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Linguistics 4: The Phonology of English Summary
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This is a summary of all lectures and reading of the course Linguistics 4 given at Leiden University,
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LINGUISTICS 4; The Phonology of EnglishLinguistics
‘Linguistics’ is the study of language and how it works, i.e. it is the scientific discipline that is concerned
with the structure of human natural languages that are used for transfer of information (i.e.
communication)
Transfer of information
- Telepathy: ability of some people to communicate directly with each other’s minds, without
using words
- Language: one of many possible means to communicate indirectly with each other (ants, bees,
birds, lions, whales, human beings)
- Human language: one of many possible means of communication between one human being
and another one or other ones
People communicate by means of
- gestures,
- facial expressions,
- sounds produced by body parts (e.g., snapping fingers or clapping hands),
- sounds produced by speech organs,
- written words,
- computer speech,
- traffic signs, - etc.
Speech chain
Speaker Hearer
‘idea’ (mental process) (intention of the speaker) ‘idea’
‘formulate’ (use words & grammar) ‘comprehend’ PHONOLOGY
‘articulate’ (=pronounce) ‘perceive’ PHONETICS
SOUNDS IN THE AIR
(Sign language: gestures in space)
The role of the speaker
1. to have a message/idea (-> independent of language)
2. to formulate (i.e.to find the right words, sentences, and larger phrases to convey the message
-> linguistic awareness)
3. to articulate = to speak (i.e.to physically produce speech sounds that combine into larger units
such as syllables that make up words and phrases that carry meaning)
1
,Knowledge of language
- Knowledge of which speech sounds are used in the language and how to combine these speech
sounds or ‘phonemes’ into larger units (syllables, words, word combinations, utterances)
-> phonology
- Knowledge of which stems and endings are used in the language and how to combine these
elements or ‘morphemes’ into larger meaningful units (complex words, phrases and sentences)
-> morphology & syntax
- Knowledge of how to extract meaning from the utterances we hear or read
-> semantics & pragmatics
Speech is
- Transitory (it disappears immediately) -> phoneticians would like to ‘fetch’ the transitory sounds
- Elusive (you cannot grasp it)
- Not reproductive -> phoneticians would like to ‘hear’ the utterances again and again, so that
they can analyse them
- Continuous (i.e. a continuous stream of noises that ‘merge’ into each other so that they cannot
be distinguished) -> phoneticians would like to identify units within the stream of sound waves,
i.e. they would like to segment the air stream into separate speech sounds
- Audible -> we can record speech on tape
Phonetics and Phonology
are concerned with speech sounds that occur in the human languages of the world
a) They identify these speech sounds (i.e. what these sounds are) and
b) Phoneticians determine the physical properties that characterise possible speech sounds
c) Both phoneticians and phonologists are interested in how these speech sounds fall into patterns
and
d) How they change in different circumstances
e) Phoneticians and phonologists need a tool/convention: how speech can be written down
(phonetic transcription)
Phonetics: the study of physical properties of speech sounds
- What goes on in the human body – in particular in the human speech organs – when speech
sounds are produced
- The measurable properties of speech sounds when they are transmitted from speaker to hearer
- What goes on in the human body – in particular in the ear and head - when speech sounds are
perceived
The study of the physical properties of sounds used in speech Physical properties of /k/: raise the tongue
dorsum towards the velum to from a complete obstruction of the air, then release the obstruction More
physical properties of /k/: spread lips in <keep>, vs. lip rounding in <cold>.
Tasks of a phonologist
1. To determine the inventory of speech sounds, i.e. which speech sounds are used to distinguish
meaning (=phonemes).
2. to account for the distribution of speech sounds (i.e. where the speech sounds or ‘phonemes’
may occur within a word or phrase).
3. to account for the behaviour of speech sounds (i.e. how sounds may alter under certain
phonological conditions -> allophonic distribution).
2
, Phonology: five main concerns
The study of the sound system of a language or a group of languages
1. The function of speech sounds within a language across languages (e.g., to distinguish meaning)
-> The inventory of speech sounds in a language
2. The behaviour of speech sounds, i.e. in which ways speech sounds may alter their form under
certain phonological conditions -> the allophonic variation of speech sounds
3. Which sounds may or may not occur in which combination in certain positions in the word
(/kn/-/mp/-/ls/ etc.) -> the phonotactic restrictions of a language
The study of the sound system of a language or a group of languages
4. Phenomena that have a scope over more than one segment, e.g. word stress and sentence
intonation
5. Phonological alternations at a morpheme boundary, e.g. English approximant-insertion
I see it -> I see [j] it
I saw Ann -> I saw [ɹ] Ann
The study of which speech sounds are used in a language to distinguish meaning: /k/ is used to
distinguish meaning (<kind> - <find>, <meek> - <meat>)
Note! Aspiration is not a physical property! It exists in English, but not in Dutch. So, it is part of the
English phonology but not the Dutch phonology. Therefore, aspiration is not a necessity and is therefore
part of phonology, not phonetics.
The function of speech sounds is to distinguish meaning (e.g., replace the sound /t/ in by the sound /p/
=> the result is another word with a different meaning)
tin pin bear pear be key bin fin bed red
In a sample of about 400 languages of the world - which amounts to about 17% of the world’s
languages - the phoneticians Peter Ladefoged and Ian Maddieson found a total of about 600 possible
consonants and 200 different vowels that can be used as distinct speech sounds, i.e. speech sounds that
can cause a change in meaning when one is replaced by another: pin-tin-bin-Fin ==> /p/, /t/, /b/, /f/ are
distinctive sounds in English.
No language in the world uses all 800 speech sounds that are found by Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996)
to contrast meaning. The speech sounds that are used contrastively in a language are the phonemes of
that language. Most languages have about 30 to 40 phonemes.
- Rotokas (East Papuan language) uses 11 speech sounds:
6 consonants & 5 vowels: /p, t, k, b, d, g/ & /a, e, i, o, u/
- !Xu (Northern Khoisan language spoken in Namibia, Botswana, Angola) uses 141 speech sounds:
117 consonants & 24 vowels
- English: about 40 to 50 speech sounds
How do we determine the phonemes of a language? -> By considering minimal pairs: ‘a minimal pair
consists of two forms with distinct meanings that differ by only one segment found in the same position
in each form’ ‘the same position’ = the same phonetic context/environment, e.g. the beginning of a foot,
or between vowels, or the end of a syllable, etc.
Speakers of a language have subconscious knowledge of the inventory of speech sounds (vowels and
consonants) that are used to contrast meaning in their language: English: tin – ten – ton (*/tyn/)
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