By Shapla Parveen

1. Phonetics and phonology -
Phoneme

2.  Phonetics and Phonology – related fields
 Basic differences
 Phonetics – Deals with the physical properties
of speech sounds – way it is produced,
transmitted and perceived.
 Phonology – Deals with the organisation of
speech sounds into sound systems/patterns
and their meaning – within and across
languages.

3.  Articulatory phonetics – action of speech
organs and speech production.
 How speech is physically created
 Vocal tract movements to create different
speech sounds

4.  Phonology –
 Who did you see Graham with?
 Who did you see Graham and?
 The English speaker knows that there is more
to the two sentences than the differences
between with and and

5.  Difference between -
 He told the man who he knew. - Ambiguous
 He told the man how he knew.
 I usually go to the movies with my friends.
 I usually went to the movies with my friends.
 I used to went to the movies with my friends.
 I used to go to the movies with my friends.
 By instinct a native speaker knows. – unconscious
knowledge.
 Even not having knowledge of syntax to semantics.

6.  Linguists believe –
 - A native speakers’ unconscious knowledge must
also contain phonological knowledge.
 - can tell how many syllables there are in a word
without having any idea of what a syllable is,
consciously.
 - it shows they have the ability to recognize
syllables.

7.  -similar way, a native speaker can also point
out the sequence of segments e.g. [blᴧ g],
 - it is a utterance of a word, an English word.
 And the sequence of segments in [tʰlᴧ is not an
g]
English word.
 They may never have heard of these sequences before.

8.  Thus assumeing - that they have access to an
unconscious knowledge which constitutes ‘the
phonology of English’.
 Phonology refers to the study of - mental
abilities and largely unconscious state of
the native speaker’s knowledge of the
sound system of a certain (his/her)
language.

9. - the abstract system organizing the speech
sounds of a language.

10.  Phoneme –
 Smallest meaningful unit/segment in the
sound system of a language that is capable of
conveying a distinction in meaning in words
or morphemes.
 /pin/ and /bin/
 Smallest phonetic unit, which distinguishes
meaning,
 A mental category
 How many phonemes - in SBE/RP
pronunciation?

11.  Phonological System/Rules of English –
 - Constraints (restrictions/limitations)
 - form or structure of language
 Syntactic rules –
 Phonological rules -
 The Phonemic Principal –

12. 1. Aspirated and unaspirated voiceless
stops in English – /p/, /t/, /k/
 a.pool [ᴧpʰuɫ] c. appear [əᴧpʰɪə]
 b.spurt [ᴧspɜ:t] d. despite [dəᴧspaɪt]
 e.top [ᴧtʰɒp] ʰ
h. attack [əᴧt æk]
 f.stop [ᴧstɒp] g. destroy [dəᴧst ɔɪ]
ɹ
 i. kill [ᴧkʰɪl] k. accrue [əᴧkʰɹu:]
 j. scold [ᴧskoʊɫd] l. discover [dɪᴧsk və]
ᴧ

13.  Rule –
 - voiceless stops are aspirated when they are at the
beginning of a stressed syllable,
 - but unaspirated when preceded by a voiceless
alveolar fricative.
 Fortis – phonemes produced with force - strong
 Lenis – phonemes produced with less force - weak

14.  Korean words
 a. [pʰul] – grass, b. [pul] – fire
 c. [tʰal] – mask, d. [tal] – moon
 e. [kʰɛda] – dig, f. [kɛda] - fold
 Different realisations of the phonemes .

15.  Bangla examples –
 [pul] – a bridge
 [pʰul] – flower

16.  Distribution – the range of places within a word
which a given sound may occur in, is called its
distribution.

17.  In English –
 Where one kind of stop occurs, the other kind
never occurs in the same environment.
 They are in complementary distribution.
 - Two or more sounds are realisations of the
same phoneme.
 - they are phonetically similar (to the English
speaker)
 - no semantic contrasts -

18.  In Korean, Bangla –
 Where one kind of stop occurs, the other kind can
also occurs in the same environment.
 Aspirated and unaspirataed stops overlap.
 They are in Parallel distribution –
 - Two or more sounds are realisations of different
phonemes.
 - they are phonetically distinctive (to the Korean,
Bangla speakers)
 - the two sounds are semantically contrastive -

19.  Minimal pairs – when a pair of words are
identical in all respect, except for one sound
segment, they are referred to as minimal pairs.
 - The two sounds are in parallel distribution
 - Semantically contrastive.
 Allophones – variations/realisations of a given
phoneme.

20.  Problems for second language learners –