English Phonetics & Phonology Topic 1 PDF

English Phonetics & Phonology Institute of English Studies Jagiellonian University Topic 1: Phonetics vs. phonology. Phonetic alphabets and speech segmentation 1. PHONOLOGY VS PHONETICS a. The speech chain (Denes, P.B., & Pinson, E. 1993. The Speech Chain. 2nd edition. Worth Publishers; page 5...

English Phonetics & Phonology Institute of English Studies Jagiellonian University Topic 1: Phonetics vs. phonology. Phonetic alphabets and speech segmentation 1. PHONOLOGY VS PHONETICS a. The speech chain (Denes, P.B., & Pinson, E. 1993. The Speech Chain. 2nd edition. Worth Publishers; page 5) (Adapted from this link) b. Phonology deals with language (a cognitive system underlying speech): i. linguistic encoding/decoding at the level of speech sounds and syllables ii. organization of speech sounds into a linguistic system iii. sound patterns in language iv. structure of linguistic units such as syllables and morphemes c. Phonetics deals with speech (a manifestation of language in the physical world): i. physiology of speech sounds: production (articulatory phonetics) and reception (auditory phonetics) ii. physics of speech sounds as sound waves (acoustic phonetics) d. Comparison: Phonology Phonetics - branch of linguistics - interdisciplinary (linguistics, physics, anatomy, etc.) - often theory-oriented - highly data-driven - makes reference to abstract entities - deals with entities that can be observed and measured (phonemes, allophones, syllables, word stress, (vowel length, frequency, loudness, articulatory word boundary, etc.) movements, etc.) e. Bear in mind that phonology and phonetics have much to offer to each other. 1 2. INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET a. Used in major monolingual English dictionaries: Oxford English Dictionary; Dictionary; , Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, etc. b. but not usually not in dictionaries published in America (American Heritage Dictionary; Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language) c. Used by all pronunciation dictionares Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary) and in America (Upton & Kretzschmar Jr. The Routledge Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English, Kenyon & Knott A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English) d. Also used in all major English departments in Europe (incl. Poland), and increasingly in America e. Developed in 1888 by Alexander J. Ellis, Henry Sweet, Daniel Jones, and Paul Passy, members of the International Phonetic Association f. Basic principles: i. one unique IPA character for each distinctive sound ii. letters derived from the Roman alphabet + additional characters g. Multiple revisions since; current version from 2015 h. Notable extensions of IPA: i. extIPA (Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for Disordered Speech) ii. VoQS (Voice Quality Symbols) i. Other phonetic alphabets exist: e.g. Americanist Phonetic Alphabet; Uralic Phonetic Alphabet 3. WHY WE NEED A PHONETIC ALPHABET: SPEECH VS. WRITING a. Consider a few sets of examples: i. spelling of a single vowel: chic, seen, shield, people, ceiling, quay, wheat, key, legal, phoenix ii. spelling of a single consonant: sugar, chic, issue, ocean, version, precious, fission, fashion, clash, information, schmuck, conscious iii. variable letter-to-sound mappings: church, monarch, chic, sandwich /t / (2x), /k/, / /, /d / six, luxury, exit, xenon, X-ray /ks/, /k /, / head, great, meat / /, /e mat, mate, about, father, water, many /æ/, /e /, / /, / / / iv. -ough words: hiccough / p/, cough / f/, rough / f/, hough / k/ the tarsus bone of quadrupeds such as horses lough / x ~ k/ ; furlough / /, plough /a /, through , fought / , thorough / / b. Types of sound-to-spelling correspondences: i. linear, i.e. in a string: one-to-many one sound spelt with two or more letters: /k/ in yuck through many-to-one two sounds spelt with one letter: /ks/ in tax (what about /a / like?) ii. systemic, i.e. within a given spelling system: one-to-many one sound represented in many ways /k/ in kettle, chic, monarch, yuck many-to-one many sounds represented in the same manner: chic, seen, shield, people c. Consequences: i. homophones: key vs. quay ii. homographs: tear n. vs. tear v.; transport n. vs. transport v. 2 4. SEGMENTATION OF SPEECH: Is speech discrete or continuous? a. Is speech a series of discrete acoustic segments? i. Consider the IPA representation of The force will be with you. Always [ð w w ] ii. A stretch of speech between pauses is a continuous series of acoustic events, with smooth transitions and partial overlap between and cannot be segmented unambiguously in a waveform or a spectrogram. b. Is speech a string of discrete articulatory gestures? i. Consider the MRI clip of the pronunciation of the sentence n ask mi k i n a (link) ii. Speech involves continuous movements of articulatory organs between articulatory targets. 5. THE MAINSTREAM CONSENSUS: a. Most phoneticians/phonologists act on the assumption that speech consists of a string of discrete segments b. Some arguments in favour: i. the articulatory targets themselves are discrete ii. speech seems to be perceived and processed in the brain as combinations of discrete objects: phrases words morphemes phonemes iii. slips of the tongue, e.g. spoonerisms: The Lord is a shoving leopard. c. Controversies remain: i. Recent critique of the concept of segment: Boucher, V.J. 2021. The study of speech processes. Cambridge: CUP. ii. How many segments are there in these AmE words? choice IPA /t s/ vs. APA / oys/ cute IPA /kjut/ vs. APA /kyut/ nurse IPA /n rs/ or /n s/ vs. APA /n rs/ 3