PAPER

This paper to fulfill one of the tasks

Introduction To Linguistics

Lecturer: Dr. Kaharuddin , S.IP., M.Hum.

Created by:

Group 1

NURHIDAYAH AMELIA PUTRI 20400121010

MUHAMMAD SAFRI 20400121028

NURUL AISYAH 20400121022

MAYA 20400121032

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

FACULTY OF TARBIYAH AND TEACHING SCIENCE

ALAUDDIN STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY

2021
 PREFACE

Assalamualaikum Wr. wb.

Thank to the Almighty God for His bless and grace to the writer for accomplishing the English
paper assignment with the title “UNDERSTANDING PHONOLOGY”.

The writer also wants to deliver his sincere thanks to all the people who has given their
hands to help him completing this paper. It is written to complete task of Introduction To
Linguistics.

The writer realize that it is still imperfect, but he has a high expectation that his work
may help the reader to learn about the Understanding Phonology.

Samata, Oktober 4th, 2021

Author
 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the paper

B. Problem formulation
C. Purpose of the paper
CHAPTER II
THEORY AND DISCUSION

A. Definition Phonology

B. Contrastive And Non Contrastive Sound

CHAPTER III

SUMMARY
 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background Of The Paper

English phonology is the sound system (phonology) of the English language, or the
study of that system. Phonology is the study of how sounds are organized and used in
natural languages. Like many languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation,
both historically and from dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regional dialects of
English share a largely similar (though not identical) phonological system.
Our phonological knowledge is not something we can necessarily access and talk about
in detail: we often have intuitions about language without knowing where they come
from, or exactly how to express them. But the knowledge is certainly there.

1.2 Problem Formulation

1. What is the definition of phonology?

2. What are contrastive and non contrastive sound?

1.2 Purpose Of The Paper

1. To know what is the definition of phonology
2. To know what are contrastive and non contrastive sound
 CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

PHONOLOGY

1. Definition Of Phonology
Just like learning phonetics and the other previous topics, laming phonology needs to be
initiated by learning its definitions based on the perspective of two different sources that
is
ton online dictionaries and linguists because understanding its definition will give us a
clearer picture of what phonology is. When browsing the internet and searching the
definition of phonology from online dictionaries, we Find the following definitions.

1. https://www.merriam-webster.com defines
'"phonology as hi science of speech sounds including especially the history, and theory of
sound changes in a language or in two or more
related languages".
2. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com defines
"phonology as the branch of linguistics that deals with systems of sounds (including or
excluding phonetics), within a language or between different languages".
3.https://www.dictionary.com defines "phonology as the study of the distribution and
patterning of speech sounds in a language and of the tacit rules governing pronunciation"
4.According to, https://www.yourdictionary.com,/"phonology
is defined as the study of sound patterns and their meanings, both within and across
languages".
5.According to https://www.collinsdictionary.com,
"phonology is the study of the sound system of a language or of languages in general".
6.https://www.vocabulary.com defines "phonology as the study of the way sounds are used
in a language and the rules for
pronouncing certain words"
7.According to https://www.thefreedictionary.com,
"phonology is the study of speech sounds in language or a language with reference to their
distribution and patterning and to tacit rules governing pronunciation"
8.https://www.britannica.com defines
"phonology as the study of the sound patterns that occur within languages. Some linguists
include phonetics, the study of the production and description of speech sounds, within the
study of phonology ".

In addition to the definitions provided by the online dictionaries, many linguists also give
a variety of definitions on phonology. Definitions that are provided by the linguists are
assential. no present as well, to enrich the understanding on phonology in addition to those
derived from the online sources.
1. According to Crane, L. B., Yeager, E., & Whitman, R. L. (1981), "phonology is the
study of how speech sounds are organized and how they function in language"
2. Lass, R. (1984) defines "phonology as a sub-discipline within linguistics concerned with
the sounds of language which is specifically concerned with the function, behavior, and
organization of sounds".
3. Poole, S.C. (1999) is of the opinion that "phonology studies sounds in the context of
languages other speech varieties. It
is concerned with which sounds a language uses and how it arranges them. It is concerned
with the contribution of sounds to the task of communication".
4. According to Becker, A., & Bieswanger, M. (2004), "phonology is concerned with the
speakers' knowledge of the sound
system of one specific language. It is the branch of linguistics that studies the sounds used
by a given language, the so-called
sound inventory, and investigates the function and (mental) organization of these sounds
in the specific language".
5.Akmajian, A., et al. (2017) define "phonology as the subfield of linguistics that studies
the structure and systematic patterning of sounds in human language. The term phonology
is
Used in two ways. On the one hand, it refers to a description of the sounds of a particular
language and the rules governing the distribution of those sounds

When the above definitions are analyzed, we will finally understand that phonology
basically studies about the speech sounds from cognitive perspective. In other works
 phonology leads us do study about how human’s mind works in two fundamental aspects
i.e. to organize and to use the speech sounds in a language.

2. Sound Patterns : Contrastive And Non Contrastive Sound

In this section, we are specifically going to study the patterns of speech sounds'
organization by taking English language as an obvious example. The speech sounds'
organization provides an overview of the patterns of phonemes organization in the
language pronunciation system. From this point of view, the phonemes have at least two
patterns namely contrastive and non-contrastive sounds. Contrastive sound refers to the
pattern of phonemes organization in the pronunciation of a word by which if one of the
phonemes is switched for another sound, it
will produce a new word with different sound and meaning from the previous word. For
example, the word "say" is pronounced [sei], when phoneme /s/ is switched for phoneme
/d/, it will make a new word "day" which has different pronunciation [der]
and meaning. On the other hand, non-contrastive sound refers to the pattern of speech
sounds organization in the pronunciation of a word by which if one phoneme is switched
for another phoneme, it will produce different pronunciation, but still the
same meaning. For example, the word "tomorrow" is pronounced [ta'ma,rou], when
phoneme /a/ is switched for phoneme /w/,it will make different pronunciation [tu'marou]
which doesn't change the word's meaning.

1. Contrastive Sounds: Minimal Pairs

The representation of contrastive sound patterns is minimal pair. According Crane, LB.,
Yeager, E., & Whitman, R.L. (1981), the concept of minimal pairs can be understood by
three main characteristics namely:
a.Contain the same number of segments (letters/alphabets);
b. Differ in only one segment;
c. Have different meanings.

Based on the three main characteristics, a minimal pair may then be defined as two words
which have the same number of
phonemes, but differ in one phoneme and meanings. Here is the example; the words "pin"
pronounced [pin] and "sin" pronounced
 [sin] are minimal pairs since the two words have the same number of segments (three
segments), differ only in initial segment
namely segment /p/ and /s/, and have different meanings, in Which the word "pin" means
a thin piece of metal with a sharp Point at one end and a round head at the other, used
especially do fastening pieces of cloth (http://en.oxforddictionaries.com.)

while the word "sin" means an action or type of behavior which is believed to break the
laws of God (Chttps://www.collinsdictionary.com). In this regard, we need to underline
that the focus of contrasting a pair of words is the sound of the word (what sounds make
up the word) and not the spelling (what letters form the word). Besides, a segment of a
minimal pair in this context can be understood as a phoneme in the pronunciation of a
word.
Minimal pairs are taking place in two different perspectives i.e. the perspective of
segmental sounds and the perspective of phonemic position. The perspective of segmental
sounds refers to a way of contrasting the pronunciation of two words based on
the type of sounds whether consonant or vowel that we recognize consonant minimal pairs
and vowel minimal pairs.

2. Non-contrastive Sounds: Allophone

In this part, we are going to discuss the representation of non-contrastive sounds namely
Allophone. To understand about this, it is essential to know what allophone is. Allophone is
the sound variants of the same phoneme (Poole, S.C., 1999). For example, phoneme /t/ in
English is sometimes pronounced sound [t] as in the word 'stop' [stɔp] and is sometimes is
pronounced in the aspirated form [th) as in the word 'time' [th aim]. Therefore, sound [t] and
sound [th] are considered as the sound variants or the allophones for the phoneme /t/. According
to Nordquist, R. (2018), when a speaker substitutes one allophone for another allophone of the
same phoneme in a certain word, it doesn't lead to a different word, just a different
pronunciation of the word which does not lead to different meaning at all. Therefore,
allophones are said to be non-contrastive.

The allophone is categorized into two types i.e. situational allophone and preferential
allophone. Situational allophone occurs when sound variants are made due to a phoneme's
position and different phonetics environment in a word. The position of a phoneme in a word
can be initial, medial, or final position. On the other hand, phonetic environment refers to the
nearby sounds around a phoneme e.g. in the word “time” (taim], [t_m] is the environment for
the phoneme /a1/. For details, let's take a look at this example, phoneme /p/ in English may
have three variants of speech sound namely strongly aspirated [ph], weakly aspirated [p'], and
unreleased [p-]. These sound variants are determined by the position and the environment of
phoneme /p/ in the word. For example:

a. When phoneme /p/ is in initial position and in the environment before a vowel
[_high front vowel] e.g. 'pill' [pıl] then strongly aspirated allophone [ph] is
produced.
b. When phoneme /p/ is medial position and in the environment between a consonant
and a vowel [voiceless alveolar fricative consonant_high front vowel] e.g. “spill”
[spıl] then weakly aspirated allophone [p') is produced.
c. When phoneme /p/ is in final position and in the position after a vowel [low back
vowel_) e.g. “stop” [stap) then unreleased allophone (p-] is produced.

The allophones of a certain phoneme which occur in different phonetic environments

as the examples are then called as complementary distribution. The typical characteristic of a
complementary distribution is that one allophone will only be found in a certain environment,
while other allophones will never be found in the same environments, but in the different
environment instead.

Besides, preferential allophone occurs as sound variants are made due to speakers’
unconscious freedom to choose the allophone. Skandera, P., & Burleigh, P. (2005) make effort
to explain this by saying that “The choice of one allophone rather than another may depend on
such factors as communicative situation, language variety, and social class”. Due to the factors,
the choice of allophone may vary from person to person and communicative situation to
communicative situation. Therefore, this kind of allophone tends to be free variation. Free
variation refers to the act of pronouncing a word in which one phoneme in the word is switched
for another in the same phonetic environment that produces two versions of speech sound
without changing the words meaning, in which the use of free variation occasionally takes
place because of the speakers' different background as mentioned by Skandera, P., & Burleigh,
P. (2005). For example, as an American and a British English speaker are differently
pronounced the word 'tomato’as [tə'meitəʊ] and [tə'ma:təʊ]. From this example, we can clearly
see three facts namely:

The free variation is allophone [α:] for the phoneme /eI/ or allophone [eI] phoneme/α:/.

a. The allophones take place in the same phonetic environment [tə'm_ təα]
b. The speech sound /el/ and /a:/ are heard as two different sounds but do not change the
meaning of the word 'tomato'.
c. For the reason, free variation sound is also known as one type of allophones.
 CHAPTER III
SUMMARY

English phonology is the sound system (phonology) of the English language, or the study
of that system. Phonology is the study of how sounds are organized and used in natural
languages. Suprasegmental, also called Prosodic Feature, in phonetics, is a speech feature such
as stress, tone, or word juncture that accompanies or is added over consonants and vowels;
these features are not limited to single sounds but often extend over syllables, words, or
phrases.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kaharuddin.2020. Linguistics Basic Theory and Roles in English Language Teaching.

Yogyakarta: Trust Media