Why study phonetics and phonology?

2. Why study phonetics and phonology? • Of particular importance for learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) because it has a practical application • English has a far larger repertory of phonemes than languages like Standard Italian • English is not a phonographic language, i.e. spelling generally does give a clear indication of pronunciation

3. Standard British English v. Standard Italian

4. English is not a phonographic language • Many sounds have several different spellings, e.g. /@U/ :go, though, foe, slow, boat; or /dZ/George, Joe, badge, village • Many spellings have different sounds, e.g. <ough>: though, cough, bough, through, thought, lough and enough.

5. The problem of pronunciation for learners of ESL • Learners cannot rely on the spelling of a word • The problem is the opposite for native speakers – English schoolchildren spend incredible amounts of time learning to read and esp. to write. Many adults have very poor spelling. • To learn to pronounce English correctly it is of great help to learn to read phonemic transcription /f@Uni:mIk trnskrIptS@n/and/or have a CD dictionary with sound

6. Even the predictable combinations in English are different to those of other languages • <au> corresponds to either /O:/ or /Q/, e.g. auto, Austria • <ai> usually corresponds to /eI/, e.g. pain, paid, almost never to /aI/ (exceptions: Thailand, aisle) • <ch> usually, but not always, corresponds to /tS/ at the start of a word, e.g. cheese (exceptions: chemist, chalet, Chalcolithic)

7. Is English spelling really so erratic? • 83% of English words have predictable spelling • However, the remaining 17% is comprised of the most commonly used, everyday words • Therefore the greatest difficulties are faced by the learner at the start

8. Why is English spelling so erratic? (1) • Not enough vowel letters for vowel sounds • English does not use accents, umlauts etc. • English spelling reflects many archaic forms of pronunciation e.g. night in the past, was pronounced with a fricative

9. Why is English spelling so erratic? (2) • English has always resisted spelling reforms and academies to set standards • English spelling became fixed in the 16th-17th c. with the arrival of printing. Many of the printers were Flemish and had little knowledge of the language • English has borrowed extensively from other languages and has tended to maintain original spelling

10. What is the difference between phonetics and phonology? • Phonology deals with the sound systems of languages • Phonetics deals with the physical realisation of the elements of the sound system, e.g. how the sound is physically produced (articulatory phonetics), or the acoustic characteristics of the speech sound (acoustic phonetics)

11. Key concepts: the phone • Each time a speech sound is produced it is different • Each time you produce a /t/ it will be ever so slightly different • Hence the concept of the phone: a physical realisation of a speech sound

12. Key concepts: the phoneme • The smallest speech sound that has linguistic value • When a series of phones are similar in terms of articulation and can be distinguished from another group in terms of meaning and collocation, the group is given a name e.g. /t/. This is a phoneme. • The phoneme is an abstract term, specific to a particular language.

13. Key concepts: the allophone • Each phoneme may have different realisations depending on the context in which it is found e.g. consider the different articulations of /s/ in seen and soon. In the first, the phoneme is produced with spread lips, as /i:/ follows. In the second /s/ is realised with rounded lips, to prepare for the following rounded vowel, /u:/. This second, rounded /s/ is a variation, or allophone of the phoneme. It is indicated with a special symbol called a diacritic [s].

14. The difference between a phoneme and an allophone • If one allophone is exchanged with another, e.g. if seen is produced with a [s], the word, while perhaps sounding a bit strange, is still comprehensible • If one phoneme is swapped with another, e.g. seen is produced with a /b/, instead of a /s/, the meaning of the word changes

15. Phonemic v. Phonetic transcription (‘Broad’ v. ‘Narrow’) • Slashes // are used to indicated phonemic transcription (also called broad transcription). This is specific to a particular language, e.g. the English and Italian /t/ phonemes are quite different • Square brackets [ ] are used for phonetic (also called narrow) transcription. This gives detailed information on the speech produced, e.g. characteristics of an accent of a language, or of the speech of a particular person.