Summary on phonetics and phonology by Andrés Henríquez

Phonetics

andreshenriquez416 — 2024-03-03 05:32:35 UTC

To begin with, we will define what each word means.

What is phonetics?
It is a system for objectively describing and recording the sounds of language. Phonetics provides a valuable way of opening our ears to facets of language that we tend to understand in reference to its written forms rather than its real spoken forms.

Articulatory Phonetics

andreshenriquez416 — 2024-03-03 05:40:30 UTC

The Phonetic Alphabet
In 1888, Members of the international phonetic association developed a phonetic alphabet to symbolize the sounds of all languages. They used ordinary letters and invented symbols, each character of the alphabet had exactly one value in all the languages of the world.

The phonetic alphabet uses many of the letters of the English alphabet, but its pronunciations are very restricted and are not always what you would expect. In this system, there are no "silent" letters. To produce speech, air must flow from the lungs through the vocal tract, which includes the vocal cords (popularly called vocal cords, although they look more like thick elastic bands than strings), the nose or nasal cavity and the mouth.

Consonants and Vowels.

andreshenriquez416 — 2024-03-03 06:06:10 UTC

The sounds of all languages are divided into two classes: Consonants and Vowels.

Consonants
The consonants include the sounds we represent as in the ordinary alphabet. All consonants are produced by totally or almost completely stopping the stream of air that leaves the lungs.
Vocal Tract
As a warm-up exercise, make the fffff sound and keep it that way while counting to five. Now make the vvv sound and continue counting to five.

Now alternate these two: fffffvvvvvfffffvvvvv. You've probably noticed that www had a "buzz" that fffff didn't have. That "buzzing" is caused by the vibration of your vocal cords, which you can control by putting your fingers in your throat or covering your ears while alternating fffff and vvvvv.

Some phonetic symbols.

andreshenriquez416 — 2024-03-03 06:27:40 UTC

Nasality
Make the sound represented by in the word Pam and continue for a few seconds. As you continue, pinch your nose and observe what happens to the sound. It should stop immediately. This shows that the air flowed through your nose while you produced this sound. Now try the same little experiment with the of bread and the of pang. You should check that the air flows through the nose also in these two cases.
Manner of articulation
By articulation mode we refer to the type of closure or constriction used to produce the sound. We classify the English consonants according to three modes of articulation: occlusive (total stop of the airflow somewhere in the oral cavity between the vocal cords and the lips, as in [p], [b], [m]); fricatives (constriction of the air stream in the oral cavity that produces turbulence and noise, as in [f], [v]); africains (total stop of the air flow immediately followed by constriction.

Place of articulation
By place of articulation we refer to the area of the mouth in which the consonant closure or constriction occurs. English uses some places of articulation:

➖The labiodental sounds are produced by putting the upper teeth in contact with the lower lip and forcing air between the two to create the fricatives.
➖Interdental sounds occur by placing the tip of the tongue between the upper and lower teeth and forcing the passage of air. Again, both are fricatives.

Phonology

andreshenriquez416 — 2024-03-03 06:36:40 UTC

What’s phonology ?
Phonology is the study of how the speech sounds of a language are used in that language to distinguish significant units (such as words).The study of phonology requires that we take into consideration the meaning, while phonetics does not.

Phonemes and Allophones

andreshenriquez416 — 2024-03-03 06:43:36 UTC

Phonemes
Any of the perceptually distinct units of sound in a specified language that distinguish one word from another, for example p, b, d, and t in the English words pad, pat, bad, and bat.

Allophones
It refers to each of the phonos or sounds that in a given language is recognized as a certain phoneme, without the variations between them having a differential value; each allophone corresponds to a certain acoustic form, but in the rules of a specific language they are treated as the same value, that is, the same phoneme.

In other words, A phoneme is a set of allophones or individual non-contrastive speech segments. Allophones are sounds, whilst a phoneme is a set of such sounds. Allophones are usually relatively similar sounds which are in mutually exclusive or complementary distribution.

Allophone and their contexts

andreshenriquez416 — 2024-03-03 06:54:24 UTC

Some allophones of a phoneme are in complementary distribution, that is, they occupy different positions (contexts or environments) in words, where one can appear and the other may not. That is, the allophone of a vocal phoneme before a sound consonant will be appreciably longer (up to three times longer) than the allophone of the same vocal phoneme before a deaf consonant. For example, listen to the pronunciation of /e/ in bet and bed.

Phonological Rules

andreshenriquez416 — 2024-03-03 06:56:57 UTC

A phonological rule is a general statement about the distribution of the allophones of a phoneme, for example, those of /t/. There are several types of phonological rules to represent the different patterns of distribution of sounds in a language.

It can be considered that the rule for the allophone [th] of /t/ adds an extra breath after releasing a deaf occlusive. This rule adds the aspiration characteristic to the consonant. These rules are called feature addition rules.