Phonology

Chapter2PHONOLOGYTeachingaims:letthestudentshavethegeneralideaaboutphoneticsandphonology.Focalpoints:descriptionofconsonantsand

Phonology

• What is phonology ?
  • Definition
  • Phonology is concerned with the abstract or mental aspect of the sounds in languages rather than with the actual physical articulation of speech sounds.
  • Phonology is concerned with the abstract set of sounds in a language which allows us to distinguish meaning in the actual physical sounds we say and hear.
  • Phonology is about the underlying design, the blueprint of the sound type that serves as the constant basis of all the variations in different physical articulations of that sound type in different contexts.
• Phoneme
  • A phoneme is a phonological unit.
  • It is the basic form of a sound as sensed mentally rather than spoken or heard.
  • It is a unit of distinctive value.
• Minimal pairs test
  • When the two words are identical in form except for a contrast in one phoneme occurring in the same position, the two words are described as a minimal pair.
  • eg:book-----look,ban----bun
• Allophones
  • Allophones are the phones that can represent a phoneme in different phonetic environments.
  • They are the members of the same phoneme.
  • They are non-distinctive.
• Phones
  • It is the smallest perceptible discrete segment of sound in a stream of speech.
  • It is a phonetic unit.
  • Not necessarily distinctive of meaning.
  • Physical as spoken or heard.
• Distinctive features
  • Phonemes, the smallest units of speech sounds that distinguish one word from another, are described as bundles of distinctive features or as complexes of binary features.
  • The idea of distinctive features was first developed by Roman Jakobson in the 1940s.
• Phonological process
  • Sequence
    • Sonority scale
      • vowels,approproximants,nasals,fricatives,affricates,stops
        • From most sonorous to least sonorous
      • Initial consonant cluster
        • /s/+/p/,/t/,/k/+/l/,/r/,/w/
          • one and only
        • ① the first phoneme must be /s/, ② the second phoneme must be /p/ or /t/ or /k/, ③ the third phoneme must be /l/ or /r/ or /w/.
          • If three consonants should cluster together at the beginning of a word, the combination should obey the following three rules.…
      • Others
        • If a word begins with a /l/ or a /r/, then the next sound must be a vowel.…
        • /ŋ/ never occurs in initial position in English and standard Chinese.
  • Assimilation
    • Assimilation refers to a process by which one sound takes on some or all the characteristics of a neighboring sound.
    • Regressive assimilation
      • If a following sound is influencing a preceding sound, we call it regressive assimilation. 逆同化
    • Progressive assimilation
      • If a preceding sound is influencing a following sound, we call it progressive assimilation. 顺同化
  • Deletion
    • A certain sound in words may be deleted even though it may be orthographically represented. The process involved here is the deletion rule.
    • eg:knife, knock, know
• Suprasegmentals
  • Syllable
    • A syllable is a unit of speech sound consisting of a vowel or a vowel with one or more than one consonant.
    • A syllable is a word or part of word which contains a vowel sound or a consonant acting as a vowel.
  • Suprasegmental features
    • Stress
      • Stress refers to the degree of force used in producing a syllable.
      • word stress
      • sentence stress
    • Tone
      • Tones are pitch variations, which are caused by the different rates of vibration of the vocal cords.
    • Intonation
      • When pitch, stress and sound length are tied to the sentence rather than the word in isolation, they are collectively known as intonation.
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