República Bolivariana de Venezuela

Ministerio del Poder Popular para la Educación

U.E Colegio “Arzobispo Silva”

Mérida- Edo- Mérida

PHONETICS AND
PRONOLOGY

Name: Diego Castro

Age: 4to B

What is Phonetics?

Is the study of speech sounds and their

physiological production and acoustic
qualities. It deals with the configurations
of the vocal tract used to produce
speech sounds (articulatory phonetics), the acoustic properties of speech sounds
(acoustic phonetics), and the manner of combining sounds so as to make syllables,
words, and sentences (linguistic phonetics).

What is Pronunciation?

"Pronunciation" refers to the way in which we make the sound of words. To

pronounce words, we push air from our lungs up through our throat and vocal
chords, through our mouth, past our tongue and out between our teeth and lips.
(Sometimes air also travels through our nose.)

To change the sound that we are making, we mainly use the muscles of our mouth,
tongue and lips to control the shape of our mouth and the flow of air. If we can
control the shape of our mouth and the flow of air correctly, then our pronunciation
is clearer and other people understand us more easily.

Speakers of different languages tend to develop different muscles of the mouth for
pronunciation. When we speak a foreign language, our muscles may not be well
developed for that language, and we will find pronunciation more difficult. By
practising the foreign language pronunciation, our muscles develop and
pronunciation improves.

As well as creating correct vowel and consonant sounds using the muscles of our

mouth, tongue and lips, there are other important aspects of pronunciation,
including:

 word stress - emphasis on certain syllables in a word

 sentence stress - emphasis on certain words in a sentence

 linking - joining certain words together

 intonation - the rise and fall of our voice as we speak

Basic concepts of English phonetics and pronunciation:

We produce language using a number of body parts known as ’speech organs‘ or

articulators. The variety and combination of these articulators is possibly what
really makes human language more diverse and more complex than animal
communications. Here is a useful illustration showing you the parts relevant for
English language.
You will have noticed during your studies that the English spelling system is not
systematic or unambiguous. For instance, gh and ff represent the same sound /f/ in
cough and off, and e is pronounced in different ways in me, met, and English.
Much of this has to do with the fact that the English language has just 26 letters,
but more than 40 sounds, known as phonemes. A phoneme is an abstract unit of
sound, the smallest unit of sound which is connected to meaning. Therefore, if you
change the first sound of the word bat so that the meaning is changed, e.g. to mat,
then you are dealing with phonemes. If, however, you change that sound without
changing the word, for instance by producing the b with a big burst of air, you are
dealing with an allophone, which is a variation in the pronunciation of a phoneme
and does not affect meaning.

Phonemic symbols were developed so that both linguists and language learners
are able to distinguish between sounds without the confusion of English spelling.
Some of these symbols look just like the Roman alphabet you know, but many are
different, and there are several systems. The best known system internationally
and among linguists is the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Phonetic
symbols are always written between slashes, so that the words mat and bat are
transcribed as /mæt/ and /bæt/. These words are an example of a minimal pair, two
words which differ in only one phoneme. Such pairs are useful for practicing both
the production and the reception of such sounds. Allophones, on the other hand,
are written between brackets, so that the sound variation described above is
represented as [bhæt].

Speech Apparatus:

The human vocal apparatus is like two kinds of musical instruments at once: a
wind instrument and a string instrument. This apparatus includes a source of wind
(the lungs), components that vibrate (the vocal cords in the larynx), and a series of
resonant chambers (the pharynx, the mouth, and the nasal cavities). Here is how
all these components work together when you speak.

The first component of this apparatus is the lungs that provide the necessary air
and that can thus be described as the “generator”. When you are speaking, your
inhalations become faster and shorter and you breathe more with your mouth,
whereas otherwise you inhale only with your nose. When you exhale while
speaking, you increase the volume and pressure of your airstream to vibrate the
vocal cords in your larynx.

When you speak, the air expelled from your lungs moves up through the trachea to
the larynx, where it passes over the vocal cords. These cords are a matched pair
of muscles and ligaments, pearly white in colour, 20 to 25 millimetres long, and
coated with mucus. They constitute the second component of your vocal
apparatus: the “vibrator”.

Under the pressure of the air being exhaled, the vocal cords separate, then close
again immediately, causing the air pressure beneath the glottis to increase again.
By opening and closing the glottis rapidly during phonation, the vocal cords thus
release the air from the lungs in a vibrating stream. When you speak a sentence,
you modify the vibration frequency of your vocal cords many times to produce the
acoustic vibrations (sounds) that are the raw materials for the words themselves.

For these sounds to be transformed into words, they must then be shaped by the
rest of the vocal apparatus. The first step in this process occurs in the pharyngeal
cavity, where the respiratory and digestive systems meet. The pharynx and the
other cavities with which it communicates (the nasal cavities, mouth, and larynx)
act as a “resonator” that alters the sounds issuing from your vocal cords, amplifying
some frequencies while attenuating others.

The transformation of the sounds from the larynx is then completed by the position
of the soft palate, tongue, teeth, lips, and other parts of the mouth, which act as
“modulators” for this sound. While the larynx produces the vibrations without which
you would have no voice, it is these other parts of your vocal apparatus that make
your voice so flexible and versatile. They do so in different ways. Your he soft
palate either blocks the passage to the upper nasal cavities or leaves it open so
that the vibrating airstream can enter them. Your jaws open or close to change the
size of the oral cavity. Your tongue changes shape and position to alter this cavity
further. Your tongue and the lips obstruct the airflow through the teeth to varying
extents. The lips also alter their shape—open, closed, pursed, stretched, and so on
—to shape the sound further.

To produce the vowel sound “ee” (as in “teen”), for example, you must move your
tongue toward the front of your palate, which widens the pharyngeal cavity while
raising the larynx slightly. To produce the sound “ah” (as in “far”), you must lower
your jaw and your tongue. To pronounce consonants, you must make various
movements of the tongue and lips. For example, to pronounce an “F”or an “S”, you
move your tongue and lips so as to slow the outgoing airstream. To pronounce a
“B”, “P”, or “T”, you stop the airstream and then release it, with varying degrees of
sharpness. To produce a “V” or a “J”, you make the airstream vibrate, and so on.
What is phonology?

Phonology is the study of the patterns of sounds in a language and across

languages. Put more formally, phonology is the study of the categorical
organization of speech sounds in languages; how speech sounds are organized in
the mind and used to convey meaning. 

Phonology can be related to many linguistic disciplines, including psycholinguistics,

cognitive science, and sociolinguistics and language acquisition. Principles of
phonology can also be applied to treatments of speech pathologies and
innovations in technology. In terms of speech recognition, systems can be
designed to translate spoken data into text. In this way, computers process the
language like our brains do. The same processes that occur in the mind of a
human when producing and receiving language occur in machines. One example
of machines decoding language is the popular intelligence system, Siri.

What are Speech Sounds?

Speech sounds are the vocal sounds we use to make up the words of the English
language. We use them every time we say a word out loud. Saying the right
sounds in the right order is what allows us to communicate with other people and
understand what they are saying.
 It can help to differentiate speech sounds from the alphabet. For example, in
English, the alphabet is made up of 26 letters. The 44 speech sounds in English
are the pure sounds that letters make when spoken, not related to the name of the
letter.

There are 44 speech sounds in English, each with a different letter connection.

Speech sounds only exist as a spoken format, meaning that we cannot officially
spell them out. However, we can use a letter or combination of letters to represent
different speech sounds.

Just like with our written alphabet, we can split speech sounds into two major
categories, vowels & consonants.

Some speech sounds (particularly vowel sounds) can be made up using just one
letter. For example, The 'oo' speech sound just use the letter o, and 'ee' speech
sounds just use the letter e.

A few words that use oo sounds include:

 Boo

 Book

 Look

Examples of words that have an ee sound in are:

 Eel

 Sea

 Sheep

However, there are also lots of speech sounds that are made up of two letters. For
example, the sound 'ew' is made using the letters e and w and the sound 'oe' is
made using the letters o and e.

However, there are also lots of speech sounds among the 44 sounds that are
made up of two letters (this is called a digraph). For example, the sound 'ew' is
made using the letters e and w and the sound 'oe' is made using the letters o and
e.
 Some speech sounds even use three letters - we call this a trigraph (e.g. 'dge').

Words that contain an ew sound include:

 Dew

 Few

 Knew

Examples of words that use an oe sound are:

 Toe

 Foe

 Heroes

What is the difference between Phonetics and Phonology?

Phonetics and phonology are two subfields of linguistics which studies the sounds
in language. Since both these fields are related to the production of sound, many
people do not understand the difference between phonetics and phonology.
The main difference between phonetics and phonology is that phonetics is the
study of speech sounds whereas phonology is the study of sounds, especially
different patterns of sounds in different languages.

Definition
Phonetics is the study of speech sounds.
Phonology is the study of the speech sounds used in a language.
Branch of Linguistics
Phonetics belong to descriptive linguistics.
Phonology belongs to theoretical linguistics.
Areas
Phonetics studies the production, transmission, reception of sound.
Phonology studies different patterns of sounds in different languages.
Specificity
Phonetics does not study one particular language.
Phonology can study one specific language.
 Introduction

Phonetics plays a very important role in improving our communication. All

the alphabets and the words must sound correctly; else the content as well
as our communication will lack lustre and sound unimpressive.

Through the following work, we will discover what phonetics and phonology
are, their basic concepts and other topics related to it.

It is important to preserve this information since it is the basis of speech in

English, without phonetics many things could not exist.

This work is about the sounds we use when we speak (as opposed to the sounds
we make when we’re doing other things). It’s also about the various kinds of
relationship that exist between the sounds we use. That is, it’s about ‘phonetics’ –
the physical description of the actual sounds used in human languages – and it’s
about ‘phonology’ – the way the sounds we use are organised into patterns and
systems.