Phonetics and phonology

Some basic definitions: 

Phonetics :

 Phonetics is the scientific study of the production and perception of human speech sound , for example place and manner of articulation .

Phonetic is the scientific study of human speech sounds

Types of phonetics :

i) Articulatory Phonetics :

Articulatory phonetics is the study of the articulation of speech sounds using different combination of human speech organs .  In this branch of phonetics , the phonetician is interested in the way in which the air is set in motion , In the movements of speech organs  and the coordination of movements in the production of single sounds . Articulatory phonetics deals with studying the making of single sounds by the vocal tract. It is the branch of phonetics which studies the way in which speech sounds are made (‘articulated’) by the vocal organs. It derives much of its descriptive terminology from the fields of anatomy and physiology, and is sometimes referred to as physiological phonetics. This area has traditionally held a central place in the training of phoneticians, the movements involved being reasonably accessible to observation and, in principle, under the control of the investigator. The classification of sounds used in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), for example, is based on articulatory variables. It is the branch of phonetics that studies articulators and their actions related to human speech production. Actually, we can only produce speech sounds by moving parts of our articulators (body parts), and this is done by the contraction of muscles. Most of the movements relevant to speech take place in the mouth and throat area (though we should not forget the activity in the chest for breath control), and parts of the mouth and throat area that we move when speaking. These are called articulators. In this branch of phonetics, we study the principal articulators (such as tongue, lips, lower jaw and the teeth, velum or soft palate, uvula and larynx) and other processes related to speech production. This includes the features of various sounds such as vowels and consonants and their specific properties including places and manners of articulation, phonation, etc. ii) Acoustic Phonetics :

Acoustic phonetics is the study of the physical transmission of speech sounds from the speakers to the listener . In this branch of phonetics the phonetician is interested in the way in which the air vibrates between them the mouth of speaker and the ear of the listener . Acoustic phonetics is related to the study of physical attributes of sounds produced by the vocal tract. It is the branch of phonetics which studies the physical properties of speech sound as transmitted between mouth and ear according to the principles of acoustics (the branch of physics devoted to the study of sound). It is primarily dependent on the use of instrumental techniques of investigation (such as Praat software), particularly electronics, and some grounding in physics and mathematics is a prerequisite for advanced study of this subject. Its importance to the phonetician is that acoustic analysis can provide a clear, objective datum for the investigation of speech – the physical ‘facts’ of speech sounds (such as duration, formants F1, F2 and F3, etc.). Thus, acoustic evidence is often referred to when one wants to support an analysis being made in articulatory or auditory phonetic terms. On the other hand, it is important not to become too reliant on acoustic analyses, which are subject to mechanical limitations (e.g. the need to calibrate measuring devices accurately), and which are often themselves open to multiple interpretations.   

iii) Auditory Phonetics :

Auditory phonetics is the study of the reception of the speech sounds by the listener . It is the study of hearing and perception of speech sounds . Auditory phonetics deals with understanding how human ear perceives sound and how the brain recognizes different speech units. This branch of phonetics studies the perceptual response to speech sounds as mediated by ear, auditory nerve and brain. It is a very less well-studied area of phonetics, mainly because of the difficulties encountered as soon as one attempts to identify and measure psychological and neurological responses to speech sounds. On the other hand, anatomical and physiological studies of the ear are well advanced, as are techniques for the audiology and audiometry. But relatively little pure research has been done into the attributes of speech-sound sensation, seen as a phonetic system, and the relationship between such phonetic analyses and phonological studies remains obscure. The subject is closely related to studies of auditory perception within the domain of psycholinguistics.

Forensic Phonetics: Forensic phonetics is the study of the identification of speech sounds by the forensic experts. It is usually used in understanding the signals used in telephonic conversations used in crimes.

Importance of phonetics :

Knowledge of phonetics is very necessary for a student of BS ENGLISH . knowledge of phonetics enables him or her to acquire correct pronunciation , to give a true description of the sounds of English and also it helps in to point out mistakes the pronunciation of his or her . it helps to learn correct pronunciation  of English sounds

Phonology:

Phonology can be defined as under :

Phonology is the study of vocal sounds and sound changes , phoneme and their variants in a particular language

Phonology is the level at which a linguist describe the sounds of a particular language . what is sound ? How and where is it produced from? How is it received by the ears ? How and why is one sound different from the other ?

Branches of phonology :

Segmental phonology

Super segmental phonology

diachronic phonology

synchronic phonology

segmental phonology: In this branch of phonology , the phonologist is interested in the speech sound . It analyses the speech into discrete segments such as phonemes .

super segmental phonology : In this branch of phonology , the phonologist is interested in those features of human speech sounds which extend over more than one segment such as stress , pitch , rhythm , and intonation .

Diachronic phonology : In this branch of phonology , the phonologist is interested in to study the patterns of sounds change in the history of language.

Synchronic phonology : This branch which studies sound patterns regardless of the process of historical changes.

Difference between phonetics and phonology : Phonetics and phonology, both are important subfields of linguistics dealing with speech sounds overlapping each other. But the key difference is that phonology is the study of how sounds are organized in individual languages. It focuses on the organization of sounds by studying speech patterns (e.g., phonological rules within a specific language). The key words for describing phonology are ‘distribution’ and ‘patterning’ related to speech. Phonologists may look into questions like – why there is a difference in the plurals of cat and dog; the former ends with an ‘s’ sound, whereas the latter ends with the ‘z’ sound. Phonetics, on the other hand, is the study of actual process of sound making. Phonetics has been derived from the Greek word ‘phone’ meaning sound or voice. It covers the domain of speech production and its transmission and reception. The sounds made by us when we talk are studied through different branches of phonetics like acoustic phonetics, auditory phonetics and articulatory phonetics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Difficulties of foreign learners in pronouncing English speech sounds:                                                          (My experience) I am also teacher of “Gurmukhi” (Gurumukhi is the native language of Panjabi people or Sikhs ) . When I speak with a Panjabi, I cannot speak exactly same like him or her . The big problem which I face is pronunciation I cannot able and capable to pronounce words like native speakers  . Also this problem we face in English when two people communicate or speak English they cannot speak exactly alike. We can always hear differences between them. Here are some factors which cause difficulty for foreign learners in learning English speech sounds.

1. Words having same alphabets (spellings) but different pronunciation such as man   /mæn/, father /fɑːðə/ ,   sat    /sæt/ ,   many  /meni/ ,   among  /əmʌŋ/ ,  in all the words have letter “a‟ but it is pronounced in two different ways in all of them.                                                                                    

L1 interference:

L1 means mother tongue of a learner. A baby starts listening sounds of his own mother tongue and its speech sounds become familiar to him as his native language. So, L1 interferes in learning L2 e.g. /ʌ/ as in but, put, cut; /ə/ as in mother, father; /ɜː/ as in purse, bird, third etc. are present in English language but not present in Urdu that is why Pakistani learners face problem in pronouncing them.

Habit formation:

Habit formation is another factor responsible for the difficulties faced by Pakistani learners in learning English sounds. A speech is made by definite movements of the organs of speech and their movements are exactly repeated, the result will always be the same sound but due to habit formation of pronouncing Urdu sounds, the Pakistani learners face difficulties in pronouncing Urdu sounds.

Age:

  The next factor is age. We as grown-ups already have the habit of pronouncing sounds of our own language so strong that it is very difficult to break that habit .

Solutions to the difficulties

1.       Practice : According to me practice is mother of learning.

2.       Repetition: according to me repetition  is father of lrarning.

3.        We should not depend on spelling for learning English language.

4.       The speaker must learn to listen to speech sounds in their proper places in connected speech on TV, radio or CD.

5.        Learn how to use standard variety of English language such as BBC English.

Phoneme: The minimal unit of sound which can make a difference in meaning is called a phoneme OR A phoneme is the smallest meaningful unit of sound e.g. /p/ and /b/ in pack and back.

Introduction to Suprasegmental (SS) Features  

Supra means ‘above’ or ‘beyond’ and segments are sounds (phonemes). Suprasegmental is a term used in phonetics and phonology to refer to a vocal effect (such as tone, intonation, stress, etc.) which extends over more than one sound (segment) in an utterance. Major suprasegmental features include pitch, stress, tone, intonation or juncture. Remember that these features are meaningful when they are applied above segmental level (on more than one segment). Phonological studies can be divided into two fields: segmental phonology and suprasegmental phonology. Suprasegmental features have been extensively explored in the recent decades and many theories have been constituted related to the application and description of these features.

Stress as a Suprasegmental Feature 

Stress

 Stress may be defined as the degree of force with which a sound or syllable is uttered. Syllables which are pronounced with a greater degree of stress force than the neighbouring syllables in a word or sentence are said to be stressed. Syllables pronounced with a relatively smaller degree of stress are said to be unstressed.

The nature of stress:

 All stressed syllables have one characteristic in common which is called prominence. A stressed syllable stands more prominently than its immediate neighbouring syllable. There are four factors that make it prominent.

 a) Loudness: If one syllable is made louder than the other, it will be heard stressed.

 b) Length: If a syllable is made longer than the other, that syllable is heard stressed.

c) Pitch: Pitch is related to the frequency of vibration of vibration of the vocal cords. If one syllable is said with a pitch which is noticeably different from that of the others, it will produce the effect of prominence.

 d) Change of vowel sound: In English language, words having weak syllables have /ɪ/, /ʊ/ and /ə/. Therefore, words having long vowels are stressed. Stress can fall on any syllable in the word e.g.

First syllable:  father / ˈfɑː.ðə/, happy /ˈhæp.i/

Second syllable: perhaps /pəˈhæps/, allowed /əˈlaʊd/

Fourth syllable: academic /ˌæk.əˈdem.ɪk/, photographic /ˌfəʊ.təˈgræf.ɪk/ Stress is basically a suprasegmental feature applied to a whole syllable when it is made prominent by adding factors such as loudness, rise in pitch, length of duration and vowel quality (in contrast with other syllables). For example, in mi-ni-mi-ZA-tion, the second last (penultimate) syllable is prominent (as greater amount of energy is applied to it) as it is louder and longer than the rest of the syllables in the word. Similarly, its quality and pitch are different than that of others. All these factors make it stressed (compare: IN-sult vs. inSULT and be-LOW vs. BILL-ow).

 Stress is an important feature both in phonetics and phonology. Despite the fact that it has been extensively studied, there remain many areas of disagreement among the experts. To begin with a basic point, it is almost certainly true that in all languages some syllables are in some sense stronger than other syllables; these are syllables that have the potential to be described as stressed. Stress plays an important role in conveying (and changing) meaning