Topic no 1: Phonetics and Phonology

Phonetics: It is the study of speech sounds in general. It has three main branches;
Articulatory Phonetics, Acoustic Phonetics and Auditory Phonetics. In phonetics,
.we study about speech sounds in general
Phonology: It is the study of sounds patterns or sound systems in a particular
language to create meaning. In phonology we study sounds in a particular
language. Every language has its own phonology. So, it is the study of sounds in a
particular language. According to Bloomfield, phonology is the organization of
sounds into patterns. Phonology has two main branches; segmental phonology and
.supra-segmental phonology
Segmental phonology: It deals with individual sounds segments, e.g. {vowels .1
and consonants}
Supra-segmental phonology: It deals with the units of sounds beyond individual .2
segments e.g {syllable, stress, rhythm, intonation}

Topic no 2.Difference between Phonetics and Phonology

Phonetics
Phonetics studies sounds in general .1
.It is abstract .2
.Phonetics is structural .3
.In phonetics, we study about allophones .4
.Phonetics has three main branches .5
.In phonetics, we use phonetic symbols to represent a sound .6
] [ .In phonetics, we use phonetic transcription in a form of two brackets e.g .7
In phonetics, we study about phones which are speech sounds .8
B: Phonology
.In phonology, we study aboutsounds in a particular language .1
It has two main branches; segmental and supra-segmental .2
.Phonology
.In phonology, we study about phonemes which are the units of sounds .3
.It is concrete .4
.It is more descriptive than phonetics .5
.Phonology is phonemic .6
./ / In phonology, we use phonemic transcription using two slashes .7
Phonology is functional, dealing with the functional aspects of sounds .8

Topic no 3.Phoneme
A phoneme (/ˈfoʊniːm/) is a smallest unit of sound in speech that
distinguishes one word from another in a particular language. It is also
called a bundle of sound features. So, each phoneme comprises a set of
allophone, and each allophone is particular realization of phoneme in a
particular linguistics environment For example, in most dialects of
English, the sound patterns /θʌm/ (thumb) and /dʌm/ (dumb) are two
separate words distinguished by the substitution of one phoneme, /θ/, for
another phoneme, /d/. Such words are called minimal pair (it is a pair of
words that differ in meaning by only a single phoneme). Phoneme
doesn’t have any meaning by itself, but when they are put together, they
can make meaningful words. For example, the word ‘fat’ has three
phonemes /f/ /a/ and / t/, when join together, form the word fat. There are
.44 phonemes in English
Allophones
Allophones are a phoneme variation in a language. It is a set of phones
all of which are version of one phoneme. So, we can say allophones are
phoneme variants in a particular language. Example, / p / and /p h/ are
allophones of the phoneme /p/. One, (ph), has a puff of air after the lips
open, and occurs at the beginnings of words such as "pit". The other, (p),
does not have a puff of air, and occurs after second word such as in
"spit". Usually, the different ALLOPHONES of the same PHONEME
are all similar to each other - they form a FAMILY of sounds. We can
see this by the fact that the same difference can be allophonic in one
language, and phonemic in another. Similarly, / t / and / th/ are allophones
of the phoneme / t /. In linguistics, an allophones is an audibly distinct
variant of a phoneme, such as the different pronunciation of the / t /
sound in ‘’tar’’ and ‘’star’’. Other examples of allophones are:
top – / t / park / p / kill - / k /
stop / th / spark / ph/ skill- / kh/
life / l / pill / lh /
The phoneme /s/ is pronounced differently in different words like, sun,
seen, so, soon etc. Changing one allophone for another allophone of the
same phoneme doesn’t change the word but different pronunciation of
the same word.  Allophones happen because of the position of a phoneme
and the phonetic characteristics of neighboring sounds.
Aspirated Sound / Unaspirated Sound
Aspirated Sound is produced with a puff of air e.g. star / th/. Usually it
comes at the initial position. Examples: pill [phil], kill [ khil] , fill
[ fhil].Aspiration is a strong puff of air that is released at the closer of
consonants [ l ]. For example pronunciation of /pha/ is aspirated
compared to / pa/.
Unaspirated sound: is produced without a puff of air e, g. tar /t /. It is
usually heard at the middle or final position. Examples: cup [kʌ p] rabbit
[ræ bit]
Topic no 4
Difference between Phonemes and Allophones Phonemes
1. Phonemes are sounds.
2. They belong to phonology more than phonetics.
3. They are minimal unit of sound with meaning.
4. They can occur in the same environment.
5. Phonemes are significant.
6. Phonemes are unpredictable.
7. They are usually found in contrastive distribution ( compare with
each other)
8. Phonemes have broad transcription using two slashes / /, phonemic
transcription.

Allophones
1. Allophones are variation of sounds.
2. They belong to phonetics more than phonology.
3. These are representation of the phonemes.
 4. They can never occur in the same environment.
5. They don’t change the meaning of the words.
6. Allophones are non-significant.
7. These are predictable.
8. They are usually found in complementary distribution ( the
existence of one excludes the other)
9. Allophones use narrow transcription using two brackets [ ] ,
phonetic transcription.

Topic no 5. SYLLABLE

A unit of sound or pronunciation having one vowel sound and may or

may not have consonants. E.g. introduction ( in-tro-duc-tion).It is a
combination of phonemes, each syllable consists of at least one
phoneme.Phonemes and syllable are units of structure in phonology.
Syllables are often considered the phonological "building blocks" of words.

?Why learn syllables

Without a strategy for dividing longer words into manageable parts,

students may look at a longer word and simply try to guess what it is — or
altogether skipping it. Familiarity with syllable-spelling conventions helps
readers know whether a vowel is long, short, a diphthong, r-controlled, or
whether endings have been added. Familiarity with syllable patterns helps
students to read longer words accurately and fluently and to solve spelling
problems — although knowledge of syllables alone is not sufficient for being
.a good speller
Spoken and written syllables are different

:Say these word pairs aloud and listen to where the syllable breaks occur

bridle – riddle table – tatter even – ever

Spoken syllables are organized around a vowel sound. Each word

above has two syllables. The jaw drops open when a vowel in a
syllable is spoken. Syllables can be counted by putting your hand
under your chin and feeling the number of times the jaw drops for a
.vowel sound

Spoken syllable divisions often do not coincide with or give the

rationale for the conventions of written syllables. In the first word
pair above, you may naturally divide the spoken syllables of bridle
between bri and dle and the spoken syllables of riddle between ri
and ddle. Nevertheless, the syllable rid is "closed" because it has a
short vowel; therefore, it must end with consonant. The first
syllable bri is "open," because the syllable ends with a long vowel
sound. The result of the syllable-combining process leaves a double
d in riddle (a closed syllable plus consonant-le) but not in bridle
(open syllable plus consonant-le). These spelling conventions are
among many that were invented to help readers decide how to
pronounce and spell a printed word.
 Nature and Structure of Syllable

An important unit of sound phonetically, a syllable must have a vowel

.(centre). It may or may not have consonants before or after the centre
The sound before the vowel is called 'onset ' e.g , no
and the sound after the vowel is called 'coda ' e.g, on. The only
compulsory part of a syllable isVowel. Phonologically each languagehas
.certain rules or restriction on the distribution of sounds of syllable
The term used for it is called Phonatactics. It is also defined as the study of
possible combination of phoneme in a language. The structure of syllable
can be represented as follows as
 Syllable Types

Closed syllables
The closed syllable is the most common spelling unit in English; it
accounts for just under 50 percent of the syllables in running text. When
the vowel of a syllable is short, the syllable will be closed off by one or
more consonants. Therefore, if a closed syllable is connected to another
syllable that begins with a consonant, two consonant letters will come
between the syllables (com-mon, but-ter).

Two or more consonant letters often follow short vowels in closed syllables
(dodge, stretch, back, stuff, doll, mess, jazz). This is a spelling
convention; the extra letters do not represent extra sounds. Each of these
example words has only one consonant phoneme at the end of the word.
The letters give the short vowel extra protection against the unwanted
influence of vowel suffixes (backing; stuffed; messy).

Vowel-Consonant-e (VCe) syllables

Also known as "magic e" syllable patterns, VCe syllables contain long
vowels spelled with a single letter, followed by a single consonant, and a
silent e. Examples of VCe syllables are found in wake, whale, while,
yoke, yore, rude, and hare. Every long vowel can be spelled with a
VCe pattern, although spelling "long e" with VCe is unusual.

Open syllables
If a syllable is open, it will end with a long vowel sound spelled with one
vowel letter; there will be no consonant to close it and protect the vowel
(to-tal, ri-val, bi-ble, mo-tor). Therefore, when syllables are combined,
there will be no doubled consonant between an open syllable and one that
follows.

A few single-syllable words in English are also open syllables. They

include me, she, he and no, so, go. In Romance languages — especially
Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian — open syllables predominate.
Vowel team syllables
A vowel team may be two, three, or four letters; thus, the term vowel
digraph is not used. A vowel team can represent a long, short, or
diphthong vowel sound. Vowel teams occur most often in old Anglo-Saxon
words whose pronunciations have changed over hundreds of years. They
must be learned gradually through word sorting and systematic practice.
Examples of vowel teams are found in thief, boil, hay, suit, boat, and
straw.

Sometimes, consonant letters are used in vowel teams. The letter y is

found in ey, ay, oy, and uy, and the letter w is found in ew, aw, and ow. It
is not accurate to say that "w can be a vowel," because the letter is
working as part of a vowel team to represent a single vowel sound. Other
vowel teams that use consonant letters are -augh, -ough, -igh, and the
silent -al spelling for /aw/, as in walk.

Vowel-r syllables
We have chosen the term "vowel-r" over "r-controlled" because the
sequence of letters in this type of syllable is a vowel followed by r (er, ir,
ur, ar, or). Vowel-r syllables are numerous, variable, and difficult for
students to master; they require continuous review. The /r/ phoneme is
elusive for students whose phonological awareness is underdeveloped.
Examples of vowel-rsyllables are found in perform, ardor, mirror,
further, worth, and wart.

Consonant-le (C-le) syllables

Also known as the stable final syllable, C-le combinations are found only
at the ends of words. If a C-le syllable is combined with an open syllable
— as in cable, bugle, or title — there is no doubled consonant. If one is
combined with a closed syllable — as in dabble, topple, or little — a
double consonant results.

Not every consonant is found in a C-le syllable. These are the ones that
are used in English:

-ble (bubble) -fle (rifle) -stle (whistle) -cle (cycle)

-gle (bugle) -tle (whittle) -ckle (trickle) -kle (tinkle)
-zle (puzzle) -dle (riddle) -ple (quadruple)  
 Simple and complex syllables
Closed, open, vowel team, vowel-r, and VCe syllables can be either simple
or complex. A complex syllable is any syllable containing a consonant
cluster (i.e., a sequence of two or three consonant phonemes) spelled with
a consonant blend before and/or after the vowel. Simple syllables have
no consonant clusters.

Simple Complex

late plate

sack stack

rick shrink

tee tree

bide blind
 

Table 5.1. Summary of Six Types of Syllables in English

Syllable
Examples Definition
Type

dap-ple
A syllable with a short vowel, spelled with a
hos-tel
Closed single vowel letter ending in one or more
bev-er-
consonants.
age

Vowel-
com-pete A syllable with a long vowel, spelled with one
Consonant-
des-pite vowel + one consonant + silent e.
e(VCe)

pro-gram
A syllable that ends with a long vowel sound,
Open ta-ble
spelled with a single vowel letter.
re-cent

aw-ful Syllables with long or short vowel spellings

Vowel Team
train-er that use two to four letters to spell the vowel.
(including
con-geal Diphthongs ou/ow and oi/oyare included in
diphthongs)
spoil-age this category.

Vowel-r (r- in-jur-i- A syllable with er, ir, or, ar, or ur. Vowel

controlled) ous pronunciation often changes before /r/.
con-sort
 char-ter

drib-ble
Consonant- An unaccented final syllable that contains a
bea-gle
le(C-le) consonant before /l/, followed by a silent e.
lit-tle

Leftovers:
dam-age
Odd and Usually final, unaccented syllables with odd
act-ive
Schwa spellings.
na-tion
syllables

Topic 6: Distribution of Syllables

A syllable is apart of a word made up of one or more consonants

and one vowel sound. Breaking unknown words into syllables help
.you pronounce longer words perfectly
Rules

.Compound words are divided between the shorter words -1

.Examples: - foot/ball , back/ground

Prefixes and suffixes are usually separate syllable in a word -2

.Examples: power/less  

When two consonants appear together in the middle of a word, -3

the word should be divided between the consonants. Examples,
den/tist , hap/py
When a word contains a vowel – consonant/ vowel, it is not -4
.always divided the same way divide the word after the consonant
Examples: riv/er, cab/in

A consonant and le usually form the last syllable of a word e.g. -5

. cir/c+le

When a (d or t) is at the end of a word is followed by ed, the ed -6

.forms a separate syllable. Examples want/ed ,mind/ed

Consonant Cluster

A sequence of two or more than two consonants in a word is called

.consonant cluster
In word ‘‘cash’’ there is a single consonant in the initial position but
a word '' crash'' has a sequence of two consonants, k and r ( kr). A
word ‘’stress’’ / stris/ has three consonants cluster; s , t and r ( str)
in initial position, but a word “ stamped” has three consonants
.cluster in final position

Rules for phonological structure

The English syllable has this phonological structure .1

Pre-initial + initial + post-initial + Vowel + pre-final + final + post-final 1 + post-final 2

CCC----------Vowel ------- CCCC

.No word begins with more than three consonants .2

.No word ends with more than four consonants .3
.The vowel and coda are known as Rhyme (rime) .4
.The rhyme is divided into peak and coda .5

.Onset : The beginning sounds of the syllable the ones preceding the nucleus

.a. Any vowel may come onset except / u / is rare

.b. Any consonant can start a syllable except / / and / / are rare

.Coda : The ending sound of the syllable, the ones after the nucleus
.a. Any consonant can come coda except /h / / w/ / j/ are rare
b. Some consonants can form by themselves without vowels and they are
/ / called syllable consonant. Example able / / nation