Phonetics and Phonology

Phonetics & Phonology

Phonetics and Phonology

INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE

Introduction to the Course (Why studying phonetics and phonology?)

In a very simple sense, ‘linguistics’ is the study of language; how it is put together and how it
functions. In other words, various building blocks of different types and sizes are combined to make up a
language. For example, sounds are brought together and sometimes when this happens; they change their
form and do interesting things (phonetics and phonology). Words are arranged in a certain order (syntax),
and sometimes the beginnings and endings of the words are changed to adjust the meaning (morphology).
Then the meaning itself can be affected by the arrangement of words (semantics) and by the knowledge of
the speaker about what the hearer will understand (pragmatics). Linguistics is the study of all of these
fields.

So, like other branches, such as syntax, morphology and semantics, phonetics and phonology is
the branch of linguistics which deals with the human speech sounds. It is the study of the description of
speech sounds such as vowels (monophthongs and diphthongs) and consonants. In this subject, we study
the sets of phonemes and sound patterns (e.g., dynamic; as in connected speech, and static; as in isolation)
within a human language. Among other things, expertise in phonetics and phonology enable researchers
to describe spoken languages which are not yet documented thus proving very important for language
documentation and language description. Similarly, it is an important field for typological studies and for
cross linguistic comparisons and generalizations in terms of sound systems (languages) and their
classifications.

Introduction to Vowels and Consonants

Human sounds are divided into two broad categories: consonants and vowels. A consonant is a
speech sound in which air is at least partly blocked whereas vowel is a sound in which there is no
obstruction found and the air passes through the cavity freely. Moreover, a consonant is classified in
terms of the places and manners of articulation and voicing whereas a vowel is classified in terms of the
position of tongue, the part of tongue and lip-rounding. Vowels are further classified in terms of pure
vowels (monophthongs) and diphthongs.

Introduction to English Vowels

There are 44 sounds in English RP (BBC) accent. Out of them, 20 are vowels which, in turn, are
further divided into pure vowels and diphthongs. Pure vowels or monophthongs are 12 out of which 5 are
long and 7 are short vowels. Examples for these vowel sounds are given here:

Short vowels
• ɪ pit
• e pet
• æ pat
• ʌ putt
• ɒ pot
• ʊ put
 • ǝ another

Long vowels
• iː bean
• ɑː barn
• ɔː born
• uː boon
• ɜː burn

Introduction to English Diphthongs

English diphthongs are divided into two categories: centering (which end with ‘ǝ’ sound) and
closing (which end with either ‘ɪ’ or ‘ʊ’ sounds respectively). Examples for these diphthongs are given
below:

Diphthongs
• ɪǝ peer
• eǝ pair
• ʊǝ poor
• eɪ bay

• aɪ buy
• ɔɪ boy
• ǝʊ no

aʊ now
•

Introduction to English Consonants

English sounds are briefly introduced here:

• Plosives 6
• Nasals 3
• Fricatives 9
• Affricates 2
• Approximants 4

These sounds are presented with examples as follows:

Plosive sounds
• p pin
• b bin
• t tin
• d din
• k kin
• g gum
Nasal sounds
• m sum
• n sun
• ŋ sung
Fricative sounds
• f fine
• v vine
• θ think
• ð this
• s seal
• z zeal
• ʃ sheep
• ʒ measure
• h how

Affricate sounds
• ʧ chain
• ʤ Jane
Approximant sounds
• l light

• r right

• w wet
• j yet

IPA Transcription of English Sounds

As discussed earlier, the RP (BBC) accent of English has 44 sounds. The IPA symbols for
these sounds are given here for your understanding (you can also see them from the IPA charts):

Vowels:
• Long vowels iː ɑː ɔː uː ɜː
• Short vowels ɪ e æ ʌ ɒ ʊ ǝ
• Diphthongs eɪ aɪ ɔɪ ǝʊ aʊ ɪǝ eǝ ʊǝ
Consonants:
• Plosives p b t d k g
• Nasals m n ŋ
• Fricatives f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ h
• Affricates ʧ ʤ
• Approximants l r w j