Kamis, 03 Mei 2012

The Sound Pattern of Language



The Sound Pattern of Language


Introduction


      The purpose of this paper is very simple: to help you the reader, to pronounce English better than you do now. Millions of foreign students want to learn English as well as they can; for some it is only matter of reading and writing it, and they will find no help here. But many students want to be able to speak English well, with a pronunciation which can be easily understood both by their fellow-students and by English people, and it is for them that this paper is specially intended.



                                                                                                              Malang, April 2012


                                                                                                                          Writer

Contents

Preface

Unit One   : the sound pattern of language

Ø Phonology

o   Phoneme
o   Phone and allophone
o   Minimal pairs
o   Phonotactics
o   Syllable
o   Consonant clusters
o   Connected speech

Ø List the following verbs according to the –ed pronunciation

Ø Morphophonemic alternations

Ø Morphophonemic alternations

Unit two: the conclusion
          





The sound pattern of language


Phonology
Phonology is essentially the description of the systems and pattern of speech sounds in a language. It is the study of the sound system of a given language.
Phonemes are usually enclosed in slanted brackets / /.  Infect these are used when a sound is discussed phonologically.
When the sound is articulated, the Phonemes are enclosed in square brackets [ ]
Phoneme and phone
      Phone is different versions of that sound-type regularly produced in actual speech.
Phoneme is meaning –distinguishing sounds in a language. And also the abstract unit or sound-type (in the mind) “.  A phoneme is the single sound also called segment.  It is the smallest phonetic unit in a language that is capable of conveying a distinction in meaning, as the /r/ of rat and the /b/ of bat in English.
Phones and allophones
      A phone is a variation of sound.
When we have a set of phones that are all
Versions of one phoneme we refer to them as allophones.
An allophone is a phonetic variant of a phoneme in a particular language.
 Examples:
• [p] and [pH] are allophones of the phoneme /p/.
• [t] and [t H] are allophones of the phoneme /t/.




         Minimal pairs and sets
                        Phonemic distinctions in a language can be tested via pairs and sets of words. When two words such as pat and bat are identical in form except for a contrast in one phoneme, occurring in the same position, the two words are describe as minimal pair. More accurately, they would be classified as a minimal pair in the phonology of English. (Arabic does not have this contrast between the two sounds.) Other examples of English minimal pairs are fan-van, bet-bat, and site-side. Such pairs have been used frequently in tests of English as a second language to determine non-native speakers’ ability to understand the contrast in meaning resulting from the minimal sound contrast.
     When a group of words can be differentiated, each one from the others, by changing one phoneme (always in the same position), then we have a minimal set. Thus, a minimal set based on the vowel phonemes of English would include feat,fit,fat,fate fought, foot and one based on consonants could have big,pig,rig,fig,dig,wig.


Phonotactics
       Phonotactics is concerned with how sounds are distributed or where they can occur in a word (beginning, middle, and end).
Syllables
       part of language which at utters one attraction
      A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically consonants).
Syllables are often considered the phonological "building blocks" of words. They can influence the rhythm of a language, its prosody, its poetic meter, its stress patterns, etc.
A word that consists of a single syllable (like cat) is called a monosyllable (such a word is monosyllabic)
While a word consisting of two syllables (like monkey) is called a disyllable (such a word is disyllabic).
A word consisting of three syllables (such as indigent) is called a trisyllable (the adjective form is trisyllabic).
A word consisting of more than three syllables (such as intelligence) is called a polysyllable (and could be described as polysyllabic), although this term is often used to describe words of two syllables or more.
A syllable must contain a vowel sound.
One syllable can consist of:
- Me: CV              – Ham: CVC              – Green: CCVC            – Splat: CCCVC
A syllable has to have a vowel and could consist of just one vowel. Ex: I. 

Consonant clusters
• A consonant cluster is a set of more than one consonant meeting in a syllable.
• In syllables with 3 initial consonants the 1st one is usually an unvoiced sibilant /s/ like in [sprèd] spread, [spríÑ] spring, [strètß] stretch. /s/ cannot occur in 2nd place in an initial cluster. E.g. we have [spaík] spike but [saík] psyche
• Whenever several consonants occur together at the end of a word then the last one

Connected speech
         The process of producing one sound almost at the same time as the next is called co-articulation. Co-articulation effects can be of the following types:
– Assimilation – Elision   – Liaison
Vowels and consonants segments combine into syllables; syllables combine into words; and words combine into phrases and sentences.
Assimilation
    When two phonemes occur in sequence and some aspect of one phoneme is taken or ‘copied’ by the other, the process is known ASSIMILATION. Ex: in polite In terms of the physical production of speech, one might assume that this regular process is occasioned by ease of articulation in every day talk. In isolation, you would probably pronounce / I/ and /ǽ/ without any nasal quality at all. However, in saying words like pin and pan, the anticipation of forming the final nasal consonant will make it, easier; to go into nasalized articulation in advance and consequently the vowel sounds in these words will be in precise transcription, [I] and [ǽ]. This is a very regular feature of English speaker’s pronunciation. So regular, in fact, that a phonological rule can be stated in the following way:’ any vowels become nasal whenever it immediately precedes nasal.
Elision
                 Note that in the last example, in the employment of preceding and following nasals, the [d] sound of and has simply disappeared. The [d] sound is also commonly ‘omitted’ in the pronunciation of a word like friendship,[friensIp]. This ‘omission’ of the sound segment which would be present in the deliberate pronunciation of a word in isolation is technically described as elision. Ex: Aspect 


List the following verbs according to the –ed pronunciation
•/t/ -/íd/ -/d/
•I liked it a lot.
•I wanted to speak to him.
•I lived in Milan 2 years ago.
•I finished my book.
•I stopped smoking.
•I started playing the piano last year.
•I worked for a call centre last month.
•I cleared the table and went to bed last night.

Morphophonemic alternations
The morpheme –ed is realised as
– [íd] when the word ends in /t, d/  e.g. wanted [wântíd], hated [heítíd];
– [d] When the word ends in any voiced phoneme or vowel and semi vowel. e.g. Allowed  [ëlaúd];
– [t] When it ends in any voiceless phoneme. e.g. licked [líkt].
      /íd/    wanted         Started
      /d/     lived             Cleared
      /t/      liked             Finished          Stopped          Worked
Morphophonemic alternations
      When we consider the inflections –s (third person singular) and –ed (past form) we call morphophonemic alternations the different pronunciations they can have, according to different word spelling.
      Pronunciation of –s:
 –/íz/ when the word ends in a fricative /f, v, †, ∂, s, z, ß, Ω/ like bushes [búßíz];
–/-z/ when the word ends in voiced phoneme or vowel like boys [bòíz] friends[frèndz];
–/-s/ when it ends in any voiceless phoneme like bikes [baíks], cooks [kúks]
Conclusion              
       We have just seen the definition and units of the sound pattern of language so we can conclude from them above. Part one’s knowledge of a language is knowledge of the sound pattern of language is phonology. The one of the unit of the sound pattern of language is phonology. The definition of phonology, phonology is essentially the description of the systems and pattern of speech sounds in a language. The phonology of the language includes the inventory of phones, the phonetic segment that occur in the language, and the ways in which their pattern. It is patterning that determines the inventory of the more abstract phonological unites. And parts of phonology are Phoneme. Phone and allophone Minimal pairs, Phonotactics, Syllable, Consonant clusters and Connected speech all of them are important for making our English speaking especially our pronunciation, and we can pronounce and read a word in English well.
                                                                                                                                 

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