PHONOLOGY

Lecture 1
I. Consonants
- Sounds articulated by air stream, closure or stricture
- The air stream through the vocal organs be obstructed in some way – classified:
+ place of articulation
 Bilabial:
 Labio-dental:
 Inter-dental/ dental:
 Alveolar:
 Alveolo-palatal:
 Palatal: /j/
 Velar:
 Glottal: /h/
+ manner of articulation: air stream is obstructed in the production of speech sounds ->
describes types of obstruction
 Stop/ Plosive:
 Nasal (stop):
/p/, /b/ - /m/
/t/, /d/ - /n/
/k/, /g/ - /ng/

 Fricative (Spirant): - make them as long as having

enough air in lungs

 Affricative:
 Approximant (frictionless continuant)
 Lateral: /l/
 Retroflex: /r/
 Glide (semi-vowel): /w/, /j/

+ voicing:

 Voiced:

 Voiceless:
- Description: Voicing – place – manner
 Lecture 2
II. Vowels
- The passage of air stream is unobstructed and air can get out freely
- Depend on variations in the position of the tongue, normally voiced
- Classification: 3 variables:

+ tongue height
 High vowels:
 Mid vowels:

 Low vowels:
+ part of the tongue which is raised
 Front vowels:
 Central vowels:

 Back vowels:
+ Degree of lip rounding
 Rounded:

 Neutral:
 Unrounded:
1. Long and short vowels
- Long: /i:/, /u:/
- Short:
2. Diphthongs
- A glide from one vowel to another, the whole glide acts like one of the long simple vowels
- Classification:
+ Centring: ending in
+ Closing:
 
- Describe:
+ Vowel: long/ short – high/low – front/back – rounded/ unrounded

EX:
+ Diphthong: Height – part of tongue – to – height – part diphthong

EX:

- Identification:

Lecture 3

III. Phonemes vs Allophones:

- The smallest segment of sound which can distinguish 2 words
1. Minimal pairs:

EX: pit – bit; pet – bet, back – bag

2. Phonemes
- 44: 24 consonants + 20 vowels
- Meaningless in isolation, only meaningful when combined with other phonemes
3. Allophones
- The variants of phonemes that occur in speech
- The way a phoneme is pronounced is conditioned by the sounds around it or by its position in
the word (ở vị trí khác nhau thì đọc âm khác nhau)

EX:

4. Symbols

Phonemic Phonetic
 Symbols for phonemes  Symbols for allophones
 The number of phonemic symbols  Give accurate label to represent sounds
must be same as number of phonemes more accurately
 44 phonemic symbols

5. Phonemic/ broad transcription
 EX:

6. Phonetic/ narrow transcription

EX:

Lecture 4 – Syllable structure & Suprasegmental features

I. Syllable structure
- Syllable (âm tiết) - A unit consisting of a vowel as the center (nucleus) and/ or consonant(s)
before and after it (chứa 1 nguyên âm ở giữa hoặc 1 phụ âm trước và sau nó)

EX: are; no

- Can be a part of a word or can coincide with a word (có thể là phần của 1 từ hoặc đồng thời là 1
từ)
1. The nature of syllables:
- A minimum syllable is a single vowel in isolation (âm tiết tối thiểu là 1 nguyên âm đứng riêng lẻ)

EX: a

- Some have an onset (phần đầu tiên của âm tiết)

Onset is a consonant or consonant blend at the beginning of a word that precedes the first vowel. It can be
one, two, or three letters long.
EX: Cat

- Some have no onset but have coda (termination) (phần cuối của âm tiết)

Coda appears at the end of the syllable

- Some have both an onset and a coda

The nucleus is a vowel that forms the core of the syllable

EX: pin - one syllable => [p] - onset, [i ] – nucleus, [n]- coda

2. Structure

3. Syllable division
- Maximum onset principle:
+ Consonants are assigned to the right-hand syllable as far as possible within the restrictions governing
syllable onsets and codas (Các phụ âm được gán cho âm tiết bên phải càng xa càng tốt trong các hạn chế
chi phối các onsets và coda của âm tiết)

+ Restrictions:

 No word begins > 3 consonants

 // ends > 4 //
 No one-syllable word ends with a short vowel

Ex: extra ->

+ Ambisyllabicity: when a consonant stands between vowels and it is difficult to assign the consonant to
one syllable or the other (Lưỡng âm tiết: khi một phụ âm đứng giữa các nguyên âm và rất khó để gán
phụ âm đó cho âm tiết này hay âm tiết kia)

II. Suprasegmental features

1. Stress
- An extra force exerted on a particular syllable or a particular word I spoken language
- The stressed syllable or word is said with greater energy and stands out in a word, phrase or
sentence

EX:

2. Types of stress
a. Word stress: put on a particular syllable in a sentence, often fixed

EX:

b. Sentence stress: put on a particular word in a sentence, depends on the speaker’s feelings and
attitudes, message he wants to get across to the listener
3. Nature of stress
4. Levels of stress
a. Primary stress (tonic/nuclear)
- The strongest

- Marked by
b. Secondary stress (non-tonic)
- Weaker than primary one, but stronger than unstressed syllables
-
-
c. Unstressed

4. Functions of stress
a. Distinguish diff parts of speech (noun, verb,…)
b. Distinguish a word from a phrase

c. Dist parts of speech of derivationally related words

d. Dist between function words and content words

- Function words are generally unstressed -> reduced to weak form
- Content words are stressed
e. Provide contrastive emphasis

f. Signal new as opposed to old/given infor

III. Intonation
- The patterns of pitch variation in a sentence
- A meaningful suprasegmental feature of speech
+ affect the sentence’s meaning
+ indicate the attitude or relation of the speaker to the hearer
+ Show various contextual features
1. Common intonation patterns

2. Tone group

3. Tonic syllable