Phonetics and Phonology: Class Notes

Phonetics and Phonology (definitions, activities, branches, phoneme, IPA, RP)

Phonetics

– the science which studies the characteristics of human sound making, especially those used in speech. It is a branch of linguistics concerned with the study of speech sounds and their production, transmission, reception, description, and representation by written symbols. – Major activities: description classification transcription – it can be divided into three branches: articulatory phonetics acoustic phonetics auditory phonetics – Articulatory phonetics - studies the way speech sounds are made (it names and describes organs participating in sound production, describes how sounds are produced) – Acoustic phonetics - studies physical properties of speech sound as transmitted between mouth and ear – Auditory phonetics - studies the perceptual response to speech sounds (describes how the sound is received by the ear, describes the structure and the function of the ear)

Phonology

– a branch of linguistics which studies the sound system of languages – sounds which have distinctive features. The sounds are organized into a system of contrasts which are analyzed in terms of phonemes. – There are two branches of phonology: • segmental phonology (which analyses discrete segments – phonemes) • suprasegmental phonology (which analyses those features which extend over more than one segment – it means, rhythm, stress placement etc.) – Another classification of phonology is the classification into • diachronic phonology (the historical development of sounds) • synchronic phonology (the present systems of various languages)

Phoneme - is a minimal unit in the system of language (Crystal) - the basic unit in phonology - a family