Anglická filologie – Fonetika

Phonological theory, relationship between phonetics and phonology (phoneme, phone, allophone, phonetic features, contrasts, complementary distribution, free variation, neutralization, phonological rule, phonetic terms for classification of vowels, phonetic terms for classifications of consonants, phonemic inventory)

Phonetics

= a branch of linguistics that studies the production of sounds
3 main branches of phonetics:
1. articulatory phonetics – how different articulators cooperate to create sounds
2. acoustic phonetics – study and description of the acoustic properties
3. auditory phonetics – hearing and comprehension of sounds
– phone = the smallest identifiable unit in an utterance that can be transcribed by an IPA symbol
– allophone = variant of a phoneme, basic unit for a narrow transcription (e.g. [p] – no aspiration (e.g. spot.) [ph] – aspiration (e.g. pot))

Phonology

= a branch of linguistics that deals with the distribution of sounds into sound patterns and studies relations among these sounds
– phoneme = has distinctive function, occur in overlapping distribution

Consonants

– 24 consonants in English X 25 in Czech
– Classification according to:
1. active articulator
a) labial – with lips (e.g. m)
b) coronal – with flexible front part of the tongue (e.g. s)
c) dorsal – with the middle part of the tongue (e.g. g)
2. the place of articulation
a) Bilabilal – with both lips (sometimes referred as labial), e.g. m
b) labiodental – lower lip + upper teeth, e.g. f/v
c) dental – tongue against the upper teeth, e.g. ?
d) palatoalveolar – tongue blade + back of the alveolar ridge, e.g. ?
e) palatal – tongue against the hard palate, e.g. j
f) velar – back of the tongue (dorsum) against the soft palate, e.g. g
g) retroflex – tongue tip against the back of the alveolar ridge or curled back; a lot of speakers don’t pronounce retroflex consonants

3. manner of articulation
a) obstruents – airflow is obstructed and turbulent
I. stops – complete obstruction, 3 phases of a stop: 1.approach 2. closure 3. release (may be called also differently), 2 kinds of stops: 1. oral – velum is not lowered, e.g. p, 2. nasal – velum is lowered, acoustically they are sonorants, e.g. n
II. fricatives – only close approximation, e.g. f, v
III. affricates – combination of stops + fricatives, t?,d?
b) sonorants – without turbulent airflow, in English :/l/, /m/, /n/, /?/, /?/, /w/, /j/
I. approximants – one articulator is close to the other but without the vocal tract being narrowed
II. nasals
III. taps and trills

4. according to the state of the vocal folds
a) voiced – vocal folds pulled together, vocal folds vibrate, e.g. b
b) voiceless – vocal folds pulled part, vocal folds don’t vibrate, e.g. p

5. whether the air is channeled through the nose
= velum is lowered

Vowels

– 12 in English, 14 in Czech (however these number differs a lot so be careful)
– when articulated the vocal tract is free
-vowel space – the space within which the tongue can move without creating friction
-cardinal vowels – fixed reference points, 8 basic cardinal vowels
-rhotacized vowels – a lot in GA (rhotic dialect) in words like butter
-vowel reduction – centralization and weakening of an unstressed vowel
1. height
a) high b) mid c) low or
a) close b) near-close c) close-mid d) mid e) open-mid f) near-open g) open
2. blackness
a) front b) central c) low
3. lip rounding
a) rounded
b) unrounded

Diphthongs

– articulation: smooth movement of the tongue from one articulation to another
1. opening.
2. closing
3. centering

phonetic feature

– articulatory and acoustic properties sounds are made of
– e.g. gesture: raised velum –> feature: oral
a) binary e.g. + or ? voice
b) unary e.g. labial/coronal/dorsal
c) multivalued e.g. stricture: stop, fricative, approximant

complementary distribution

– two sounds are in the c.d if they occur in mutually exclusive environments
– e.g. velar nasal – which occur only before k/g in words such as sing, think…

neutralization

– two sounds that are in a complementary distribution can be in an environment when they contrast is neutralized
– e.g. the contrast of nasals is neutralized between stops

free variation

– two possibilities ? it depends only on the speaker
– e.g. glottalization, very often two pronunciations possible

contrast

1) minimal pair – differ only in 1 sound, e.g. fine x wine
2) minimal set – differ in I. the initial segment, e.g. ban-can-fan
II. the vowel, e.g. tip-tap-top
III. the final consonant, e.g. map-mat-mad