Phonology

deals with the following

questions:
1. Of all the sounds in a language, which
are predictable?
2. What is the phonetic context that
allows us to predict the occurrence of
these sounds?
3. Which sounds affect the meaning of
words?

PHONOLOGY

What

is a phoneme?
A class of speech sounds that are
identified by a native speaker as the same
sound is called a phoneme.
The different phonetic realizations of a
phoneme are called allophones.

PHONEMES

CONSONANTS
When

describing a consonant, use the

following parameters:
VOICE: do your vocal cords vibrate?
PLACE: Which cavity is involved? Which
articulators are used?
MANNER: how is the sound produced?

Phonemes of English

Try

putting a hand lightly on your throat and

then say the following words, drawing out the
initial sounds.
If you feel vibration, this means that your
vocal cords are open and the sound in question
is a voiceless sound. If, on the other hand, you
feel some vibration or a buzzing feeling, this is
due to the vibration of your vocal cords which
are closed together. This means that the sound
you are making is a voiced sound.

Voicing

How

is the air stream modified by the

vocal tract to produce the sound?
Stops : Sounds that are stopped
completely in the oral cavity for a brief
period of time.
Fricatives: If the air stream is not
completely stopped because of a narrow
passage in the oral cavity that causes
friction and turbulance.

Manner of Articulation

Affricates:

a stop closure + slow release

(fricative)
Liquids: some obstruction formed by the
articulators, but not narrow enough to
cause any real constriction.
Glides: slight closure of the articulators,
they are almost like vowels. Therefore,
they are often called semi-vowels.

Consonants

are produced with some closure

or restriction in the vocal tract as the air
stream is pushed through the glottis out of
the mouth.

When

vowels are produced, there is nothing

in the vocal tract that narrows the passage
such that it would obstruct the free flow of
the air stream. That is, vowels are produced
without any articulators touching or even
coming close together.

CONSONANTS VS: VOWELS

Vowels

are the most audible, SONORANT

(or intense) sounds in speech.
Vocal fold vibration is the sound source for
vowels. Therefore, all vowels are, almost
always, VOICED.
Unlike consonants, there is neither place
of constriction or closure (place of
articulation), nor a specific manner of
articulation.

The

shape of the vocal tract determines

the quality of the vowel. There are several
ways in which we can change the shape of
the vocal tract:
1. raising or lowering the body of the
tongue
2. pushing the tongue forward or pulling it
back
3. rounding the lips

1. How high is the tongue?

HIGH , MID , LOW
2. Is the tongue advanced or
FRONT , CENTRAL , BACK
3. Are the lips rounded?
ROUNDED , UNROUNDED
4. Is the tongue tense?
TENSE, LAX

retracted?

VOWEL CLASSIFICATION

Compare

the vowels in beat and bit, or

bait and bet.
TENSE vowels ([i],[u],[e],[o]) are
produced with greater tension of the
tongue muscles than their LAX
counterparts (all others)
TENSE vowels are phonetically longer
than LAX vowels.

EXAMPLE

If

two sounds are separate phonemes,

then they are contrastive (in terms of
meaning).
If the two phones are allophones of the
same phoneme, then they are noncontrastive.
To determine whether a given pair of
sounds is contrastive, linguists look for
minimal pairs.

Aspiration:

The period between the

release of the closure of a consonant and
the start of the vocal cord activity for the
vowel that comes after it. This period is
usually felt as a puff of air.
Aspiration occurs on all voiceless stops
occurring
as the first sound in a stressed syllable.
For English, aspiration is not employed to
create a meaning difference.

ASPIRATION

minimal pair is a pair of words with

different meanings with exactly the same
pronunciation except for one sound that
differs.
Examples:
[tek] vs. [tep] "take" vs "tape"
[tim] vs [dim] "team" vs "deam"

Minimal Pairs