Topic 9

Descripción del sistema fonológico de la lengua inglesa.

Modelos y técnicas de aprendizaje. Percepción,
discriminación emisión de sonidos, entonaciones, ritmos
y acentos. La corrección fonética.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCCTION
1. DESCRIPTION OF THE PHONOLOGICAL
SYSTEM.
1.1. Consonant system.
1.2. Vowel system.
1.3. Suprasegmental features of pronunciation.
2. THE CHOICE OF A MODEL OF
PRONUNCIATION.
3. TEACHING AN LEARNING PRONUNCIATION.
4. CORRECTION: PROBLEMS FOR SPANISH
SPEAKERS.
INTRODUCTION
Phonetics is the science concerned with the study of
speech processes, including production, transmission
and reception of speech sounds from both acoustic
and physiological point of view.

Phonology
We assume a system that ignores the exact phonetic
details, but deals with the meaningful sound
oppositions of the spoken language of as many
varieties as possible.
INTRODUCTION
PHONETICS is concerned with the physical
properties of speech sounds or signs their
physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory
perception, and neurophysiological status.

PHONOLOGY, on the other hand, is concerned with

the abstract, grammatical characterization of systems
of sounds or signs.
1. Description of the phonological system of the
English Language. Phonetics vs. Phonology.

From a phonetic point of view, vowels and

consonants are distinguished by their articulation and
the associated patterns of acousstic enerhy.
Vowel sounds: the air stream comes out unimpeded
Consonant sounds: may meet a stricture of
 Complete closure (plosives, nasals, affricates)
 Partial oral closure (lateral)
 Close approximation (fricative)
From a phonological point of view, we distinguish
vowels and consonants in terms of their use in the
structure of spoken language.
Vowels are syllabic
Consonants are non-sylabic.
Our descriprion of the phonetic inventory of English
will correspond to the Received Pronunciation (RP)
model.

Wide intelligibility in all English-speaking communities

Represents no regional characteristics
Enjoys social prestige
It have been describes thouroughly
PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM = SEGMENTAL
FEATURES + SUPRASEGMENTAL FEATURES
SEGMENTAL FEATURES are discrete units, which may
be identified in the stream of speech.
Their articulatory phonetic description can make reference
to six main factors:
Air stream – the source and direction of the air stream.
Vocal folds – the absence or presence of vibration (voiced and
voiceless sounds)
Soft palate – indicates if the sound is nasal or oral.
Place of articulation – refers to the point in the vocal tract at which
the main closure is made (teeth, lips, etc.)
Manner of articulation – refers to the type of constriction.
The position of lips – rounded or spread.
1.1.The Consonant System
The three basic criteria used in the articulatory
description of a sound are
vocal cord vibration (voicing),
the place of articulation and
the manner of articulation.
Chart of English consonants
1.2. The Vowel System.

The inventory of vowels in English can be determined

by three features:

Height of the tongue: open or close vowels.

Tongue frontness/backness. It can be front,
central or back.
Complexity of the vowel: its quality and
quantity.
In the following diagram you can see the organization of vowel
sounds in English depending on their articulation.
The Vowel system. Short and long vowels.
English has a large number of vowels sounds. The first
to be examined are short vowels.
The symbols for these vowels are:

Short vowels are only relatively short. Vowels can

have different lengths in different contexts. Each
vowel is described in relation to the cardinal vowels.
The Vowel system. Short and long vowels.
The first to be introduced are the 5 long vowels. These
are the vowels which tend to be longer in similar
contexts. The symbols consist of one vowel sound plus
a length mark made of two dots.
 
Thus we have:
 The Vowel system. Diphthongs.
BBC pronunciation has a large number of diphthongs, sounds which consist
of a movement or glide from one vowel to another. A vowel which remains
constant and does not glide is called a pure vowel. The first part is much
longer and stronger than the second part
The total number of diphthong is eight. The easiest way to remember them
is in terms of three groups divided as in this diagram:
1.3. Suprasegmental features of
pronunciation.
The suprasegmental features of pronunication are
stress, rhythm and intonation.
Stress – the prominence with which one part of the
word or of a longer utterance is a starter of pitch
movement or has the potential to be one.
Rhythm – the pattern formed by peaks of prominence as
they are distributed in an utterance.
Intonation – association of relative prominence to a
series of factors such as pitch movement, loudness,
rhytmicality and tempo.
`
STRESS
Though the stresses are normally in a fixed position in
a word, their position is unpredictable.
However there some generalizations about endings in
words stress and compound accentual patterns:
Abstract nouns ending in –ion> syllable preceding the
ending.
Stress before adjectival –ic> phoneme – phonemic.
Stress before nominal –ity> un/animous – una/nimity
RHYTHM
Rhythm is timing patterns among syllables.      
There are basically two types of sentence rhythm in
languages:
"stress-timed rhythm" and "syllables-timed rhythm.“
In a stress-timed language - the stressed syllables are said
at approximately regular intervals, and unstressed syllables
shorten to fit this rhythm. In syllable-timed languages -
each syllable takes roughly the same amount of time.
INTONATION
Different levels of pitch (tone) are used in particular
sequences to express a wide range of meaning.
Intonation performs a wide range of functions:
Emotional: works with attitudinal meanings, form
excitement to boredom.
Grammatical: helps to identify major units, such as
clauses and sentences, some contrasts/questions and
statements/ may rely on intonation.
Information structure: conveys a great deal about what is
already known in an utterance.
Psychological: helps to organize a language into chunks.
Indexical: helps to identify people as belonging to
different social groups and occupations.
The most important tunes students should know are the following:
TUNE 1. FALLING TONE
This tone is usually regarded as neutral. The fall tone gives the impression of
“finality”. It is used in: statements, tag questions, commands, wh-questions, dual
questions.

TUNE 2. RISING TONE

This tone conveys an impression that something more is to follow:
A (whishing to attract attention): Excuse me.
B: ́yes
It is used in: yes/No questions, Polite requests, echo questions.

TUNE 3. FALLING-RISING TONE

This intonation is used a lot in English. We will consider only one fairly simple
one: “limited agreement” or “response with reservations”.

A: I've heard that it's good school.

B: ˘yes.
B´s reply would be taken to mean that he would not completely agree with what
A said.
2. THE CHOICE OF A MODEL OF PRONUNCIATION.

There are two standard, widely accepted

pronunciations: Received Pronunciation and General
American.
British RP or General British – is a form of
pronunciation of the English language which has been
the prestige British accent.
In the UK it is used as the standard for English in most
books on phonology and represented in the
pronunciation schemes of most dictionaries.
It is also known as BBC English because it was
traditionally used by the BBC.
General American Pronunciation (or American
Broadcast English) is the accent of American English
perceived by Americans to be most neutral and free of
regional characteristics.
The General American accent is not thought as a
linguistic standard, but its speakers are perceived as
accentless by most Americans.
In the last decades, our educational system has asserted
the value of British RP.
The use of RP has been considered a mark of
education.
The lowest requirement when teaching
pronunciation:
 MINIMUM GENERAL INTELLIGIBILITY (to
possess a set of distinctive elements which correspond to
the inventory of the RP phonemic system and which is
capable of conveying a message efficiently).
 At the other extreme we have HIGH INTELLIBIBILITY
(a form of speech so high that the native listener may not
identify it as non-native).
3. TEACHING AN LEARNING PRONUNCIATION.
3.1. Perception and discrimination.
We must first make our pupils aware of the English
pronunciation features. They must be able to perceive and
discriminate.
Our pupils should be aware that the sounds they are hearing
or producing are English. We must first ear-train them.
Some exercises:
Listening for a specific word
Write the word you hear
Same or different?
Which order?
Which sound?
Odd one out?
It is important to give our pupils training also in
suprasegmental features.
English word stress patterns importance may be
demonstrated: teaching names of class members or the
names of well-known places and people.
Once they recognize word stress we may begin with
rhythm and intonation.
English is a stress-timed language . We can show this
by clapping the strong beats in songs, rhymes and jazz
chants.
Intonation awareness can be developed by telling
students to hum rather than say dialogues.
3. TEACHING AN LEARNING
PRONUNCIATION.
3.2. Production and assesment.
Once our students are able to perceive and
discriminate, we can ask them to produce those
features so that assessment can take place.
The integration of pronunciation in English lessons
must be consistent and planned, and it requires that
students integrate pronunciation in their learning.
Students must make acts of monitoring and self-
evaluation an integral part of work inside and outside
the classroom by: recording or asking for a repetition
of a speaking activity, introducing oral homework, and
tracking students’ progress.
4. Correction: problems for Spanish
speakers.
4.1. Consonant Sounds.
Some English phonemes have equivalents in Spanish but
others are distinctive sounds.
z/∫ / ð / ν / ʤ / ʒ /  h have no real match in Spanish.
High priority problems:
/b/ and /v/ are confused
Spanish words never start with an “s” sound, and words
which are similar to English tend to have an initial “es”
sound instead, as in escuela/school.
/ð / and /d/ are confused
/p, t, k/ are not aspirated in initial position
/t/ is dental in Spanish
Consonant clusters in general
4.1. Vowel sounds.
Spanish has 5 vowel sounds and English has….12. The
other problem is that the length of the vowel sound is
not an important feature which leads to classic
misunderstandings.
High priority sounds:
/i/ and /i:/ are confused
/a:/, /ʌ/, /æ/ are all confused.
/ɒ/ , /ɔ:/, /əʊ/ are confused.
/ɜ:/ is replaced by its spelling.
4.3. Stress
In Spanish, vowels instead of syllables are stressed.
Spanish students are not used to accentuate 3 and 4 –
syllable words on their first syllables.
English derivatives do not always follow the patterns of
their roots:
/ˈpɜːsn̩ /
/pəˌsɒnɪfɪˈkeɪʃn̩ /

No secondary stresses in Spanish.

 /,refjʊ'ʤiː/
 /,vɒlən'tɪə/
4.4. Rhythm
It is a musicality of the language.
Spanish is a syllable-timed language. The number of
syllables determines the length of time to say something.
English is a stressed timed language. The time it takes
something to say in English depends on the number of
stressed syllables or words, not on the number of
syllables.
COMPARE
 YO-QUIE-RO-SER-TU-MR-JOR-A-MI-GO
 I-WANT-to-BE-your-BEST-FRIEND
4.5. Intonation
We tend to use a very narrow pitch.
Our falling pitch movement is not low enough.
We do not use rise-fall tunes.