PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY

COURSE DESCRIPTION:
▪ Phonetics and phonology gives insight into the pronunciation of
English by analyzing speech sounds taking into account both the
description of sounds as physical elements (phonetics) and
linguistic elements (phonology).
▪ The focus is on articulatory phonetics - the activity of speech
organs in the course of speaking. An important phonetic method
used in the analysis of pronunciation is phonemic transcription,
where each speech sound must be identified as one of the
phonemes and transcribed with the appropriate symbol of the
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
PHONETICS &
PHONOLOGY → both study the sounds of language; common subject matter, but two
different points of view.
PHONETICS → studies the production, transmission, and perceptionof speech sounds; the
study of the speech sounds in human language in general.
PHONOLOGY → studies how sounds are organized and used in a given language, the study of
the role of these sounds in a particular language.
PHONETICS
▪ speech sounds as physical reality;
▪ physical view of speech sounds
– how sounds are produced, transmitted, and perceived.
PHONOLOGY
▪ speech sounds as abstract units;
▪ functional view of speech sounds – how sounds pattern together and function in a
language.
PHONETICS
1. ARTICULATORY PHONETICS – studies how speech sounds are produced or articulated. It
covers the description of the organs of speech and how they are used to produce sounds.
2. ACOUSTIC PHONETICS – studies how speech sounds are transmitted through the air in the
form of air waves.
3. AUDITORY PHONETICS – studies the perception of speech by the hearer.

PHONOLOGY
1. SEGMENTAL PHONOLOGY – deals with individual segments (phonemes).
2. SUPRASEGMENTAL PHONOLOGY (PROSODY) – goes beyond a single segment (phoneme);
it deals with aspects of speech such as stress, intonation, and pitch.

SPEECH SOUND VARIATION

ACCENTS AND DIALECTS OF ENGLISH

✓ ACCENT – refers to variation in pronunciation.

✓ DIALECT – refers to variation in grammar and vocabulary + pronunciation.

▪ REGIONAL VARIATION – variations in speech between different geographical areas (British
English vs. American English).
▪ SOCIAL VARIATION – variation in speech between different social groups (differences based
on gender, ethnicity, age, social class, etc.).
▪ RP (Received Pronunciation) – is an accent of English; it is a social not a regional accent. For
a long time it has been considered a prestige model of pronunciation generally associated
with the elites (Oxford and Cambridge, BBC, etc.). Nowadays the situation is somewhat
different and a greater variation in pronunciation has become acceptable. RP is used only by
around 3% of the population of England.
▪ RECEIVED PRONUNCIATION
▪ SSBE (Standard Southern British English) – neutral type of modern British English (educated
middle and younger generation speakers in England), also known as Standard Southern
British English (SSBE).
▪ GA (General American) – is an accent of American English; perceived as having no distinct
regional characteristics; non-regional style of American English aka. Network American.The
educated English of the northern USA.The accents of the southern states are clearly quite
different from GA.
▪ GENERAL AMERICAN
RHOTIC AND NON-RHOTIC ACCENTS
e.g. CAR /kɑːr/ or /kɑː/
▪ In some accents, the sound /r/ at the end of the words like car is pronounced and in some
it is not – the most noticeable difference among accents of English.

✓ RHOTIC ACCENTS – the sound /r/ is always pronounced (US, Ireland, Scotland, etc.).

✓ NON-RHOTIC ACCENTS – /r/ sound is pronounced at the beginning or in the middle of a

word (SSBE, Australia, etc).

TRANSCRIPTION
How are English and Croatian different in terms of the spelling and pronunciation of a word?
e. g. sound vs. glas
- How many letters in the words?
- How many sounds in the words?
- In Croatian, there’s a one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds, whereas, in
English, letter-to-sound consistency is not regular –spelling does not reflect pronunciation.
ENGLISH SPELLING — CHALLENGES
ONE SOUND MANY LETTERS
meat, meet, machine, people, Caesar, silly, key
• one sound is represented by different graphemes (alphabet letters) or combinations of
graphemes
ONE LETTER MANY SOUNDS
damage, educate, picked
• one grapheme represents different sounds
SOME LETTERS REPRESENT NO SOUND
knee, lamb, receipt, right, honor, rhyme, psalm, salmon
• some graphemes represent no sound at all
TWO OR MORE LETTERS ONE SOUND
throne, chain, edge, nation, itch, school, eat, too, leopard, lieutenant
• two or more graphemes represent a single sound
ONE LETTER TWO SOUNDS
fox
• a single grapheme may represent two or more sounds, the letter x represents the sound
sequence “ks”
DOUBLE LETTERS ONE SOUND
letter, summer, offer
• a grapheme may simply indicate the quality of a neighboring sound, as in dinner vs. diner
(where a double or single n indicates the quality of the preceding vowel – monophthong vs.
diphthong)
- Since there’s no correspondence between letters and sounds in English, how do we
represent speech?
- We use alphabetic symbols to represent sounds – TRANSCRIPTION
- The term transcription refers to the process and “the methods of writing down speech
sounds in a systematic and consistent way” (Crystal 2008: 490).

THE INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET

▪ The International Phonetic Alphabet is a standardized system of symbols for transcribing
human speech. It aims to provide a separate symbol for every meaningful sound in every
language of the world.
▪ It is an alphabetic system, based primarily on the Latin script.
▪ There is a one-to-one correspondence between an actual sound and the symbol. A single
written symbol represents one and only one speech sound.

TRANSCRIPTION
▪ PHONEMIC TRANSCRIPTION (BROAD) – a transcription of phonemes; it doesn’t show all the
phonetic details of a sound produced –general pronunciation. Every speech sound is
identified as one of the phonemes. It is the transcription you see in a dictionary, enclosed in
forward slashes /t/.
▪ PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION (NARROW) – more detailed and specific; with a lot of
information about the exact quality of the sounds. It is enclosed in square brackets [tʰ].
Speech production

Organs of speech / Speech mechanism

✓ The BREATHING MUSCLES produce the stream of air that is needed for the production of
almost all sounds. The majority of languages (English and Croatian included) use the
airstream coming from the LUNGS → pulmonic egressive airstream (the lungs are
contracting and pushing the air outwards). The other type of airstream is ingressive (air is
being taken into the mouth).  XHOSA

✓ The LARYNX (you can feel it moving up and then down when swallowing; Adam’s apple is
a part of larynx). Very important speech organ as it contains vocal folds/vocal cords, which
play an important role in the process of voicing.  LARYNX

✓ VOCAL FOLDS (vocal cords) - in the larynx, two muscles stretching horizontally across the
larynx; the vocal cords are relatively open during normal breathing but closed during eating.
They vibrate when airstream passes between them producing a „buzz” known as voice that
we can here in vowels and some consonants. For voiceless sounds, the vocal folds are open
and the air escapes freely. The space between the cords when they are open is known as the
glottis.
VOCAL FOLDS - POSITION
breathing; voicelessconsonants like p, t, s
h – voiceless glottalfricative
vocal folds are vibrating– voicedsounds like b, d, z
air cannot pass –glottal stop/glottal plosive ʔ
Articulators above the larynx / Supraglottal vocal tract

✓ The PHARYNX (throat)

▪located directly above the larynx
▪for the production of English (and Croatian) speech sounds, the pharynx only serves as the
air passage. Arabic, for example, also knows pharyngeal sounds.
▪the pharynx separates into the oral cavity and the nasal cavity.

✓ The VELUM (SOFT PALATE)

▪it is a movable speech organ – it can be raised or lowered.
▪it directs the airflow into the oral cavity or nasal cavity.
▪if velum is raised, the air cannot escape through the nose, but goes through the mouth →
oral sounds are produced
▪If velum is lowered, some part of the airstream goes through the nose → nasal sounds are
produced
▪If the back of the tongue is in contact with the lower side of the velum → velar sounds are
produced

✓ The UVULA
▪you can see uvula in the back of your mouth when you open your mouth and say „ah”.
▪its movement is opposite to that of the velum.

✓ The ALVEOLAR RIDGE

▪sounds produced with the tongue touching the alveolar ridge (the ridge immediately behind
the front teeth) are alveolar e.g. t, d, s, z, n.

✓ The HARD PALATE

▪sounds produced on the hard palate are palatal (e.g. j).

✓ The TONGUE
▪it is a movable speech organ; it’s usually divided into 5 parts (tip, blade, front, back, root)

✓ The TEETH (upper and lower)

▪sounds produced with the tongue touching the back of the upperfront teeth are called
dental (e.g. /ð, θ/).

✓ The LIPS
▪sounds produced with the lips in contact with each other are called bilabial (e.g. /p, b, m/,
while those produced with the lips in contact with the teeth are called labiodental (e.g. /f,
v/).
Active and passive articulators
ACTIVE ARTICULATORS (movement) - e.g. vocal folds, tongue, soft palate, uvula, lips, lower
jaw, lower teeth
PASSIVE ARTICULATORS (little or no movement) - larynx, pharynx, vocal tract, hard palate,
alveolar ridge, upper teeth