ENGLISH 1

Jeffries 1st Chapter

What is language?

• Linguists understand language as a system of arbitrary vocal signs.

• Language is rule governed, creative, universal, innate, and learned, all at the same time.

• It is also distinctly human.

Language

• Because we believe that there is an inevitable connection between a word and the thing it represents, the word is very powerful.

• Names are extremely important and the possession of language can be very dangerous (Tower of Babel).

• We avoid naming certain taboo objects, we may avoid directly naming things which we fear or stand in awe of, such as God, and things which are unpleasant or unclean, such as birth, death, bodily parts and functions, or disease. Instead, we substitute euphemisms.

The levels of language

• Phonetics: The physical properties of speech

• Phonology: The study of linguistic sounds

• Morphology: The study of word structure

• Syntax: The study of utterance/sentence structure

• Text/discourse structure: The study of higher-level structures

• Context and use: The influence of situation, participants and functions

Language…

• gives expression to our thoughts;

• is used to transmit information, also known as its “communicative function”;

• is used to maintain social intercourse (greetings, talk about the weather etc.);

• is often referred to as its “phatic” function;

• provides the raw material for works of literature.

Phatic function: keeps the channel of communication open

QuickTime™ e undecompressore

sono necessari per visualizzare quest'immagine.

Signs

• Human language consists of signs: things that stand for or represent something else.

• Linguistic signs involve sequences of sounds which represent concrete objects and events as well as abstractions.

• Signs may be related to the things they represent in a number of ways.

SIGNS (Peirce, )

1. Iconic: resemble the things they represent (eg,

photographs,diagrams, star charts, or chemical models);

2. Indexical: point to or have a necessary connection with the things they represent

(eg, smoke to fire, a smile to happiness, or a frown to anger);

3. Symbolic: are only conventionally related to the thing they represent

(eg, a flag to a nation, a rose to love, a wedding ring to marriage).

The hierarchy of linguistic levels (Jeffries, p.5)

QuickTime™ e undecompressore

sono necessari per visualizzare quest'immagine.

P= Phoneme M= Morpheme

Orthography and Sounds

• Alphabetic spelling represents the pronunciation of words.

• However, the sounds of the words in a language are unsystematically represented by orthography, i.e. Spelling.

Orthography and Sounds

• The English language is not phonetic.

• Words are not spelled as they are pronounced

• There is no one to one correspondence between the letters and the sounds or phonemes.

Sounds

• Mark Twain offered a phonetic alphabet for English.

fishghoti • the gh = f as in rouGH

• the o = i as in wOmen

• the ti = sh as in naTIon

Phonology

• Phonology deals with the system and pattern of speech sounds in a language. • Phonology of a language is the system and pattern of speech sounds.

Phonetics vs Phonology

Phonetics

The study of speech sounds.

Phonology

The study of the way speech sounds form patterns.

Phonology & Phonetics (1)

- Phonemics, or Phonology, is the study of the distribution of sound systems in

human languages. A Phoneme is a particular set of sounds produced in a

particular language and distinguishable by native speakers of that language

from other (sets of) sounds in that language. That's what "distinctive" means --

the English phonemes /n/ and /ŋ/ can be told apart by native speakers of

English, because we use these sounds to distinguish different words -- sin ~

sing, ton ~ tongue, run ~ rung, etc. This would be impossible if these

phonemes weren't distinctive in English.

- Phonetics, on the other hand, is simply the physiological and acoustic study of

speech sounds, covering all sounds used in all languages, and relying only on the

physical characteristics of the sounds without regard to their systemic patterns in

various languages.

Phonology & Phonetics (2)

- Phonemes, the unit of (this variety of) phonemics, encased in

/slashes/, are always specific to a language. Since phonetics is a

natural science, phones, the unit of phonetics, encased in [square

brackets], are universal and are not specific to any language.

Thus, we say that there is such a thing as "the phone [p]", because

phones are defined universally, but that there is no such thing as "the

phoneme /p/", because phonemes are relative to languages. Thus "the

French phoneme /p/" and "the English phoneme /p/" both exist and are

meaningful, and the phone [p] is represented in both of them; but they

are not the same sets of sounds, and thus not the same phonemes

The smallest units of language: sounds

• Phonetics is the study of the sounds that human beings use to communicate through language;

• It is mostly concerned with individual speech sounds that follow each other in a linear fashion, just as letters do in the written language;

• The word cat is made up of three letters when written (c-a-t) and three sounds when spoken

[k-æ-t].

Segmental Units of Sound

Segment

• is any discrete unit that can be identified, either physically or auditorily, in the stream of speech.

• In phonetics, the smallest perceptible segment is a phone.

• In phonology, the smallest segment is a phoneme

Phones

• A speech segment that possesses distinct physical or perceptual properties

• A particular occurrence of a speech segment

• The basic unit revealed via phonetic speech analysis

Phonemes

• In human language, a phoneme is the smallest unit of speech that distinguishes meaning.

• Phonemes are not the physical segments themselves, but abstractions of them.

• The /t/ sound found in words like tip, stand, writer, and cat are examples of phonemes.

Phones vs Phonemes

• We use slashes / / for phonemes

• We use brackets [ ] for phones.

• The vowel “phoneme” in the words bead and bean is represented as /i/

• The “phone” is represented as [i]

Vocal apparatus (Jeffries, p.10)

• The speech sounds of most human languages are made as we breathe out.

• The production of human speech originates in the lungs as most human speech sounds are articulated on an outgoing breath.

Egressive pulmonary airstream mechanism

The lungs and trachea (Jeffries, p.10)

QuickTime™ e undecompressore

sono necessari per visualizzare quest'immagine.

Larynx & Vocal folds

• Before the expelled gases leave the body through the mouth and nose they pass through the larynx.

• Larynx= a ‘box’ made of cartilage that contains two folds of flesh known as the vocal folds.

• The vocal folds are joined together at the front of the larynx, at the point where the cartilage walls meet. This intersection of the sides of the larynx is visible on the outside of the throat as the Adam’s apple.

Structure of the larynx and vocal folds (Jeffries, p.11)

QuickTime™ e undecompressore

sono necessari per visualizzare quest'immagine.

ORAL and NASAL CAVITIES (p.12-13)

• The pharynx leads to the back of the mouth, it is a muscular tube.

• When the sounds are not nasal in tone, the velum or soft palate is pulled back to make contact with the back of the pharynx. The velum can be raised or lowered to cut off the air or to allow it to flow.

• The nasal cavity operates as a large resonating chamber.

• The uvulum is a fleshy protuberance

The places of articulation

QuickTime™ e undecompressore

sono necessari per visualizzare quest'immagine.

The tongue

• The tip is protruded between the teeth to produce the interdental ‘th’ sound in English, or it may contact the back of the teeth to produce the Italian /t/ and /d/ sounds = DENTAL.

• Some sounds are retroflex when the tip is curled back to tap the back of the alvelolum.

• The blade can be raised to meet the alvelora ridge and produce many English consonant sounds.

Tongue

QuickTime™ e undecompressore

sono necessari per visualizzare quest'immagine.

IPA vowel chart

Sites to visit

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De4iMKxSpgY

• http://www.antimoon.com/how/pronunctransdemo.htm

• http://www.antimoon.com/resources/phonchart.htm

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufdm3ufV6pg

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt-lbhLHO1Y

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HeujZ45OZE

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWbmOuq4eVs

Learning phonemic transcription

• http://davidbrett.uniss.it/phonology/transcription%20exercises/tips%20for%20transcription.html

• http://davidbrett.uniss.it/phonology/transcription%20exercises/index_of_transcription_exercises.htm

• http://www.cambridge.org/features/genetti/CH02-IPAtranscription/