Unit 2 English Phonetics and Phonology, Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology, The unphonetic character of English Orthography, The need for a phonetic script – phonetics, phonemics, phonics, Aspects of English Language – II, 2nd Year, 4th Semester, BA English Literature syllabus, University of Madras

University of Madras

Syllabus with effect from 2020-2021

BA English Literature

[2^nd Year, 4^th Semester]

ASPECTS OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE – PAPER II

Unit 2: English Phonetics and Phonology -I

2.1 Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology

        Phonetics is the scientific study of the production, transmission and reception of speech sounds. It studies the medium of spoken language. It belongs to the practical application of science to language study. It studies how sounds are articulated by the human speech mechanism and received by the auditory mechanism, how sounds can be distinguished and characterized by the manner in which they are produced.

The study of phonetics can be divided into three main branches: Acoustic, Auditory and Articulatory.

Acoustic Phonetics: Acoustic phonetics is the study of the physical properties of speech sounds such as frequency and amplitude in their transmission. Acoustic phoneticians analyze the speech waves with the help of instruments; they attempt to describe the physical properties of the stream of sound that issues forth from the mouth of a speaker.

Auditory Phonetics: Auditory phonetics is the study of hearing and the perception of speech sounds. It studies different auditory impressions of quality, pitch and loudness of sounds. The auditory classification of speech-sounds has not yet been carried to a decisive phase. At the present time, phonetics can be regarded as being made up of two main branches: articulatory and acoustic phonetics.

Articulatory Phonetics: Articulatory phonetics recognizes that speech is produced by some kind of sound-making apparatus inside the human body, and that specific sounds may be related to specific movement of the apparatus. Hence it is the study of movement of the speech organs in the articulation of speech. Speech is produced by the movements of the organs of speech— lungs, larynx, soft palate, tongue, teeth and lips. The knowledge of the organs of speech, their relation to each other, and the way in which they are used while speaking, provides a sound basis for the classification of sounds of human languages.

The unphonetic character of English Orthography

The  English  Orthography  or  Writing  System:  The  word  ‘orthography’  means  the  rules  for writing  a  language.  English  orthography  is  the  alphabetic  spelling system  which  uses  a  set  of rules that governs how speech is represented in writing. It is used to represent spoken English in written form that allows readers to connect spelling to sound to meaning. English spelling system is comparatively complicated as the complex history of the English language. Most of the letters produce  multiple  pronunciations  because  a  large  number  of words  have  been  borrowed  from many  other  languages  in  the  world  throughout  the  history  of  the  English  language,  without successful attempts at complete spelling reforms.

The need for a phonetic script – phonetics, phonemics, phonics

Phonetics:

Phonetics refers to a branch of linguistics and it deals with the proper scientific study of sounds associated with human speech. Therefore, phonics can be regarded as a simplified form of phonetics.

Phoneme refers to the smallest phonetic unit of sound in a language. It is capable to distinguish meanings of words. Phonemes are of great importance as if a phoneme is changed that there are chances of the word getting changed too. Example – In English, i in 'bit' and o in ‘log’ is a vowel phoneme. J in ‘judge’ and sh in ‘ship’ are consonant phonemes.

Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure can be credited for recognizing the prime importance of sound in human language, during the early 20th century.

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is used as the basis for the phonetic transcription of speech. It is mainly divided into three branches –

•  Acoustic Phonetics – it deals with examining the physical properties of sounds like frequency of vibrations, etc.

•  Auditory Phonetics – it deals with studying that how human ear perceives sound or how they get recognized by the brain.

•  Articulatory Phonetics – It deals with studying that how sounds get produced by various vocal apparatus.

Phonics:

Phonics is a method in which letters are associated with sounds. It is regarded as a very important part of teaching the skill of reading. It helps young children to learn how to read. Children start recognizing the sound of each individual letter, and thus are able to develop their reading skills. Individual sounds are taught which are used for making words. For example, when the sounds associated with letters t, p and a are taught, the children can easily build up the word tap.

Apart from teaching the sounds of individual letters, it also includes identification of sounds produced by combination of letters like ‘sh’ or ‘oo’. Phonics when taught in an organised and structured way, it leads to a very effective way of teaching young children to read.

Phonics is basically described as an instructional approach defining a relationship or association between letters and sounds; regarding which letter produces which type of sound. Phonetic is the scientific study of speech words. Thus, it is more broad and scientific than in comparison to Phonics.  Phoneme is a contrastive unit in the sound system of a particular language, and is generally a part of both phonics and phonetics.

Phonics is the association of sounds (phonemes) to written alphabet letters (graphemes). For reading (decoding) the phonics coding system is used to convert the written word into sounds. For spelling (encoding) the same phonic coding system is used to covert sounds heard into letters to form written words.

Phonemics:

Phonemic awareness is our ability to split words into their smallest sound units (individual phonemes) and to manipulate these sounds through segmentation, blending, substitution, re-ordering and deletion. This is based on what we hear and say, not the written word.

These are developed further later on when phonics is introduced, sound to letter association.

· Segmentation – being able to split words into their individual sounds, for example ‘cat’ into c-a-t.

· Blending – being able to blend individual sounds together to say a word, for example d-o-g into dog.

·  Substitution – being able to swap one sound/letter association for another in a word, for example swapping the /k,(k)/ sound in the word ‘cat’ with a /h,(h)/ sound to say the word ‘hat’.

· Reordering – being able to swap the sounds/letter association around to create a new word, for example changing the order of the letters in the word ‘cat’ to form the new word ‘act’.

· Deletion (omission) – being able to remove a sound/letter association from a word to create a new word, for example removing the /t,(t)/ sound from the word ‘cart’ to say the new word ‘car’.

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