Phonetics & Phonology

P. S E B A S T I A N

PHONETICS & PHONOLOGY

INFORM MY TEACHING

• Knowing the relationship between the written alphabet and phonetics can reveal some important limitations to the “phonics” approach to reading (ghoti). See also limitations of the alphabet on p. 40 of LF text• Knowing voicing, place, and manner of

articulation can help to give more specific instructions for more accurate pronunciations.• Understanding physiology of speech production

can aid in the understanding of invented spellings that emergent writers produce.

PART 1: ORIENTATION

UNIT OBJECTIVES

• Awareness • Articulation of phonemes in English• International phonetic alphabet through practice with

transcription• Understanding• Key terms related to phonetics and phonology• How knowledge of phonetics & phonology can benefit

you in the classroom

HOW LANGUAGES “SOUND”

• English• Other Languages• Asian Languages

WHY USE SOUND TO COMMUNICATE?

• Advantages• To overcome visual

barriers• Distance• 360 degree

exposure• Multi-tasking (with

hands)

• Limitations• Easily disrupted• Language variation• Creates noise (is

loud)

KEY TERMS• Phonetics – Study of the sounds that exist in a language• Phonology –Study of the how sounds in a language

combine and change in combination• Phoneme – A sound that makes a difference in meaning

in a language• Allophone – A variation of a phoneme that does not

change meaning (pit/sip)• Minimal Pair – Two words that differ only by a single

sound in the same position and that have different meanings (cat/cab)

THE PHONEME

• Described by its place and manner of articulation and whether or not it is voiced or voiceless• Phoneme = sound ≠ alphabet letter• Phoneme vs. phone

ANATOMY OF SOUND PRODUCTION

• http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/anatomy.htm• Compare to p. 56 in EL text• How can it help in the classroom?• /t/ and /d/ (voiced and voiceless)

THE SYMBOLS

• See IPA symbols document listed on sebaspan.weebly.com

KEY TERMS – PLACE AND MANNER OF ARTICULATION

• Stop- Sound produced by completely obstructing the airstream in the oral cavity and then quickly releasing the constriction to allow the air to escape.

• Fricative- Sound made by forming a nearly complete obstruction of the airstream so that when air passes through the small passage, turbulent airflow is produced.

• Affricate- Sound produced by complete obstruction of the airflow followed by a slight release of the obstruction, allow frication. Combination of a stop and a fricative.

• Nasal- Sound produced by making a complete obstruction of the airflow in the oral cavity and lowering the velum to allow air to pass through the nasal cavity.

• Liquid- Consonant sound produced by an obstruction of airflow that is less narrow than that of stops or fricatives, but more narrow than that of glides.

• Glide- Sound produced with a constriction in the vocal tract that is only slightly more constricted than that of vowels.

PRACTICE!

• Produce the following consonants:• Voiced bilabial nasal• Voiced inter-dental fricative• Voiceless velar stop

• Produce the following vowels:• Front low • Back low• Central mid

SUMMARY

• Youtube Guy

TONGUE TWISTERS• Peggy Babcock (p. 69)• What makes tongue twisters so difficult?• Alternating place, manner, and voice • Irregular rhythms and cadence

• Rubber baby buggy bumpers• The hardest twister in the world!

PART 2: WORKING WITH IPA

THE SYLLABLE

• Syllable = unit of speech, every utterance contains at least one syllable.• Onset = any consonants that occur before the

rhyme within the syllable form the onset• Rhyme = the vowel and any consonants that

come after it• Nucleus = vocalic part of the rhyme• Coda = consists of any final consonants in the

rhyme• *see p 41 in LF text for diagram*

CONSONANTS

• Described by voicing, place, and manner of articulation

VOWELS

• Most sonorant, intense, and most audible sounds in speech

• Can function as syllable nuclei and consonants around them often depend on them for their audibility (pop)

• 4 main ways speakers can change the shape of the vocal tract and thus change vowel quality• Raising or lowering the body of the tongue• Advancing or retracting the body of the tongue• Rounding or not rounding the lips• Making these movements with a tense or a lax gesture

• See chart on p. 57 of LF text

INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET

• Attempt at a standardized symbolic representation of sounds in a language• Shows place (top column), manner (left column),

and whether the phoneme is voiced or not (shading)• Variations of the IPA exist in different languages

(because languages have different sets of phonemes)• Each symbol should represent only one sound• P. 41-43 additional explanation of IPA with word

samples

PRACTICE WITH IPA

•CELLO•t∫ɛloʊ•Crazy•kɹeIzi

PRACTICE WITH IPA

• Choose 1 word from each exercise and transcribe the word into IPA.• Compare your transcriptions with another student

MORE PRACTICE WITH IPA

• Write the transcription of the word that the professor reads aloud.

READING IPA

• Reading Samples

PART 3: THE CONCLUSION

THE SCHWA AND THE WEDGE

• http://linguisticmystic.com/2012/10/17/whats-the-difference-between-schwa-and-wedge/• Language change towards efficiency• We don’t particularly care what each /ə/ sounds like, and

as such, we just make something vaguely in the center of the mouth, sometimes a bit higher2, sometimes a bit lower. A schwa is a vowel that we produce just to have produced a vowel, the vowel we produce so we can move on to a part of the word which is more important to establishing and communicating the identity of the word. We make a /ə/ because we’ve got better things to do than pronounce the middle vowel in “photograph”.

PHONOTACTICS

• Description of possible sound combinations in a language

• When languages borrow words that violate their phonotactics, the word undergoes transformation to adhere to the rules• Gnostic, knish, etc.

• Foreign accents are sometimes derived from violations of phonotactics or enforcing phonotactics of the native language

• Sound substitution is when a similar sound is substituted to fulfill a missing sound • Frech who say [ZIS] instead of the English [ðIS]

ENGLISH PHONOTACTIC SAMPLES

• Do not pronounce a word-final/b/ when it occurs after a /m/ as in • Bomb, crumb, lamb, tomb• As opposed to (bombard,crumble, limber, tumble)

• Allow up to 3 consonants to start a word• Strength, spleen, spree• As opposed to strgegth, splten, sprkee

ORTHOGRAPHY AND SOUND CORRESPONDENCE IN ENGLISH

• Very little• Did he believe that Caesar could see the people seize the

seas?• Fish – Ghoti

PHONEMES VS. ALLOPHONES

• See transcriptions on p. 109 of LF• Allophones of /t/ = [t], [th], [r], and [?]

• Contrastive distribution• Teen/team

• Complementary distribution• Allophones of the same phoneme• Aspiration exercise 7 on p. 114 (hand in front of mouth)

• Free variation (overlapping distribution)• Existence of allophones that do not change meaning• Exercise 9 p. 115

PHONETICS AND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

• Pronunciation • Make conscious something that you understand

subconsciously• An explicit knowledge of phonotactics, for example, can

help overcome this barrier• Pronunciation needs to be learned to the point of

automaticity because there is very little processing time allowed in the production of various sounds

TRANSCRIBING SPEECH SEGMENTS

• http://accent.gmu.edu/browse_language.php?function=find&language=english

APPLICATION WITH SCENARIOS!• Scenario 1• Bernardo is a 2nd grader who recently moved with his

family to Caldwell Idaho from Mexico. Bernardo repeatedly adds /ɛ/ to the beginning of words like school, stop, and student.• Use your knowledge of phonetics and phonology to:• 1. Identify the problem and explain to the student the

nature of the error• 2. Brainstorm some activities for the student to engage in

to address the error• 3. Additionally, what might you say to/do with the class so

as to encourage linguistic awareness and to help them be nice to one another?

MORE SCENARIOS!

• Scenario 2• Kandra is a 7th grader in your English class. She struggles

with standard spelling conventions and appears to even be getting worse. She seems to be a gifted storyteller but sometimes her writing is almost incomprehensible due to spelling and other errors. • Use your knowledge of phonetics and phonology to:

• 1. Identify the problem and explain to the student the nature of the error

• 2. Brainstorm some activities for the student to engage in to address the error

• 3. Additionally, what might you say to/do with the class in general to help Kandra feel more at ease about the errors?