PHONOLOGY I

PHONETIC: is the scientific study of sounds. The central concerns are the discovery
of how speech sounds are produced, how they are used in spoken language, how we
can record speech sounds with written symbols and how we hear and recognise
different sounds.

- ARTUCULATORY PHONETICS: would tell us which part of our tongue and mouth we
have to raise and how high or down we have to do it.
- ACOUSTIC PHONETICS: are the study of the relationship between activity in the
speakers vocal tract and the resulting sound.
- AUDITORY PHONETICS: are the analysis of speech carried out by the listeners ears.
It require a lot of training and practise to be done wright.

PHONOLOGY: is the study of the function of sounds: how to identify words and word-
groups and how to distinguish words with different meanings.
- PHONEMES: are any of the abstract units of phonetic system of language that
correspond to a set of similar speech sounds.

- ALLOPHONES: are one of the two or more variants of the same phoneme.

- TWO TYPES OF TRANSCRIPTION may be used to represent the spoken form of

language:
A) A PHONEMIC BROAD TRANSCRIPTION that gives more limited amount of
phonetic information.
B) A PHONETIC NARROW TRANSCRIPTION that carries a lot of fine detail
about the precise phonetic quality of sounds.

THE SPEECH CHAIN: is a process where the speaker transmits information to the
listener through a specific mode: The speaker arrange his/her thoughts, decide what
he/she wants to say and put it into a linguistic form.
- SOUND WAVES: process associated with activity in speakers brain, and it is in the
brain that appropriate instructions in the form of impulses along the motor nerves
are sent to the muscles of the vocal organs setting them into movement which
produces minute pressure changes.

- SPEECH COMMUNICATION: consists on a chain of events linking the speakers

brain and the listeners brain.

- FEEDBACK: In the simple speaker-listener situation there are two listeners

because the speaker not only speaks but also listens to his/her own voice.

SPEECH CHAIN LANGUAGE LEVELS:

1) LINGUISTIC OR PHYCHOLOGICAL LEVEL: first linguistic level of the speech
chain. The transmition of the message begins with the selection of suitable
words and sentences.
2) ARTICULATORY OR PHYSIOLOGICAL LEVEL: neural and muscular activity in the
speech chain.
3) ACOUSTIC OR PHYSICAL LEVEL: end of the speech chain on the speakers side,
with the generation and transmition of a sound wave.
At the listeners end of the chain the process is reversed: events stars on the
PHYSICAL level, continue on the PHYSIOLOGICAL level and it is completed
when the listener recognizes the words and sentences transmitted by the
speaker.