Phonetics and Phonology Overview

Phonetics and Phonology

• Phonetics is the study of the physical characteristics of speech sounds.
• Phonology is the study of how sounds are organized and used in a language.
• Phonetics focuses on the production, transmission, and perception of speech sounds.
• Phonology analyzes how these sounds function within a particular language.

Consonant Sounds

• Plosives: Sounds produced by a complete closure of the vocal tract.
• Fricatives: Sounds produced by a narrow constriction of the vocal tract, causing friction.
• Affricates: Sounds that start as plosives, then transition to fricatives.
• Nasals: Sounds produced with the air flowing through the nasal cavity.
• Approximants: Sounds produced with a narrow constriction, but not enough to create audible friction.
• Liquids: A type of approximant where the air flows along the sides of the tongue.
• Glides: Approximants where the articulators move to a vowel position.

Vowel Sounds

• Vowel quality refers to the distinctive characteristics of vowel sounds.
• Vowel quantity refers to the length of a vowel sound.
• Vowel position refers to the tongue position in the mouth (front, central, back).
• Vowels can be categorized based on the shape of the mouth and the position of the tongue.

Stress and Intonation

• Stress is the emphasis placed on a syllable in a word.
• Intonation refers to the patterns of pitch changes in speech.
• Stress patterns in a language can affect word meaning.

Other Concepts

• Elision: The omission of a sound, often when it appears at the end of one word and the beginning of the next.
• Coalescence: The combination of two sounds into one.
• Intrusive /r/: The insertion of an /r/ sound between two vowels.
• Assimilation: the modification of a sound to make it more similar to a neighboring sound.
• Devoicing: A voiced sound becoming an unvoiced/voiceless sound.
• Dark L (velarized I): When 'l' is followed by a consonant.
• Clear L (nonvelarized I): When 'l'is followed by a vowel.
• Assimilation: A process where a sound changes its form as a result of its contextual position.
• Dipthongs: A combination of two vowel qualities in one sound.
• Triphongs: A combination of three vowel qualities in one sound.
• Schwa sound: It's a vowel sound of neutral quality produced in unstressed syllables.
• Lexical words: The words with strong meaning.
• Grammatical words: The words with weak meaning, like prepositions, conjunction, articles, etc.
• Stress-timing and syllable-timing: languages with stress patterns and those with syllable patterns.