ENG507 Short Notes

Phonetics and Phonology

Q. Define Linguistic. Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It involves analysing language form, language meaning, and language in context. Linguists traditionally analyse human language by observing interplay between sound and meaning. In a very simple sense, ‘linguistics’ is the study of language.

Q. What are the aim and objective of the course Eng507?

Aim and objective of course are: understand how human sound is produced; know the physical properties of human sounds; study the suprasegmental features and features of the connected speech; have a greater awareness of IPA symbols and transcribe any kind of English text; prepare themselves for more advanced level course in Experimental Phonology for their detailed future research work; learn about the modern software used in phonological research.

Q. Differentiate vowel and consonant. Human sounds are divided into two broad categories: consonants and vowels. A consonant is a speech sound in which air is at least partly blocked whereas vowel is a sound in which there is no obstruction found and the air passes through the cavity freely.

Q. How we classify consonant?

A consonant is classified in terms of the places of articulation, manners of articulation and voicing.

Q. How we classify vowel?

Vowel is classified in terms of the position of tongue, the part of tongue and lip-rounding.

Q. Write down short vowel with examples

Short vowels ɪ pit e pet æ pat ʌ putt ɒ pot ʊ put ǝ another

Q. Write down long vowel with examples

iː bean ɑː barn ɔː born uː boon ɜː burn

Q. Write down Plosive sounds

P,b,t,d,k,g

Q. Write down fricative sounds

f , v , θ , ð , s , z , ʃ , ʒ , h

Q. Write down affricate with examples. ʧ chain ʤ Jane

Q. What are the approximants in English. l light r right w wet j yet

Q. Differentiate phonetics and phonology. Phonology is the study of the sounds of a particular language (e.g., English). In phonology, it matters whether sounds are contrastive or not, that is, whether substituting one sound for another gives a different, or "contrastive," meaning. Phonetics, as a discipline, is the study of human speech sounds. It includes the understanding of how sounds are articulated using mouth, nose, teeth and tongue, and how ears hear those sounds and can tell them apart. are three major types of phonetics: articulatory phonetics, acoustics phonetics and auditory There phonetics

Q. Define phoneme with suitable example. A phoneme is the smallest meaningful unit of sound (therefore, a smallest unit in phonology) in a language and this meaningful unit of sound is one that will change one word into another word. For example, the difference in both ‘white’ and ‘right’ (ignore spellings here, focus on sounds) is the difference of sounds (w – r) which are phonemes and they have the ability to change meaning

Q. Define allophone?

An allophone is a definable systematic variant of a phoneme. Compare the following sets:

1. ‘s’ sound in words like sill, still and spill or in words like seed, steed and speed
2. ‘k’ sound in words like, key and car
3. ‘t’ sound in words like true and tea
4. ‘n’ sound in words like tenth and ten
5. Phone is a sound pattern having some acoustic features.

Q. Define Articulatory phonetics. Articulatory phonetics deals with studying the making of single sounds by the vocal tract. It is the branch of phonetics which studies the way in which speech sounds are made (‘articulated’) by the vocal organs Q. Define Acoustic phonetics. Acoustic phonetics is related to the study of physical attributes of sounds produced by the vocal tract. It is the branch of phonetics which studies the physical properties of speech sound as transmitted between mouth and ear according to the principles of acoustics (the branch of physics devoted to the study of sound).

Q. Define Auditory phonetics. Auditory phonetics deals with understanding how human ear perceives sound and how the brain recognizes different speech units. This branch of phonetics studies the perceptual response to speech sounds as mediated by ear, auditory nerve and brain.. Q. Define Experimental phonetics. Experimental phonetics is the branch of general phonetics that deals with the study of the sounds and other human speech units by applying the experimental method. This scientific field covers basic areas of phonetics - articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics and auditory phonetics. Moreover, experimental method used in study of the segmental phonetics and suprasegmental phonetics, in exploration of the typological phonetics. Experimental phonetics is used to test theories or hypotheses in order to support or disprove them.

Q. What are the areas of experimental phonetics explored by Peter Ladefoged in 1967:

Following three area were explored by Peter Ladefoged Stress in respiratory activity The nature of vowel quality Perception and production of speech

Q. Define Generative Phonology. Generative phonology is a component of generative grammar that assigns the correct phonetic representations to utterances in such a way as to reflect a native speaker’s internalized grammar.

Q. Write down theories stemmed (branches) down by Generative Phonology. Following are the theories that have stemmed from ‘generative phonology’:

1. Autosegmental phonology
2. Metrical phonology
3. Lexical phonology
4. Optimality theory

Q. What is speech production?

The process of speech production mainly includes respiration, phonation, articulation and resonance. This simply means that in order to produce speech, we need the air stream mechanism ,the exploitation of the air stream at larynx , the modification of the air passage with the help of articulators at the cavity ,and finally the transfer of energy.