Review

Phonetics and Phonology

 Before we start…
The session may not cover 100% of your
exam.

You are RESPONSIBLE for all the issues

introduced in your textbooks and lectures.
Basic Speech Anatomy – upper details
Basic Speech Anatomy – lower details
 Famous phoneticians
• Sir William Jones Set a trend in the linguistic
study of Sanskrit.
• Henry Sweet Pioneer in modern scientific
phonetics.
• Daniel Jones Cardinal vowels
• Raymond H. Stetson Speech movements and
phonetics.
• Peter Ladefoged Major contributions in
articulatory, acoustic, and linguistic phonetics.
 IPA
• International Phonetic Alphabet.
• Each symbol represents a single sound.
• Sounds, in the sense that we discuss them, are totally
different from letters. A word like through has seven letters (t-
h-r-o-u-g-h), but only three sounds (th-r-ough). DO NOT
CONFUSE LETTERS AND SOUNDS.
• We can transcribe any sound of any language with IPA.
A warning: beginners often approach IPA transcription by
trying to translate directly from English spellings into IPA
symbols: e.g. ea (as in treat) = [i] in IPA. But the ea in great,
for example, is not [i], it's [e].

English spellings of sounds are notoriously inconsistent,

making this strategy fundamentally unworkable.

Rather, always be aware of how the word sounds in any

exercise involving phonetic transcription.
 Transcription methods
• Broad captures the phonemes
of a language, by using a simple
set of symbols.
• Narrow captures allophones
and shows more phonetic detail,
either by just using more specific
symbols or by using a variety of
diacritics.
 Accent

• The phonetic and phonological

distinctions between language
varieties.
 Dialect
• A dialect is any variety of a
language spoken by a group of
people that is characterized by both
the aspect of word selection and
phonological characters.
Social vs. Geographic constraints
Social
• Teenagers:
– “Dude…”
• College professors:
– “Henceforth…”
Geographical
• Texans:
– “I’m fixing to go lunch.”
• Some of NE region:
“May I aid you?”
 Received Pronunciation

Received Pronunciation, often abbreviated to RP, is

an accent of spoken English. Unlike other UK accents, it's
identified not so much with a particular region as with a
particular social group, although it has connections with
the accent of Southern England. RP is associated with
educated speakers and formal speech.
Language Variation

• Regional
• Socioeconomic
• Political
• Age
• Gender
• Ethnicity
 Important Note
• Linguistically speaking, no one dialect or
language is better, more correct, or more
logical than any other.
Some basic definitions
 Phonetics
• Phonetics is a branch of linguistics. It is the scientific study of
speech sounds.

– Articulatory phonetics: How speech sounds are

articulated Description and classification of speech
sounds.
– Acoustic phonetics: How speech sounds are generated
and transmitted The relationship between articulation
and acoustic output.
– Auditory phonetics: How humans perceive speech
sounds.
 Phonology
• How speech sounds are used in
language.
• The study of systems of speech
sounds and the rules which
govern them.
 Allophone
• Allophones refers to a variant of a
phoneme. The allophones of a
phoneme form a set of sounds that do
not change the meaning of a word.
• The differences among allophones
can be stated in terms of
phonological rules.
 What do phonological rules explain?
Allophones
– Are all very similar to one another, and
– Occur in phonetic contexts different from one another (for
example, syllable-initial as opposed to syllable-final).
Minimal pair
•Two words that have the same phonemes except one.
•Minimal pairs are useful for determining which sounds are
phonemes in a language.
Vowels and Consonants
 Vowel
Monophthongs vs. Diphthongs
Monophthongs
• A vowel in which there is no appreciable
change in quality during a syllable, as in
“father.”
Diphthongs
• A vowel in which there is a change in quality
during a single syllable, as in “high.”
 How to describe vowels

Main classification
• Tongue height high, mid, or low.
• Tongue advancement front, central,
or back.
Also, we talk about…
• Tenseness tense or lax
• Lip rounding
 But remember..
• As Ladefoged tells us, vowels are more
precisely described by their acoustic
characteristics (i.e., formant frequency
relations, duration) than by their
articulatory features (e.g., mid/high, etc.).
 Citation form
• Single words pronounced by
themselves.
• We rarely talk in citation form.
Our conversation is usually
carried out in “connected speech.”
 Connected speech
• The way we talk daily. Our talk is
“connected” because we do not
separate each word as we talk.
• Connected speech is not like
citation form.
In our connected speech, we use more:
•Assimilations
•Vowel reduction
•Coarticulation
•Consonant omissions

than in the citation form.

 Coarticulation
• Coarticulation is:
– Overlapping of speech sounds.
– language dependent.
2 types:
– Anticipatory coarticulation “look-ahead”
future sounds influence the present sound.
– Perseverative coarticulation “carryover”
previous sounds still influence your present
sound.
 Assimilation

• Coarticulation is one form of

assimilation.
• Assimilation refers to the change of
one sound into another sound
because of the influence of
neighboring sounds, as in the change
of underlying [n] to [m] in “input”
 Syllable
• A unit of speech consisting of either a
single vowel (or a syllabic consonant) or a
vowel and one or more consonants
associated with it.
• The syllable is often used to describe
patterns of stress and timing in speech.
 Strong form & Weak form
Strong form
• The form in which a word is pronounced when
it is stressed. This term is usually applied only
to words that normally occur unstressed and
with a weak form, such as “to” and “a.”

Weak form
• The unstressed form of any word, such as “but”
or “as,” that does not maintain its full form
when it occurs in conversational speech.
 MORPHOLOGY
THE STRUCTURE OF
WORDS
 MORPHOLOGY
• Morphology deals with the syntax of complex words and
parts of words, also called morphemes, as well as with
the semantics of their lexical meanings. Understanding
how words are formed and what semantic properties
they convey through their forms enables human beings
to easily recognize individual words and their meanings
in discourse.
Words are potentially complex units, composed of even more
basic units, called morphemes. A morpheme is the smallest part
of a word that has grammatical function or meaning (NB not the
smallest unit of meaning); we will designate them in braces { }.
For example, sawed, sawn, sawing, and saws can all be
analyzed into the morphemes {saw} + {-ed}, {-n}, {-ing}, and {-s},
respectively. None of these last four can be further divided into
meaningful units and each occurs in many other words, such as
looked, mown, coughing, bakes.
{Saw} can occur on its own as a word; it does not have to be
attached to another morpheme. It is a free morpheme.
However, none of the other morphemes listed just above is free.
Each must be affixed (attached) to some other unit; each can
only occur as a part of a word. Morphemes that must be
attached as word parts are said to be bound.
Exercise 1. Identify the free morphemes in the following words:

kissed, freedom, stronger, follow, awe, goodness, talkative,

teacher, actor.
 Free and Bound Morpheme

• Analysis at a morphological level is concerned with structural

elements of meaning called morphemes. Morphemes are
classified into two types:
• Free Morphemes: girl, boy, mother, etc. These are words with
a complete meaning, so they can stand alone as an
independent word in a sentence.
Bound Morphemes: These are lexical items incorporated into a
word as a dependent part. They cannot stand alone, but must
be connected to another morpheme.

Bound morphemes operates in the connection processes by

means of derivation, inflection, and compounding.
 DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY

• Derivation is concerned with the way morphemes are

connected to existing lexical forms as affixes.
• We distinguish affixes in two principal types:
• 1. Prefixes - attached at the beginning of a lexical item or
base-morpheme – ex: un-, pre-, post-, dis, im-, etc.
• 2. Suffixes – attached at the end of a lexical item ex: -age, -
ing, -ful, -able, -ness, -hood, -ly, etc.
 EXAMPLES OF MORPHOLOGICAL
DERIVATION
• a. Lexical item (free morpheme): like (verb)=piacere
+ prefix (bound morpheme) dis-
= dislike (verb) = detestare;

• b. Lexical item: like (verbo)= piacere

+ suffix –able = likeable (agg)= simpatico
+ prefix un- =unlikeable (agg)= antipatico
+ suffix –ness = unlikeableness (sost)= antipatia
• 3. Lexical item: like (agg)= simile
+ prefix un- = unlike (agg)= dissimile
+ suffix –ness = unlikeness (sost) = dissimilarità;
• 4. Lexical item: like (agg)= simile
+ suffix –ly = likely (agg)= probabile e
(avv) probabilmente
+ suffix –hood =likelihood (sost)= probabilità
+ prefix un- =unlikelihood (sost)= improbabilità.
 Derivational affixes can cause semantic change:

Prefix pre- means before; post- means after; un- means

not, re- means again.
Prefix = fixed before; Unhappy = not happy = sad; Retell =
tell again.

Prefix de- added to a verb conveys a sense of subtraction;

dis- and un- have a sense of negativity.
To decompose; to defame; to uncover; to discover.
 INFLECTIONAL MORPHOLOGY
• Inflection is a morphological process that adapts existing
words so that they function effectively in sentences without
changing the category of the base morpheme. English has the
following inflectional suffixes:
 VERB INFLECTIONAL SUFFIXES
• 1. The suffix –s functions in the Present Simple as the
third person marking of the verb : to work – he work-s
• 2. The suffix –ed functions in the past simple as the past
tense marker in regular verbs: to love – lov-ed
• 3. The suffixes –ed (regular verbs) and –en (for some
regular verbs) function in the marking of the past
partciple and, in general, in the marking of the perfect
aspect:
To study studied studied / To eat ate eaten
• 4. The suffix –ing functions in the marking of the present
participle, the gerund and in the marking of the
continuous aspect: To eat – eating / To study - studying
 NOUN INFLECTIONAL SUFFIXES
• 5. The suffix –s functions in the marking of
the plural of nouns: dog – dogs
• 6. The suffix –s functions as a possessive
marker (saxon genitive): Laura – Laura’s
book.
 ADJECTIVE INFLECTIONAL
SUFFIXES
7. The suffix –er functions as comparative
marker: quick – quicker
8. The suffix –est functions as superlative
marker: quick - quickest
 Derivational affixes can mark
category change
• The derivational suffix –able derives an adjective
from a verb, implying an ability with a passive
relation with its stem:
Eatable means able to be eaten
(commestibile), not able to eat.
• Suffix –er derives a noun from a verb, indicating
a human agent or an inanimate instrument:
Speaker (parlante o amplificatore); Baker
(fornaio);
• The suffixes –ful and –less derives an
adjective from a noun.
• -ful indicates addiction, abundance;
• -less indicates subtraction, reduction:
careful = full of care
careless = with no care
• The suffixes –ure and –age derive e noun
from a verb:
To fail – failure = fallire/fallimento
To marry – marriage = sposare/matrimonio
• The suffix –hood derives an abstract noun
from a concrete noun, the suffix –ness
derives an abstract nounfrom an adjective.
Child – childhood = bambino/infanzia
Good – goodness = buono/bontà
• The suffix –ly derives an adverb from an
adjective (but also adjs can end in –ly):
Quick – quickly
Easy – easily
but: lonely (adjective)
• The suffix –ing derives a noun from a
verb:
To write – writing.
 Reflection
Exercise 1. Divide each of the following words into their smallest meaningful
parts: landholder, smoke-jumper, demagnetizability.

Exercise 2. Each of the following sentences contains an error made by a

nonnative speaker of English. In each, identify and correct the incorrect word.
a. I am very relax here.
b. I am very boring with this game.
c. I am very satisfactory with my life.
d. Some flowers are very attracting to some insects.
e. Many people have very strong believes.
f. My culture is very difference from yours.

In general terms, briefly discuss what English language learners must learn in
order to avoid such errors.
Exercise 3. Some native speakers of English use forms such as seen instead
of saw, come instead of came, aks instead of ask, clumb instead of climbed,
drug instead of dragged, growed instead of grew.

Are these errors? If they are, are they the same kinds of errors made by the
nonnative speakers of English listed in Exercise 2?
If not, what are they?