Phonology studies the distinctive sounds (phonemes) of a language and their patterns, including syllabic structure and prosodic features. Key concepts include phonemes, minimal pairs, allophones, free variation, linking and intrusive /r/, assimilation, elision, and the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). These elements illustrate how sounds function and interact within a language, affecting meaning and pronunciation.
Phonology studies the distinctive sounds (phonemes) of a language and their patterns, including syllabic structure and prosodic features. Key concepts include phonemes, minimal pairs, allophones, free variation, linking and intrusive /r/, assimilation, elision, and the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). These elements illustrate how sounds function and interact within a language, affecting meaning and pronunciation.
Phonology studies the distinctive sounds (phonemes) of a language and their patterns, including syllabic structure and prosodic features. Key concepts include phonemes, minimal pairs, allophones, free variation, linking and intrusive /r/, assimilation, elision, and the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). These elements illustrate how sounds function and interact within a language, affecting meaning and pronunciation.
Phonology studies the distinctive sounds (phonemes) of a language and their patterns, including syllabic structure and prosodic features. Key concepts include phonemes, minimal pairs, allophones, free variation, linking and intrusive /r/, assimilation, elision, and the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). These elements illustrate how sounds function and interact within a language, affecting meaning and pronunciation.
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Phonology
Phonology or Phonemics deals with the distinctive sounds (phonemes) and their specific patterning in a particular language. It describes the functional behaviours, how they get into combinations, in other words, syllabic structure and the nature and use of prosodic features like stress, pitch, intonation etc. The Phoneme A phoneme is the smallest distinctive unit of sound in the sound system of a language. The phonemes of a language are distinctive/contrastive. It means that they are distinct from each other in the phonological system of the language. If one phoneme is substituted by another, it will result in a meaning change. If /p/ is substituted by /b/ in the word pet, the meaning certainly changes to bet. If it is further substituted by /s/ the meaning changes to set. Thus it can be understood that /p/, /b/ and /s/ are in contrastive relation. Minimal Pairs Minimal pairs are pairs of words which differ from each other only in one sound segment. For example: 1. Bet, Set, Pet, Met are words that can enter a minimal pair relation. 2. Leper, Lesser, Letter are words that has changes only in the sounds /p, s, t/ respectively. Allophones A phoneme can have variant forms appearing in different contexts. Allophones are such variant realizations of the same phonemes. For example: 1. /p/ in ‘pin’ is aspirated, but ‘spin’ is unaspirated 2. /t/ in ‘take’ is aspirated, but ‘steak’ is unaspirated 3. In the word ‘outpost’, the first /t/ is incomplete. The /t/ in ‘take’ is different from it. The /t/ in ‘steak’ is aspirated and different from the former two. 4. The /l/ in love and that in girl are different. There are some characteristic features of allophones, like: The allophones of a phoneme are considerably similar, but they don’t occur in the same phonetic environment. They occur in predictable phonetic environment. Each variation of the phoneme is called a phone. The varieties of each phoneme are members of the same family; they are called allophones of the particular phoneme family. They are phonemically the same, but phonetically different. Free variation Even if one allophone of a phoneme is substituted with another, it will not change the meaning of the word. Such a relationship is termed to be in free variation. There are three criteria to be met to be phones belonging to the same phoneme. 1. They should be in complementary distribution, i.e., never occurring in the same phonetic environment. 2. They ought to display a considerable amount of physical similarity. 3. They should be in non-contrastive free variation. If they occur in the same contexts they should not change the meaning of the word. Linking /r/ The sound /r/ is not pronounced at the end of a word. But when words ending with the letter ‘r’ in spelling are followed by words beginning with vowel sounds, it is usual in RP that the letter ‘r’ is realized as /r/ in pronunciation. Examples are My car is red - /mai ka:r iz red/ Far away - /fa:r əweI/
Intrusive /r/ In some cases where there is no ‘r’ in spelling, /r/ occurs in pronunctiation. If one word ends in a vowel and the next one begins with a vowel, a /r/ is inserted between the two. Examples are Asia and Africa /eIʒər ən æfrIkə/ The idea of it /ðɪ aɪdɪər əv ɪt/
Assimilation It is a process by which a certain sound is replaced by another, under the influence of a third sound which is adjacent to it. For example, the word newsprint /nju:z/ + /print/ /nju:sprint/ /z/ is replaced by /s/ by the influence of /p/. The change after assimilation could be allophonic or phonemic. Sometimes an allophone of a phoneme maybe replaced by another. Sometimes an entire phoneme can be replaced by another.
Elision When unaccented syllables are pronounced rapidly in connected speech, to maintain the characteristic rhythm of English, certain sounds are dropped. Instead, weak forms are used in which either a sound is dropped or replaced by another. When a sound which exists in a word pronounced in isolation or in connected speech is dropped in a compound or connected phrase, it is called elision. After a while /a:ftr ə wail/ - elision of /ə/ Bed time /betaIm/ - elision of /d/ Last time /la:staIm/ - elision of /t/
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
The IPA has symbols to represent all the sounds existing in the languages of the word. This alphabet is based on the Roman alphabet but since the twenty six letters of the Roman Alphabet (A to Z) are not sufficient to represent all the sounds, additional symbols are included and the existing ones are suitably modified.
