Introduction
to Phonology
Speech
sounds are very important for human languages, and the study of speech sounds
is phonetics. The study of speech sound then include three aspects:
1. How
the sounds are produced
2. How
they are transmitted
3. How
they are perceived
The
study of production of speech sounds constitutes three aspects:
1. Articulatory
phonetics = The study of the production of speech
sounds
2. Acoustic
phonetics = The study of the transmission and the
physical properties of speech sounds
3. Auditory
phonetics = The study of the perception of speech
sounds
The
study of articulatory phonetics has had the longest history among the three
sub- branches of phonetics, probably due to the fact that it is relatively easy
to observe articulatory processes. But acoustic phonetics has developed only in
the last few decades. In contrast to articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics
relies on the heavy use of sophisticated instruments in a way that is similar
to the study of acoustics in physics.
The
study of articulatory phonetic has three subparts:
1. We
study the articulation (production) of speech sounds
2. We
describe the sounds in a way that is understood by other linguists in the field
3. We
classify sounds according to the properties they have
Orthography
is spelling system. Orthography transcription is a transcription method that
employs the sound of words. As you have probably noticed, our English spelling
systems often fails to represent in an unambiguous way the sound of words. Let
see the example below:
Ë The italicized letters represent
the same sounds: to,
too, two, though, clue etc.
Ë The same spelling can represent
different sounds: charter,
character, though, tough, sign, resign, thin, then etc.
Ë A combination of letters may
represent only one sound: character, though, tough, deal, physics etc.
Ë A combination of sounds is
represented by a single letter: exit, axe, etc.
Ë The letters represent so sound at
all:
though, often, bomb, make, pneumonia
etc.
In
a phonetics alphabet, there is a one to one correspondence between sounds and
symbols. Phonetic symbols are written within square brackets, “[ ]”, to distinguish them from letters or words
written in an ordinary spelling system (orthography).
We
saw in the previous section that phonetics is the subfield of linguistics
concerned with the description of speech sounds. The subfield known as phonology
is concerned with how these sounds are systematically organized in a language,
how they are combined to form words, how they are categorized by, and
interpreted in, the minds of speakers.
Put simply, phonology is the study of the sounds patterns of language, how
speech sound are grouped by speakers to effect communication.
For example it is a fact of English that the sound sequence [ ps ] never occurs
at the beginning of a word – although it can occur word-medially as in [ k æ
psul ] ‘capsule’ or word-finally as in [ t æ ps ] ‘taps’. Phonology also deals
with the abstract, or psychological, level of sounds, the level at which speech
sounds are stored in our minds. For example, the t of top is phonetically
realized as the aspirated [ 
], the t
of stop as the unaspirated [ t
], and (in American English) the t
of kitten as the glottal stop [ ? ].
Speech sounds at this abstract level are called phonemes while those at
the concrete or phonetic level are known as allophones.
], the t
of stop as the unaspirated [ t
], and (in American English) the t
of kitten as the glottal stop [ ? ].
Speech sounds at this abstract level are called phonemes while those at
the concrete or phonetic level are known as allophones.
When
the speech sound as stored in our minds like the /t/ above, differs from the
physical sound as it is spoken. Like the [ t ] of kitten, it is because the /t/ has undergone an alteration. We say
that the /t/ has been changed to a [ ? ] by the application of a type of rule
known as a phonological process. In studying language it is important to
distinguish between phonemes and allophones because this distinction is an
important fact about language. The linguistic performs what is known as a phonemic
analysis.
Finally,
not all languages have the same sound systems or permit the same combinations
of sounds in words. For example, the sound system of English does not contain
the voiceless velar fricative /x/ that is found in German (in the word Bach
/bax/) and while English, does not permit word-initial [ ps ] sequences, a
language such as Greek does; in fact words like pseudo, psyche, and psychiatrist are borrowed from
Greek.
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