WEEK 3

PHONETIC AND PHONOLOGICAL CONTRASTIVE

ANALYSES
I. Phonetics or Phonology?

1. What do ‘type’ and ‘token’ refer to?

 A type is a class of linguistic items, e.g. phonemes, words, utterances.
 A token is an example or a physical manifestation of a class.

For example, hello, hi, good morning are three different tokens of the text or discourse type “Greeting” in phatic
communication or phatic communication. There are nine letter-tokens in the word phonology (i.e. there are
nine physical manifestations of each of the different letters of the English alphabet that appear in the word
phonology), but there are only seven letter-types (different letters) in the word phonology.

2. Fill this table with ‘Phonetics’ or ‘Phonology’ in the gaps.

PHONETICS
 ‘studies human speech sounds in
general, that is, the type of speech
sounds’ (p. 47)
 ‘studies how people physically produce
and perceive different sounds to create
speech’
 Contrastive Phonetics involves ‘making
detailed descriptions of the sounds
of a pair of languages and then
somehow equating certain of these
sounds interlingually for purposes of
comparison.’ (p. 48)
PHONOLOGY
 ‘studies the specific speech sounds as
employed in different languages, i.e. the
tokens of human speech sounds’ (p. 48)
 ‘studies how speech sounds are
structured and combined to create
meaning in words, phrases and
sentences’
 Contrastive Phonology involves
‘investigat[ing] and then compar[ing] the
specific functions comparable sounds
(phonemes) in different languages
perform in their own sound systems.’ (p.
48)
II. Contrastive Phonetics

 The big picture 1: What are the three aspects of the reality of sound? Provide a short explanation for
each of them.

*Three realities of sound:

+ Physiological
+ Physical
+ Psychology

*These three different realities of sound are respectively the objects of investigation of three different
branches of phonetics: articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics, and auditory phonetics.

+ Articulatory Phonetics (Physiological aspects): deals with the way in which speech sounds

are produced.

+ Acoustic Phonetics: concerned with the trip speech sounds make to reach our ears => the physical
properties of sound.

+ Auditory Phonetics: concerned with how speech sounds are perceived by the listener => the
psychological properties of sound

 A closer look (Challenge: Can you find the Vietnamese equivalents for all the terms in this
chapter?)
1. Articulatory Phonetics (Physiological aspects)
a. What are the vocal organs/ speech organs/ articulators?

Vocal organs/speech organs/articulators produce the sounds of language comprise: chest muscles,
diaphragm, lungs, larynx, vocal cords, glottis, pharynx, epiglottis, esophagus or oesophagus, uvula,
soft palate (velum), hard palate, tongue, alveolar ridge, teeth, lips, mandible

b. Based on the descriptions of the vocal organs on pp. 49-50 and their visual illustration in
Fig. 3.1 (p. 50), what types of sound are missing from the list of places of articulation (1-
9) in Fig. 3.1?
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c. Summarise the process of voice production (e.g. with a diagram).

d.
Based on what you have learned in previous modules about manners of articulation, what
types of sound have not been mentioned on p. 52?

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e. What vowels and/or consonants in English do you think are often mispronounced due to
L1 interference? Briefly explain how.

The problem sound is /dʒ/.

Reasons:
 This sound doesn’t exist in L1 (Vietnamese).
 Students may confuse this sound with the sound /tʃ/
 This is a consonant cluster.
 Ss may drop this sound because it is at the final position.

2. Acoustic Phonetics (Physical aspects)

a. What are the three physical properties of sound? Briefly explain each of them.

• Frequency:

+ The frequency at which a sound vibrates determines the pitch of a sound.

+ The basic frequency (fundamental frequency): F0

• Amplitude of Vibration:

The extent to which an air particle moves to and fro around its rest point.

• Timbre

+ Characteristics of a particular voice that enable the listener to distinguish one voice from another

+ When a sound is produced by an object vibrating in a periodic way => multiples of the
fundamental frequency

(overtones/harmonics)

 Vowels: musical sounds

 Voiced consonant:musical sounds tinged with some noises
 Voiceless consonant: noises
3. Auditory Phonetics (Psychological aspects)
a. How is a ‘phoneme’ different from an ‘allophone’?

- allophones : different forms of a phoneme

- phoneme: the smallest unit of sound in a language which can distinguish two words

b. Fill in the table with key points

BROAD TRANSCRIPTION NARROW TRANSCRIPTION

(PHONEMIC) (PHONETIC)
 DEFINITION  Phonemic transcription/notation  Phonetic/allophonic
 Transcribe only the more noticeable transcription/notation
phonetic features  Describe phonetic variations of
 A representation of the phonemic specific allophones
structure (phonology) of a language  A transcription of the phonetics of a
language

 Examples: /t/ /d/ /m/ /n/  Examples:

ADVANTAGES

More accurate description of the

Suitable for providing pronunciation
phonetic system of a language =>
data in
students learn exactly the right sound
foreign language dictionaries

DIS- Cannot reflect the dialectal variations - Rarely representative of all speakers
ADVANTAGES of a - Involves a larger number of
language’s phonetic system unfamiliar
symbols

III. Contrastive Phonology

4. Fill in the table below with key points about the two models.

TAXONOMIC/ STRUCTURAL PHONOLOGY GENERATIVE PHONOLOGY

DEFINITION + The taxonomic or structural phonology is + Generative phonology stems from America
characterized by an effort at classifying items (Chomsky and Halle, 1968) but is rooted in
into classes and then sub-classes.
 + The distinctive speech sounds of a language
are first classified as vowels and consonants; the
consonants are then classified as stops,
fricatives, nasals, etc.; the stops may be further
classified as voiced and voiceless
and so on.
ADVANTAGES
Work pretty well on the whole
DIS- -Failure in CA: inability to to differentiate
ADVANTAGES productive difficulty from receptive difficulty.
- Assumption: what is difficult to perceive by the
learner will in fact be difficult for him to
produce. <= not always the case
European phonological theory of the 1940s.
+ Assumption: the surface-structure phonology
is derived from the deep-structure phonology by
means of transformations.
- Failure in CA: the phonological deep
structure is assumed to contain
forms which are deleted from the surface
representation.
  For CA, taxonomic phonology is more practical & concrete
5. ‘The important point to be made in this context is that objectively similar sounds of two
languages can have different functional statuses; in L1 the differences may be disregarded and
the two speech sounds viewed as “the same,” while in L2 the same objective difference is
upheld as constituting a functional difference.’ (p. 58)  Can you think of an example in
Vietnamese-English?

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6. What is ‘functional load’? What features can be said to have high functional load in
Vietnamese?
- Functional load: the relative importance of linguistic contrasts in a language.

Example:

• Voiced/voiceless contrast has a high functional load in English

• Aspirated/unaspirated contrast of consonants in Chinese

7. What is a ‘phonemic error’? Give one example.

A phonemic error occurs when a person produces a sound that is a well-formed phoneme of the
language but not one that was intended by the speaker or anticipated by the listener, as in examples
a and b:

 a) They have a smole ‘smile’ (smole rhymes with mole)

 b) … coming out of the gar ‘jar’ (gar rhymes with bar)
 8. What is an ‘allophonic error’? Give one example.

IV. Suprasegmental Contrastive Analysis

 The big picture 2: What features of phonetic structure do ‘suprasegmentals’ comprise? Briefly
explain each feature.
Suprasegmentals (also called prosodies or prosodic features) : aspects or features of phonetic
structure above the level of individual sounds, such as tempo, stress, pitch, and juncture.
- Tempo:
 Tempo (also known as speech rate expressed in words per minute or syllables per second), e.g.
is conditioned by pause rate (slower speech involves more pausing), or by variations in
articulation rate (the speed with which the syllables themselves are produced, regardless of
pauses in between the words), or by both, and affects a series of utterances or a stretch of
discourse.
- Stress
- Pitch:
Pitch: the height of speech sounds perceived by a listener.
=> In suprasegmental phonology: Tone & Intonation
- Juncture:
+ A pause or other phonological feature or modification of a phonological feature, such as the
lengthening of a preceding phoneme or the strengthening of a following one, marking a
transition or break between sounds, especially marking the phonological boundary of a word,
clause, or sentence.
+ The point in a word or group of words at which such a pause or other junctural marker occurs.
 A closer look:
9. Which of the features you identify in the question above does the author explore in more
detail?

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10. What are the two elements of pitch mentioned in this chapter? Provide a short definition for
each.
a) Tone: the height of pitch and a unit of change of pitch which is associated with the
pronunciation of syllables or words and which affects the meaning of the word.
Tone is a distinctive feature in tone languages such as Vietnamese, Chinese and Thai
=> the meaning of a word depends on the tone used
Tonal contasts in Vietnamese make phonemic distinction.
b) Intonation (pitch movement): the change of pitch to convey grammatical or attitudinal
information rather than vocabulary differences.
 11. What do you know about the tones in Vietnamese?

Tonal contasts in Vietnamese make phonemic distinction.

Example: A French speaker might say “Xin cháo” instead of “Xin chào”

=> Pronunciation errors resulting from phonemic asymmetries

12. What are the main functions of intonation? Give one example for each function.
- Perform grammatical functions (for instance, to show whether an utterance is a statement or a
question)
Ex:

- Give additional information to that given by the words of an utterance.

Ex:

- Indicate the speaker’s attitude to the matter discussed or to the listener.

Ex:

13. What do ‘stress-timed language’ and ‘syllable-timed language’ mean? Which type do you think
Vietnamese can be classified as? Why?
- A syllable-stressed language where the timing of all syllables tends to be the same, regardless of
their stress.
- A stress-timed language, which means the length of time between any two neighboring stressed
syllables is roughly the same, no matter how many unstressed syllables occur in between.
14. What is ‘juncture’?
+ A pause or other phonological feature or modification of a phonological feature, such as the
lengthening of a preceding phoneme or the strengthening of a following one, marking a
 transition or break between sounds, especially marking the phonological boundary of a word,
clause, or sentence.
+ The point in a word or group of words at which such a pause or other junctural marker occurs.

15. What might be the intentions of the author in introducing machine translation while discussing
juncture?

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16. Read some news headlines in Vietnamese and English. Which headlines contain ‘alternative
structures’?

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