English Phonetics

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FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND LANGUAGES

SEPTEMBER 2011

HBET 1203

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ENGLISH PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY

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1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 PHONETICS

Phonetics is the study of the sounds of language. It is the term for the description and classification of speech sounds, particularly how sounds are produced, transmitted and received.   These sounds are called phonemes. There are literally hundreds of them used in different languages.  Even a single language like English requires us to distinguish about 40. The key word here is distinguish.  We actually make much finer discriminations among sounds, but English only requires 40.  The other discriminations are what lets us detect the differences in accents and dialects, identify individuals, and differentiate tiny nuances of speech that indicate things beyond the obvious meanings of the words. Phonetics is the basis for phonological analysis. Analyzes the production of all human speech sounds, regardless of language.

1.2 PHONOLOGY

Phonology is the study of how sounds are organized and used in natural languages. Phonology is just one of several aspects of language. It is related to other aspects such as phonetics, morphology, syntax, and pragmatics. Analyzes the sound patterns of a particular language by determining which phonetic sounds are significant, and explaining how these sounds are interpreted by the native speaker. The distinctive accents that many learners of English have are due to differences between the phonological system of their language and that of English.

2.1 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY

Phonetics and Phonology are two terms that have to be understood with difference. It is important to...