INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS

Profa. Valquiria C.P.S. Carvalho

valquiria.carolina@gmail.com
LINGUISTICS
 The science that investigates the phenomena
related to language in order to determine the
principles and characteristics which regulate the
structure of language.
PHONETICS
 Phonetics deals with the production of speech
sounds by humans, often without prior
knowledge of the language being spoken.
PHONETICS
 Articulatory phonetics:
Articulatory phonetics deals with the
categorization and classification of the production
features of speech sounds.
PHONETICS
 Acoustic phonetics: the study of the physical
transmission of speech sounds from the speaker
to the listener
 Auditory phonetics: the study of the reception and
perception of speech sounds by the listener
PHONOLOGY
 Phonology is about patterns of sounds,
especially different patterns of sounds in
different languages, or within each language,
different patterns of sounds in different positions
in words, etc.
EXAMPLES OF PHONOLOGICAL USE
 The consonant cluster /st/ is OK at the beginning,
middle or end of words in English.
 At beginnings of words, /str/ is OK in English,
but /ftr/ or /ʃtr/ are not (they are ungrammatical).
 /ʃtr/ is OK in the middle of words, e.g. in
"ashtray".
 /ʃtr/ is OK at the beginnings of words in German,
and /ftr/ is OK word-initially in Russian, but not
in English or German.
THE SOUNDS OF ENGLISH
 26 letters of the alphabet.
 44 different sounds in English (phonemes)
 ‘International Phonemic Alphabet'
 Phonemic transcriptions are written between
slashes, / /
 The number of letters doesn't necessarily
correspond to the number of sounds, or
phonemes
WRITING WITH PHONEMES
 Pronunciation of the word 'pet‘ :
/pet/
 Using phonemic symbols, we can see exactly
how many sounds a word has.
 CAT is transcribed - /kæt/
CATCH is transcribed - /kætʃ/
 In 'CATCH' the three letters TCH = one
sound represented by one phonemic symbol
/tʃ/
THE PHONEMIC CHART