ENGLISH PHONETICS AND

PHONOLOGY I
 Phonetics & Phonology

There is an important and fundamental

distinction between these two terms, but
at the same time there is an obvious and
equally fundamental connection.
 Phonetics
• The study of the sounds made by the human
vocal apparatus, used in speech.

• This science deals with all sounds. It tries to

describe how they are made, to classify them and
to give some idea of their nature.

• Phonetics is a more general discipline than

Phonology, in that it is concerned with speech
sounds without reference to their function or
role in any particular language.
 Branches of Phonetics

• Acoustic phonetics studies the transmission of speech

sounds through the air from the speaker to the hearer
and is thus concerned with measuring and analyzing
the movement and vibration of air.

• This involves investigation within the framework of

physics.

• A phonetician deals with the study of wave forms and

studies of frequency (f0) and amplitude in much the
same way as a physicist or acoustic engineer .
 Acoustic phonetics
/…and in the second photograph…/

Wave form
(energy-
amplitude)

Pitch line
(Fundamental
Frequency or F0)
Auditory or perceptual phonetics is the study
of the hearing of speech sounds and deals with
such questions as how we perceive and
recognize different speech sounds. Such
investigations take place within the framework
of psychology.

There are many dishes on the table


Articulatory phonetics is the study of the production of
speech sounds by the human vocal apparatus, of how a
speaker produces, by means of the organs of speech, the
sounds he or she uses in speech and of how we can
classify and describe such sounds.

Ex:
There
• Eth. A voiced dental fricative sound.
• Epsilon. Lower mid front unrounded vowel.
• Schwa. A mid central unrounded vowel.
• Each language uses only some of the sounds that
are available.

• Each language has its own particular selection

from all the available sounds.

• Each language organizes and makes use of the

sounds in its own particular way.

• The study of the selection that each language

makes from the vast range of possible speech
sounds and of how each language organizes and
uses the selection it makes is called PHONOLOGY.
 Phonology
• Phonology tends to be more particular than
Phonetics, in that it is usually concerned with the
patterning of sounds in a particular language. That
is why even in general phonetics there are many
notions and concepts, such as that of the syllable,
which are virtually impossible to discuss without
bringing in phonological considerations.

• It is difficult to study the sounds of one language

without taking into consideration their relationship
to one another and the way they work together
• Phonetics is concerned with what speech sounds are,
their nature, while Phonology is concerned with what
they do, their function.

Phonetics => form

Phonology => function

• The sounds in themselves are not meaningful: /p/, /b/.

The difference between them can be meaningful, in that
it can distinguish between two different meanings: pin
and bin.

• It is not so much the sounds but the relationship of the

sounds with one another that is important in phonology.
But this relationship, esp. of difference, depends on the
phonetic nature of the sounds (phonetics).
• Phonology deals with a complicated network
or relationship of sounds, a system of sounds.
It is not the nature of the elements that
matters, but their relationship with all the
other elements, that is, the place of each
element in the system.

• No sound is meaningful in itself (phonetics). It

is the combination of sounds (phonology) that
carries meaning.
• There is a difference in meaning between the
words pin and bin given by the sounds /p/ and
/b/.

• This difference is significant or distinctive, as it

signals a distinction of signification or meaning.

• These distinctive or significant sounds are the

elements of the sound system and are known as
PHONEMES.
 Phoneme
• A phoneme is an abstract entity which has particular
phonetic forms on particular occasions. It is not strictly
speaking, a sound, but rather a class or category of
sounds. The English /p/, for instance, consists of two
allophones, two particular sounds: [p] and [ph].

• A phoneme, or phonological unit, will have, on any

particular occasion, a particular phonetic shape or form
know as an allophone.

• An allophone is thus a concrete sound representing an

abstract class or group of sounds all having the same
function and place in the system, a phoneme.
 Allophones
• /p/ in pin is not the same as /p/ in spin

• These are two slightly different sounds, but the difference

between them is not significant.

• /l/ in lip is not the same as /l/ in pill.

• As both /p/ and /l/ have been identified as phonemes of

English, each of these phonemes has slightly different variants
which are found in different positions. These variants are
known as allophones. Thus, the phonemes /p/ and /l/ have
two allophones each: [p] , [ph] and [l] , [ɫ]

• Differences which do not matter, which are of form only,

belong to the domain of phonetics, while differences which
do something, which have a function, belong to the domain of
phonology.
Allophonic differences are predictable: predicted
by rules…
• [ph] with the puff of air is called aspiration,
and it occurs only at the beginning of stressed
syllables, as in pin. In spin the /p/ is
unaspirated.

• [l] allophone of /l/ known as “clear l”, occurs

before vowels, as in like, whereas [ɫ]“dark l”,
occurs in all other positions, as in all.
 Free variation
• If two or more allophones can replace one another, i.e., if they
can occur in the same position, these allophones are said to be
“free variants” or in free variation, i.e. without any systematic
distribution according to phonetic context. In British English,
for example, word-final Itl tends to be produced as a glottal
stop [?] - for example in the word what - by young speakers
rather than older speakers, and they do so more in informal
situations than in formal situations (Fabricius 2002). Similarly,
in slow and careful speech in English, the Itl at the end of
words is usually released, whereas in casual or fast speech it
tends to be unreleased.
. Two phonemes can also replace each other without causing
a change of meaning. Although phonemes do cause a change
of meaning, in some words, two phonemes are acceptable:
economics, evolution and either
 Complimentary distribution
• If two or more allophones cannot replace one
another, i.e., if they do not occur in the same
position, because their occurrence is determined
by the surrounding sounds, these allophones are
said to be contextual variants or in
complimentary distribution. They are mutually
exclusive.

• The alveolar phoneme /n/ can be realized as an

alveolar allophone in ten, or as a dental
allophone in tenth, depending on the
surrounding neighboring sounds.
 Suprasegmental phonology
• There are other phonological distinctions which
do not involve individual sounds:

Stress
Rhythm
Intonation

• This branch of phonology is sometimes referred

to as suprasegmental phonology, because it
concerns phonological units such as syllables and
tone groups which are greater than a segment,
or individual sounds.