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
--------------------------->Millward, A Biography of the English Language
Be able to
recognize this chart
Be able to
distinguish among a stop, affricate, fricative, and nasal
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
The names of
the letters are also not universal: think of French “a, e, i”
Where these
noises come from, relatively:
Brinton & Arnovick
chart, faced
Back are most
rounded (in Modern English)
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.
Variable from
Latin and French
Reduction of unstressed vowels to
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:
Hebrew, Arabic, Phoenician are
Semitic languages, non-Indo-European
their alphabets do
not indicate vowels
