2221ENGL1415 Contrastive Linguistics (Eng-Vie) – Ms Hoa Ninh

WEEK 3
PHONETIC AND PHONOLOGICAL CONTRASTIVE ANALYSES
I. Phonetics or Phonology?
1. What do ‘type’ and ‘token’ refer to?
 Type: is a class of linguistic items, e.g. phonemes words, utterances e.g. phonemes (音位), words, utterances
 Token (形符) 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
communion
ex:
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

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

______Phonetic___________ ____ Phonology__________

 ‘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)
 ‘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?)
2. Articulatory Phonetics (Physiological aspects)
a. What are the vocal organs/ speech organs/ articulators?
*Three realities of sound:

+ Physiological
2221ENGL1415 Contrastive Linguistics (Eng-Vie) – Ms Hoa Ninh
+ 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

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?

______________________________
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.

3. 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

2221ENGL1415 Contrastive Linguistics (Eng-Vie) – Ms Hoa Ninh
• 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

4. Auditory Phonetics (Psychological aspects)

a. How is a ‘phoneme’ different from an ‘allophone’?
- allophones : different forms of a phoneme (từ đồng nghĩa)
- phoneme: the smallest unit of sound in a language which can distinguish two words (âm vị)
*Different of these:
The crucial difference between phonemes and allophones is that substituting one phoneme for another will result
in a word with a different meaning (as well as a different pronunciation, but substituting allophones only results
in a different (and perhaps odd) pronunciation of the same word.
b. Fill in the table with key points
BROAD TRANSCRIPTION NARROW TRANSCRIPTION
(PHONEMIC) (PHONETIC)
DEFINITION  Phonemic transcription/notation  Phonetic/allophonic
 Transcribe only the more transcription/notation
noticeable phonetic features  Describe phonetic variations of
 A representation of the phonemic specific allophones
structure (phonology) of a  A transcription of the phonetics of
language a language

 Examples:
 Examples: /t/ /d/ /m/ /n/
ADVANTAGES allows more widely applicable statements to describes the phonetic system of a language
be made about the pronunciation of a accurately and helps students to learn
diverse language community and thus more exactly the right sound
suitable for providing pronunciation data
in foreign language dictionaries.
2221ENGL1415 Contrastive Linguistics (Eng-Vie) – Ms Hoa Ninh
DIS- can not reflect the dialectal variations of a  rarely representative of all
ADVANTAGES language’s phonetic system speakers of a language. In some
British accents
e.g. the in very is pronounced as a tap (轻
拍音) (i.e. a speech sound which
is produced by striking the tongue
quickly and lightly against the part of the
mouth
behind the upper front teeth).
 narrow transcription involves a
larger number of unfamiliar
symbols.
III. Contrastive Phonology
5. Fill in the table below with key points about the two models.
TAXONOMIC/ STRUCTURAL GENERATIVE PHONOLOGY
PHONOLOGY
DEFINITION + The taxonomic or structural phonology + Generative phonology stems from
is America (Chomsky and Halle, 1968) but is
characterized by an effort at classifying rooted in European phonological theory of
items into classes and then sub-classes. the 1940s.
+ The distinctive speech sounds of a + Assumption: the surface-structure
language are first classified as vowels and phonology is derived from the deep-
consonants; the consonants are then structure phonology by means of
classified as stops, transformations.
fricatives, nasals, etc.; the stops may be
further classified as voiced and voiceless
and so on.
ADVANTAGES first classsifted as vowels and consonants; the  the gain in economy
consonants are then classified as stops,  is of particular interest to the
fricatives, nasals, etc.; contrastivist (对比 分析研究者), is
the stops may be further classified as voiced the universality of distinctive
and voiceless and so on. features: phonemes
=> Work pretty well on the whole

-Failure in CA: inability to to differentiate - Failure in CA: the phonological deep

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
structure is assumed to contain
- forms which are deleted from the surface
representation.

6. ‘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?
đường (ăn) – đường (đi) => same sound
sugar – road

7. 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

2221ENGL1415 Contrastive Linguistics (Eng-Vie) – Ms Hoa Ninh
• Aspirated/unaspirated contrast of consonants in Chinese

8. 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)

9. What is an ‘allophonic error’? Give one example.

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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
2221ENGL1415 Contrastive Linguistics (Eng-Vie) – Ms Hoa Ninh
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:
10. Which of the features you identify in the question above does the author explore in more detail?
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11. What are the two elements of pitch mentioned in this chapter? Provide a short definition for each.
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.
Intonation (pitch movement): the change of pitch to convey grammatical or attitudinal information rather than
vocabulary differences.

12. 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

13. 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:
2221ENGL1415 Contrastive Linguistics (Eng-Vie) – Ms Hoa Ninh

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

Ex:

14. 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.
15. 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
16. What might be the intentions of the author in introducing machine translation while discussing juncture?
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17. Read some news headlines in Vietnamese and English. Which headlines contain ‘alternative structures’?
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