Phonetics

The level which concerns itself with the smallest units of language is phonetics.
Phonology on the other hand is the functional classification of the sounds of a
particular language. It is the system of sounds by means of which meanings
are differentiated in a language and which serve as the building blocks for the
higher linguistic levels, e.g. morphology.
Phonetics is the study of human sounds in general without saying what
function which sounds may have in a particular language. The term phonetics
is, however, often used with reference to one language when the emphasis is
on the pronunciation of this language. For instance, a book on The phonetics of
English would be about how to pronounce English correctly and not necessarily
about the functions which the sounds may have in the phonological system of
the language.
It is customary to divide the field of phonetics into three branches as follows.

1)

articulatory phonetics (emission of sounds)

2)

acoustic phonetics

(transmission of sounds)

3)

auditive phonetics

(reception of sounds)

Sounds can be divided into consonants and vowels. The former can be
characterised according to 1) place, 2) manner of articulation and 3) voice
(voiceless or voiced). For vowels one uses a coordinate system called a vowel
quandrangle within which actual vowel values are located. See the detailed
discussion below
Terms in phonetics
In any language there will be sounds which are used to differentiate meaning
and those which do not serve this function. To cope with this situation
descriptively one needs a number of terms to start with.
Phone This is the smallest unit of human sound which is recognisable but not
classified. The delimiters used are square brackets: [ ]. Examples: [p], [i:], [t] all
of which are found in English peat, [b], [], [g] all of which are found in Irish
bog soft. Phones are unclassified in that nothing is said of their function in the
sound system of a language. They are thus different from allophones (see next
paragraph but one).

Phoneme This is the smallest unit of language which distinguishes meaning, it

is the organisational unit of phonology, the study of the sound system of a
language or languages. Phonemes are written in slashes: / /. Examples of
phonemes are /k/ and /g/ in Irish or English. Their status is shown by finding
minimal pairs in which the only difference is between the two sounds in
question, e.g. cot and got in English or cl left-hand (side) and gl clear,
lucid in Irish.

Remember that phonemes are sound units and independent of letters which
are the representation of sounds in writing without, however, a necessary oneto-one relationship between each. In Irish there is a general rule that palatal
sounds are flanked by either <i> or <e> and non-palatal (velarised) sounds by
<a>, <o> or <u>. This rule for writing is called caol le caol, leathan le
leathan in Irish, i.e. narrow with narrow, broad with broad.

Allophone This term has two basic meanings. a) the realisation of a phoneme;
b) non-distinctive variants of a phoneme. Allophones are written in square
brackets: [ ]. Examples of allophones are provided by different sounds in a
language which do not change the meaning of a word, e.g. the aspirated and
unaspirated /t/ in Irish in tu [ti:] straw and stad [stad] stop of Irish. An
English example would be the alveolar (word-initial) and the velarised (wordfinal) /l/ of English as in leap [li:p] and deal [di:l] respectively. Note that in Irish
the latter two sounds are not allophones but phonemes as minimal pairs like l
[l:] day and le [l:] melt demonstrate.

Procedures for determining a phoneme In the majority of cases it is clear what

phonemes are, /p/ and /t/ or /s/ and /f/ are clear instances in Irish and English.
There are however borderline cases. Consider the case of English /h/ and // as
in hat [ht] and sing [s]. The former does not occur in syllable-final position
and the latter only occurs in syllable-final position, i.e. [t] and [sh] are
impossible sound sequences in English. So one could imagine that they are
allophones of the same phoneme in complementary distribution, like [l] and
[l]. However, the sounds are so phonetically dissimilar that it would be
nonsensical to consider them as two realisations of the same phoneme. In Irish,
the matter is clearer as both /h/ and // can occur in word-initial position, cf. a
hainm her name and a nguonna [-] their prayers, and so their phonemic
status is obvious.

Not all phonemes in a language have the same functional load. For instance,
the difference between /s/ and /z/ or /f/ and /v/, i.e. the distinction between
voiceless and voiced sounds, is essential to the English language as the many
minimal pairs prove, e.g. sue /su:/ : zoo /zu:/, feel /fi:l/ : veal /vi:l/. However, the
number of words which are distinguished by a voiceless ambidental fricative
and a voiced ambidental fricative are few and far between: in initial position
the only word pair is thy [ai] and thigh [ai]. In final position there are a few
more with pairs like teeth [ti:] and teethe [ti:]. The reason why the two
sounds // and // have not collapsed to a single one in the history of English is
probably because the distinction in voice is so central to the phonology of the
language.
In Irish, the functional load of // is much lower than /x/. The latter occurs in
many more words than does the former which is additionally restricted to
mutated words (a ghualainn / uln/ his shoulder) and a few grammatical
words like d [o:] for him.

Structural considerations Another instance where one may have difficulties

determining phonemes is where one is dealing with more than one sound.
Clusters of consonants may exist in different languages on a phonetic level but
have a different status in each. For example, in English and Irish the sound
sequence [t] is found. In Irish, however, it really occurs only when /x/ and /s/
come together as part of a verb structure, e.g. bheadh s /ve:x/ + /se:/ >
[ve:te:] he would be. This means that there is always a morpheme boundary
between the /x/ and the /s/ in Irish. In English, however, one has [t] as part of
lexical stems as in chop /tp/ and cheat /ti:t/. Hence one can analyse /t/ for
English as an indivisible cluster, i.e. as a single phoneme.

Minimal pairs It was said above that the phoneme is the smallest unit of
language which distinguishes meaning. This definition implies that one can find
sets of words which are differentiated only by the sounds in a single slot. Any
such set of words is called a minimal pair as the words in question are
minimally different on the sound level. This principle applies to all languages as
each language avails of the contrasts which can be constructed using the
distinctive sounds of that language. Pairs like stop /stp/ vs. step /stp/ or
railing /reil/ vs. sailing /seil/ illustrate the principle in English as do Kunst
/kunst/ art and Gunst /gunst/ favour in German, zub /zub/ tooth vs. sup
/sup/ soup in Russian, fiach /fix/ hunt vs. liach /lix/ calamity in Irish.

Bracketing Slashes (also called obliques) are used to enclose phonological units
(phonemes), e.g. /i:/, /k/, /au/ while square brackets [] enclose the realisations
of these units. If two realisations are non-distinctive, that is do not cause a
different in meaning, then they can be assigned to one phoneme, e.g. in Irish
/a/ has the realisation [a] after non-palatal consonants and [] after palatal
ones as in slacht and teacht respectively. In addition these realisastions can
occur long, as in Cois Fharraige Irish (on the coast west of Galway city). The
length distinction is not distinctive because [txt] and [t:xt] are still the
same word, teacht, i.e. they do not cause a change in meaning.
In Irish phonetic studies, bracketing is not normally used. Instead
transcriptions are usually given in bold type.

Phonotactics This is the area which is concerned with the possible sequences of
sounds in a language. For instance, there is a word in English with a syllablefinal /-kt/ but there is no word ctaf as /kt-/ cannot occur at the beginning of a
syllable. Another example of a phonotactic restriction can be seen with the
vowel // which occurs in closed syllables but not in open ones, e.g. dove /dv/
is a permissible word in English but /d/ is not because the syllable is not
closed by a consonant at the end. Irish is different in this respect as it does
allow this vowel word-finally, cf. scoth /sk/ pick, choice (adj.). It also permits
sequences at the beginnings of words which are not possible in English, e.g.
/sr-/ as in srid /sr:d/ street, /tn-/ as in tnuth /tnu:/ envy or /dl-/ as in dl
/dli:/ law.

Prosody This area is concerned with features of words and sentences above the
level of individual sounds, e.g. stress, pitch, intonation. The stressed syllable of
a word is indicated by a superscript vertical stroke placed before the syllable in
question, e.g. scadn /skd:n/ herring (Western Irish). Stress varies in Irish
with Southern Irish showing stress on non-initial long vowels, e.g. scadn
/skd:n/. Western and Northern Irish both share initial stress with such words.
Consonants

These are sounds which involve some constriction of the vocal tract during
their articulation. The degree of constriction can be very slight as with /w/ or /j/,
cf. wet /wet/ and yes /jes/ respectively, or can be total as with stops, e.g. /p, t,
k/ in words like English pea, tea, key, Irish pioc pick, tac support, cabhair
help.

In order to characterise the articulation of consonants, reference is usually

made to three aspects, yielding so-called three-term labels. These cover the
majority of cases in English and most other languages. The first term of these
labels refers to the point in the vocal tract where constriction occurs. The
second term refers to the manner of constriction. e.g. whether there is
complete closure as with stops or only approximation as with fricatives. The
third aspect refers to the presence or absence of voice, i.e. whether the vocal
folds are vibrating during the articulation of a sound or not. For Irish an
additional factor plays a central role, namely whether the consonant in
question is palatal or non-palatal.

1) Place
2) Manner of articulation
3) Voice (voiceless or voiced)
4) Palatal or non-palatal