Phonetic and Phonology

PHONETICS THE SOUND OF LANGUAGE

THE SOUNDS OF LANGUAGE

WHAT IS A SOUND?

All sounds are vibrations traveling through the air as sound waves. Sound waves

are caused by the vibrations of objects and radiate outward from their source in all

directions. A vibrating object compresses the surrounding air molecules

(squeezing them closer together) and then rarefies them (pulling them farther

apart). Although the fluctuations in air pressure travel outward from the object, the

air molecules themselves stay in the same average position. As sound travels, it

reflects off objects in its path, creating further disturbances in the surrounding air.

When these changes in air pressure vibrate your eardrum, nerve signals are sent

to your brain and are interpreted as sound

T IS A LANGUAGE?

Language is the human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of

communication, and a language is any specific example of such a system. The

scientific study of language is called linguistics.

Concepts of some authors

Sapir: language is a purely human and non – instinctive method of communicating

ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbols.

Robins: tend to be trivial and uninformative, unless they presuppose… some

general theory of language and linguistic analysis.

Chomky: from now on I will consider a language to be a set of sentences, each

finite in length and constructed out of elements.

Block and Trager: a language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of

which a social group co – operates.

Hall: the institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each other by

means of habitually used oral – auditory arbitrary symbols.

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THE PHONETICS SYMBOLS In the English language there are 44 sounds, but in the alphabet only there are 26

letters.

When a person wants to learn this language, he has to learn with the phonetic

alphabet, because it has one and one all the symbols.

The English alphabet has 26 letters and it is uses in the system orthography.

To learn these sounds are important for your pronunciation.

Phonetic symbols are a written character used in phonetic transcription of

represents a particular speech sound.

Some definitions

"One of the most important achievements of phonetics in the past century has

been to arrive at a system of phonetic symbols that anyone can learn to use and

that can be used to represent the sounds of any language. This is the

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)."1

"Though they are primarily designed for representing speech sounds (objective

physical events), the IPA symbols are naturally also widely used for representing

the phonemes of particular languages. For example, the initial consonant of

English think is phonetically the dental fricative [θ] for most speakers, and so the

phoneme realized in this way is commonly represented as /θ/. But note carefully

that a conventional phoneme symbol consisting of an IPA symbol in phoneme

slashes may not in fact be pronounced in the way the IPA symbol would suggest;

for example, the phoneme at the beginning of English red is customarily

represented as /r/, for orthographical convenience, but probably no native speaker

of English ever pronounces this word with the trill [r]. . . . An IPA symbol in square

brackets is (or should be) intended to represent a real speech sound accurately;

an IPA symbol in phoneme slashes is just a convenient way of representing some

phoneme in some language and may not be a faithful guide to phonetic reality."2

THE AIR STREAM MECHANISM

The most usual source of energy for speech production is the air stream expelled

from the lungs. This is called the pulmonic egressive air stream. The term,

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pulmonic, has to do with the lungs. Egressive has to do with the fact that it is

coming out. The opposite of this is ingressive, that is, being sucked in. Air stream

may be regarded as a continuum of release of air. It is called mechanism because

it is a process of air stream release that works together to form sounds. The

English language normally makes use of the pulmonic egressive air stream

mechanism for the production of its sounds.

However, it should be noted that some languages possess sounds not requiring

lung or pulmonic air for their articulation. These include such airstream

mechanisms as the glottalic and velaric types. The glottalic airstream mechanism

is initiated at the laryngeal cavity and is usually used to produce implosives and

ejectives. The velaric airstream mechanism is initiated at the tongue and is usually

the source of the production of clicks. It should, nevertheless, be noted that these

last two airstream mechanisms are not very relevant to the production of English

sounds. Nonetheless, Gimson and Ramsaran (1989:9) note that English also has

one or two extralinguistic sounds; that is, sounds that are not really regarded as

language. Examples given in the work include the sound usually written as tut-tut

and the sound of encouragement made to horses. One may also add that the

sound we normally make when we suck in our breath in pain and the sound we

make to call dogs (at least, in the western part of the River Niger in Nigeria) are in

this category. These sounds are made without the aid of the lungs. One could

actually refer to them as ingressive airstream types, but non-pulmonic. Our

concern though is with the pulmonic airstream mechanism. So, the process of the

English sound production is presented in the next section.

THE SPEECH CHAIN

The air provided by the lungs undergoes important modifications in the upper

stages of the respiratory tract before it acquires the quality of a speech sound. The

different stages involved in the process of speech production from the initiation to

that of its full realization is referred to as speech chain. As mentioned above,

English sounds generally make use of the air initiated from the lungs.

The air stream coming from the lungs first of all comes up through the trachea,

that is, the windpipe. It then passes through the larynx. The larynx is a casing,

formed of cartilage and muscles. It is situated in the upper part of the trachea

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(windpipe). Its forward portion, which is more prominent, is commonly referred to

as ‘Adam’s apple’. Housed within this structure, from rear to front, are the vocal

folds. The two folds are made up of ligament and elastic tissue. The folds may be

brought together or parted by rotation of the arytenoids cartilages, which are

attached at the posterior end of the folds, through muscular action. The opening

between the folds has the biological function of helping to prevent foreign bodies

from entering into the trachea and the lungs. The diagram of the pulmonic air

stream movement is shown in the next picture. The diagram shows the air stream

directionally moving upwards out of the lungs. The arrows reveal the direction of

the air stream as it comes outwards from the lungs towards the larynx.

THE STATES OF THE GLOTTIS

We have already described the nature of the glottis in the preceding section. This

is usually formed by the action of the vocal folds. Whatever shape the vocal folds

may assume at a particular time is the state of the glottis.

THE THREE STATES OF THE GLOTTIS

There are three states of the glottis, which are relevant linguistically.

I. The first is that of closed glottis. This is achieved when the folds are brought

close together so that no air is allowed to pass between them. This results

in a glottal stop when the air is released. This stop /ʔ/ frequently precedes

the forceful articulation of vowels, e.g. [ʔaut, ʔi:t] out, eat. It may even

replace the English stop /t/ in words like football, bottle, bit, etc. It may also

reinforce or replace such other plosives like /p, k/.

II. The glottis may be held open for normal breathing. It is also this state that

produces the voiceless sounds of English. Examples of these are /t, p, k, f,

s, ʃ, ʧ, h/. The vocal folds are spread and do not vibrate. The glottis is

sufficiently wide open to allow the air stream to pass through without

obstruction or vibration of the vocal folds.

III. The third state of the glottis is that of the narrow glottis or vocal folds loosely

held together. In this state, the vocal folds vibrate to produce voice,

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otherwise called phonation. This vibration of the larynx may be felt by laying

a finger on or just above the Adam’s apple. This bony structure houses the

larynx. All vowels, nasals, glides and laterals are voiced.

You can compare the dual phonemes /f-v, p-b, t-d, k-g, s-z, ʃ-ʒ, ʧ-ʤ/ to

differentiate their phonation status, whether voiceless or voiced. This is the

only thing differentiating these pairs of sounds that would have been

otherwise similar. The first of the pairs are voiceless sounds while the

second segments of the pairs have voiced sounds.

The vocal folds are loosely held together to form a narrow glottis, which causes

vibration as the air passes through. This results in the production of voice in

sounds.

THE RESONATING CAVITIES

Once the air stream leaves the larynx, it is further modified in the upper regions of

the vocal tract. The shape assumed by the pharynx, the velum (soft palate) and

the mouth have great implications for sound production. These organs are

therefore called resonators.

The pharyngeal cavity extends from the top of the larynx and the esophagus,

beyond the epiglottis and the root of the tongue, to the region in the rear of the soft

palate.

The velum or soft palate may be lowered to allow the air escape through the nose

and the mouth. This produces nasalized sounds as in /dN/ of sudden and the

nasalized vowels. Many of these nasalized vowels exist in the Yoruba language

e.g. /õ/ as in ò̩I kan, /ĩ/ è̩I yin etc.

The soft palate may be lowered so that the air passes through the nose, but with a

complete obstruction at some point in the mouth. This obstruction results in the air

coming out through the nasal cavity. This is how nasal consonants are produced in

English. These are /m, n, ŋ/ as in ram, ran, rang.

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The soft palate may be raised, thus blocking the air stream from escaping through

the nasal cavity. All normal English sounds have this oral escape, except for the

nasal sounds mentioned above.

It shows the nasal and oral release of the airstream from the lungs to show the

articulation of oral, nasal, and nasalized sounds.

THE MOUTH

The shape of the mouth usually finally determines the quality of our speech

sounds despite the fact that all the other speech organs previously mentioned play

important roles in speech production. Far more finely controlled variations of

shape and realisations are possible in the mouth than in any other part of the

speech mechanism.

The only points which may be regarded as being relatively fixed in the mouth are

the upper teeth, the alveolar ridge, the hard palate and the pharyngeal wall. You

may go back to the diagram of organs of speech to locate these different points in

the mouth.

The other organs in the mouth are movable: the lips, the various parts of the

tongue and the soft palate, with the uvula hanging from it. The lower jaw is also

capable of a great deal of movement; its movement controls the gap between the

lower and the upper teeth and the position of the lips. The lower jaw has a great

influence on the variations in the shapes of the mouth in speech production.

The alveolar ridge is the teeth ridge. It can be felt behind the teeth. You should try

using your tongue to touch your teeth ridge just behind your front upper teeth. The

hard palate is the bony arch at the roof of the mouth. The soft palate, which is also

called the velum, is immediately behind the hard palate, towards the rear of the

mouth. You can use the tip of your tongue to touch all these parts mentioned

above to locate them.

But better still, you should take a mirror to look at the points mentioned, which are

located in the upper part of your mouth, as you touch them with your tongue.

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The lips constitute the final orifice of the mouth in an oral articulation. Their shape

usually affects the total cavity. They may be shut tightly or held loosely or rounded.

If they are shut totally, they form a complete obstruction of the air stream. The air

stream is held back momentarily before being released suddenly as in the

production of bilabial stops /p/ and /b/ in pat and bat or it is allowed to pass

through the nose as in the production of the bilabial nasal /m/ in mat.

The tongue is the most flexible organ among the movable organs of the mouth. It

is capable of assuming a great many varieties of positions of articulation of both

vowels and consonants. The tongue is a complex muscular structure, which does

not show obvious parts but had been arbitrarily divided into four parts. These are

tip, blade, front, and back. The tip and blade are usually referred to as apex and

the edges as rims.

The tongue takes various shapes in articulating vowels. The front may be raised to

the highest point in articulating /i:/ in feel or the back similarly raised for

pronouncing /u:/ as in fool or the tongue may be relatively flat as in /a:/ to produce

far. The middle of the tongue may also be depressed as in the pronunciation of /ə:/

in fir. It should, however, be noted that the tip of the tongue usually remains behind

the front lower teeth in articulating vowels. It maintains this resting position in the

articulation of all vowel types in English. You may experiment this and write your

findings to the author.

The various parts of the tongue may also come in contact with the roof of the

mouth. Thus, the tip, blade, and rims may articulate with the teeth to produce /θ/

and /ð/, sounds normally written as th, or with the upper alveolar ridge as in /t, d, s,

n, z/. The tip and the blade (the apex) alone may make contact with the alveolar to

produce /l/, with the rims providing an escape route for the air stream. There may

also be an intermittent contact of the apex of the tongue with the alveolar to

articulate a rolled /r/.

The front of the tongue may articulate against or near to the hard palate. This will

produce the phonemes /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ as in she and vision.

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This raising of the front of the tongue towards the hard palate normally results in

palatalisation. However, this articulatory form is the main feature of the production

process of the palatal sound /j/ as we have it in yam.

The back of the tongue can form a total obstruction of the air steam by its contact

with the soft palate (velum) when raised as in the case of /k/ in card and /g/ in

guard. However, the soft palate gets lowered in order to produce the velar nasal

/ŋ/ as in bring.

PLACE OF ARTICULATIONS By place of articulation we mean the area in the mouth at which the consonantal

closure or constriction occurs. English uses only seven places of articulation which

we describe and illustrate below.

Bilabial sounds are made by bringing both lips together to stop the

airstream:

[p] pie cupping cup

[b] by clubbing cub

[m] my coming come

Labiodental sounds are made by bringing the top teeth into contact with

the bottom lip and forcing air between the two to create the fricatives:

[f] feel raffle tough

[v] veal ravel dove

Interdental sounds are made by placing the tip of the tongue between the

top and bottom teeth and forcing air through. Again, these are both

fricatives:

[T] thigh ether mouth bath (noun)

[] thy either mouth bathe (verb)

Alveolar sounds are made by bringing the tongue and the alveolar ridge

(the bony ridge just behind the top teeth) together to create either a stop or

fricative:

[t] tub boating boat [s] sip fussy grace[d] dub boding bode [z] zip fuzzy graze

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[n] knit boning bone [r] rip terror tear

MANNERS OF ARTICULATIONWe have described a number of properties of phonetic articulation that allow us to

categorize linguistic sounds into several overlapping classes in terms of

voiced/voiceless, oral/nasal distinctions as well as place of articulation. However,

we have not yet said enough to describe all of the necessary distinctions between

sounds in English. How is /t/, the first sound of the word tell, different from /s/, the

first sound of the word sell, for example? They are both voiceless oral alveolar

sounds! In order to do this we need to also talk about sounds in terms what is

called their manner of articulation:

STOPS AND CONTINUANTS

Pulmonic air entering the oral cavity may be (i) stopped completely, (ii) partially

obstructed, or (iii) allowed to flow out of the mouth unobstructed. Certain sounds

are produced by stopping the airflow completely in the oral cavity for a brief period

before it is released. Such sounds are called stops. The sounds represented by

/p/, /b/, /m/, /t/, /d/, /n/, /k/, /g/ and /õ/ are all stops. All other sounds are called

continuants, since the stream of air is allowed to continue through the oral cavity

without being completely interrupted.

The sounds represented by /m/, /n/, and /õ/ are called nasal stops. In their

production, the velum is lowered so that air is allowed to flow through the nasal

cavity, although it is stopped completely in the oral cavity. All other stops are

called oral stops and are produced with the velum raised and airflow stopped in

the oral cavity.

/p/ = voiceless oral bilabial stop

/b/ = voiced oral bilabial stop

/m/ = voiced nasal bilabial stop

/t/ = voiceless oral alveolar stop

/d/ = voiced oral alveolar stop

/n/ = voiced nasal alveolar stop

/k/ = voiceless oral velar stop

/g/ = voiced oral velar stop

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/õ/ = voiced nasal velar stop

AFFRICATES

Some sounds are produced as stops followed immediately by a slow release into a

fricative. Such sounds are called affricates and include the sounds represented

by / / and /ĵ/. For example, in the production of / /, articulation starts out the same

as in the production of the stop /t/ but quickly moves into the position for

production of the fricative / /. Thus an affricate is in many ways like the sequence

of a stop followed by a fricative, raising the question of whether an affricate is one

sound or two. There are some reasons, however, to treat affricates as single

consonantal sounds. This raises the question whether to classify affricates as

stops or continuants. Affricates are often said to be stops, since they start with

complete closure of airflow from the oral cavity.

LIQUIDS

In the production of the sounds /l/ and /r/ there is some degree of obstruction in the

oral cavity, but not enough to give rise to any real friction or turbulence. These

sounds are called liquids. /l/ is sometimes called a lateral sound. It is produced by

raising the tip of the tongue to the alveolar ridge or to the upper teeth, but with the

sides of the tongue lowered so as to allow the flow of air to “escape” out of the

mouth. The sound represented by /r/ is produced in several different ways, and

varies even amongst speakers of the same language. In English, /r/ is often

produced curling the tip of the tongue back behind the alveolar ridge, in which

case it is called a retroflex sound. In English, both /r/ and /l/ are usually voiced, but

some languages have a voiceless /l/.

GLIDES

The sounds /y/, /w/, /h/ are called glides. In the production of glides, there is

usually a rapid movement, or gliding, of the tongue from the place of articulation

for the glide to the position for the production of the following vowel. In this sense

glides are “transition sounds.” Also, since glides usually involve little obstruction in

the oral cavity, they are considered to be more sonorous than consonant, and are

sometimes even referred to as semi-vowels.

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The palatal glide /y/, as in the first sound of the words you, yell, etc., is produced

by raising the back of the tongue in the direction of the hard palate, but without

causing any real obstruction to the airflow through the oral cavity. It then moves

rapidly to the position for the production of the following vowel sound. The glide

/w/, as in the first sound of the words witch, whale, etc., is produced by

simultaneously rounding the lips and raising the tongue in the direction of the

velum. It is thus called a labio-velar glide. Both /y/ and /w/ are voiced sounds, but

some languages also have a voiceless labio-velar glide, which is written as / / (in

some dialects of English, witch and which differ in pronunciation, the first sound of

the former being voiced /w/ and the first sound of the latter being voiceless / /).

GLOTTAL SOUNDS

The first sounds in the words house, who, etc., represented by /h/, although

voiceless, are produced with constriction at the glottis causing some turbulence. It

is this noise of the turbulent air passing through the open glottis that is heard as

/h/. Thus /h/ is often referred to as a voiceless glottal fricative. If the air is stopped

completely at the glottis, by tightly closing the vocal folds, the result is a glottal

stop, written as /§/, which is also voiceless. /h/ and /§/ are sometimes classified as

glides since they are produced without any obstruction in the oral cavity.





THE PHONEMES

WHAT IS A PHONEME?

A phoneme is a basic unit of a language's phonology, which is combined with

other phonemes to form meaningful units such as words or morphemes. The

phoneme can be described as "The smallest contrastive linguistic unit which may

bring about a change of meaning"

In this way the difference in meaning between the English words kill and kiss is a

result of the exchange of the phoneme /l/ for the phoneme /s/. Two words that

differ in meaning through a contrast of a single phoneme are called minimal pairs.

Is the smallest speech sound group in terms of meaning and collocation, the group

is given a name e.g. /t/. This is a phoneme. that has linguistic value

When a series of phones are similar in terms of articulation and can be

distinguished from another

The phoneme is an abstract term, specific to a particular language.

ETYMOLOGY: From the Greek, "sound"

OBSERVATIONS:

"The central concept in phonology is the phoneme, which is a distinctive category

of sounds that all the native speakers of a language or dialect perceive as more or

less the same. . . . [A] although the two [k] sounds in kicked are not identical--the

first one is pronounced with more aspiration than the second--they are heard as

two instances of [k] nonetheless. . . . Since phonemes are categories rather than

actual sounds, they are not tangible things; instead, they are abstract, theoretical

types or groups that are only psychologically real. (In other words, we cannot hear

phonemes, but we assume they exist because of how the sounds in languages

pattern as they are used by speakers.)"3

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"The concepts of phoneme and allophone become clearer by analogy with the

letters of the alphabet. We recognize that a symbol is a despite considerable

variations in size, colour, and (to a certain extent) shape. The representation of the

letter a is affected in handwriting by the preceding or following letters to which it is

joined. Writers may form the letter idiosyncratically and may vary their writing

according to whether they are tired or in a hurry or nervous. The variants in the

visual representations are analogous to the allophones of a phoneme, and what is

distinctive in contrast to other alphabetic letters is analogous to the phoneme."4

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEMBERS OF A PHONEME"We cannot rely on the spelling to tell us whether two sounds are members of

different phonemes. For example, the words key and car begin with what we can

regard as the same sound, despite the fact that one is spelled with the letter k and

the other with c. But in this case, the two sounds are not exactly the same. . . . If

you whisper just the first consonants in these two words, you can probably hear

the difference, and you may be able to feel that your tongue touches the roof of

the mouth in a different place for each word. This example shows that there may

be very subtle differences between members of a phoneme. The sounds at the

beginning of key and car are slightly different, but it is not a difference that

changes the meaning of a word in English. They are both members of the same

phoneme."5

DESCRIPTIONS OF ENGLISH VOWELS A. The English simple (“pure”) vowels or monophthongs.

a) English front vowels. There are four front vowels phonemes in English: [i:].

[I]. [e] and [ae]

1) [i:] is a close (high), long, tense, unrounded vowel. The duration of [i:] can

be compared to that of the Romanian vowel in plural nouns like genii and

the sound is roughly similar to the French vowel of the French word précise,

though not so close. The vowel is distributed in all three basic positions:

word-initial: east; word-medial: dean and word-final: sea. As already

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1 T. E. Murray, The Structure of English, 1995

2 Sidney Greenbaum, The Oxford English Grammar. Oxford University Press, 1996


mentioned, it is longer if it occurs in syllable final position and shorter if it is

followed by a voiced sound, the shortest variants being those followed by a

voiceless obstruent. If followed by a nasal stop it is nasalized: e.g. bean,

beam. It is spelt e: economy, remark, or ee: eel, see, feet, or ea each, seal,

plea. Other possible spellings are ie: fiend, ei: seizing, i: machine, or,

exceptionally: ey: key; ay: quay [ki:], eo: people, oe: Oedipus or eau:

Beauchamp [bi:±cm]

2) [ı]. This is a more retracted front vowel, and its degree of openness is close

to that of the cardinal half-close position. [ı] is a short, lax, unrounded

vowel, its length varying, as in the case of the preceding vowel, according

to the nature of the following consonant. The length decreases if the

following sound is voiceless. It is distributed in all three basic positions:

initial, medial and final: ink, kill, aptly. After the schwa, it is the commonest

English vowel in unstressed positions. The vowel is spelt i (e.g. ill, tick) or y;

syntax, party. Other spellings are possible as well, as in the exceptional

examples minute [mınıt] (NB. The adjective having the same spelling is

read [maınju:t], private [praıvıt], women [wımın]. As it commonly

represents a reduced unstressed vowel, other spellings are also possible –

for instance day [deı] is reduced to [dı] in the names of the days of the

week: Friday [fraıdı].

3) [e] This is a short, lax, unrounded vowel whose degree of openness is

intermediate between cardinal half-close and half-open. It is a common

vowel in English, distributed in initial position: end, or medial position: tell. It

never occurs in word-final position as it is normally reduced to [ı] or [c] if it is

unstressed or diphthongizes to [eı] in loan words like attaché, fiancé or café

if it is stressed. It can occur, nevertheless, in syllable-final position, under

stress, as in telegraph [telıgraf], peril [perıl]. The vowel is spelt either e in

words like elf, fell, or ea in lead (n. = plumb), head or bread. It can be

exceptionally spelt a in ate (the past tense of eat), many, any, Thames or

Pall Mall.

4) [æ] is the lowest front vowel of English. It is a short, lax, unrounded vowel, a

little higher than the cardinal vowel [a]. It is a very common vowel in English

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and, contrary to the perception of many foreign learners of English, it is a

short, not a long vowel. In fact, the basic difference between this vowel and

the preceding one is the degree of openness, [æ] being lower. Romanian

speakers of English find it particularly difficult to make the difference

between the two vowels (which is a contrastive, phonemic one) simply

because Romanian does not recognize this contrast between front low

vowels as being a functional one. Constant training can, however, lead to a

correct pronunciation of the English sound. The vowel is distributed in

syllable-initial, medial and final position (e.g. ant [ænt], cat [kæt], rapid

[ræpıd]), but not in word-final position. It is usually spelt a: act, fat, and only

exceptionally ai: plait [plæt], plaid [plæd].

b) English back vowels there are five back vowel phonemes in the standard

English: [a:], [ ], [ :], [υ] and [u:].

1) [a:] in RP does not coincide with cardinal vowel 5 [a] It is a more advanced,

low, long, tense, unrounded vowel. It is distributed in all three basic

positions: are, cart, far. It is normally spelt by the letter a followed by a silent

r in syllable or word-final position: jar, carpet. It is often followed by a silent l in words like palm, calm, balm. Sometimes f or ff can follow: after, staff; or

ss: pass, class, or s or n followed by another consonant: past, demand; or

th in word-final position: path, bath or, exceptionally, other letters: aunt

[Y:nt], Berkeley [ba:klı], hearth [ha:θ], father [fa:ðc], sergeant [sY:®cnt], memoir [memwa:], barrage [bærY:¥].

2) [ ] is a genuine back vowel in RP. It is short, lax, open and slightly rounded.

It is only distributed in initial and medial position: on, pot, and never in final

position. In some accents of English the vowel is pronounced pretty close to

the cardinal vowel 5 [a]. In some varieties of American English it is still open

and a little bit fronted, coming very close to [a:] so that it is often difficult to

distinguish pot from part, for instance. The vowel is usually spelt o. Other

spellings are possible; ou, a and au in rare cases like cough, want, or

laurel.

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c c

c

c


3) [ :] is closer and longer than [ ]. It is a long, tense vowel, more rounded

than [ ], the degree of aperture being between open and half-open. The

vowel is distributed in all three basic positions: awful, caught, flaw. It is

usually spelt either aw or au: awl, drawn, thaw, august, taught. The

sequence or is also read [ :] if it occurs in final position or is followed by

either a consonant or a silent e: for, sore, port. The sound is exceptionally

spelt oo in floor, door, oa in board, broad, coarse and hoard, ough in

(n)ought, sought, wrought, and a in water or wrath and ou in course,

source.

4) [υ] is a short, lax, rounded vowel which is considerably closer than [ :] its

degree of aperture being a little bit higher than the cardinal half-close. The

vowel never occurs in initial position and only exceptionally in final position,

in the weak, unstressed form of the preposition to, the verb do or the

pronoun who. We can then say that its distribution is restricted to medial

position. The usual spelling for [υ] is the letter u in words like push, cushion,

pull, put. The letter o can also represent the sound after w: wolf, Worcester.

In quite a few words double oo is the spelling for the sound, followed by k:

look, book; by t: foot, soot, by d: wood, stood; by the lateral l: wool, or a

nasal: room, broom, groom; ou appears as the spelling of the sound in

verbal forms like would, could, should.

5) [u:] is the highest back vowel of English. It is a long, tense, rounded vowel.

It occurs in all three basic positions, though pretty infrequently in initial

position: oom, oomph, ooze, ugh, uhlan; rude, baboon, crew, chew, tatoo.

Romanian speakers of English should remember that the vowel is closer

and tenser than the preceding sound for which it must not be mistaken. The

sound is usually spelt u or oo: rule, root, taboo. O can be the spelling of [u:] in final position in the stressed forms of to, who, etc, and in the noun ado. In

words like route, though, routine, soup, douche, the sound is spelt ou. In

shoe, canoe, manoeuvre it is rendered by oe. The sound is often preceded

by the palatal [j] which is optionally inserted in words like suit [su:t/sju:t] or

fruit [fru:t/frju:t], and obligatorily in beauty and its derivatives, in feud,

music, mutiny, deluge, etc.

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We can easily notice that all English front vowels are unrounded, while the back

ones, with the exception of [a:] which is not, strictly speaking, a back vowel, since

its pronunciation in standard English is a little more advanced than that of cardinal

vowel 5 [a] – display different degrees of roundness. This means that only the

primary cardinal vowel chart is relevant for English, as there are no front rounded

vowels or back unrounded vowels in this language (at least in RP).

C) English central vowels. There are three central vowel phonemes in English:

[∧], [ ] and [3:].

1) [∧] (N.B. For technical reasons, I have followed Daniel Jones and the

majority of phonetic transcriptions in use in choosing this symbol to

represent the vowel of the English word cut; however, strictly speaking, this

symbol is used in the IPA alphabet to represent secondary cardinal vowel

14, the unrounded counterpart of primary cardinal vowel 6[ ] – see above)

is a central half-open, short, lax, unrounded vowel. It is the lowest standard

English vowel and is distributed in word-initial and medial position: utter,

subtle. It never occurs in word or syllable-final position. It is usually spelt

either u: under, but, or o: come, front, honey; in a number of words it is

spelt ou: courage, southern, rough, tough, and exceptionally oo in blood

and flood and oe in does. Many Romanian speakers of English find it

difficult to acquire the correct pronunciation of [∧] mistaking it for some

variant of a or o.

2) [c] is the commonest English vowel. It is a central, mid, lax, unrounded

vowel – the schwa mentioned before – for the pronunciation of which the

tongue adopts the neutral position in relation to which all the other

articulatory positions can be described. The vowel freely occurs in all basic

positions, but only in unstressed syllables: aside, collide, rather. Its

pronunciation doesn’t normally raise any problem for a Romanian speaker

of English. It should be noted, however, that one of the most difficult to

acquire of the phonological features of English is the change of the vowel

quality with the stress shift (in a way comparable to Russian). Thus, most

English vowels, if unstressed, will be reduced to schwa only to resume their

basic value if the stress shifts back on them: cf. Satan [seitcn], Satanic

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[sctænık], Satanism [seıtcnızm] or fatal [feıt l], [f tælıtı], fatalism [feıt lızm].

It would be superfluous to list all the possible spellings of [sc], since the

vowel can be, as I have said, the reduced form of any simple vowel or even

diphthong (see fatality, above) in English and can consequently be

rendered in writing by any vowel letter with the exception of y which only

represents the semivowel j or the vowel i.

3) [3:] is a central, mid, long, tense central vowel. It is the tense counterpart of

the schwa and since it only occurs in stressed syllables, in complementary

distribution with the preceding vowel, some phoneticians, including Daniel

Jones, argue that the two sounds are positional variants of the same mid

central vowel phoneme. It is distributed in all three basic positions, very

often in monosyllabic words: err, first, curtain, fur, refer. It is commonly

spelt ir, ur, er, or yr in final position or followed by a consonant or ear when

followed by a consonant: bird, burn, fern, myrtle, learn. Other spellings

include our in words like courtesy, journal, journey, scourge, and,

exceptionally, o in colonel.

Here are the English simple vowels or monophthongs distributed contrastively in

the same context:

a. The front vowels: eat [bi:t], bit [bıt], bet [bet], bat [bæt]

b. The central vowels: Burt [b3:t], but [b t] – the weak, unstressed form, butt

[b∧t]

c. The back vowels: boot [bu:t], butch [butf], bought [b :t], bot [b t], Bart [ba:t].

SEMANTICS

WHAT IS SEMANTICS?

Semantics is the study of meaning. It is a wide subject within the general study of

language. An understanding of semantics is essential to the study of language

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acquisition (how language users acquire a sense of meaning, as speakers and

writers, listeners and readers) and of language change (how meanings alter over

time). It is important for understanding language in social contexts, as these are

likely to affect meaning, and for understanding varieties of English and effects of

style. It is thus one of the most fundamental concepts in linguistics. The study of

semantics includes the study of how meaning is constructed, interpreted, clarified,

obscured, illustrated, simplified negotiated, contradicted and paraphrased.

Semantics is a branch of linguistics dealing with the meaning of words, phrases

and sentences, however, contrary to pragmatics it does not analyze the intended

speaker meaning, or what words denote on a given occasion, but the objective,

conventional meaning. Additionally, it is concerned with the conceptual meaning

and not the associative meaning.

CONCEPTUAL MEANING

The conceptual meaning is what a word in

fact denotes, as for example Friday the 13th

is a day between Thursday the 12th and

Saturday the 14th, and that is the conceptual

meaning of the phrase Friday the 13th. Yet,

for many people the idea of that day brings

to mind thoughts of bad luck and misfortune,

which is the associative meaning.

The meaning of words is analyzed in several different

ways in order to account for as many aspects of

meaning as possible. First of all, words are analyzed in

terms of their semantic features that are basic elements

which enable the differentiation of meaning of words.

Apart from the semantic features of words also semantic

roles (sometimes called ‘thematic roles’) are examined.

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SEMANTIC ROLES

Semantic roles describe the way in which words are used in sentences and the

functions they fulfill. Thus, the entity that performs an action is known as an agent,

while the entity involved in an action is called the theme (or ‘patient). When an

agent uses an entity in order to do something this entity is called an instrument.

However, when a person in a sentence does not perform any action, but only has

a perception, state of feeling then the role is described as experiencer. Finally

there are roles connected with motion or position of entities. So, the location is

where an entity is, the source is the initial position of the entity, the place where it

moves from and the goal is where the entity moves to.

SEMANTICS PROPERTIES OF WORDS

Semantic properties or meaning properties are those aspects of a linguistic

unit, such as a morpheme, word, or sentence that contribute to the meaning of that

unit. Basic semantic properties include being meaningful or meaningless – for

example, whether a given word is part of a language's lexicon with a generally

understood meaning; polysemy, having multiple, typically related, meanings;

ambiguity, having meanings which aren't necessarily related ; and anomaly, where

the elements of a unit are semantically incompatible with each other, although

possibly grammatically sound. Beyond the expression itself, there are higher-level

semantic relations that describe the relationship between units: these include

synonymy, antonymy, and hyponymy.

Besides basic properties of semantics, semantic property is also sometimes used

to describe the semantic components of a word, such as man assuming that the

referent is human, male, and adult, or female being a common component of girl,

woman, and actress. In this sense, semantic properties are used to define the

semantic field of a word or set of words.

SYNONYM

Synonyms can be any part of speech (such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs

or prepositions), as long as both words are the same part of speech. Here are

more examples of English synonyms:

Verb: "buy" and "purchase"

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyponymy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonym

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synonym

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiguity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polysemy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_(linguistics)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morpheme


Adjective: "big" and "large"

Adverb: "quickly" and "speedily"

Preposition: "on" and "upon"

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Documents

Phonetic and Phonology