IntroductionToPhonology/CEA1234/Prepared by:Bharrathiy

CHAPTER 1 A. THE PRODUCTION OF SOUNDS a) Introduction i) ii) iii) iv) levels of linguistic analysis / description sounds grammar meaning reality Phonetics Phonology Morphology Syntax Lexicology Semantics Sociolinguistics Psycholinguistics Pedagogical linguistics Pragmatics

Definition of language

language is sound organised into units of form and function, and contextualised with meaning in reality. (Loga Baskaran, 1997) A descriptive structural grammar of English progresses upward through 3 levels of structure -the first or lowest level deals with the system of speech sounds employed by native speakers of English: Phonology -the next higher level is concerned with the meaningful forms made from the individual speech sounds: morphology -the top level pertains to the ways in which words are arranged to form phrases and sentences: syntax Focus

-sounds Phonetics Phonology Definition of phonetics the study of the production, transmission and reception of sounds (Loga Baskaran, 1997) the study of the inventory of all speech sounds which humans are capable of producing (Katamba, 1989)

IntroductionToPhonology/CEA1234/Prepared by:Bharrathiy

In order to understand phonology, one must have a grasp of the basic concepts of phonetics. The term speech sound has been used advisedly since not all noises which we are capable of producing with our vocal apparatus are employed in speech. For example, we can all snore; we can cough and hiccup; we can all sneeze and we can all gnash our teeth. However, no linguist has yet discovered a community that has a language which noises produced by any one of these mechanisms mentioned above are used to form words. Therefore, speech sounds form a small subset of all the noises humans can produce with their vocal apparatus. It is this subset that phoneticians focus on. The study of speech sounds can be approached from various angles which are reflected by the 3 major branches of phonetics: Articulatory phonetics the study of speech production Acoustics phonetics the study of the physical properties of speech sounds using laboratory instruments. Auditory phonetics the study of speech perception. The focus is on Articulatory phonetics as it is the branch of phonetics on which most phonological theories have been based on in the past. Definition of phonology

i) ii) iii) -

the study of speech sounds and their combinations (Loga Baskaran, 1997) the branch of linguistics which investigates the ways in which sounds are used systematically in different languages to form words and utterances (Katamba, 1989) The smallest units of sound being the phoneme. The study of speech sounds here is based on a specific language. In phonetics, it is about languages in general. The study of sound in one language (language specific) e.g m is different in English and French.

Phonology as Procedure, Structure as Emergent If we conceptualise phonology as part of the procedure for producing and understanding language, the phonological properties of language should result from the fact that it is a highly practised behaviour associated with the vocal tract of human beings. Anology: playing the piano Strike notes in sequence. Each piece of music has its own sequence of notes to be learned. 2

IntroductionToPhonology/CEA1234/Prepared by:Bharrathiy

Practice is essential to ensure the transitions between notes become more fluent, and the speed of execution automatically increases. In order to maintain the correct rhythm and tempo, the player must at times hold back and not play every note as fast as possible. Of learning to play several pieces is that new pieces are easier to master. Bybee (2001) hypothesizes that the player can access bits of old stored pieces and incorporate them into new pieces. Because snatches of motor sequences can be reused in new context, the more motor sequences stored, the greater ease with which the player can master a new piece of music. Children learn phonological independently of words. sequences as parts of words, never

Articulatory routines that are already mastered are called forth for the production of new words, leading to a tendency of children to expand their vocabulary by acquiring words that are phonologically similar to those they already know (Ferguson and Farewell, 1975; Lindblom, 1992) This tendency leads to the structuring of the phonological sequences across words and the limiting of the potentially immense phonetic inventory. Put another way, the repetition of gestures and sequences across words allow relations of identity and similarity to develop in stretched of speech, giving rise to segment, syllable, and foot-sized units. With practice, speakers become more fluent in stringing words together, and this fluency and automation is characterised by the smoothing of transitions and overlapping of movements constrained by the need to retain information value. Some repeated sequences become highly automated and reduced in form. e.g I am Im At the same time, speakers must be able to access and recruit sequences into new combinations to express their thoughts and intentions. With practice, the ability to produce new combinations is also enhanced, probably by the storage of multiword constructional schemata (Bybee, 1998; Pawley and Syder, 1983) Grammatical and phonological structures emerge from the facts of cooccurance in language use. Words that commonly occur together for instance, nouns and their determiners, or verbs and their objects begin to behave as constituents.

IntroductionToPhonology/CEA1234/Prepared by:Bharrathiy

The more commonly the co-occur, the tighter their constituency becomes (Bybee and Scheibman, 1999) Phonological structure is affected by use in that articulatory accommodations occur as the result of real language use. This is the sense in which grammar can be said to be emergent.

Phonetics and Linguistics phonetics is an essential part of the subject of linguistics. We need to understand the basic principle of contrast in language: in phonetics in general, we can identify an enormous variety of different sounds that humans can make, but only a small number of these are used in a particular language to make a difference between words. In French, the words tout (all) (which we write in phonemic symbols as /t/ and tu (you) (phonemically /tj/) are recognizably different because of their vowels. In English, the word two is phonetically /tu:/; if we were to substitute the vowel /j/, this would not result in an English listener hearing a different English word. This is because the set of distinctive sounds (phonemes), is different in French and English. Linguistics studies all aspects of human language. In some cases (syntax, for example) it deals with complex and abstract concepts, and the mental processes involved can only be guessed at, not observed or measured. In other areas of linguistics, such as the study of social or regional variation in language, the data and their patterns may be easier to grasp. But, unless we are studying written language, it is only through analysing the spoken language that we are able to collect the data we use in linguistic research. The great British scholar Henry Sweet described phonetics as the indispensable foundation for the study of language, and that view is as valid today as it was a hundred years ago.