Phonetics

Lets start with Phonetics. Phonetics provide learners of English with the necessary gestures to produce certain sounds and discover which muscle movements in which combination and sequence are required for the production of these sounds. It focuses on questions such as: what types of speech sounds do we find in the languages? How can we describe these sounds? Which criteria can we use to distinguish different sounds? I will first provide the more important terms for this subdiscipline of linguistics. The new terms you have to keep in mind are:

- sound inventory;

- International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA); - vocal tract; - articulators; - place of articulation: bilabial, labio-dental, alveolar, dental, palato-alveolar, palatal, velar, glottal; - manner of articulation: stops, plosives, fricatives, affricates, liquids, glides, semi-vowels, approximants, nasals; - voiced/ voiceless sounds; - rounded/ unrounded vowels;

- diphthongs/ monophthongs.

The sound inventory of the English language is the pool of sounds which speakers use to construct words. All languages differ in their respective sound inventory.
Given that, there is an International Phonetics Alphabet to help speakers in knowing exactly which sound one is referring to. This IPA chart was created in order to separate pronouncing from spelling, as some words reveal to be very complicated in that matter. For example, the words who and shoe share the same vowel sound, but are spelled differently. As for the words heart and beat, which share the same vowel when it comes to spelling and are pronounced differently. Therefore, the IPA provides a phonetic transcription where each symbol represents a sound.

This IPA chart occurs in the standard accent of British English (Received Pronunciation).

International Phonetics Alphabet

CONSONANTS:
[p] - pot
[t] - tie
[k] - keys
[b] - book
[d] - dog
[ɡ] - gasp
[m] - mine
[n] - not
[ŋ] - king
[f] - fly
[v] - vain
[θ] - think
[ð] - them
[s] - sand
[z] - zero
[ʃ] - shy
[ʒ] - cohesion
[h] - hell
[w] - work
[l] - lost
[ɹ] - ride
[j] - you
[tʃ] - church
[dʒ] - Georgia

VOWELS
[i:] - see
[I] - tip
[e] - bed
[æ] - and
[ɜ:] - bird
[ə] - along
[ʌ] - cut
[u:] - boot
[ʊ] - book
[ɔ:] - thought
[ɒ] - what
[ɑ:] - bath

DIPHTHONGS
[eɪ] - may
[aɪ] - buy
[ɔɪ] - toy
[əʊ] - boat
[aʊ] - how
[ɪə] - here
[ɛə] - hair
[ʊə] - tour

Source: Plag, I., Introduction to English Linguistics

I will explain the remaining terms in next session.

Introduction to English Linguistics

Linguistics is a fascinating area. I was never aware of the role that linguistics played in my everyday life. Before I started studying it, I took language for granted, never I stopped a single second to think about this thing that I call language and that I somehow ‘learned’ without even realising. Linguistics is defined as the science of language, its structure, nature and variation, which includes phonetics, phonology, morphology, semantics and syntax.

I will start by explaining what each of those concepts mean. Phonetics is a sub-discipline of linguistics which deals with the production of speech sounds (articulatory phonetics), their physical properties (acoustic phonetics), and the perception and processing of the speech signals by the listener (auditory phonetics); Phonology concerns the sound system of a language; Morphology deals with the internal structure of words, regarding to its meaningful elements; Semantics is the meaning of linguistic expressions; and finally, Syntax covers the structure of sentences or of linguistic constructions.

Source: Plag, I., et al, Introduction to English Linguistics