5305 - Structure of English

Topic: Sounds of Language (Phonetics & Phonology)

 Phonetics Vs. Phonology

 Phonetics is the study of the physical sounds of human speech, concerned with the

physical properties of speech sounds (phones), and the processes of their physiological
production, auditory reception, and neurophysiological perception, and their representation
by written symbols.

 Phonology is the branch of linguistics concerned with the study of speech sounds with

reference to their distribution and patterning. The aim of phonology is to discover the
principles that govern the way sounds are organized in languages and to explain the
variations that occur.
 Phonetics is the study of all possible speech sounds, phonology studies the way in which a
language's speakers systematically use a selection of these sounds in order to express
meaning.
Types of Phonetics

 Phonetics studies the physical properties of sound, as opposed to phonology which studies
the abstract and mental representations of speech sounds. Phonetics falls into three main
types:

 articulatory phonetics (production)

 auditory phonetics (transmission)
 acoustic phonetics (perception)
Articulatory Phonetics

 Articulatory phonetics refers to the “aspects of phonetics which looks at how the sounds of
speech are made with the organs of the vocal tract” Ogden (2009:173).

 Articulatory phonetics can be seen as divided up into three areas to describe consonants.
These are voice, place and manner respectively. Each of these will now be discussed
separately, although all three areas combine together in the production of speech.
Articulatory Phonetics cont.

 Voice
 In English we have both voiced and voiceless sounds. A sound fits into one of these
categories according to how the vocal folds behave when a speech sound is produced.
 Voiced sounds are sounds that involve vocal fold vibrations when they are produced.
Examples of voiced sounds are /b,d,v,m/.
 If you place two fingers on either side of the front of your neck, just below your jawbone,
and produce a sound, you should be able to feel a vibrating sensation. This tells you that a
sound is voiced.
 Voiceless sounds are sounds that are produced with no vocal fold vibration. Examples of
voiceless sounds in English are /s,t,p,f/.
Articulatory Phonetics cont.

 Place
 The vocal tract is made up of different sections or organs of speech, which play a pivotal
role in the production of speech. These sections are called articulators

• Bilabial – /p,b,m/
• Labiodental - /f,v/
• Dental - / θ, ð/
• Alveolar - /t,d,n,l,s/
• Postalveolar - / ʃ, ʒ /
• Palatal - / j/
• Velar - /k,g ŋ/
Articulatory Phonetics cont.

 Manner
 In simple terms, the manner of articulation refers to the way a sound is made, as opposed
to where it’s made. Sounds differ in the way they are produced. When the articulators are brought
towards each other, the flow of air differs according to the specific sound type. For instance, the
airflow can be completely blocked off or made turbulent.
 Plosives/Stops -
 Affricates
 Fricatives
 Nasals
 Laterals
 Approximants
Articulatory Phonetics cont.

 Vowels & Consonants

Acoustic Phonetics

 Acoustic phonetics is the study of the physical properties of speech, and aims to analyse
sound wave signals that occur within speech through varying frequencies, amplitudes and
durations. 

 https://all-about-linguistics.group.shef.ac.uk/branches-of-linguistics/phonetics/what-do-
phoneticians-study/acoustic-phonetics/
 Auditory Phonetics

Sound waves are in essence vibrations carried through the air. The process in which our brains interpret
those vibrations to sound can be divided into three measures: collecting the vibrations, converting those
vibrations into mechanical energy, and relaying each as an electrical impulse to be interpreted as sound by
the brain. Similarly, the ear itself can be divided into three distinct anatomical areas that are responsible for
these distinct processes:
Outer Ear: Sound waves are funnelled into the ear via the auricle and through the external auditory canal
to the tympanic membrane (eardrum) where the vibrations are then converted into mechanical energy.
Middle Ear: The tympanic membrane is attached to the first in a chain of three small bones (malleus,
incus, and stapes) known as the ossicular chain. The three bones propel one another sequentially,
ultimately striking the oval window.
Inner Ear: The primary component of the inner ear in the process of interpreting sound is the cochlea, a
coiled chamber of fluid.
https://www.ohniww.org/mechanism-general-overview/
 Phonology (Phone, Phoneme & Allophone)

PHONES
 Minimum unit of sound is called phone. Or, the speech sounds considered as units of phonetic analysis are called phones.
 Phones are any sound of language that can be consistently and individually produced and recognized by the speaker of
the language. Phones are represented by enclosing the appropriate alphabet/symbol in square bracket. Thus, [p] will refer
to p sound (which is described more technically as a voiceless, bilabial sound)
PHONEME 
 Each one of these meaning-distinguishing sounds in a language is described as a phoneme. Slash marks are
conventionally used to indicate a phoneme, e.g. /t/, an abstract segment, as opposed to the square brackets, as in [t], used
for each phonetic or physically produced segment.
ALLOPHONE 
 When we have a set of phones, all of which are versions of one phoneme, we add the prefix “allo-” (= one of a closely
related set) and refer to them as allophones of that phoneme. Allophones are variations of phonemes. So, they are set of
possible spoken sounds used to pronounce one single phoneme. e.g. [pʰ] (as in pin) and [p] (as in spin) are allophones of
the phoneme /p/. They are written in brackets.
Thank You 