1.

PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY BRANCHES OF LINGUISTICS

Linguistics represents the scientific study of human language. According to what linguists focus on, a map of linguistics includes the following areas of study: a. From a diachronic-synchronic perspective: 1. Synchronic linguistics, whose objects of study is language at a certain point in its chronological evolution; 2. Diachronic linguistics, concerned with the structural changes in the evolution of a certain language or group of languages. b. From a theoretical-applied perspective: 1. Theoretical (general) linguistics dealing with the development of models of linguistic knowledge, operating with frameworks for describing individual languages and theories about universal aspects of language. Traditionally, it includes a number of separate areas such as phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. 2. Applied linguistics, a branch concerned with the exploitation of linguistic theory in other fields such as language teaching or language acquisition; more recently it has expanded its span and has become the province of heterogeneous cross-disciplinary research. c. From an independent-contextual perspective: 1. Independent linguistics considers language for its own sake. 2. Contextual linguistics covers the studies where linguistics interacts with other sciences: social sciences (sociolinguistics, anthropological linguistics); medical sciences (psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, language acquisition); rhetoric and philosophy (critical discourse analysis); computer science (computational linguistics), cognitive science (cognitive linguistics), etc. For the purpose of this course we shall restrict our interest to theoretical linguistics. This branch encompasses a number of sub-branches, among which there are: A. The study of the sounds of a language comprises: 1. Phonetics , which deals with the physical aspects of speech. 2. Phonology, which studies the sound structure of a language. B. The study of the language structure includes: 3. Morphology, the branch concerned with the internal structure of words. 4. Syntax, that investigates the rules governing the combination of words into phrases and sentences. C. The study of meanings conveyed by means of language covers:
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5. Semantics, a science that analyzes the relations between words and

meanings in a language. 6. Pragmatics, which looks at the practical use of language in specific contexts. In conclusion, both English phonetics and phonology are branches of theoretical linguistics, they are both concerned with the sounds made in the production of English, looking at the phenomenon of speech from different points of view.

2. THE PRONUNCIATION OF ENGLISH. ENGLISH AROUND THE GLOBE

English, the second most spoken language in the world, is of Germanic origin and belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. The status of English as a global language is given by its extensive use under different shapes. English is the mother tongue of approximately 300 million native speakers, the second language of another 300 million speakers and a further 100 million speakers use it as a foreign language. Over a billion people speak English at least at a basic level. English today is probably the third largest language by number of native speakers, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.1 English is an official language or is predominantly spoken in the following countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Beliza, Botswana, Brunei, Cameroon, Canada, Dominica, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gambia, Ghana, Grenada, Guyana, India, Ireland, Israel, Jamaica, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Micronesia, Namibia, Nauru, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States, Vanuatu, Zambia, Zimbabwe. English is the predominant language of science, aviation, diplomacy, tourism and economy. Scott Montgomerya Seattle-based geologist and author of The Chicago Guide to Communicating Science,shows that English has established itself as the preferred world language for science. "Because of its scale and dynamism, science has become the most active and dynamic creator of new language in the world today. And most of this creation is occurring in English, the lingua franca of scientific effort," Montgomery said2. Montgomery believes the future will almost certainly see a continued expansion of English use in science, especially in international settings, though not to the final exclusion of other tongues. Already, more than 90 percent of journal literature in some scientific fields is printed in English. English is also one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Paradoxically though, English is not an official language in either the United States or the United Kingdom. Although the United States federal government has no official languages, English has been given official status by 30 of the 50 state governments. Nor is English the official language in Australia. The expansion of the British Empire and the primacy of the United States since WWII have spread English throughout the globe. Because of that global spread, English has developed a host of English dialects and English-based creole languages and pidgins. Because of the wide use of English as a second
3

language, English speakers have many different accents, which often signal the speaker's native dialect or language. Although no variety is clearly considered the only standard, there are a number of accents considered to be more prestigious, such as Received Pronunciation in Britain. RP for short is the prestige accent in Britain, generally associated with the south-east where RP speakers reside. It came to be adopted by the BBC as early as the 1920s. It has been the symbol of education and high position in society since a lot of prestigious public and private schools, as well as the armed forces adopted it. RP, just like any other accent, is however constantly changing. It is still used nowadays by the Royal Family, Parliament, The Church of England, the High Courts and other national institutions. But as small a percentage as 3% of the British actually speak it. It remains the type of pronunciation widely recommended as a model for foreign learners. General American (sometimes called Standard Midwestern, Standard Spoken American English or American Broadcast English) is one of the most homogeneous and widespread accents of Anglophone North America. Being the accent of American English perceived by Americans to be most "neutral" and free of regional characteristics, it is thought to be the American counterpart of Received pronunciation. Within American English, General American and accents approximating it are distinguished from Southern American English, Northeastern accents, or social group accents such as African American Vernacular English.

Figure 1. Countries in which English is an official /de facto official language (in red)3

3. INTRODUCTION TO PHONETICS
3.1. DEFINITION The name of the science, phonetics, derives from the Greek word phone meaning sound or voice, and the verbal counterpart phonein. Phonetics is the scientific study of the actual speech sounds of language. General phonetics is concerned with the speech sounds of languages in general, whereas special phonetics focuses on the sounds belonging to the phonetic system of a particular language. Phonetics deals with the concrete physical aspects of speech, namely the production, audition and perception of the sounds in a language, as opposed to phonology, which operates at the level of sound systems and abstract sound units. 3.2. BRANCHES OF PHONETICS The production, audition and perception of sounds are the coordinates which help us identify the three main branches of phonetics: articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics, auditory phonetics. The physical act of speaking is thus analyzed from three interrelated and interdependent perspectives, the three stages in the speaking act: the way speakers articulate or pronounce the sounds they use in verbal communication (articulatory phonetics); the transmission of sounds during an act of speaking (acoustic phonetics); the auditory perception of sounds in an act of speaking (auditory phonetics). General phonetics also includes comparative phonetics, that is the comparative study of sounds in two or more different languages, and experimental phonetics, which employs the methods and means of investigation borrowed from other sciences (physics, computer science, physiology, psychology) in order to measure and analyze the nature of speech sounds. In English it is profitable to relate phonetics to other branches of linguistic study. The connection between phonetics and lexicology explains the difference in meaning between different phonetic sequences, different stress placement in comparable utterances. For example, the words in the pair tap/ pat have different meanings due to the change in the order of phonemes; ship is to be distinguished from sheep in point of meaning and pronunciation of the middle vowel; a blue print differs in meaning from a blueprint since the two items have different stress patterns. Phonetics also informs grammatical structure; quite numerous nominal/ verbal pairs that reflect different accentual patterns, although they share the segmental sound structure, such as (an) insult/ (to) insult. A change in the intonational contour triggers a grammatical choice in Sam called the police.
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(falling intonation, declarative sentence) versus Sam called the police (rising intonation, interrogative sentence expressing surprise especially in colloquial speech). The perceptual characteristics of sounds may be exploited for rhetorical and stylistic purposes: this is where phonetics meets stylistic studies. Cases of alliteration (the repetition of the initial consonantal sound) or assonance (the repetition of vowel sounds in non-rhyming words) are frequently revealed and discussed in stylistic analyses for their euphonic and highlighting effects. Notice the alliteration in the following excerpt, where the repetition of the s sound creates a sense of quiet, reinforcing the meaning of the verse: I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet. (Robert Frost, Acquainted with the Night) Pragmatics is another linguistic discipline that may rely on phonetics in formulating its observations. The sentence Dont go uttered with a falling intonational contour is a command; the same sentence pronounced with a falling-rising intonational contour is a pleading request. The play upon theme and focus, the old and the new information packaged in utterances is also a topic in pragmatics that resorts to phonetics for clarification. In Sam did this, any of the three syllables can receive the tonic stress if that item of information is presented as new in the context of communication. 3.2.1. Articulatory Phonetics Articulatory phonetics studies the articulation (= production) of speech sounds. Articulation can only be understood by means of studying the anatomy and physiology of speech. As there are no designated human speech organs, some respiratory and digestive organs have adapted and developed a secondary function that of speech production. Speech is achieved by compression of the lung volume causing air flow which may be made audible if set into vibration by the activity of the larynx. This sound can then be made into speech by various modifications of the supralaryngeal vocal tract. Therefore the organs and the processes that make speech possible are the lungs (they provide the energy source during respiration), the vocal folds (they convert the energy into audible sound, a process called phonation), and the articulators (they transform the sound into intelligible speech in the process of articulation proper). The vocal organs are: 1. The lungs are the place where any act of speech production originates. In English it is only during respiration that speech production can take place, just like in most languages. Since speaking happens as we expel air from our lungs, the sounds we produce are called egressive. The airstream initiated in the
6

lungs will follow a trajectory called the vocal tract. First the air comes up from the lungs through the trachea, or the windpipe, a tube which goes up to the vocal cords. 2. The larynx (also called the voice box) is situated between the trachea and the root of the tongue; immediately behind the larynx is the pharynx and the upper border of the larynx actually opens up into the pharynx. It consists of several cartilages and a single bone, the hyoid. The inside of the bottom of the larynx is round and shaped like a cylinder. As air ascends through the larynx, it encounters two folds of tissue that extend out from the left and right sides of the larynx. These are known as the vocal folds. The space in the middle of the larynx between the vocal folds - the glottis - is triangular in shape, with the narrow part of the 'V ' pointing towards the front. During breathing, the two folds part as the air comes into the larynx or goes out. During phonation, the vocal folds come closer, setting the type of sound that is produced: a glottal stop if the closure is complete, a voiced sound if they open and close rapidly and thus produce vibration, or a voiceless sound when absence of vibration occurs, the folds being completely or partially open. The rate of vibration of the vocal cords is connected to the pitch of ones voice: a high the rate of vibration is correlated with high pitch. The epiglottis is the fold of tissue below the root of the tongue that covers the larynx during swallowing protecting it from any chunks of food that might cause death by choking. 3. The pharynx connects the larynx and the esophagus with the oral cavity. The pharynx has two possible outlets for the airstream, both of which act as resonators: the nasal cavity and the oral cavity. The airstream can exit the pharynx either of two ways, depending on the position of the soft palate: if the soft palate is lowered, a portion of the air will pass through the nasal cavity (the remainder finding its way out through the oral cavity); alternatively, if the soft palate is raised, access to the nasal cavity is cut off, the air can only pass through the oral cavity. 4. The oral cavity is the most important component of the vocal tract on account of the essential role it plays in phonation: it is in this cavity that the main features of the speech sounds are uttered. The cavity functions as a resonator, modifying the characteristics and volume of the sounds. It houses the most important articulators. According to their position, the articulators are divided into two classes: upper and lower articulators. To the first class belong the upper lip, the upper teeth, the alveolar ridge, the hard palate and the soft palate (=velum); to the second class, the lower lip, the lower teeth and the tongue.

The tongue deserves special attention on account of its important role in the production of both vowels and consonants. According to their active or passive role in phonation, the articulators are either active (e.g lips, tongue tip, tongue blade, tongue body, tongue root) or passive (e.g. lips, upper teeth, alveolar ridge, postalveolar region, hard palate, soft palate, uvula, back pharyngeal wall). Return to the table below when you study the
consonants:

bilabial labiodental dental interdental alveolar retroflex palato-alveolar palatal velar uvular pharyngeal epiglottal

Active articulator Lower lip Lower lip Apex or lamina Lamina Apex or lamina Apex Lamina Lamina Back Back Root Epiglottis

Passive articulator Upper lip Upper teeth Upper teeth Upper and lower teeth Alveolar ridge Back of alveolar ridge or hard palate Back of alveolar ridge Hard palate Velum Uvula Pharyngeal wall Pharyngeal wall

Table 1. Active and passive articulators4 Some consonants have two simultaneous places of articulation. Secondary articulation occurs when an additional articulation is overlaid on the basic sound (e.g. labialized [kw] in the word quick). In the production of sounds with double articulation (e.g. the labio-velar glide [w] in wife) both places of articulation are of equal importance. 5. The nasal cavity The nasal cavity is a large air-filled space above and behind the nose in the middle of the face. Nasals are produced with closure of the oral cavity and radiation of the sound through the nasal cavity. The obstructed oral cavity acts as a side-branch resonator.

Figure 2. The main organs involved in articulatory processes5 3.2.2. Acoustic Phonetics Speech sounds are waves produced by the vibration of the vocal cords in the larynx and then transmitted through the air. It falls within the scope of acoustic phonetics to examine the characteristics of the speech sound waves. Therefore, this branch of phonetics operates with notions borrowed from the cognate branch of physics, acoustics, in charge of determining the behaviour of any physical waves (graphically represented in sinusoidal shape). Sound waves are characterized by: a) duration (the length of time measured in milliseconds); b) frequency or pitch (measured in Hertz or cycles per second) represents how often a wave repeats itself. Vowels, for instance, consist of a series of periodic waves with various frequencies. The frequency of the simple wave produced by the simplest back-and-forth motion is called the fundamental frequency, whereas the others are called the harmonics of the respective sound. The vibration of the vocal cords generates the fundamental frequency of a sound, whereas the resonating cavities above the larynx are responsible for its harmonics. Phoneticians are interested in the energy bands (formants) given by the
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strongly reinforced harmonics of a sound; the range of formants a sound is made up of results in its acoustic spectrum. c) amplitude (the loudness of the sound measured in decibels) is defined by the size of the pressure difference a wave causes. Images of the shape of sound waves waveforms- can be rendered as spectrograms by machines called spectrographs.

Figure 3. A spectrogram of the words a bab, a dad, a gag.6 3.2.3. Auditory phonetics A hearers perception of the speech sounds of a language is the primary concern of auditory phonetics. Awareness of the anatomy and physiology of the hearing process is a prerequisite in this field. The hearing mechanism is jointly made possible by the inner, middle and outer ear. The auricle of the outer ear collects and directs the sound waves through the ear canal to the middle ear. The tympanum is a middle ear membrane that turns these sound vibrations in the ear canal into vibrations taken over by the middle ear ossicles, the hammer, anvil and stirrup, further connected to the oval window that leads to the inner ear. Both the cochlea (the organ of hearing) and the labyrinth (the organ of balance) are housed by the inner ear. The cochlea cavity is filled with a fluid called endolymph and coated with hair cells called stereocilia. Vibrations coming from the middle ear reach the endolymph and make hair cells resonate with sounds of various frequencies; these receptor cells then send a nerve impulse to the brain, to be perceived as a sound with the respective pitch. The range within which stimuli may be perceived as sound represents the auditory field. For humans, its frequency values vary between approximately 20 HZ to 20 000 Hz. As a rule, changes in frequency larger than 2Hz are perceived
10

by the human hearing mechanism; in other words, 2 Hz is the frequency resolution of the human ear. As for intensity, the range of audible sounds is considerable; the intensity of a sound should be higher than 0 Db, but the upper limits vary according to how harmful a sound may be due to the pressure on the eardrums it can cause. In naturally occurring situations, one may witness the phenomenon of a sound masking another: a normally clearly audible sound fails to be perceived as such on account of an almost simultaneously produced louder sound.

Figure 4. The mechanism of hearing. Sound waves enter the outer ear and travel through the external auditory canal until they reach the tympanic membrane, causing the membrane and the attached chain of auditory ossicles to vibrate. The motion of the stapes against the oval window sets up waves in the fluids of the cochlea, causing the basilar membrane to vibrate. This stimulates the sensory cells of the organ of Corti, atop the basilar membrane, to send nerve impulses to the brain.7

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4. INTRODUCTION TO PHONOLOGY
4.1. DEFINITION Although in practice one cannot separate the linguistic features of sounds from their phonological context and values, nor could one elaborate on phonological phenomena without invoking phonetic features, sounds lend themselves to a double interpretation. The point of view of the physical properties of speech sounds is claimed by phonetics, but the way they combine into patterns, interact with each other and function within the sound system of a certain language is the province of phonology proper. 4.2. BRANCHES OF PHONOLOGY Linguists distinguish two areas of phonology: segmental phonology and suprasegmental phonology. If attention is paid to sounds as individual units (phonological segments), it is within the framework of segmental phonology. If more complex structures such as syllables, metrical feet, phonological words, phrases or utterances together with their characteristic tone, pitch, rhythm, intonation are targeted at, then all these phenomena are encompassed by suprasegmental phonology. 4.3. THE PHONEME AND THE ALLOPHONES Linguistic units which cannot be substituted for each other without a change in meaning can be referred to as linguistically contrastive or significant units. Such units may be phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic etc. If, for example, the sound [g] in the phonetic context [b_] gives the meaning bag, and if the sound [t] in the phonetic context [b_] gives the meaning bat, then we can conclude that the sounds [g] and [b] belong to separate linguistic units. Phonemes are the linguistically contrastive or significant sounds (or sets of sounds) of a language. Allophones are the linguistically non-significant variants of each phoneme. In other words a phoneme may be realised by more than one speech sound and the selection of each variant is usually conditioned by the phonetic context of the phoneme. The phonetic context of a phoneme is also referred to as its environment. Occasionally, allophone selection is not conditioned by the phonetic environment but may vary form person to person and occasion to occasion. A phoneme is a set of allophones or individual non-contrastive speech segments; in other words, it is a class of speech sounds judged by native speakers to be the same sound. An allophone is a concrete sound, whilst a phoneme is a set of such sounds.

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For practical purposes, two different bracketing conventions have been adopted; slashes enclose phonemes (e.g. /g/), square brackets enclose allophones (e.g. [g]). A phoneme is an abstract phonological unit. "Abstract" in this context means that the pronunciation of the phoneme is not fully specified, i.e. a phoneme can be pronounced in slightly different ways depending on its environment. The actual realisation of a phoneme in a given environment is called phone, a set of phones that realise the same phoneme is referred to as its allophones. Compare e.g. the /p/-sounds in pair and keeper. The [p] in pair is aspirated, meaning that the production of this sound is accompanied by a "puff of air" (the emission of air), whereas in the production of the [p] in keeper there is no such aspiration. The aspirated and the non-aspirated variants are thus allophones of the same phoneme. The phoneme-allophone distinction fits the type-token dichotomy. In linguistics, the term token is used to refer to any single instance of some phenomenon or category that is under investigation, and type is used for some category of which a token is a member. The allophones aspirated [ph] and unaspirated [p] are phonetically distinct, but phonologically the same. At any given time, the set of phonemes in a language is a closed set (like function words and syntactic rules, the set of phonemes is part of the limited, hard wired part of language). A speaker cannot simply add a new phoneme to the language the way a new word can be added. The set of phonemes changes only over time. 4.4. TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS Native and non-native speakers of English alike acknowledge the frequently large distance between the spelling (orthography) and pronunciation of a word; the lack of predictability and consistency when pronouncing orthographically similar words (such as chemistry, chef, cherub, cheiromancy, which share the che letter string) is also notorious. Moreover, other pairs of words (mane/ main, sought/ sort, etc.) are written differently despite their identical pronunciation. These pitfalls need to be addressed by phonetics and thus avoided by language learners. It is standard practice in phonetics and phonology to use a set of conventional symbols to write down the way an utterance (a stretch of speech) is pronounced. To accurately render the pronunciation of any utterance in a language is to transcribe it, and this is one of the major obvious goals of speech sounds studies. Simple as it may seem, this is not an easy task. Each sound is given a symbol and for a unified and principled transcription the symbols have to belong to a single conventionalized system.

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The usage of symbols in this course is the one recommended by the International Phonetic Association. It is known as the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and it is broadly applied in phones studies. At this point, one distinction is a must: phonemic versus allophonic transcription of words and phrases. Linguists deal with the challenge of representing sounds by positing two different levels: at one level, there is the phoneme (hence the name phonemic/ phonological transcription), at the other level there are allophones (hence the name allophonic/ phonetic transcription): Level Transcription Unit phonemic /p/ phoneme (phonological) allophonic (phonetic) [p] [ph] allophones

As it can be seen, phonemic transcriptions are enclosed in slant lines, called solidi, whereas allophonic transcriptions are enclosed in square brackets. 4.5. THE INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET (IPA) "The aim of the International Phonetic Association is to promote the study of the science of phonetics and the various practical applications of that science. For both these it is desirable to have a consistent way of representing the sounds of language in written form. From its foundation in 1886 the Association has been concerned to develop a set of symbols which would be convenient to use, but comprehensive enough to cope with the wide variety of sounds found in the languages of the world; and to encourage the use of this notation as widely as possible among those concerned with language. The system is generally known as the International Phonetic Alphabet. Both the Association and its Alphabet are widely referred to by the abbreviation IPA . The IPA is based on the Roman alphabet, which has the advantage of being widely familiar, but also includes letters and additional symbols from a variety of other sources. These additions are necessary because the variety of sounds in languages is much greater than the number of letters in the Roman alphabet. The use of sequences of phonetic symbols to represent speech is known as transcription."8 The 2005 revised version of the IPA convention is available on the International Phonetic Association website.9

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15

For exemplification here follow example of how these phonemic symbols are actually used in transcription.The sounds represented here are those of British English spoken with an R.P. (Received Pronounciation) accent. Note that other varieties of English differ considerably in pronunciation, especially the vowels and diphthongs. A.The English Alphabet

B. English words10

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4.6. PRONUNCIATION GUIDES Pronunciation is represented in dictionaries via the symbols pertaining to a certain alphabet. In the Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary (CALD) or Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary (OALD), for example, you can find out the phonemic sequence and the stress pattern characterizing a word represented by means of the IPA symbols. It is then useful to practice and learn the IPA conventions so that you may make use of pronunciations shown in dictionaries. While learning the phonemic symbols you can resort to another instrument, talking dictionaries. They are available on the World Wide Web or CC-ROMs and they will read aloud words and definitions to you. Additionally, pronunciation dictionaries such as the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary usually include more words than regular dictionaries and they can prove particularly helpful in finding out how to pronounce various place names, family names, brand names and technical terms; they also specify different accentual variations in pronunciation.

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Online resources for practising or checking pronunciation are not scarce, many sites offer recordings of accents of English from around the world. Here are some suggestions: Radio broadcasts online will give you access to the standard pronunciation used in news reports; on some of these radio stations even transcripts of recordings are available to help you better understand broadcasts:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/ from the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) http://www.abc.net.au/streaming/ from the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) http://www.rte.ie/ from RT (Radio Telefs ireann) in Ireland http://www.rsi.sg/english from Radio Singapore http://www.penguinradio.com/ gives links to many radio stations from around the world that broadcast online. If you are interested in British regional accents you may find useful either

http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/ or the British Librarys archive/accents.htmlof

http://www.bl.uk/collections/sound-

Other options include samples of particular speech styles:

http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/ for famous political speeches; http://www.lsa.umich.edu/eli/micase/audio/ for academic speech samples (lectures, seminars, meetings, student presentations, etc.) from the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE). Some online dictionaries show and exemplify the pronunciation of words:

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/ for the Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary and the Cambridge Dictionary of American English; http://www.m-w.com/ for the Miriam-Webster Online Dictionary pronunciation of words in North American English.

For specialized areas of study, you may even find terminology pronunciation tips:

http://www.saltspring.com/capewest/pron.htm (Biology terms in Latin); http://www.dinosauria.com/dml/names/aeto/htm (names of dinosaurs); http://www.genome.gov/page.cfm?pageID=10002096 (terms from Genetics).
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4.7. PRONUNCIATION TIPS FOR ROMANIAN LEARNERS VOWELS a. front vowels: /i:/: this vowel is similar to the Romanian i in stressed syllables, especially in final position or when followed by a voiced consonant (e.g. bine / criza/ dii!) //: this vowel has an intermediate position between the Romanian vowels i and e. /e/: the English vowel strongly resembles the Romanian e (e.g. set, tel, test); do not pronounce it too open. //: the English vowel is intermediate between // and /a/; keep your mouth wide open for this vowel. Pronounce clearly the English words bed/bad. b. back vowels: /:/: the English vowel is back, unlike the Romanian a, which is a central vowel; distinguish between cam (Rom)/ calm (English); do not add a /r/ after it, unless another vowel follows. //: there is no similar Romanian counterpart; do not pronounce it with fully rounded lips or as a closer or central variant. /:/: it is similar to the Romanian o; make sure you avoid pronouncing a /r/ after it unless it is followed by a vowel. //: do not prounce it as tense as the Romanian u. /u:/: it is more open, less rounded and longer than the Romanian u. c. central vowels //: it is shorter and slightly closer than the Romanian a; avoid liprounding. /:/: start from the Romanian and prolong it without any liprounding. //: make sure it is short and pronounced without any lip-rounding. d. diphthongs: /e/: do not replace it by e; pronounce it as in tei, chei. /a/: similar to the Romanian diphthong in cai, tai. //: it is not difficult to pronounce if // is pronounced correctly. //: similar to u in tu; do not say ou as in nou. /a/: similar to au in bau. //: pay attention to the initial vowel, which is lax; do not add any /r/ after it. /e/: do not begin it with a very close /e/; do not add any /r/ after it. //: do not begin it with a tense /u/; do not add any /r/ after it. CONSONANTS /p/, /t/, /k/: remember to use an aspirated allophone whenever necessary.
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/t/, /d/: do not articulate them with the tip of tongue against the upper teeth; in English /t/ and /d/ are alveolar. /k/, /g/: do not palatalize them when followed by /e/, //, /e/. /t/, //: the Romanian affricates ci, gi (in daci, rugi) are palatalized, unlike the English ones. //, //: avoid replacing them by /f/, /v/ (do not touch the upper teeth with the lower lip); do not replace them by /t/, /d/ (place the tip of the tongue between the teeth and not against the alveolar ridge); avoid replacing them by /s/, /z/, which have an alveolar articulation. /s/, /z/: in Romanian they are dental, not alveolar. //, / /: avoid palatalization. /n/: pronounce it with an alveolar articulation, not with a dental one as in Romanian. //: it is a velar sound, not a palatal one; it resembles n in Anca, dunga. //: it can be articulated by trying to pronounce /u/ without rounded lips. 4.8. MINIMAL PAIRS The above mentioned [bg] / [bt] contrast is demonstrated by the existence of minimal pairs or contrast in identical environment. Minimal pairs are pairs of words which vary only by the identity of the segment (another word for a single speech sound) at a single location in the word (eg. [mt] and [kt]). If two segments contrast in identical environment then they must belong to different phonemes. A paradigm of minimal phonological contrasts is a set of words differing only by one speech sound. Notice how some of the English consonants could be defined by the following set of minimally contrasting words: /pi:k/ vs /li:k/ vs /si:k/ vs /gi:k/ vs /bi:k/ vs /mi:k/ vs /ri:k/ (corresponding to the words peak/ leek/ seek/ geek/ beak/ meek/reek) 4.7. SPEECH SOUND DISTRIBUTION The set of phonetic environments in which a speech sound occurs represents its distribution. A pair of phones is in contrastive distribution if interchanging the two causes a change in meaning. To check this, one needs to construct a minimal pair. e.g. [p] and [b] are in contrastive distribution since interchanging them in the pair [pet] / [bet] results in a change in meaning. Speech sounds in complementary distribution are allophones of the same phoneme which occur in non-overlapping environments. Aspirated and non-aspirated variants of /p/ are in contrastive distribution: voiceless aspirated

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stops ([ph], [th], [kh]) occur only at the beginning of a syllable, whereas voiceless unaspirated stops occur only elsewhere. Whenever two phones occur in overlapping environments but cause no distinction in the meaning of the respective words they are said to be in free variation. For example released/ unreleased word-final stops (in top/ pot, final /p/ and /t/ may be released [p], [t] or unreleased [p], [t]). 4.8. PHONETIC AND PHONEMIC FEATURES The smallest units of speech are the phonetic features that make up speech sounds. Features whose presence or absence in a given sound segment normally affects meaning are known as distinctive (or phonemic) features. Note that features are usually thought of as binary oppositions. Sometimes the presence of one feature will always imply the presence of another (rounding and backness of vowels). Such features are known as mutually redundant features. Non-distinctive (allophonic) features pertain to identical phonemes (no different meanings are engendered by a switch of such features) but different allophones. Examples of non-distinctive fetures include, for example, nasality of English vowels (e.g. bean/bead), aspiration of English stops in syllable intial position and before a stressed vowel (e.g. pair/ spare). Knowing the phonetic features of English helps one to group sounds together into natural classes - a class of sounds with at least one phonetic feature in common. Every phonetic feature has the capacity of building a natural class (e.g. sonorants, obstruents, nasals, etc.) Articulatory Correlates of Distinctive Features11
1. syllabic/non-syllabic [+/-syl]. Syllabic sounds are those that constitute

syllable peaks, non-syllabic sounds are those that do not. Syllabic sounds are typically more prominent than contiguous non-syllabic sounds. (Vowels, syllabic consonants vs. glides, non-syllabic consonants. 2. consonantal/non-consonantal [+/-cons]. Consonantal sounds are produced with a sustained vocal tract constriction at least equal to that required in the production of fricatives; non-consonantal sounds are produced without such a constriction. (Obstruents, nasals, liquids vs. vowels and glides.) 3. sonorant/obstruent [+/-son]. Sonorant sounds are produced with a vocal tract configuration sufficiently open that the air pressure inside and outside the mouth is approximately equal. Obstruent sounds are produced with a vocal tract constriction sufficient to increase the air pressure inside the mouth significantly over that of the ambient air. (Vowels, glides, liquids, nasals vs. stops and fricatives.) 4. coronal/non-coronal [+/-cor]. Coronal sounds are produced by raising the tongue blade toward the teeth or the hard palate; non-coronal sounds
21

are produced without such a gesture. (Dentals, alveolars, palato-alvcolars, palatals vs. labials, velars, uvulars, pharyngeals.) 5. anterior/posterior [+/-ant]. Anterior sounds are produced with a primary constriction at or in front of the alveolar ridge, while posterior sounds are produced with a primary constriction behind the alveolar ridge. (Labials, dentals, alveolars vs. palato-alveolars, palatals, velars, uvulars, pharyngeals.) 6. labial/non-labial [+/-lab]. As the term implies, labial sounds are formed with a constriction at the lips, while non-labial sounds are formed without such a constriction. (Labial consonants, rounded vowels vs. all other sounds.) 7. distributed/non-distributed [+/-distr]. Distributed sounds are produced with a constriction that extends for a considerable distance along the midsagittal axis of the oral tract; non-distributed sounds are produced with a constriction that extends for only a short distance in this direction. (Sounds produced with the blade or front of the tongue vs. sounds produced with the tip of the tongue. This feature may also distinguish bilabial sounds from labio-dental sounds.) 8. high/non-high [+/-high]. High sounds are produced by raising the body of the tongue toward the palate; non-high sounds are produced without such a gesture. (Palatals, velars, palatalized and velarized consonants, high vowels and glides vs. all other sounds.) 9. back/non-back [+/-back]. Back sounds are produced with the tongue body relatively retracted; non-back or front sounds are produced with the tongue body relatively advanced. (Velars, uvulars, pharyngeals, velars and pharyngealized consonants, central vowels and glides, back vowels and glides vs. all others.) 10. low/non-low [+/-low]. Low sounds are produced by drawing the body of the tongue down away from the roof of the mouth; non-low sounds are produced without such a gesture. (Pharyngeal and pharyngealized consonants, low vowels vs. all others.) 11. rounded/unrounded [+/-round]. Rounded sounds are produced with protrusion of the lips; unrounded sounds are produced without such protrusion. (Rounded consonants and vowels vs. unrounded consonants and laterals.) 12. continuant/stop [+/-cont]. Continuants are formed with a vocal tract configuration allowing the airstream to flow through the mid-sagittal region of the oral tract: stops are produced with a sustained occlusion in this region. (Vowels, glides, fricatives vs. nasal and oral stops, laterals.) 13. lateral/central [+/-lat]. Lateral sounds, the most familiar of which is [l], are produced with the tongue placed in such a way as to prevent the airstream flowing outward through the center of the Mouth, while allowing it to pass over one or both sides of the tongue, central sounds do
22

not involve such a constriction. (Lateral sonorants, fricatives and affricates vs. all other sounds.) 14. nasal/oral [+/-nas]. Nasal sounds are produced by lowering the velum and allowing the air to pass outward through the nose; oral sounds are produced with velum raised to prevent the passage of air through the nose. (Nasal stops, nasalized consonants, vowels and glides vs. all other sounds.) 15. advanced/unadvanced tongue root [+/-ATR]. As its name implies, this feature is implemented by drawing the root of the tongue forward, enlarging the pharyngeal cavity and often raising the tongue body as well; [-ATR] sounds (do not involve this gesture. ([+ATR] vowels such as [i,u,e,o] vs. [-ATR] vowels.) 16. tense/lax [+/-tense]. Tense vowels are produced with a tongue body or tongue root configuration involving a greater degree of constriction than that found in their lax counterparts; this greater degree of constriction is frequently accompanied by greater length. (Tense vowels vs. lax vowels.) We note that this feature and the last (ATR) are not known to co-occur distinctively in any language and may be variant implementations of a single feature category. 17. strident/non-strident [+/-strid]. Strident sounds are produced with a complex constriction forcing the airstream to strike two surfaces, producing high-intensity fricative noise; non-strident sounds are produced without such a constriction. (Sibilants, labiodentals, uvulars vs. all other sounds.) The feature [+strid] is found only in fricatives and affricates. 18. spread/non-spread glottis [+/-spread]. Spread or aspirated sounds are produced with the vocal cords drawn apart, producing a non-periodic (noise) component in the acoustic signal; non-spread or unaspirated sounds are produced without this gesture. (Aspirated consonants, breathy voiced or murmured consonants, voiceless vowels and glides vs. all others.) 19. constricted/nonconstricted glottis [+/-constr.]. Constricted or glottalized sounds are produced with the vocal cords drawn together, preventing normal vocal cord vibration; non-constricted (non-glottalized) sounds are produced without such a gesture. (Fricatives, implosives, glottalized or laryngealized consonants, vowels and glides vs. all others.) 20. voiced/voiceless [+/- voiced]. Voiced sounds are produced with a laryngeal configuration permitting periodic vibration of the vocal cords; voiceless sounds lack such periodic vibration. (Voiced vs. voiceless consonants.) 4.9. PHONOLOGICAL RULES

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There may be a wider or narrower gap between sounds spoken in utterances and the corresponding phonemes. Sometimes speech may be difficult to process because several changes affect sounds by changing, deleting or inserting sounds. Take for instance the sentence You couldnt give me a lift, could you?; it can be pronounced / ju: /kdnt /gv mi: /lft /kd ju:/ in slow careful speech, or /j /kdn /gbm /lf /k/ in fast connected speech, characteristic of everyday conversation between native speakers. Despite the differences between the slow and careful pronunciation and the fast coarticulated speech one, a native speaker of English is likely to come up with the same interpretation. This happens because the native speaker has the competence to match the first sequence of phenemes (the underlying structure) to the fast spoken stretch of speech (the surface structure) via a set of phonological rules.12 These rules are a set of explicit predictions about the way particular phones represent particular phonemes in a ceratin language. The phonetic representation of an utterance is derived from the phonologial representation by applying phonological rules: Underlying (phonological) representation phonological rules Essentially, any phonological rule is bound to specify three kinds of information: - the class of phonemes affected (the input items) - the phonetic change that occurs (the output) - the specific phonological environment where this rules applies The information may be formalized as in A B / X_Y, where A represents the input item, B the output item and X_Y the phonological environment, with X and Y standing for the left-hand and right-hand environment, respectively, and _ representing the position of A. Ther are different types of phonological rules. Let us illustrate two kinds. Allophonic rules fill in qualities of pronunciation that are absent in the lexical forms of morphemes but are required by their circumstances in speech, like the aspiration of word-initial /k/ in coats and the rounding of the word-initial /r/ of rules. Examples: Rule 1. The English Stop Aspiration Rule13
Unless preceded by /s/, stops (/p/, /t/, and /k/) are aspirated before stressed vowels. {p t k} [+aspirated] / {#_ , _V } Interpretation:

Surface (phonetic) representation

24

 means becomes or is changed to / means in the environment of ____ is placed before or after segments that condition the change. # indicates a syllable boundary; you can also just use $

Rule 2. Vowel Nasalization in English14

Nasalize vowels when they occur before nasal consonants (within the same syllable). V [ + NASAL] / ___ [ + NASAL] (C) #

Interpretation: means becomes or is changed to / means in the environment of ____ is placed before or after segments that condition the change. ( ) enclose optional segments, whose presence or absence are irrelevant to the rule # indicates a syllable boundary; you can also just use $

Morphemic (morphophonological) rules change or choose between meaningful qualities given as part of the lexical entries of morphemes, as where voicing of the /z/ of the plural suffix is replaced by voiclessness, giving /s/, in words like /kots/ coats and /saks/ socks. Examples The English plural rule The English regular noun plural morpheme15 (orthographically rendered as (e)s) has three allomorphs16: /s/, /z/, and /iz/, depending on the nature of the preceding segment. The actual shape of the three allomorphs of the plural morpheme is said to be phonologically conditioned: - [z] is selected after voiced non-sibilant segments; - [s] is selected after voiceless non-sibilant segments; - [iz] is selected after sibilant segments ([s], [z], [], [], [t], [d]). The English regular past tense or the third person singular present tense are other examples of this type of rule. 4.10. PHONOLOGICAL SCHOOLS IN A NUTSHELL17
The term phoneme was first used by A. Dufriche-Desgenettes. It was

taken over by Ferdinand de Saussure who defined it as an element of the phonological system, a complex psychic unit that mingles representations of both articulatory and acoustic processes. In 1894, Baudouin de Courtenay referred to the phoneme as to a psychic equivalent of a sound, opposing it to its physical realization. The Prague School

25

An outstanding representative of the Prague school, N. Trubetzkoy, was extremely influenced by B. de Courtenays psychological approach to the phoneme. He elaborated the system of phonology based on key concepts such as phonological oppositions, archiphoneme, neutralization, rules for determining phonemes. He tried to define the phoneme from the point of view of its function in the language system. Roman Jakobsons theory was based on Saussures idea about the phonemes as oppositional units. The relations between phonemes were claimed to be those of binary oppositions. He then tried to define each phoneme by an exhaustive set of distinctive features. The Russian and the Soviet Phonological School (L.V. Serba, A.A. Reformatskij, R.I. Avanesov) has had an important contribution in linguistics and phonology. Russian linguists developed their phonological theories in contradistinction to the Prague school; they often mingled phonetics with phonology. However, they laid emphasis on the worddifferentiating function of phonemes. The London School Daniel Jones, J. R.Firth. Jones distinguishes the phoneme as a family of sounds which occur in the speech of a single person. He was aware of the importance of establishing a simple and coherent system of phonetic transcription for languages. He proposed that an unambiguous system of transcription where each symbol stands for each phoneme be the solution. According to Firth, the theory of the phoneme is linked to the study of the word, because the substitution of one sound for another may produce different lexical units, a different form or a different function of a sentence. The Copenhagen School Louis Hjelmslev For Hjelmslev a phoneme, being an entity, has a value, a content (a functional destination in the phonemic system of a language); a form (it occupies a certain place within the phonemic sytem); and an expression (a materialization). He is of the opinion that the expression of a phoneme is independent of its form and content. By the method of commutation Hjelmslev established phonemes. The American School Edward Sapirs conception of the phoneme is close to that of the Prague School, although psychological considerations are complemented by a functional perspective. Leonard Bloomfield, dealing with types of phonemes, distinguished simple primary phonemes from compound phonemes (e.g. diphthongs) and secondary phonemes ((suprasegmentals). Generative phonology has been modelled by Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle (cf. Chomsky & Halle 1968) as part of generative grammar. As input of the phonological component of the language faculty in this
26

framework serve syntactic surface structures, where each terminal node (or each lexical item) has its specific phonological feature representation. Optimality Theory (OT) is the most influential linguistic theory of the 1990s (Prince & Smolensky 1993). It originated in research on phonology but has been extended to other areas in linguistic theory. OT suggests that Universal Grammar contains a set of constraints that are all violable and which represent universal properties of language. The ranking of these constraints is language specific, thus giving rise to variation between languages. The term phoneme was introduced in Romanian linguistics by Sextil Puscariu and Al. Rosetti in the 1930s. Other important considerations were contributed later on by I. Iordan and F. Seidel. The founder of the Romanian phonological school is considered to be Emil Petrovici who, influenced by a functional approach, presented his view on the phoneme in his studies centered on the softening of the Romanian consonants.

Notes

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Rosenberg, Matt. English Speaking Countries. Available online at http://geography.about.com/od/politicalgeography/a/englishcountry.htm [15th Nov. 2007] 2 Lovgren, Stefan. English in Decline as a First language. In National Geographic, Feb 24, 2006. Available online at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/02/0226_040226_language.html [15th Nov. 2007] 3 Language and Culture. An Introduction to Human Communication. Available online at http://anthro.palomar.edu/language/language_1.htm [15th Nov. 2007] 4 Mateescu, Dan.2002. English phonetics and Phonological Theory. Bucuresti: Editura Universitii Bucuresti. p. 73. 5 Bickford, A. J. and David Tuggy. Electronic Glossary of Linguistic Terms. Available online at http://www.sil.org/Mexico/ling/Glosario/E005bi-OrgansArt.htm [15th Nov. 2007] 6 Ladefoged, Peter. A Course in Phonetics. Available online at http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/chapter8/8.7.htm [15th Nov. 2007] 7 Encyclopdia Britannica. Ear: hearing mechanism. Available online at http://www.britannica.com/eb/art536/The-mechanism-of-hearing [15th Nov. 2007] 8 ***.1999. Handbook of the International Phonetic Association. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p.3 9 The International Phonetic Association. Available online at http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/ipa/fullchart.html [15th Nov. 2007]
1

10

Omniglot.

Writing

systems

and

languages

of

the

world.

Available

online

at

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/english.htm [15th Nov. 2007] 11 Halle, Morris and G. N. Clements.1983. Problem Book in Phonology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. p.121. 12 see also Phonology LIN3010. Lecture 10. 2/2/07. Available online at http://grove.ufl.edu/~rhabib/Lecture10phonologicalanalysis4.3&4.6.pdf [15th Nov. 2007] 13 Roach, Peter J. 2004. English Phonetics and Phonology: A Practical Course. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p.240. 14 Introduction to Linguistics. Phonology Class 3. Available online at http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Linguistics-and-Philosophy/24-900Spring-2005/6996F887-2D28-4438-8D6D14C2B91CBBA0/0/24_phon_2_1.pdf [15th Nov. 2007]
15 16

A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in a language. Phonologically conditioned variants of a single morpheme are called allomorphs. 17 Cf. Goglniceanu, Clina.2003. Introduction to Linguistics. Iai: Institutul European. p.63-82.