dr Hanna Dziczek-Karlikowska

Phonology and Phonetics year I

LECTURE I - INTRODUCTORY INFORMATION

PHONETICS and PHONOLOGY

TWO SUBDISCIPLINES IN LINGUISTICS WHICH DEAL WITH SOUNDS

1. LINGUISTICS: the scientific study of language and its structure. There are broadly
three aspects to the study: language form, language meaning, and language in context.

LINGUISTICS

DESCRIPTIVE

THEORETICAL

APPLIED

Anthropological linguistics

Cognitive linguistics

Computational linguistics

Comparative linguistics

Generative linguistics

Forensic linguistics

Historical linguistics

Pragmatics

Evolutionary linguistics

Sociolinguistics

Semantics

Language acquisition

Etymology

Syntax

2nd language acquisition

Morphology

Linguistic anthropology

Phonetics

Graphemics

Psycholinguistics

Phonology

2. PHONETICS
Provides objective ways of describing and analysing the range of sounds humans use in their
languages, that is, it is concerned with the physical properties of sounds, i.e. phones.
Branches of phonetics: articulatory, acoustic and auditory.
a. Articulatory phonetics: identifies precisely which speech organs and muscles are
involved in producing the different sounds of the worlds languages;
b. Acoustic phonetics: the study of speech as it travels through the air in the form of
sound waves;
c. Auditory phonetics: the study of how sounds are perceived by the hearers ears and
brain.
3. PHONOLOGY
It studies the way speech sounds are organised into patterns and systems in a particular
language.
4. PHONETICS vs. PHONOLOGY
Phonetics: more concrete field of study than phonology; it is concerned with more detailed,
physical description of speech sounds.
Phonology: more abstract field of study than phonetics; it is concerned with the functioning of
speech sounds as part of a system within a language and the relationships between them.
Phonology tries to answer the following questions:
How are the sound patterns of one language different from those of another language
(phonotactics)?
Why do L2 learners have particular pronunciation problems (phonological processes)?
How do the sound patterns of a language change over time or over geographical area?

5. RECEIVED PRONUNCIATION (RP)

Also known as: BBC English, Oxford English, Royal English, the Queens English

Some prestige is still attached to this implicitly accepted social standard of

pronunciation.

Definition:

A pronunciation of British English, originally based on the speech of the upper class
of southeastern England and characteristic of the English spoken at the public schools and at
Oxford and Cambridge Universities
(The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: 2000)

The term suggests that it is the result of a social judgment rather than of an official
decision as to what is correct or wrong.

The first RP model of pronunciation was codified by Daniel S. Jones in Outline of

English Phonetics, 1918 and English Pronouncing Dictionary, 1917.

6. TRANSCRIPTION OF ENGLISH
Phonetic symbols are used to represent sounds, e.g. the word enough is written
(transcribed) as /nf/.
The list of phonetic symbols (phonemes) for British English
as in pit pt

i: as in key ki:

e as in pet pet

: as in car k:

as in pat pt

: as in core k:

as in cup kp

u: as in cool ku:l

as in pot pt

: as in first f:st

as in put pt
as in upper p
e as in bay be

as in go g

a as in buy ba

a as in cow ka

 as in boy b
as in peer p
e as in fare fe
as in poor p
p as in pea pi:

b as in bee bi:

t as in toe t

d as in doe d

k as in cap kp

g as in gap gp

f as in fat ft

v as in vat vt

as in thing

as in this s

s as in sip sp

z as in zip zp

as in ship p

as in measure me

h as in hat ht
m as in map mp

l as in led led

n as in nap np

r as in red red

as in hang h

j as in yet jet
w as in wet wet

as in chin n

as in gin n

TRANSCRIPTION can be:

PHONEMIC or PHONETIC (ALLOPHONIC)
Phonemic transcription is also referred to as broad transcription which contains only
information concerning those sounds which introduce contrast (change) in meaning.
Phonetic (Allophonic) is also referred to as narrow transcription which contains small
details which are not responsible for meaning contrasts (allophones).
take /tek/ vs [thek]
acts /kts/

vs [ts]

little /ltl/

vs

[lt]

would you /wd j/ vs [w]

7. INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET (IPA)

The standardised representation of the sounds of oral language.
The basis for the most widely used system of symbols for the transcription of English.
IPA provides one letter for each of all distinctive sounds present in the worlds languages.