22

Prof. S.A. Zhabotynska

General Linguistics (4^th year)

Lecture 3

PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY

1. Phonetics

Acoustic Phonetics, or acoustics of speech, studies physical properties (pitch, loudness, length, timbre, etc.) of audible speech sounds. Acoustic phonetics uses various instrumental techniques of investigation to provide an objective account of speech patterns related to the way sounds are produced and heard.

Articulatory Phonetics, or physiology of speech, studies articulation of sounds with regard to the organs of speech.

• Organs of speech. The lips, the tongue, the lower jaw, the soft palate, and the vocal cords are active organs of speech. The teeth, the lower jaw, the hard palate are passive organs of speech which serve as a place of obstruction to the air stream. The moth, nasal, and pharyngeal cavities are resonators. The lungs are the power mechanism.

• Stages of articulation. Every speech sound pronounced in isolation has three stages of articulation: the on-glide, the retention stage and the off-glide_.

1. The ON-GLIDE, or the beginning of a sound, is moving the speech organs from the neutral position to the position necessary for the pronunciation of a sound. There is no audible sound yet.

2. The RETENTION STAGE, or the middle of a sound, is keeping the speech organs for some time in the posi­tion necessary for the production of an audible sound.

3. The OFF-GLIDE, or the end of a sound, is moving the speech organs back to the neutral position.

These three stages of articulation may be represented graphically:

e.g. /k/ k2

k1 k3

In actual speech sounds are seldom pronounced in isola­tion. They usually interact within words or at the junc­tion of words. In English there are two main types of this interactions merging of stages and interpenetration of stages.

1. MERGING of STAGES takes place when the two sounds of different articulatory nature come toge­ther. In this саsе the off-glide of the first sound and the on-glide of the second sound are pronounced simultaneously:

e .g. queue /kju:/ k2 j2

k1 j1 k3 j3

2. INTERPENETRATION of STAGES takes place when the two sounds of similar articulatory nature come together. In this саsе different stages of articula­tion penetrate into each other:

– the off-glide of the first sound penetrates into the retention-stage of the second sound:

e .g. asked k2 t2

/`a:skt/

k1 t1 k3 t3

– the on-glide of the second sound penetrates into the off-glide of the first sound:

e.g. month n2 θ2

/`mauθ/ n3 θ1

n1 θ3

– the retention stages of the two sounds interpe­netrate into each other:

e .g. unknown n2 *n2

/`n΄noυn/

n1 *n3

• Articulatory basis of a language is the scope of all movements performed by the organs of speech to produce the sounds of this language. Articulatory bases of different languages do not coincide.

Phonology vs. Phonetics. While phonetics studies material, or physical, sounds of speech, phonology studies sound types, or abstract sounds of language. Phonology highlights the functions of sound types, i.e. their ability to differentiate between meanings.