Universidad Nacional de José C.

Paz – Profesorado Universitario de Inglés

Prácticas Discursivas: Oralidad I
Prof. Carolina González (Adjunta) - Prof. Agustina D’Andrea (JTP)
Ficha de cátedra N°1

PHONOLOGY

Phonology is the establishment and the description of the distinctive sound units of a

language, phonemes, by means of distinctive features. Each phoneme is considered as

consisting of a group of these features and differing in at least one feature from the other

phonemes, e.g.:

Position of Articulators Air flow Vocal Folds Vibration

/b/ Bilabial Plosive Yes

/p/ Bilabial Plosive No

/f/ Labiodental Fricative No

/ʃ/ Palatal Fricative No

Chart N°1

Phonology is also concerned with:

v The study of word-to-word relations in sentences; that is, how sound patterns are

affected by the combination of words. For example, don’t /dəʊnt/ and you /jə/ may

combine to /ˈdəʊntʃə/. This is called assimilation, and we are going to study it once we

have learnt every sound in the English language.

v The investigation of intonation patterns. We are going to study some basic intonation

patterns in this course and the following, and go deeper into the topic in the 3rd and

4th year of the teacher training course.

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a language which can distinguish two words,

e.g., in English, the words pan and ban differ only in their initial sound /p/ and /b/. These

are phonemes of English, and the only feature that is different between the two is the

vibration of the vocal folds, as we have seen in chart N°1. Phonemes are represented

between slashes. The number of phonemes varies from one language to another.

PHONETICS

Phonetics is the study of speech sounds or phones. A phone is the sound itself, that is, a

realisation of a phoneme. Phonemes of a language can be produced in different ways, e.g.

in River Plate Spanish we have two different sounds for the phoneme /s/. If you speak

River Plate Spanish –as most of us in Buenos Aires do–, and you say the word «señor» and

then the word «mosca» (try saying «El señor de las moscas»), you will see that the two /s/

sounds are different. But if you want to pronounce the word «mosca» with the same /s/

sound of «señor» (Mexico City style), the meaning will remain the same. That is because

/s/ is a phoneme in Spanish which has two different ways of pronouncing it, that is: two

allophones: [s] (the one in «señor») and [h] (the one in «mosca»). Phones and allophones

are represented between brackets.

There are three main areas of phonetics:

v Articulatory phonetics deals with the way in which speech sounds are produced.

Sounds are usually classified according to the position of the different articulators,

how far open the mouth is, whether or not the vocal folds are vibrating, etc. This is

what we are going to study in this course.

v Acoustic phonetics deals with the transmission of speech sounds through the air.

When a speech sound is produced it causes minor air disturbances (sound waves).

There is technology that allows us to represent the sounds in a graphic:

v Auditory phonetics deals with how speech sounds are perceived by the listener (e.g.

differences between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, dark and clear lateral, etc.).