ENG 4339 Lecture 2: introduction-to-english-pronunciation
UNIT 1: INTRODUCTION: A Theoretical Approach
1. INTRODUCTION:
This document includes a brief introduction to phonetic and phonology; and it presents
the basic concepts, terms and ideas to have a first approximation to pronunciation. The
following aspects will be covered:
Phonetics and phonology: allophones and phonemes.
Perspectives for the study pf phonetics.
Organs of speech.
o The oral and nasal cavities.
o The vocal folds.
The production of sounds.
o Intonation.
o Phonation.
o Articulation.
The segmental level and the suprasegmental level.
2. PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY: Allophones and Phonemes.
Phonetics and phonology are two disciplines that study the production of the sounds of a
language from different perspectives. Phonetics studies sounds from a psychological
approach, that is, it deals with the ways sounds are produced and perceived by speakers.
Thus, phonetics, for example, studies the positions and movements of the organs of
speech involved in the production and perception of sounds. For example, a sound such
as [p] is produced with a complete closure of the lips.
Phonology, on the other hand, describes sounds from a mental (linguistic) perspective.
One of the main roles of phonology is to analyse the whole amount of sounds belonging
to a language and decide which of them are linguistically relevant (or contrastive) and
which of them are not, namely, which of them are phonemes and which of them are
allophones. A phoneme is the smallest unit in a language that can cause a difference in
meaning (or contrast) between two words. An allophone, on the other hand, is one of the
different possible realizations of a phoneme. Contrary to phonemes, allophones do not
trigger a difference in meaning between two words.
In order to find out whether a particular sound is a phoneme or an allophone we have to
examine whether this sound triggers differences in meaning or not. If it does, the sound is
a phoneme, if it does not, it might be an allophonic variation of a given phoneme.
The best way to see if a sound is responsible for changes in the meaning of words is by
finding a minimal pair, that is, a pair of words which have the same sounds except for
one. If this sound causes a difference in meaning between two words, it should be
interpreted as a phoneme. If this sound does not trigger a semantic difference, it should
be categorized as an allophone, that is, as one of the possible realizations of a given
phoneme. This is illustrated in the following Spanish and English examples which include
two words only differentiated by one sound, [t] and [].
Spanish English
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[‘pata] (meaning “leg”) [‘siti] (meaning “city”)
[‘paa] (meaning “for”) [‘sii] (meaning “city”)
Whereas in Spanish the presence of a [t] or a [] triggers a difference in meaning (“leg” –
“for”), in English it does not (“city”). Thus, whereas in Spanish [t] and [] are two
phonemes (or contrastive units), in English [t] and [] are two allophones (or realizations)
of the same phoneme. (/t/) which is realized as [t] or []. In this case, the decision to use
one of the two allophonic variants ([t] or []) is geographically determined. Whereas in
British English the /t/ between vowels tend to be produced as [t] (city [siti]) in American
English it is usually produced as [] (city [sii]). Phonemes tend to be represented
between brackets (/ /) and allophones between square brackets ([ ]).
Besides the geographic or the dialectal variability, the use of a given allophone tends to be
determined by the phonetic context or by the environment in which it occurs, that is, by
the types of sounds surrounding this allophone. Allophones can show up in two kinds of
distributions (or groups of environments):
1. In complementary distribution.
2. In free variation.
When two allophones are complementary in distribution, these are mutually exclusive,
that is, they show up in different environments, and whereas one of the allophones shows
up, the other one not. For example, the English phoneme /l/ can be realized as [l] (clear
“l”) or [l] (dark “l”). Clear “l” only happens before vowels /j/ and dark “l” before
consonants (except for /j/ or before a comma. This is illustrated below. The formalism is
interpreted as follows: the arrow means “is realized as”, the slash (/) means “in the
environment of”, the horizontal line indicates the spot where a given sound is realized.
Thus, /l/ is realize as [l] before a vowel or a /j/ and as [l] before a consonant or a pause.
The symbol # indicates a word boundary.
[l] / _______ vowel light [laIt]
/j/ lure [lj]
/l/
milk [mIlk]
[l] / _______ consonants mill # [mIl]
#
When allophones are in free variation, they can appear in the same context. This is the
case of English /t/ which may be realized as [t] or [] in word final position. In this case,
the presence of [t] or [] does not cause any difference in meaning. Thus, [t] or [] are
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allophonic variants of the same phoneme. See page 55 in the book for more details on
[].
[ t ] / ________ # put [pt]
/t/
[] / _________ # put [p]
Finally, is important to note that for two sounds to be interpreted as allophones of the
same phoneme they should also be phonetically similar. For example, in English the
sounds [] and [h] are in complementary distribution since [h] can only appear at the
beginning of the syllables (for example “head” [hed]) but never at the end, and [] can
only appear at the end of the syllables (for example “sing” [sIn]) but never at the
beginning. Despite being complementary in distribution, these sounds could never be
interpreted as allophones of the same phoneme because their phonetic characteristics are
too different. As we will see in Unit 3 [h] is occlusive, fricative and voiceless; and [] is
nasal, velar and voiced. Thus, they do not share any phonetic characteristics and
furthermore is very unlikely that they can be allophonic variants.
3. PERSPECTIVES FOR THE STUDY OF PHONETICS
The study of phonetics can be done from different perspectives: 1) through the speaker’s
perspective (articulatory phonetics), 2) through the listener’s perspective (listening /
hearing phonetics) and 3) through the way sound is transmitted through the air (acoustic
phonetics).
To summarize, articulatory phonetics studies how the speakers produce sounds of a given
language. Thus, it examines the different positions (or articulatory movements) of the
organs of speech used to produce a given sound or string of sounds. Auditory phonetics
studies how sounds are perceived by listeners. It mainly analyses how listeners of a given
language register or receive sounds and decode them into a message. Acoustic phonetics
examines the properties of sounds and how they are described as changes in air pressure.
Figure 1 represents a schematized picture of the speech chain illustrating the three stages
of a communicative act (production, transmission and perception of the speech signal). In
this case, we will study English phonetics from an articulatory point of view.
Articulatory Acoustics Auditory
Phonetics phonetics
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Document Summary
Unit 1: introduction: a theoretical approach: introduction: This document includes a brief introduction to phonetic and phonology; and it presents the basic concepts, terms and ideas to have a first approximation to pronunciation. Phonetics and phonology are two disciplines that study the production of the sounds of a language from different perspectives. Phonetics studies sounds from a psychological approach, that is, it deals with the ways sounds are produced and perceived by speakers. Thus, phonetics, for example, studies the positions and movements of the organs of speech involved in the production and perception of sounds. For example, a sound such as [p] is produced with a complete closure of the lips. Phonology, on the other hand, describes sounds from a mental (linguistic) perspective. A phoneme is the smallest unit in a language that can cause a difference in meaning (or contrast) between two words. An allophone, on the other hand, is one of the different possible realizations of a phoneme.
