3. Phonology Flashcards
What is phonology?
Phonology refers to the study of the sound features used in a language to communicate meaning.
Which are the sound features in English?
- Phonemes.
- Word stress.
- Sentence stress.
- Intonation.
What’s a phoneme?
A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that can make a difference to meaning in a language.
How the phonemes of a language are represented in writing?
They are represented by phonemic symbols. They are often shown in a phonemic chart.
How does the phonemic chart group sounds?
- Vowels ( sounds made with the mouth partly open and where the air is not stopped by the tongue, lips or teeth).
- Diphthongs (a movement between one vowel sound to another within a single syllabe).
- Consonants (the flow of air is partly stopped by the tongue, lips or teeth).
What is word stress?
Is the pronunciation of a syllable with more force or emphasis than the sorrounding syllables which are said to be unstressed.
What is sentence stress?
It refers to the way some words in a sentence are stressed. In English these are usually the information-carrying words.
What is rhythm?
The patterns of stress in connected speech.
What is intonation?
It is the way a speaker changes the level of his voice to show meaning.
What is contrastive stress?
It envolves putting the stress in different words of a sentence.
What is sound discrimination?
Hearing the differences between sounds, particularly minimal pairs, e.g. lot/not.
