Phonetics

- is the study of the actual sounds of human

languages, their production and their
perception.

The Phonetics Alphabet

- In 1888 the International Phonetic Alphabet
(IPA) was invented in order to have a system in
which there was a one-to-one correspondence
between each sound in language and each
phonetic symbol.

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION

HOW DO WE CREATE A SOUND?

- Most speech sounds are produced by pushing
air through the vocal cords.

 Glottis—the opening between the vocal

cords
 Larynx—‘voice box’
 Pharynx—tubular part of the throat above
the larynx
 Oral cavity—mouth
 Nasal cavity—nose and the passages
connecting it to the throat and sinuses

Consonants: Place of Articulation

- Consonants are sounds produced with some
restriction or closure in the vocal tract
- Consonants are classified based in part on
where in the vocal tract the airflow is being
restricted (the place of articulation)
- The major places of articulation are:

bilabial, labiodental,
interdental, alveolar,
palatal, velar, uvular,
and glottal
Major Sound Classes
Suprasegmentals

Intonation languages (lie English) have varied pitch

contour across an utterance, but pitch is not used to
distinguish words
However, intonation may affect the meaning of a whole
sentence:
John is here said with falling intonation is a
statement
John is here said with rising intonation is a
question.
 PhonOLOGY
- A study of systematic pattern and organization
of speech sounds in a language.

Phonology
patterns of sounds
different patterns of sounds in different
languages, or within each language
basis for further work in morphology,
syntax, discourse and orthography design.
Phonetics
production of speech sounds by humans
without prior knowledge of the language being spoken
basis for phonological analysis

PHONEMES
- any of the perceptually distinct units of sound in a specified language that distinguish one word from another
- abstract mental representations of the phonological units of a language.

p, b, d, and t pad, pat bad, bat

CONTRASTIVE DISTRIBUTION
changing the sounds changes the meaning of the words

ALLOPHONES
- any of the speech sounds that represent a single phoneme

k unaspirated k- kit aspirated k- skit

COMPLEMENTARY DISTRIBUTION
If two sounds are allophones of the same phoneme, they cannot change the meaning of otherwise identical words.

MINIMAL PAIR

-are words with different meanings that have the same sounds except for one.

OVERLAPPING DISTRIBUTION

-sounds that occur in phonetic environments that are identical

A minimal pair is a pair of words with ONE phonemic difference only.

In order to decide whether a pair of words is a minimal pair or not, you need to know what sounds make up the word, and
you need to IGNORE the word's spelling.
If you are a native English speaker, you may find this easy. Most people have to look up the words in a pronunciation
dictionary.

This can best be shown with examples.

Making minimal pairs is a method that can be used to work out whether two different sounds in a certain language are
allophones or phonemes. For instance, we can see that l and r are different phonemes by making the minimal pair:

PHONEMIC TRANSCRIPTION

- also known as “broad transcription”

- involves representing speech using just a unique symbol for each phoneme of the language.

‘strewn’ /strun/

‘tenth’ /tɛnθ/

‘clean’ /klin/
PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION

-also known as “narrow transcription”

- involves representing additional details about the contextual variations in pronunciation that occur in normal
speech

‘strewn’ [stru:n]

‘tenth’ [tʰɛ̃n̪θ]

‘clean’ [kl ̥i:n]

SYLLABLE

- A syllable is the sound of a vowel (A, E, I, O, U) that is created when pronouncing the letters A, E, I, O, U, or Y.

The letter "Y" is a vowel only if it creates an A, E, I, O, or U sound.

examples: fry, try, cry, & dry

The number of times that you hear the sound of a vowel is the number of syllables in a word.

When two (or more) vowels are next to each other, the number of syllables depends on the number of vowel sounds.
examples: free (1 syllable), eat (1 syllable), & bio (2 syllables)

If a vowel is silent, it is not counted as a syllable.

example: fire (1 syllable)
Semantics
- the study of meaning in language.
- The term is taken from the Greek seme,
meaning sign.
- meaning is "the function of signs in language."
FIELDS AND TERMINOLOGIES:
HOMOPHONES
- words have the same sound but have different
meaning
example: write and right, peace and piece
AMBIGUITY
HOMONYMS
- words have same spelling but have different
definition of action or work
example: bat- an animal, bat- a thing
HYPONYMY
- the state on phenomenon that shows the
relations between more general term (lexical
representation) and the more specific term.
Example: lexical representation of red, yellow,
green, blue, and purple is color
Thus we can say that red is a hyponym of color
SYNONYMY
- the state or phenomenon in which the words
that sounds different (in pronunciation) but
have the same and identical meaning as another
word or phrase.
Example: small:little
ANTONYMY
- the state or phenomenon in which the words
have the sense relation which involve the
opposite in meaning.
TYPES OF ANTONYMY:
Implicity gradable pairs (Graded Antonymy)
- refers to the word related the object they
modify. The words themselves do not provide an
absolute scale.
Example: big – small, good – bad
- another characteristics of graded antonymy is
marked and unmarked
Example: we ask, “How high is the mountain?”
We answer, “Ten thousand feet high”
Complementary pairs (Complementarity)
- refers to the existence of pairs that the denial of
one implies the assertion of other
examples: male-female, alive-dead
Relational pairs (Converseness)
- refers to the pair of words that display
symmetry in their meaning
example: If X gives Y to Z, then Z receives Y from
X.
Lexical Ambiguity
- a writing error that occurs when a sentence
contains a word that has more than one
meaning.
Example: I went to the bank last week…
1. –and deposited money.
2. –and caught a fish.
Structural Ambiguity
- The result of a writing error such misplaced
modifiers.
- the presence of two or more
possible meanings within a single sentence or
sequence of words.
Example:
 The professor said on Monday he would give an
exam.
 The chicken is ready to eat.
 The burglar threatened the student with the
knife.
 Visiting relatives can be boring.
 "This morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas.
How he got in my pajamas I don't
know."(Groucho Marx
 "A lady with a clipboard stopped me in the
street the other day. She said, 'Can you spare a
few minutes for cancer research?' I said, 'All
right, but we're not going to get much
done.'"(English comedian Jimmy Carr
 "'Planes can go around the world, iPhones can
do a zillion things, but humans have not
invented a machine that can debone a cow or a
chicken as efficiently as a human being,' says
Alan Alanis, a JPMorgan Chase (JPM) analyst."
(Bryan Gruley and Lucia Kassai, "Brazilian
Meatpacker JBS Wrangles the U.S. Beef
 Industry." Bloomberg Businessweek, September
19, 2013)

SENTENTIAL SEMANTICS

- Deals with the meaning of syntactic larger than

words, example phrases, clause, and sentences
and the semantic relationships between them.
- In describing the meaning of such larger
syntactic units, we usually start with its core
meaning

TYPES OF SENTENTIAL SEMANTICS:

PARAPHRASE
- Sentences or phrases that convey the same
meaning using different wording
- Although the logical definition of paraphrases
requires strict semantic equivalence
Example: Destination- Last stop (paraphrase)

ENTAILMENT
- The truth of one sentence guarantees the truth
of another
Example: I love to eat. (I am capable of eating.)
My dog is cute. (I own a dog.)

CONTRADICTION
- A combination of statements, ideas, or features
of situation that are opposed to one another
Example: “Mary is married.” And “Mary is
single.”
morphology
- The branch of linguistics and (one of the major components of grammar) that studies word structures, especially
in terms of morphemes.
- The study and description of word formation (as inflection, derivation, and compounding).
- The study of morphemes, which are the smallest significant units of grammar
- A level of structure between the phonological and the syntactic.
Examples:
- care-less
- un-happy
- teach-er

What is morpheme?
• A minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function.
• A meaningful linguistics unit consisting of a word, such a man, or a word element, such as ed in walked, that
cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts.

TYPES OF MORPHEME
FREE MORPHEMES
- which can occur as separate words
- Morphemes that can stand by themselves as a single word, i.e. Are those which can stand alone as words of a
language.
- They may be lexical morphemes (serve), (press), or grammatical (function) morphemes (at), (and).
- In english, free morphemes can be identified as the set of separate word forms such as basic nouns, adjectives,
verbs, etc.
Example: care, teach, help, above.

BOUND MORPHEMES
- cannot occur on their own.
- Morphemes that cannot stand normally alone and are typically attached to another form.
- A morpheme that only appears as part of a larger words
- The morphemes that occur only in combinaton
Examples:
Un-, -er, -less, -ed, -ing and ect.
Unhappy, teacher, careless, talked, teaching
- All prefixes and suffixes are bound morphemes
*When free morphemes are used with bound morphemes attached, the basic word forms are known as stem
Examples:

carelessness
care -less -ness
stem suffix suffix
(free) (bound) (bound)

undressed
un- dress -ed
prefix stem suffix
(bound) (free) (bound)
NOTE:
There are a number of english words in which the element treated as stem is NOT a free moprheme.

Example:
reduce, repeat and receive,

- we can identify the bound morpheme re at the beginning, but the elements -duce, -peat, -ceive are NOT separate word
forms and that is why they CANNOT be free morphemes, these types of forms are called “bound stems” to distiguish
between them and “free stems”

TYPES OF FREE MORPHEMES

Lexical morphemes
- Is the set of ordinary nouns, adjectives and verbs and adverbs that carry meaning or content.
- A word that conveys information in a text or speech act is known as a lexical word.

Example:
Car, boy, red, break, calm

Functional morpheme
- Are morphemes that consist of the functional words in the language such as conjunctions, prepositions, articles
and pronouns.

Example:
And, in, that, the, it, she,..... Etc.

TYPES OF BOUND MORPHEMES

Inflectional morphemes
- Are those morphemes that are used to indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word.

Clean + (-ed) = cleaned

- inflectional morphemes are also called inflections.

Derivational morpheme
- Are those bound morphemes that we use in making new words or making words of a different grammatical
category from the stem.

Good (adj) + -ness (derivational morpheme) = goodness (noun)

care (noun) + -ful ( derivational morpheme) = careful (adj)

SYNTAX
- Refers to the rules that govern the ways in which words combine to form phrases, clauses, and sentences.
- The term syntax comes from Greek meaning “arrange together”
SYNTACTIC RULES
- The sentence follows a subject-verb-object pattern
Example: Beth ran the race.