Phonetics & Phonology Basic Definitions Lecture No. 1 Syllabus approved by HEC

 

Basic Definitions of Phonetics & Phonology

Phonetics & Phonology

Lecture No. 1

HEC based Syllabus

                                                  Phonetics

Phonetics is the study of the physical manifestation of the sounds of language, their production, transmission and perception. It provides methods for the description, classification, and transcription” of the human speech sounds (Crystal 2008).

Phonetic is derived from the Greek word phone, which means sound or voice, and used first in the early 1800s. Phonetic is the sub-discipline in linguistics that is concerned with the pronunciation and sounds of language.

People engaged in the study of phonetics are known as phoneticians. Phoneticians find the ways of describing and analysing the sounds that humans use in a language in an objective way.

                             Three Branches of Phonetics

Articulatory phonetics is the study of the ways of the production and articulation of speech sounds by the vocal organs, or production of sounds from lungs to lips.

Acoustic phonetics studies the physical properties (amplitude, intensity, frequency, duration) of speech sound, as transmitted between mouth to ear, and objective in nature.

Auditory phonetics studies the perceptual (loudness, pitch, quality, length) response to speech sounds, as mediated by ear, auditory nerve and brain, as well as, subjective in nature.

                                             Phonology

Phonology is the branch of linguistics, that study the ways in which sounds are used in different languages to form syllables and words by following some system. It is the study of the systems/ or patterns of sounds of a particular language, internal structure of sounds, and their composition into syllables, Sound-change rules and ordering of words and phrases.

Phonology is the speakers’ unconscious knowledge about the sound pattern of language. It is abstract or mental knowledge about the sounds of the language that is in the speakers’ minds. As said earlier, it is the mental or unconscious speakers’ knowledge of sounds patterns, so it is theoretical in nature as compared to the phonetics that is the practical one.

Phone

Phone is the Greek word, used for sound or voice. It is the smallest perceptible discrete segment of sound in a stream of speech” (Crystal, 2008), For example, /p/, /t/, /d/, /k/,/g/ are phone without any concern to the meaning or syntactic system of words. 

The phone is the wave of  single sound or vibration, that do not have concern with the sound of a specific language. It is simply recognizable by the seeker of language and represented by enclosing in brackets like [p].

Phoneme

Phoneme is the smallest contrastive unit of language (linguistic unit), which brings change in meaning. It is abstract in nature and can be realized by the comparison of words, e.g. tap vs tab,     tin vs bin, big vs bag. Phoneme is an abstract segment and based on the spoken language, and is written between slashes / /.

                        Summary/ Important Points

1. Phonetics is the study of production, transmission and perception      of speech sounds.

2. The method of the description, classification, and transcription of        sounds is phonetics.

3. Phonetic has three offshoots, articulatory, acoustic and auditory phonetics.

4. The study of the patterns and system of producing different                syllables, words and sounds depending on the context is                 phonology.

5. The speakers’ unconscious and abstract cognitive knowledge of           sounds is phonology.

6. Phone is an individual part of the sound expresses by the speaker         in the stream of speech.

7. The smallest/contrastive linguistic unit of speech that bring         change  in meaning is phoneme.

                                                 Questions

1. How does the human vocal tract work to produce sounds?

2. How do the shapes of different morphemes vary depending on their context and on their position in a word or sentence?

3. Who are the Phoneticians?

4.  What are the types of Phonetics?

5.   Define phone & Phoneme.

6.   Differentiate between phonetics & Phonology.

Tick true or false.

1.      1. The physical manifestation of the sounds of language is called         phonology. 

     2. Phonology is the abstract or theoretical knowledge of sounds in speakers’ subconscious.

3.    3. The study of patterns and rule to forms different speech sound is the study of phonology.

4.    4. The smallest linguistic unit of sound, which brings changes in the  meaning is called phoneme.