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English Language Composition 4

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34 views2 pages

English Language Composition 4

Uploaded by

twumasisandra8
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We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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o begin our study of the English language we will start off with a consideration of

exactly how human beings are able to communicate with one another using speech.

The most logical way to begin is by focusing on speech sounds. The study of the sounds

that we produce when we engage in spoken communication is called phonetics. In

contrast with other mammals, the human body contains a complex set of equipment,

commonly known as the organs of speech, which enables us to produce spoken

language. The power for all speech sounds emanates from the lungs, travels up the

windpipe, past the vocal cords and then into and out of the mouth or nose.

Individuals who conduct research on speech sounds are known as phoneticians.

Phoneticians investigate the production of speech in one of three ways: through audi-

tory phonetics, which refers to how speech sounds are perceived, through acoustic

phonetics, referring to how speech sounds are made up of physical properties, and

finally through articulatory phonetics, the study of how speech sounds are produced

by the organs of speech known as articulators. The units on sounds in this book (A1–D1)

fall under the third category, articulatory phonetics. This is the area of phonetics that

has the most applicability in an introduction to the English language and it is also the

most accessible area of investigation within phonetic science.

In order to be able to learn about articulatory phonetics as a foundational area

for English language study it is really important for you to test out speech sounds

practically yourself to get to grips with exactly how your own articulators work. Though

articulating individual speech sounds in isolation, without surrounding sounds to give

meaning to the noises that you make, may seem rather strange, as may articulating

seemingly random individual words in isolation, it is the most effective way to learn

about how your organs of speech work. If you are a little reticent to do this at first

you can always lock yourself away in a private room while reading the units on sounds!

Mastering exactly how your organs of speech work is an important step in enabling you

to recognise and describe all of the different sound features of the English language.

Another key area of study in the investigation of sounds is phonology, which is

a very closely related discipline to phonetics. Individuals who specialise in the study
of phonology are known as phonologists. As a general way of distinguishing between

the two disciplinary areas, phonology can be perceived as investigating sounds as an

abstract system, whereas phonetics focuses on the actual sounds as they are spoken

by specific individuals during particular speech events.

However, as you will find with many areas of the English language which we will

study in this book, the boundaries between disciplinary terms can often be fuzzy and

clear delineations between phonetics and phonology are frequently difficult to pin-

point. Overall, it is important to bear in mind that in order to produce a phonetic

analysis of speech in English you need to draw upon the phonological system of the

English language in order to fulfil this task successfully.

Within phonology, the term phoneme refers to a set of abstract units which together

form the sound system of a language. Contrasts in meaning are produced through

directly contrasting phonemes. For example, if we compare /p/ with /t/ as in pip and

tip then a different meaning is created by the contrast. Word pairings where there is

only one sound change between them, as in this example, are known as minimal pairs.

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