Phonetic & Phonology

 

PART I

 

Phonetics: the study of the phonic medium of language; it is concerned with all the sounds that occur in the world’s languages. 

 

Scope of phonetics:

 

1) Articulatory Phonetics: We many examine the way in which a speech sound is produced to discover which vocal organs are involved and how they coordinate in the process.

2) Auditory Phonetics: We may look into the impression a speaker makes on the hearer as mediated by the ear, the auditory nerve and the brain.

3) Acoustic Phonetics: We study the physical properties of speech sounds a transmitted between mouth and ear.

 

Classification of English Consonants: （辅音）

Two ways: one is in terms of manner of articulation; the other is in terms of place of articulation.

1)      根据发音方式的不同，英语的辅音可以分为：完全阻塞音（又称爆破音stops，包括，p,b,t,d,k,g）摩擦音（fricatives, 包括 f,v,s,z,* * h,*） (破擦音affricates  * * ） ; 流音（liquids, 包括l,r）; 鼻音 （nasals,包括m,n,* ）滑音（glides， w, j）

2)      根据发音部位的不同，可以分为： bilabial （双唇音 p,b, m, w）labiodentals (唇齿音 f,v )dental (齿音 ** )alveolar (齿龈音，t,d,s,z,n,l,r) palatal (上颚音 j, * *) velar (软颚音) glottal (声门音 h)

 

Classification of vowels:

1)      the position of the tongue (front , central, back) in the mouth

2)      the openness of the mouth (close vowels, semi-close vowels , semi-open vowels and open vowels)

3)      the shape of the lip (rounded, unrounded)

4)      the length of the vowels

 

phonology: aims to discover how speech sounds in a language from patterns and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic communication。音位学是指从功能的角度出发，对出现在某种特定语言中的语音及其组合、分布规律进行研究的语言学分支。

 

Difference between Phonology and Phonetics:

语音学着重于语音的自然属性，主要关注所有语言中人可能发出的所有的声音，它是音位学研究的基础；音位学则强调语音的社会功能，其对象是某一种语言中可以用来组合词句的那些语音。

 

Phone (音素) phoneme (音位)，allophone (音位变体)

A phone is a phonetic unit or segment.

Phoneme: a phonological unit, a unit that is of distinctive value

Allophones: The different phones which can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments are called the allophones of that phoneme.

 

Minimal pairs(最小对立体) : When two different forms are identical in every way except for one sound segment which occurs in the same place in the strings, the sound combinations are said to form a minimal pair. So in English, pill and bill are a minimal pair, and so are beat and bit.

 

Suprasegmental phonology (超音位阶音位)： Stress (重音), tone （音调）, and intonation （语调）

 

PART II

 

1． What is phonetics?

Phonetics  is the science which studies the characteristics of human sound-making, especially those sounds used in speech, and provides methods for their description, classification and transcription (标音) 。可以分成三类

 

2． How are the vocal organs formed? 发音器官

The vocal organs , or speech organs, are organs of the human body whose secondary use is in the production of speech sounds. The vocal organs can be considered as consisting of three parts: the initiator of the air-stream, the producer of voice and the resonating cavities.

人的发音器官由三个部分组成：肺和气管。它们为发音所需要的气流提供动力。2）喉头和声带。它们是呼出的气流发出有规律的振动（即产生乐声）。 3）咽腔，口腔和鼻腔，可称共鸣腔，其中最重要的是口腔。

 

3． What is place of articulation?

It refers to the place in the mouth where, for example, the obstruction occurs, resulting in the utterance of a consonant. Whatever sound is pronounced, at least some vocal organs will get involved, e.g. lips , hard palate, etc. , so a consonant may be one of the following: bilabial; labiodental’ dental; alveolar; retroflex; palato-alveolar; palatal; velar; uvular; glottal

 

Some sounds involve the simultaneous use of two places of articulation. For example, the English [w] has both an approximation of the two lips and that of the tongue and the soft palate, and my be termed “labial-velar”

 

 4)   What is the manner of articulation?

      The “manner of articulation” literally means the way a sound is articulated. At a given place of articulation, the airstream may be obstructed in various ways, resulting in various manners of articulation, the major types of which, in decreasing degree of obstruction, are the following: plosive; nasal; trill; tap for flap; lateral; fricative; approximant( semi-vowels); affricate

 

5)      How do phoneticians classify vowels?

Phoneticians, in spite of the difficulty, group vowels in 5 type: 1) long and short vowels; 2)front and back vowels 3) high and

 low vowels 4) rounded and unround vowels 5) pure and glide vowel.

 

6)      What is IPA? When did it come into being ?

The IPA, abbreviation of “International Phonetic Alphabet “, is a compromise system making use of symbols of all sources, including diacritics indicating length, stress, and intonation, indicating phonetic variation (Allophones). Ever since it was developed in 1888, IPA has undergone a number of revisions.

 

7)       What is narrow transcription and what is broad transcription? (严式标音和宽式标音)  In Handbook of Phonetics, Henry Sweet made a distinction between “narrow” and “broad” transcriptions, which he called “ Narrow Romic” and “Broad Romic.” The former was meant to symbolize all the possible speak sounds, including even the most minute shades of pronunciation while Broad Romic or transcription was intended to indicate only those sounds capable of distinguishing one word from another in a given language. 严式标音旨在标出发音的细微差别，连最微小的差异也能标出；宽式标音旨在粗略的标音，只要一个词的这中宽式标音不至于导致该词与其他词混淆就行了。

 

8)      What is phonology (音位学)? What is the difference between phonetics （语音学） and phonology ?

A) Phonology is the study of sound systems—the invention of distinctive speech sounds that occur in a language and the patterns wherein they fall. Minimal pair, phonemes, allophones, free variation, complementary distribution, etc, are all to e investigated by a phonologist.

B) Phonetics, is in the branch of linguistics studying the characteristics of speech sounds and provides methods for their description, classification and transcription(标音). A phonetist is mainly interested in the physical properities of the speech sounds, whereas a phonologist studies what he believes are meaningful sounds related with their semantic features, morphological features, and the way they are conceived and printed in the depth of the mind. Phonological knowledge permits speaker to produce sounds which form meaning utterances, to recognize a foreign “accent”, to make up new words, to add the appropriate phonetic segments to form plurals and past tense, to know what is and what is not a sound in one’s language.

* 一个语音学家主要关心语音是怎样产生的，一个音位学家关心的是所谓“有意义语言＂的数量、质量，它们的分布方式和组合方式，它们的形态学特征和语义特征，以及这些有限 “有意义”语音和它们滋生的词（即形态音位学特征）在人们认知过程中的作用等等。一个人要是武装此类知识就可以产生出有意义的话语，辨别外国语音（或洋腔洋调），构造新词，增添合适的语音片断而构成复数形式和过去时态，区分母语和外音。

 

9)  What is phone 音素? What is a phoneme音位? What is an allophone音位变体?

a) A “phone” is a phonetic unit or segment. The speech sounds we hear and produce during linguistic communication are all phones. When we hear the following words pronounced: [pit][tip][spit], etc, the similar phones we have heard are [p] for one thing, and the different [p]’s,readily making possible the “ narrow transcription or diacritics”.  Phones may and may not distinguish meaning. A “phoneme” is a phonological unit; it is a unit that is of distinctive value. As an abstract unit, a phoneme is not any particular sound, but rather it is represented or realized by a certain phone in a certain phonetic context. For example, the phoneme [p] is represented differently in [pit][tip][spit].

b) The phones representing a phoneme are called its “allophones”, I,e, the different members of a phoneme, sound which are phonetically different (i.e. phones) but do not make one word so phonetically different as to create a new work or new meaning thereof. So the different [p]’s in the above words are the allophone of the same phoneme [p]. How a phoneme is represented by a phone, or which allophone is to be used, is determined by the phonetic context in which it occurs. But the choice of an allophone is not random. In most cases it is rule-governed; these rules are to be found out by phonlogist.

 

10）What are minimal pairs? 最小对立体

 

11）What is free variation? 自由变体

   If two sounds occurring in the same environment do not contrast; namely , if the substitution of one for the other does not generate a new word from but merely a different pronunciation of the same word, the two sounds then are said to be in “free variation”.  The plosives, for example, may not be exploded when they occur before another plosive or a nasal (a.g. act, apt, good morning). The minute distinctions my, if necessary, be transcribed in diacritics. These unexploded and exploded plosives are in free variation. Sounds in free variation should be assigned to the same phoneme.

 

12) What is complementary distribution? 互补分布

  When two sounds never occur in the same environment, they are in “complementary distribution”. For example, the aspirated English plosives never occur after [s], and the unaspirated ones never occur initially. Sound in complementary distribution should be assigned to the same phoneme. The allophones of [l], for example , are also in complementary distribution. The clear [l] occurs only before a vowel, the voiceless equivalent of [l] occurs only after a voiceless consonant, such as in the words “please” “butler” “clear”, etc, and the dark [l] occurs only after a vowel or as a syllabic sound after a consonant, such as in the words “feel” “ help”, middle” ,etc.

 

13) What is the assimilation rule 同化原则? What is the deletion rule 省略原则?

1) The “assimilation rule” assimilates one segment to another by “coping” a feature of a sequential phoneme, thus making two phones more similar. This rule accounts for the varying pronunciation of the nasal [n] that occurs with a word. The rule is that within a word the nasal [n] assumes the same place of articulation as the following consonant. The negative prefix “in-“ serves as a good example. It may be pronounced as [in] [im] or [] when occurring in different phonetic contexts, eg. Indiscrete; input; inconceivable

2) The “deletion rule” tells us when a sound is to be deleted although it is orthographically represented. While the letter is mute in “sign”, “design” and “paradigm”, it is pronounced in their corresponding derivatives: “signature”, “designation”, and “paradigmatic” . The rule then can be stated as : delete a [g] when it occurs before a final nasal consonant. This accounts for some of the seeming irregularities of the English spelling.

 

14)What is suprasegmental phonology ? What are suprasegmental features?超语段音位学

 

“Suprasegmental phonology” refers to the study of phonological properties of linguistic units larger than the segment called phoneme, such as syllable, word and sentence.