Phonetics:

● The general study of characteristics of speech sounds

● Types:
o Articulary (how speech sounds are made, articulated)
o Acoustic (physical properties such as sound waves)
o Auditory (deal with perception, ear, of speech)

Voiced and voiceless sounds:

● Air pushed out by lungs through traches (windpipe) to the larynx inside of which are vocal
folds/cords which take 2 basic positions:
o Spread apart, air comes unimpeded – voiceless (f,s)
o Drawn together, the air is being repeatedly pushes them apart creating vibration
effect – voiced (z,v)

Place of articulation:
● Air passes through the larynx -> comes up and out
through mouth/nose
● consonant sounds are produced by using the tongue
and parts of the moth to shape out the oral cavity
which the air is passing through

Bilabials:

● sounds formed by using both (=bi) upper and

lower lips (=labia)
● voiced
o initial sounds in pat, bat, mat: [p], [b], [m]
● voiceless:
o initial sounds in wat: [w]

Labiodentals:

● sounds formed by upper teeth and the lower lip

● voiced:
o initial sound of vat, final sound of save: [v]
● voiceless:
o initial sound of fat, final sound of safe: [f]

Dentals:

● sounds formed with the tongue tip behind upper front teeth
● voiceless:
o initial sound of thin, three and final sound of bath, teeth: [θ] (theta)
● voiced:
o initial sounds of the, there, then, thus, middle consonant in feather and final sound in
bathe: [ð] (eth)
 Alveorals:

● sounds formed with the front part of the tongue on the alveolar ridge (immediately
above the upper teeth)
● voiceless:
o initial sounds in top, sit, lap, lit: [t], [s], [l]
● voiced:
o initial sounds in dip, zoo, nut, wight, write: [d], [z], [n], [r]

Palatals:

● sounds produced with the tongue and the palate

● voiceless:
o initial and final sound in child, church: [ʧ]
o initial sound of shout, initial and final sound in shoe-brush: [ʃ]
● voiced:
o middle consonant in treasure, pleasure + final sound in rouge: [ʒ]
o initial sound of gem, joke + initial and final sound of judge, George: [ʤ]
o initial sound of you, yet: [j]

Velars:

● sounds produced with the back of the tongue against velum (the soft palate, in the
further back of the mouth)
● voiceless:
o initial sounds of kid, kill, car, cold + initial and final sound in cook, kick, coke: [k]
● Voiced:
o Initial sound in go, gun, give + final sound in bag, mug, plague: [ɡ]
o Final sound in sing, sang, tongue + occurs twice in ringing + final sound in bang:
[ŋ] (angma)

Glottals:

● Sound produced without the active use of the tongue and other parts of the mouth
● Voiceless:
o Initial sounds of have, house, who, whose: [h]

Manner of articulation:
● How are the words pronounced (the manner of the pronunciation??)
● [p], [b], [t], [d], [k], [ɡ]

Stops/plosives:

● Sound resulting from blocking or stopping effect of the air stream

● Voiceless:
o Initial sound in ten: [t] (alveolar)
● Voiced:
o Initial and final sound of bed: [b] (bilabial), [d] (alveolar)
Fricatives:
 ● Involves almost blocking the air stream and having the air push through the narrow
opening -> as the air pushes through, a type of friction is pronounced in the resulting
sounds
● [f], [v], [θ], [ð], [s], [z], [ʃ], [ʒ], [h]
● Voiceless:
o Initial and final sound in fish: [f] (labiodental); [ʃ] (palatal)
o Initial sound in hello, hi: [h] (glottal)
● Voiced:
o Initial and final sound in those: [ð] (dental); [z] (alveolar)

Affricates:

● Combination of a brief stopping of the air stream with an obstructed release which
causes some friction
● [ʧ], [ʤ]
● Voiceless:
o Initial sound in cheap: [ʧ] (palatal)
● Voiced:
o Initial sound in jeep: [ʤ] (palatal)

Nasals:

● Lowered velum, air stream is allowed to flow out through the nose (zní to, jak kdybych
měla rýmu proste a snazila se mluvit)
● [m], [n], [ŋ]
● initial sounds in morning, knitting, name: [m] (bilabial), [n] (alveolar), [ŋ] (velar) -> all
voiced

Liquids:

● [l], [r]
● Voiced:
o initial sound in led: [l] (alveoral) ->formed by letting the air stream flow around
the sides of the tongue as the tip of the tongue contacts the middle of the
alveolar ridge
o initial sound in red: [r] (alveolar) -> formed with the tongue tip raised and curled
back near the alveolar ridge

Glides:

● typically produced with the tongue in motion (or “gliding”) to or from the position of a
vowel
● [w], [j]
● pak je tam cosi o tom, ze se to nejak kombinuje nebo se temu rika jinak, ale fuck it, I
don’t have time for this
● voiced:
o initial sound in we, wet: [w] (bilabial)
o initial sound in you, yes: [j] (palatal)
 Glottal stops and flaps:

● glottal stop – symbol [ʔ]

o when the space between the vocal folds (the glottis) is closed completely (very
briefly), then released
o example:
▪ Oh-oh, uh-uh: glottal stop between the first Oh and the second oh
▪ Quickly pronouncing Batman (the t just leaves)
▪ Butter and bottle of water pronounced in Briish accent
● Glottal flap
o Pronouncing butter as budder
o Represented by [D] or sometimes [ɾ] (produced by the tongue tip tapping the
alveolar ridge briefly)
o Americans flap [t] and [d] -> writer, rider, metal, medal.

Vowels:
● are produced with a relatively free flow of air, typically voiced
● when describing, we consider the way in which the tongue influences the shape through
which the airflow must pass
● place of articulation: high x low, front x back
o heat, hit: high, front (sound is made with the front part of the tongue in a raised
position)
o hat, hot: low, back (tongue in a lower position)
Diphthongs:

● combination of two vowel sounds

● from low towards low back/low towards high front
o hi, bye: from low [a] to high front [ɪ] -> [aɪ]
o from low [a] to high back [ʊ] -> [aʊ]
● vowel sounds are notorious for varying between different accents
PHONOLOGY 
 Description of the systems and patterns of speech sounds in a language 
 Concerned with the abstract set of sounds in a language that allows us to
distinguish meaning in the actual physical sounds we say and hear 

PHONEMES
= the smallest unit of sound that can differentiate the meaning, abstract (in the mind)
 Phoneme /t/ is described as a sound type, different spoken versions of [t] are tokens
 BACHA NA ZÁVORKY FEST DŮLEŽITÉ 
 We can describe them with the signs + (present) and – (not present)
 /k/ - (-voice, +velar, +stop) 
 sounds which have features in common would behave phonologically in some similar
ways 

PHONES AND ALLOPHONES 

= sound types regularly produced in actual speech (in the mouth), we can describe these
different versions of PHONEMES as PHONES – these are phonetic units -> [ ] brackets 
 when we have a set of phones – all of which are versions of one PHONEME, we call
them ALLOPHONES of that PHONEME 
 the crutial distinction between phonemes and allophones is that substituting one
phoneme for another will result in a words with a different meaning, 
 substituting allophones will result in a different (unusual) pronunciation of the
same word 

MINIMAL PAIRS AND SETS 

= when two words such as pat and bat are identical in form except for a contrast in one
phoneme occurring in the same position, the two words are described as a minimal pair
 if it’s a group of words, then it’s a minimal set
 e.g. feat, fit, fat, fate, fought, foot
 e.g. big, pig, rig, fig 

PHONOTACTICS 
= permitted arrangements of sounds
 lig, vig – do not exist, but could be possible, our phonological knowledge allows us to
treat these as real, if they ever came into use 
 fsig, rnig – do not exist, unlikely to ever exist, ugly, formed without obeying
constraints on the sequence or position of English phonemes -> these constraints
are called PHONOTACTICS  

SYLLABLES 
 must contain a vowel or vowel-like sounds, including diphthongs 
 the most common type of syllable also has a consonant ( C ) before vowel (V) 
  represented as CV 
 green – CCVC, eggs – VCC, and - VCC
 the basic elements: 
 onset – one or more consonants followed by:
 rhyme (sometimes rime) – consists of a vowel, which is treated as the
nucleus, plus any following consonants – coda 
 coda present (syllables like up, cup, at) – CLOSED SYLLABLES
 coda not present (me, to, no) – OPEN SYLLABLES 

CONSONANT CLUSTERS 
 both the onset and the coda can consist of more than one consonant – consonant
clusters (CC) 
 black, bread, trick, twin...
 liquids (/r/, /l/) and glides (/w/) are being used in second position 
 English can have larger onset clusters (CCC) 
 Stress, splat.. 
 Phonotactics of there larger onset consonant clusters: the first consonant must
be /s/, followed by one of the voiceless stops /p/, /t/, /k/ and a liquid or glide /l/,
/r/, /w/ 

COARTICULATION EFFECTS 
 Assimilation and elision

ASSIMILATION
 When two sounds occur in the sequence and some aspect of one segment is taken or
“copied” by the other 
 Quicker, simpler, more efficient 
 I have to go – I haefto go (jsem líná na fonetický přepis na pc sori) 

ELISION
 Efficiency 
 Process of not pronouncing a sound segment that might be present in the deliberately
careful pronunciation of a word
Morphology:
  Investigating basic forms in language (nitakupenda – ni = I, ta = will, ku = you, penda = love),
study of forms

Morphemes: 
 a minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function (talks, talker, talked, talking ->
bold=morpheme)
 units of grammatical function: indicating past tense, plural, etc
 reopened -> consists of 3 morphemes, minimal unit of meaning: re- (as in again),
open, minimal unit of grammatical function: -ed (past tense indicator)
 tourists: minimal unit of meaning: tour, -ist (person that does something), minimal
unit of grammatical function: -s (plural)

Free and bound morphemes:

 free morphemes: can stand by themselves (tour, open) -> when used with bound morpheme,
it’s known as a stem (bound stem: receive, repeat x free stem: dress, care)
 bound morphemes: they’re attached to another form and cannot stand alone (re-, -ist, -s) ->
affixes are bound morphemes

Lexical and functional morphemes:

 free morphemes fall into 2 categories
 set of ordinary nouns, adjective and verbs that carry the “content of the message”
we try to convey = lexical morphemes (girl, man, house, tiger, sad, long, yellow,
sincere, open, look, follow, break)
 open class of words (easily added)
 conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns = functional morphemes (and, but,
above, because, on, near, in, the, that, it, them)
 closed class of words (almost never added)

Derivational and inflectional morphemes:

 bound morphemes fall into 2 categories
 using bound morphemes to make new words or to make words of a different
grammatical category from the stem = derivational morphemes (goodness, careful,
careless, foolish, quickly, payment, prefixes: re-, pre-, ex-, mis-, co-, un-)
 indication of aspects of the grammatical function of a word = inflectional morpheme
 used to show if a word is plural or singular, if it is past tense or not, and if it is
a comparative or possessive form
 8 inflectional morphemes (inflections):
 Noun + -’s, -s 
 Verb + -s, -ing, -ed, -en 
 Adjective + -er, -est

Morphological description:
 Difference between derivational and inflectional morphemes in in worth emphasizing
 Inflectional morpheme: 
 never changes the grammatical category of a word (old -> older -> both adjectives)
 Derivational morpheme: 
 Can change the category (teach -> teacher -> from verb to a noun)
  Whenever there is a derivational suffix and an inflectional suffix attached to the same word,
they always appear in that order -> first derivational (-er), then inflectional (-s) => teachers

Morphs and allomorphs:

 Morph = the actual form we use for realization of morpheme 
 2 morphs in the word cats -> cat + -s (one lexical morpheme, one plural morpheme)
 2 morphs in the word buses -> bus + -es (one lexical morpheme, one plural
morpheme)
 At least 2 different morphs used to realize the inflectional morpheme “plural”
 Allomorph = a group of different morphs, all versions of one morpheme
 “cat + plural,” “bus + plural,” “sheep + plural,” and “man + plural”
 All of the actual forms are different, but they all are allomorphs of the morpheme
“plural”
 In addition to /s/ and /əz / -> zero-morph “sheep + ø“, vowel change in men
Families of languages
 Groups of languages with common origin (comparing languages in detailed and systematic
way -> if there was appliable correspondence = common origin)
 Roman languages (Spanish, Italian) -> Latin; hypothesis of proto-language (Proto-Indo-
European)
 Latin (parent language) -> daughter languages (French, Spanish), French to Spanish = sister
language
 In larger families – sub-families
 In modern language there’s a modern term to call these ‘families’ but idgaf, it’s gonna be
families to me no matter what
The comparative method
 In historical linguistics: a way of systematical comparison of a series of languages in order to
prove a historical relationship between them
 Scholars identified a set of formal similarities and differences between the languages
and tried to work out (reconstruct) an earlier stage of development -> internal
reconstruction
 If the languages have common ancestor -> they’re cognate

 the * means that the form in question is reconstruction which has not been
attested in written records
 pronunciation is a matter of debate

Types of linguistic classification

 Genetic classification
 historical, based on the assumption that languages diverged from a common
ancestor
 early written remains as evidence (when lacking, deductions are made using the
comparative method)
 widely used at the end of the 18 century -> all linguistic survey to date have been
th

carried out by it
 Typological classification
 Based on comparison of the formal similarities which exist between languages
 Attempt to group languages into structural types based on phonology, grammar or
vocabulary rather than by historical relationship
 Groups differentiated in terms of how they use sounds (how many and what
kinds of vowels they have, usage of clicks, tones etc), fixer or free word order
 Earliest – in the morphology field, recognition of 3 main linguistic types based on the
way a language constructs its words
 Isolating, analytic or root languages
  All words are invariable, there are no endings, grammatical
relationships are shown by the word order (Chinese, Vietnamese,
Samoan)
 Example:

 Inflecting, synthetic or fusional languages

 Grammatical relationships are expressed by changing the internal
structure of the words (use of inflectional endings that express
several grammatical meanings at once) (Latin, Greek, Arabian)
 Example:
 The -o in Latin amo ‘I love’ expresses that the form is in the
first person singular, present tense, active and indicative
 Agglutinative or agglutinating languages
 Words are built up out of a long sequence of units
 Each unit expresses a particular grammatical meaning in clear one-
to-one way (Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Swahili)
 A sequence of five affixes might express the meaning of amo 
 Example:

 Polysynthetic or incorporating languages

 Some linguist regard to this a s a separate typological cathegory
 Long, complex words containing a mixture of agglutinating and
inflectional features (Eskimo, Mohawk, Australian languages)

 Example:
Analytic languages
 Made up of sequences of free morphemes 
 Each word consists of single morpheme, used by itself with meaning intact
 Purely analytical languages don’t use prefixes or suffixes to compose words, sematic and
grammatical concepts are expressed by separate words instead of the suffixes 
 Example: 
 Mandarin – concepts of plurality or tense are indicated through the use of free
morpheme rather than changing a form (We = I+word for plural)

 Only the position of a word in a sentence shows it’s function -> word order is used to
show the functions of nouns in a sentence, nouns are not marked by affixes to show
their functions (Tracy likes cats x Cats like Tracy -> the subject and direct object
change changes the whole meaning of the sentence)
Synthetic languages
 Affixes or bound morphemes are attached to other morphemes -> one word may be made
up out of sever meaningful elements
 Bound morphemes add another elemenet of meaning (indicating grammatical function)
 Example:
 Hungarian
 English – the position of the noun tells me whether it’s the subject, object or a verb X
Hungarian – recognition of the subject or an object by a bound morpheme (suffix [t]
in this case)
 Hungarian uses bound morphemes to indicate f.e. personal possession and location

using suffixes

Agglutinating languages 
 Morphemes are joined loosely (it’s easy to determine where the boundaries between
morphemes are)
 Each bound morpheme carries only one meaning
  Synthesis of morphemes that’s represented in Hungarian -> agglutination
 Swahili -> verb stems take prefixes to indicate the person of the subject of the verb or tense

Fusional languages
 Words are formed by adding bound morphemes to stems (affixes aren’t that easy to
separate from the stem) -> its hard to tell where one morpheme ends and the next begins
(affixes are characteristically fused with them)
 Pak tam davaji priklady a opakuji to porad dokola and I’m bored, takze moving on
Polysynthetic languages