Phonetics Flashcards
Dialect
Acrolect - prestigious
Mesolect - between
Basilect - low class
Idiolect - specific way of pronouncing things typical for specific person
variety
= refers to any distinct form of English, we do not have to distinguish between accent and dialect
Prague variety of Czech, London variety of English
phoneme
smallest unit that distinguishes meaning within a specific sound system
allophone
= actual sound uttered by speaker and interpreted as one phoneme despite possible phonic difference
r is different for France or England
articulation
primary articulation = manner, place of articulation, not a lot lip rounding
secondary articulation = there is an additional thing that we perform when articulating the sound, usually it is because of some other sounds that follow, e.g. shoe = labialization
phonemes are divided into:
segmentals = segment = phone = the smallest perceptible sound you can make, typically vowels (a,e,i,o,u) and consonants
suprasegmentals = also called prosody, concerned with characteristics stretching over more than one segment e.g. syllables, sentence/word stress, rhythm, tempo, intonation
minimal pairs
bit X pit, sets of two words in the same language that sound the same except for one sound (vowel, consonant, stress, etc.) and have different meanings, bit X bet X bat
minimal sets
= sets of distinct words in a language which differ in only one or a limited number of phonological elements, if there are two words in the set it is a minimal pair, e.g. pit X sit X kid
weak v. strong forms
= grammatical words like should, could, these words have no stress, and so they are weakened. That weakened form is called “weak form” as opposed to a “strong form”, which is the full form of the word pronounced with stress. The strong form only happens when we pronounce the words alone, or when we emphasize them.
vowel reduction
vowels which are not under stressed are reduced
intelligibility
= the recognition of a word and/or grammatical structure of an utterance., usually refers to speech perception
comprehensibility
= the recognition of a meaning attached to a word or utterance, i.e. an understanding of a possible meaning, usually refers to what is conveyed
who came up with standard lexical sets
J C Wells
Intelligibility Principle
means that “a speaker’s message is actually understood” (Levis 2018: 2).
It consists of the following levels:
a/ identification of the words spoken (easily tested by transcriptcion)
b/ understanding the message
c/ understanding the intent of the message = pragmatic level
Comprehensibility
refers to the “degree of effort involved in understanding the message” (Levis 2018: 3).
These two notions (intelligibility) correlate but are not identical.
They are crucial in the assessment of a particular accent.
Both are compromised by other features, such as noise, a speaking rate, cultural differences, etc.
Intelligibility v. Nativeness Principle
In the nativeness-based approach, there is no need to prioritise which features to teach/learn (learners have to learn everything->perfect imitation),
In the intelligibility-based approach, the goal is “the pursuit of skilled rather than native speech” (Levis 2018: 14).
Error gravity
which segmental and suprasegmental features are the most problematic (i.e. they impede understanding):
Lexical Level
content words are more important than function words
common errors
substitution (target sound does not exist in L2 language, replaced by something close to it: /ð/->/d/ in this)
distortion (target sound is distorted so that it is not easily identifiable, i.e. it is somewhere in between two sounds: /β/ in veer or beer
insertion (also called epenthesis: Japanese strike realised as /suturaiku/)
deletion (watched realised as /wɒtʃ/)
Silent letters
/b/: bomb, plumb(er), comb [əʊ], womb [u:], climb, thumb, dumb, debt, doubt… cf. Fr douter, It dubitare;
/g/: gnaw, gnome, gnash, gnarled…;
/k/: knee, knight, knife, knock, knot…;
/w/: write, wrinkle, wrong….;
/p/: psychology, psalm, pterodactyl…;
/c/: scene, muscle, scissors…;
/h/: heir, honour, honest, herb…; /h/-dropping!
/l/: balm, psalm, yolk, half, calf…;
/n/: column, autumn, damn, hymn…;
/w/: answer, sword, two…;
/g/: height, right, design, reign, campaign…;
/t/: castle, bustle, hustle…
-pche words
apostrophe /əˈpɒstrəfi/
catastrophe /kəˈtastrəfi/
strophe /ˈstrəʊfi/
three interdependent viewpoints:
articulatory (speech production)
acoustic (transmission of sound)
auditory (perception of sound)
phonological statement vs phonetic statement
PHONETIC STATEMENT: /b/ is a voiced bilabial plosive.
PHONOLOGICAL STATEMENT: there are 6 short vowels in English.
Contrastive distribution
Two phonemes (never allophones) appearing in the same environment and with a change in meaning:
pit and bit – minimal pairs
pit, bit, kit, lit, sit; beat, bean, beam, beef, bees – sets of minimal pairs
Complementary distribution
/l/ - clear [l] light v. dark [ɫ] till – the two allophones are in complementary distribution (i.e. one or the other)
Other examples of complementary distribution:
[p] in spare, supper (after a voiceless alveolar fricative and intervocalically preceding an unstressed vowel) v. [pʰ] in pear (syllable-initial preceding a vowel under stress).
Free variation
The varied quality of /r/, namely e.g. [ɹ] in RP red, [ɾ] in Scottish terrible, [ʁ] in French rouge or in traditional Northumbrian accent. These allophones are in free variation.
Other examples of free variation: /t/-glottaling in right [ɹaɪʔ]; Czech long /a/.
the phonemic principle
Two or more sounds are realisations of the same phoneme if
(a) they are in complementary distribution and;
(b) they are phonetically similar (cf. /h/ and /ŋ/).
two or more sounds are realisations of different phonemes if
(a) they are in contrastive distribution;
(b) they serve to signal a semantic contrast.
Phonemic neutralisation
Two phonemes show overlap in phonetic realisation, i.e. ‘a sound may appear to belong to either of two phonemes’ (Cruttenden 2014: 47)
Examples:
non-aspirated realisation of voiceless plosives after s: /st/ star, /sp/ spar, and /sk/ scar—possible allophones of /d/, /b/, and /g/ respectively?
Archiphoneme
It combines the characteristics of two normally distinct phonemes that cannot be differentiated in certain contexts (environments).
Phonemic merger
Absolute phonemic neutralisation is also called a phonemic merger; i.e. two previously separate phonemes become one.
Example: US English LOT-THOUGHT merger.
English MEET-MEAT merger.
Phonemicisation- phonemic split
Establishment of a new phoneme in a given language (accent).
Also called a phonemic split
Examples:
lowering of EModE blood [ʊ] => [ʌ]-> FOOT-STRUT split
loss of /g/ in –ing endings => new phoneme /ŋ/
TRAP-BATH split in southern varieties of BrE
Phonetic conditioning
Refers to the way in which sounds are influenced by adjacent sounds=>phonemes vary in their realisations according to the phonetic context.
Four main types:
allophonic variation (here dealt with elsewhere);
assimilation;
elision;
liaison.
Assimilation
A phoneme is replaced by another one due to the influence of the preceding/following phoneme.
Types of assimilation:
leading: bad girl in casual speech becomes [bag gɜ:ɫ]; frequent in Italian (Latin octo => It otto)
lagging: on the site [ɒn nəˈsaɪt]
place: woodpecker [ˈwʊbpekə]
manner: till they see [tɪɫ leɪˈsi:]
energy: I have to [aɪˈhaf tə]
Elision
Refers to the deletion of a phoneme.
Examples:
tasteless [ˈteɪsləs];
historically, the silent letters in write, knee, castle, cupboard, chalk, thumb, etc (cf. Session 1).
Liaison (linking)
Refers to the insertion of a phoneme to enable easier articulation of the sequence.
Example:
linking /r/: here is /hɪər ɪz/
intrusive /r/: I saw it [aɪˈsɔ:r ɪt]; the idea of, vodka on ice, etc.
Kazan School of Linguistics
Jan Baudoin de Courtenay (d. 1929), Mikolaj Kruszewski (d. 1887)
physiophonetic v. psychophonetic alternations
