Phonology Flashcards
Phonology
The study of the sounf features used in a language to communicate meaning.
Phoneme
The smallest unit of sound that can make a difference to meaning in lenguage.
Sing and Ring are different words just because of the first phoneme.
Phonemic symbol
Represent one phoneme and just one. /s/ or /v/
Phonemic script
Is a set of phonemic symbols which show in writing how words or sounds are pronounced. (The word in symbols is called a phonemic transcription).
Vowels
Sounds made with the moutj partly open and the air isn’t stopped by tongue, teeth or anything. /e/
Diphthongs
A movement from one vowel sound to another within a single syllable. E.g. Make: /meIk/ the sound of ake is just one.
Consonants
The flow of air is partly blocked by the tongue, lips or teeth when these sounds are made. E.g. /b/
Voice sounds
Consonants spoken using the vibration of our voice. E.g. /b/ /d/
Unvoiced sounds
Consonants spoken without using our voice. E.g. /p/ /t/
’ or underlined word
Used to show where the stress in a word is.
Sentence stress
How sentences of groups of words are pronounced. We say different parts of one sentence with more or less stress. Slower and louder, quicker and softly.
Primary or Main stress
The word which the speaker thinks is most important to the meaning of the sentence. It usually falls in nouns verbs, adjectives or adverbs.
Secondary stress
It falls on words which are not so important to the meaning of the sentence.
Content words
Words that give information. E.g. nouns, verbs, adverbs or adjectives.
Structural words
Words that we use to build the grammar of the sentence. E.g. prepositions, articles, pronouns or determiners.
Contrastive stress
Putting the stress in an unexpected word in a sentence (like structural words).
Connected speech
Spoken language in which all the words join to make a connected stream of sounds.
Contractions
A characteristic of Connected speech. E.g. don’t, haven’t.
Weak forms
A characteristic of Connected speech. They are syllable sounds that become unstressed in connected speech and are often then pronounced as a schwa. E.g. In the sentence below the first ‘do’ is a weak form and the second is stressed.
“What do you want to do this evening?”
Rhythm
Pattern of stress in connected speech.
Linking
It´s joined words together at the word boundaries rather than saying them separately. This happens particularly when one word ends in a consonant soun and the next one starts with a vowel sound. E.g. up above He did it
Intonation
A characteristic of Connected speech. It’s the way a speaker changes the level of their voice to show meaning.
