Lingua e traduzione inglese 1

https://meet.google.com/juo-cazr-zrn

Meeting 7
Phonology 2

Sergio Pizziconi
sergio.pizziconi@unistrasi.it
 Plan of the day
● A present from your English
professors
● From our last meeting
● More Consonants
● Vowels

Extra-class work
Read Discovering English Grammar and Variation
(henceforth [=hereinafter] DEG&V) Chps 1 (applied
grammar)-14 (variation)-18 (social strata)-19(space)
 A present
from the your English professors

https://drive.google.com/file/d/185vIkn
T3FtcWlOhJRdnChF95GdDKy-yg/vie
w?usp=sharing
Definitions
● Phone
Concrete realization (execution) of a sound.
What speakers articulate and heares
perceive.
● Phoneme
Abstract unit. The smallest unit of sound
that carries NO meaning, but it can
distinguish it. (see minimal pairs).
● Allophone
A variant of a phoneme. /t/ and /th/ in English. Two
/n/ in Italian.
Minimal pairs 1/2
Minimal pairs help us understand whether two phones in
one language belong to two different phonemes or they are
variants (allophones) of the same phoneme.
In English, /ɪ/ and /i/ are two different phonemes, because I
can build this minimal pair:
/ʃɪp/ (ship) and /ʃip / (sheep)
Two strings of phones in which just one phone is different.
That only sound determines a difference of meaning.
Therefore, the two sounds DIFFERENTIATE meaning (they do
not carry meaning by themselves).

In Italian, they are mere allophones, because if we try to build

a minimal pair, such as:
/pɪno/ (pino) and /pino/ (pino)
the meaning doesn’t change.

REMEMBER the embarrassing pairs built with sheet, beach.

Minimal pairs 2/2
Clearly, you can build minimal pairs with any sound.
We said that in English /t/ and /th/ are NOT two different
phonemes, because if you contrast:
/tu/ (two) and /thu/ (two)
no difference in meaning is perceived. A native speaker
would only think that English is not your mother tongue.
On the contrary, if you compare:
/trɪk/ (trick) and /trɪp/ (trip)
we know that /k/ and /p/ are two different phonemes in
English, because by changing one sound a different
meaning is conveyed.

MIND YOU: You have to compare SOUNDS not LETTERS. ‘ck’

in trick is just one sound, namely, /k/
 Consonants
● Listen, buddy, I’m not
too thrilled about this
either
● All right, let’s get this

over with I showed these two

sentences over and over
again while doing the FiB.
Full

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw5aX7n4l_8
 IPA - Consonants

Bilabial Labio-d Dental Alveolar Post-alve Palatal Velar Glottal

ental olar

Nasal m n ŋ
Stop p b t d k g
Affricative ʧ ʤ
Fricative f v Ɵ ð s z ʃ ʒ j w h
Approximant r(ɾ)

this these
analysis analyses
thesis theses
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/possessive
a an umbrella a union a house
honor honest hour heir
Getting started with phonology: a few
strange accents

Simply try to detect what is that sounds

differently from usual pronunciation.

commercial

● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWOzuvdZ6J8
 About pronunciation
● How do British people perceive the
Italian way of speaking?
● Pay close attention to the

pronunciation of vowels.

Italian
song
song
sûr

deux

œuf

song
song