Phonological Processes of the

Connected Speech

Phonological Processes of the

Connected Speech

By Betancourt y Galiffa (2009).

Phonological Processes of the

INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, we live in a society where English Language has become one of the most

spoken languages in the whole world. Due to this, it is considered as a universal language

since it is used in different academic and occupational areas. Also, it is taken into account

as a very important language to be learnt by many people in order to communicate in

specific situations or areas such as: business, education, tourism and so on. In this way, it is

understood the relevancy that has the education in the teaching of a new language.

The learning of a new language implies to learn its grammatical and phonological

rules, for this reason, this didactic guide will help you to understand whole about the

phonological processes of the connected speech.

Here, you will find information about concept, uses and importance of the

phonological processes in the learning-teaching process of a new language.

OBJECTIVES OF THE DYDACTIC GUIDE

� To analyze the definition, importance and application of the phonological

processes for real situations in order to get an effective oral communication in the English

Language.

� To acquire all kinds of information related to the phonological processes for

the comprehension of information in the English language.

PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSES OF THE CONNECTED SPEECH

Part I, defining Phonology and Phonetics.

Phonology for Chomsky and Halle (1968) is the

systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken

human language, or the field of linguistics studying this

use. Just as a language has syntax and vocabulary, it also

has phonology in the sense of a sound system. When

describing the formal area of study, the term typically

describes linguistic analysis either beneath the word (e.g., syllable, onset and rhyme,

phoneme, articulatory gestures, articulatory feature, mora, etc.) or to units at all levels of

language that are thought to structure sound for conveying linguistic meaning. It is viewed

as the subfield of linguistics that deals with the sound systems of languages. Whereas

phonetics is about the physical production, acoustic transmission and perception of the

sounds of speech, phonology describes the way sounds function within a given language or

across languages to encode meaning. The term "phonology" was used in the linguistics of a

greater part of the 20th century as a cover term uniting phonemics and phonetics. Current

phonology can interface with disciplines such as psycholinguistics and speech perception,

resulting in specific areas like articulatory or laboratory phonology.

There is another explanation for Phonology; it is defined by Anderson (2003) as the

study of how sounds are organized and used in natural languages. She also argues that the

phonological system of a language includes:

� An inventory of sounds and their features, and

� Rules which specify how sounds interact with each other.

Phonology is just one of several aspects of language. It is related to other aspects such

as phonetics, morphology, syntax, and pragmatics.

Here is an illustration that shows the place of phonology in an interacting hierarchy of

levels in linguistics

Once explained the term of phonology, it is necessary to name and to explain one of the

branches of Linguistics: Phonetics.

Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises

the study of the sounds of human speech. It is

concerned with the physical properties of speech

sounds (phones), and their physiological production,

auditory perception, and neurophysiologic status.

Phonetics implies to talk about phonetic

transcription; it is a universal system for transcribing sounds that occur in spoken

language. The most widely known system of phonetic transcription, the International

Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), uses a one-to-one mapping between phones and written symbols.

The standardized nature of the IPA enables its users to transcribe accurately and

consistently the phones of different languages, dialects, and idiolects. The IPA is a useful

tool not only for the study of phonetics, but also for language teaching, professional acting,

and speech pathology.

Phonetic transcriptions can help to improve their understanding of the importance of

connected speech when speaking English. Dictionaries give single word phonetic

transcriptions which can greatly improve students’ pronunciation skills. However, when

speaking to native speakers, students are often surprised at how the phonetic transcriptions

seem to not always match pronunciation used in connected speech.

In this chapter, you will find the phonemes (vowels and consonants) employed in the

English Language:

Examples of phonetic transcription:

a. January / /

b. Drive / /

c. Became / /

d. Meet / /

e. Umbrela / /

Now that we have a brief explanation of the role of phonetics and phonology in the learning

of EFL it is important to talk about the Phonological Processes of the connected speech

and its role in the development of the oral skills in the target language.

Phonological Processes

To describe this particular concept it is relevant to quote Guitart (2004) who states that the

phonological processes may be seen as the execution of instructions given by the brain to

the Human Speech Apparatus about the way to pronounce single or multiple segments of a

Word or phrase. This author also adds it is extremely important to take into account that

the Phonological Processes are not applied indiscriminately; it is ruled by phonological

principles which determine the way to perceive and pronounce words.

In addition Alonso (2002) describes the phonological processes as those that act on a

phonological representation modifying it. The variation that exists among a phonological

representation and the phonetic representation comes happen because of the application of

the rules that formalize the processes.

Another definition is given by Pharies (2007) who establishes that the linguistic sounds

suffer a great amount of changes that may be seen both in the normal flow of the language

and in the course of the time, and those changes are known as the Phonological processes.

The vowels, for example, may change the place their place of articulation both in the

horizontal axis and in the vertical one. The consonants may change their way and place of

articulation and also their sonority.

These processes are considered basics in the EFL for being determining in the form in

which the apprentice of a foreign language assumes the correct way to pronounce a sound

or sound segment.