Phonetics / Lecture 2

- Why study Phonetics and Phonology?

Sane as below question.

- What is the importance of Phonetics and Phonology?

Phonetics and Phonology are considered the core, and the ‘inner circle’ of
linguistics, unlike things like Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis which form
the outer circle. Phonetics and Phonology are the basis of linguistics.
- Is Phonetics separable or inseparable from Phonology?
They are separable in that they are two fields of study that concern themselves
with different things. Phonetics the study of sound production and Phonology
studies sound systems and patterns in different languages. However, they are
also inseparable as Phonetics is the raw material, and Phonology the final
product. One cannot exist without the other. One completes the other.

- Why are speech organs involved in Phonetics?

Because of “categorization”. We can categorize concepts such as vowels,
consonants and diphthongs with the way they are produced by organs of speech.

- Why is anatomy tackled in Phonetics?

Same as above question. To determine the criteria of
vowels/consonants/diphthongs.
 - Do you think that Phonetics is applicable in dealing with the varieties of
English (dialects, accents, etc.)?
In Phonetics, encoding with its variety of processes is very important in sound
production. This means that speech organs participate medically and
physiologically and even the brain is connected. Phonology continues the
application of the phases of encoding and decoding phonetically to handle the
process of speech pronunciation on several levels, which vary depending on the
country. The dialect and accent of English play a role in deciding the phonology
in those varieties which concern a number of dialects. There is also the
important point that the formal language is more ‘teachable’ than the informal.
Examples include: Standard British, Standard American, Standard Australian,
Standard Afrikaans, Indian, and even Canadian. So, in teaching, there must be
the variety of standardization.

Miscellaneous notes:
- Traditional Linguists such as Plato and Aristotle didn’t care about Phonetics
and they made claims like considering verbs to be “actions”, which was
unable to explain certain verbs like (see, smell, hear, etc) which are
describing senses not actions.
- De Saussure further made categorizations of English, identifying parts of
speech and how they interact with each other, but still wasn’t interested in
Phonetics.
- First to identify and study Phonetics was Bloomfield, who had a process
called ‘Discovery Procedure’ involving sitting down and listening to native
speakers of the language.
- Listening is considering encoding since the brain has to work and
understand what’s being ‘heard’ for it to be considered ‘listening’. However,
we use ‘hearing’ when it’s uncategorized or unidentified sounds. The brain
isn’t working so it is not listening.
- The slants (or slanted lines) in English transcription (/ /) are there to
represent the ‘neck’.
- We use “utterance” when discussing phonetics because it is considered with
singular words, while sentences, phrases, spoken word are all
categorizations we only use with phonology.
 - For Phonetics, we utilize knowledge of anatomy and physics.
- For Phonology, we only utilize speech itself.

- Face and blood are necessary for the production of sounds.

- In intonation, both phonetics and phonology work together.

- Criteria of consonants, vowels, diphthongs:

Consonants:
- Place of articulation
- Manner of articulation
- Voicing
- Clustering
- Movement of soft palate
Vowels:
- Horizontal tongue movement
- Vertical tongue movement
- Movement of lips
- Short / Long (vowel length)
Diphthongs:
- Two short vowels gliding
- The movement of the jaws
- Voicing
- The shape of the lips
- The movement of the tongue

- Vowels are considered “voiced” because there is a vibration as a result of

frequency in the speech organs and vocal cords.