of
articulation are:
Bilabial: Where the lips come together as in the
sounds /p/, /b/ and /m/
Labiodental: Where the lower lip and the upper
teeth come together, as for the sounds /f/ and /v/.
Dental: Where the tip or the blade of the
tongue comes in contact with the upper teeth as in the pronunciation of the
initial sounds I ‘thief’ and ‘then’, represented by the symbols /θ/ and /ð/.
Alveolar: Where the tip or blade of the tongue
touches the alveolar ridge which is directly behind the upper teeth. In
English, the sounds made in the alveolar region predominate in the language. By
this we mean that the most frequently occurring consonants /t, d, s, z, n, l,
r/ are all made by approximating the tongue to the alveolar ridge.
Palato-alveolar: As the name suggests, there are two
points of contact for these sounds. The tip of the tongues is close to the alveolar
ridge while the front of the tongue is concave to the roof of the mouth. In
English, there are four palato-alveolar sounds, the affricates /t∫/ and /ʤ
/ and the fricatives /∫/ and /ʒ
/, the sounds that occur,
respectively, at the beginning of the word ‘shut’ and in the middle of the word
‘measure’.
Palatal: For palatal sounds, the front of the
tongue approximates to the hard palate. It is possible to have palatal
plosives, fricatives, laterals and nasals, but in English the only palatal is
the voiced semi-vowel /j/ s in ‘you’.
Velar: For velars, the back of the tongue
approximates to the soft palate. As with other points of contact, several types
of sound can be made here. In English there are four consonants made in the
velar region, the plosives /k, g/
, the nasal /ŋ/ and the voiced
semi-vowel /w/ as in ‘woo’.
Uvular,
pharyngeal and glottal sounds occur frequently in world languages. They are
not, however, significant in English and so will not be described in detail.
CLASSIFICATION
OF VOWEL
Since
vowels are produced with free passage of the air stream, they are less easy to
describe and classify than consonants. The two articulatory organs to be
considered are the tongue and lips for these two organs can mould and change
the shape of the vocal tract by their movements in the production of vowels. It
is the general shape of the vowel tract that gives the distinctive quality of
sound of any vowel.
THE
CARDINAL VOWELS
The symbols for these vowels and their placing on the vowel chart are shown
in Figure 3. The vowels [i] and [ɑ]
were chosen first as representing
the closest front and the openest back vowel respectively. Then [e, Ɛ , a] were determined auditory to occupy positions at equal
intervals from each other. The same procedure was used in choosing [ɒ, o, u]. These are eight vowels of fixed quality
to which we can compare any new vowel. By listening to the cardinal vowel we
can soon tell, for example, whether the new vowel is half-way between [i]
and [e] or one-quarter of the way
from [Ɛ] to [ɒ].
The vowels of English have been plotted
on to the diagram in Figure 3 to show their relationship to the cardinal
vowels.
It may prove useful to offer a summary
to guide the reader in the techniques to select in describing sounds. In
describing a vowel it is important to state:
(1) the length of the vowel, that is,
whether it is long or short.
(2) whether the vowel is oral or nasal*
(*All English vowels are oral)
(3) the highest point of the tongue
(4) the degree of closeness
(5)the shape of the lips
Thus
the vowel sound in ‘tree’ would be classified as a long, oral, front, close,
unrounded vowel. The vowel in ‘doom’ would be a long, oral, back, close rounded
vowel. It is well to remember that when the front of the tongue is raised
towards the hard palate we have a front vowel. When the back of the tongue is
raised towards the soft palate, we have a back vowel. If the centre of the
tongue is raised towards the juncture between the hard and soft palates, then
we have a central vowel. The vowel sound in the word ‘the’ is a central vowel
and would be described as short, oral, central, half-open, with neutrally spread
lips.
In describing consonants, one should
state:
(1) the type
of air stream used (in English all speech sounds are made on an
egressive air stream although certain sounds of disgust and annoyance are made
on an ingressive air stream)
(2) the position of the vocal cords (apart
for voiceless sounds, approximated and vibrating for voiced sounds)
(3) the position of the velum (raised for
oral sounds, lowered for nasal; that is, we must state whether a consonant is
oral or nasal)
(4) the manner of articulation (for example
plosive, fricative, and so on)
(5) the place of articulation (for example
bilabial, alveolar and so on)
Thus,
if we were asked to describe the initial sound in ‘buy’ and the final sound in
‘tin’ we would say that /b/ is made on an aggressive air stream and is voiced,
oral, plosive and bilabial, and that /n/ is also uttered on an aggressive air
stream and is voiced, nasal and alveolar.
SUPRASEGMENTAL
PHONEMES
In addition to finding the consonant and
vowel segments (the segmental phonemes), the linguist must also identify the suprasegmental phonemes used in a
language system. They include things like pitch,
stress, intonation and juncture.
They are called “suprasegmental” because they can occur only with the segmental
phonemes, they are imposed on the segmental phonemes. Basically, the method
used is the same as that employed in looking for the segmental phonemes. That
is, whether a certain feature contrasts with another and whether the contrasts
exists in minimal pairs. The analysis of suprasegmental phonemes is more
complicated that segmental phonemes and linguists tend to differ in their
analysis.
PITCH
differences may result in differences of meaning at the word level in the tone
languages like Thai and Chinese, the height and/or direction (up-sown contrast
level) of pitch can distinguish words. In Chinese, for example, there are four
tones which can distinguish words. If you say / t∫u/ with
a high level pitch it means “lord”. A beginner of Chinese may therefore wrongly
say “I praise the pig”, when he means “I praise the lord”. Pitch is therefore
phonemic in Chinese, because it can distinguish between pairs of words like the
above.
STRESS is the degree of loudness given to some
syllables in relation to others. The significance of stress at the word level
can be illustrated by its use in English. Minimal pairs like the following show
that stress is phonemic in English.
Phonemic
Transcription Noun Verb
/insens/ incense incense
/pƏmit/ permit permit
/insʌlt/ insult insult
/ridʒekt/ reject reject
In
the above pairs, it is the difference in stress that makes a difference in
meaning.
It is usual to describe English as
having four degrees of stress., but for the purpose of teaching English as
second language there is a simpler analysis. According to this analysis, there
are two kinds of stress: fixed stress and variable stress. Words of more than
one syllable have fixed stress while monosyllabic words have variable stress.
There are only two degrees of fixed
stress: prominent stress and weak stress (or no stress), so that in language
teaching the teacher needs only worry about which syllable in a word gets the prominent
stress, e.g.
happy administer
before
administration
exciting ridicule
satisfy ridiculous
As a general rule, the more important a
word is in a sentence the stronger is its stress. In the absence of special
emphasis, the most important words are the nouns, adjectives, demonstrative and
interrogative pronouns, principal verbs and adverbs. Such words are therefore
usually strongly stressed, e.g.
I never lent her that dress.
But
if we wish to emphasize the word I or her, or that, then we would have three
different ways of stressing the sentence:
(1)
I never lent her that dress.
(2) I never lent her that dress.
(3)
I never lent her that dress.
Notice
the change in meaning with the change in stress: (1) means someone else lent
her that dress, (2) means I lent it to someone else and (3) means I lent her a
different dress, not that one.
We have seen that stress can make a
difference in meaning at both word and sentence level in English. Pitch is used
to contribute to meaning at the sentence level by sequence of contrastive pitch
levels which constitute intonation. In speech the pitch of the voice is
constantly changing. When it falls we have falling intonation; when it remains
on one note for some tome, we have level intonation.
JUNCTURE
is the type of connection or pause we get between syllables or words. In English,
for example, syllables may be connected together very closely without pause
(close juncture) or very loosely (open juncture) so that there seems to be
a pause between them in pronunciation.
The two types of juncture can be illustrated by the minimal pair: night rate
/nait + reit/ (+ is used for open juncture) and nitrate (naitreit/. The
operation of juncture between words is exemplified in the difference between
the pairs of utterances below:
1. an aim / Ə n + eim/ 1. that’s tough / ðæts + tʌf/
2. a name / Ə
+ neim/ 2. that stuff / ðæt + stʌf/
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