Wednesday 8 October 2008

The sound patterns of language

The Study of Language by George Yule (2006)

New Words
Phonology: the study of the systems and patterns of speech sounds in languages
Phoneme: the smallest meaning-distinguishing sound unit in the abstract representation of the sounds of a language
Phone: a physically produced speech sound, representing one version of a phoneme
Allophone: one of a closely related set of speech sounds or phones
Aspiration: a puff of air that sometimes accompanies the pronunciation of a stop
Nasalization: pronunciation of a sound with air flowing through the nose, typically before a nasal consonant
Minimal pair (set): two (or more) words that are identical in form except for a contrast in one phoneme in the same position in each word (e.g. bad, mad)
Phonotactics: constraints on the permissible combination of sounds in a language
Syllable: a unit of sound consisting of a vowel and optional consonants before or after the vowel
Onset: the part of the syllable before the vowel
Rhyme: the part of the syllable containing the vowel plus any following consonant, also called ‘rime’
Nucleus: the vowel in a syllable
Coda: the part of a syllable after the vowel
Consonant cluster: two or more consonants in sequence
Co-articulation: the process of making one sound virtually at the same time as the next sound
Assimilation: the process whereby a feature of one sound becomes part of another during speech production
Elision: the process of leaving out a sound segment in the pronunciation of a word

Study questions
1 Substituting one phoneme for another will result in a word with a different meaning and different pronunciation. Substituting allophones will result in a different pronunciation of the same word.
2 An aspirated sound is one pronounced with a stronger puff of air.
3 ban-bun, fat-pat, pit-pat, tape-tale, heat-heal, chain-sane, vote-goat, heal-meal, fat-far, bell-bet
4 The phonotactics of a language are the permitted arrangements of sounds which obey constraints on the sequence or position of English phonemes.
5 An open syllable ends with a vowel (as nucleus) and a closed syllable ends with a consonant (as coda).
6 a) /n/ b) /t/ c) /m/ d) /d/

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