CH 2: Phonology and Orthography
Letters are a crude way to try and capture sound
hodgepodge
and slapdash.
Western European
Languages all try to get by with the Latin alphabet, which was designed for none of them
(hence all the differences in orthography we have to learn).
Systematic
attempt to represent sounds in writing:
International
Phonetic Alphabet
Another complete IPA, with audio!
[ ] / /
Phonemes: phonological
atoms
the
smallest unit of sound
differences
in phonemes result in different meaning
cop
vs. top
Allophones: different
sounds which do not result in different meanings
Can be hard to
get your head around; be sure to get your mouth around it.
Say all this
stuff out loud, a lot.
T in stop and top
P in spin and pin
dark
and clear “r” and “l”
rude
vs curl
letter
vs girl
Beware:
none of these sounds are as discrete as a written version would lead us to
believe
Phonetic
continuum:
in
real speech everything blends together
even
the same word is pronounced differently at different times in different
phonemic environments
Most obvious: “a” and “the”
stressed
and unstressed versions
CONSONANTS AND VOWELS:
NB: now we are
taking about SOUNDS, not LETTERS.
Each of these sounds can be represented in a variety
of ways
/f/ can be
spelled “f” or “ph” or “gh”
sometimes
in real speech the actual pronunciation is quite different than the spelling:
“matter” (= /d/)
Or when we
frequently pronounce “th” as /d/
Consonants
Qualities of Consonants:
· Place
of articulation
· Voicing
· Orality
/ Nasality
· Manner
of Articulation
Voicing:
voiced/unvoiced
Bus / buzz
is / this
leaf / leaves
Hold your vocal
chords!
Obama and his
unvoiced final “s”
paper/s/
Nasality/ Orality:
only
3 nasal sounds in English:
/m/ /n/ and /ng/ (like hang)
Place of articulation:
All these parts
you may have never thought about before:
Lips, teeth,
tongue, hard palate, alveolar ridge, velum
GO OVER CHART
WITH NOISEYS:
See websites
See this Place
of Articulation chart in particular
Another
(Furman)
Brinton and Arnovick's Consonant Chart
chart from Millward, A
Biography of the English Language
Be able to
recognize this chart
Be able to
distinguish among a stop, affricate, fricative, and nasal
Vowels
Even more trouble; very, very variable
among different speakers
Many of our vowels will differ, which is
good
English vowels per se are trouble:
because of the Great Vowels Shift
After spelling had been reasonable
established (according to Latin alphabet) all of the vowels changed
pronunciation
Pronunciation based on spelling in English
is rarely matched with other European languages or with the IPA
The names of the letters are also not
universal: think of French “a, e, i”
Where these noises come from, relatively:
Front
Central Back
High
Middle
Low
Draw a FACE on your chart
Brinton & Arnovick chart, faced
Millward’s Vowels
Front vowels are unrounded
Back are most rounded (in Modern English)
Schwa: “uh”
Diphthongs:
The real key here is TWO SOUNDS,
blended together;
a glide and a vowel (or vowel and a
glide).
Do not be confused by spelling:
not all diphthongs are
spelt in Modern English with two vowels.
Millward’s
diphthongs
Stress / Stress Accent
Fixed stress from Germanic
Variable from Latin and French
Reduction of unstressed vowels to
/ ə / or / ɪ
/
kilometer /k ɪ l ə m i d ə r/
Alphabet:
Not only is it crude, it’s a ancient hand-me-down
Phonographic, alphabetic (not syllabic)
All the ALPHABETS derive from the same
parent:
Alphabets, not all writing systems
(Chinese does not have an alphabet, nor does Japanese)
Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Cyrillic, Latin
alphabet:
All developments from the same origin (Phoenician!) despite the fact that the languages are
not necessarily related
(Hebrew, Arabic, Phoenician are Semitic
languages, non-Indo-European)
their alphabets do not
indicate vowels
Runic Alphabet
Modern English uses the Latin alphabet
plus:
V / U
I / J W
Y
Z
