MODULE 4

SECTION B

A. What are these words in normal English script?

/naɪf/ Knife
/mɪɵɒləʒɪ/ Mythology
/aɪlənd/ Island
/əkwaɪə/ Acquire
/ju:ni:k/ Unique
/ɪɡzæmɪneɪʃən/ Examination
/kjʊə/ Cure
/krʌmz/ Crumbs
/hjʊmərəs/ Humorous
/ɵættʃ/ Thatch

B. Write these words in a phonemic transcription:

Thumb /ɵʌm/
Watching / wɑ:tʃɪŋ/
Weather /wéðər/
Houses /haʊzɪz/
United States of America /ju|naɪtɪd steɪtsʌvəmɛrikə/
deserve / dɪ|z3:rv/
Knights /naɪts/
Shoelace /ʃu:leɪs/
Walked /wɒkt/
Stupid /stupid/

C. Distinguish very briefly between phonetics and phonology.

When we study phonology, it is impossible for the learners not to touch the lesson
about phonetics because they work side by side. For better understanding, Phonetics, simply
put is the study of the production of the sound such as the way a person create the sound of
every letter of the alphabet together with all the parts of the mouth. We can think rather
simply of how we use our lungs to breathe out air, produce vibrations in the larynx and then
use our tongue, teeth and lips to modify the sounds. In short, Phonetics is the study of the
physical sounds, the way we produce, receive and transmit it. On the other hand, Phonology
is the study of the system of the sounds that we create which includes the accent of a
particular language. Phonology focuses on how each sound differs depending on the native
language of a speaker. Phonology explains why people have different sound when they
produce a certain word. For instance, German has a different “r” production and Chinese and
Koreans say “r” sounds as “L” without realizing the difference between the two letters. In
addition, they don’t have any distinction when producing certain vowel sound. This is
because in their own language, that is how they produce that particular letter so that the word
“beet” is similar to “beat” although phonologically, these two words are pronounced
distinctively by the native speakers.
D. Write this sentence in normal script:

/ æl s wɪəz bɪɡnɪ ɪŋ t ə ɡe t v e r t ɪ ɑɪədəv s tɪ ɪŋ bhɑɪəs stɪə ɒŋ ð əbæŋkəŋdəv

hævɪŋnʌθɪŋtədu: w ŋʌsətwɑs: hɪ ʃɪəd p :pt ntu: ðɪɪəbʊk h əs stɪəwəz r dɪ ɪŋbʌt t hæd nɪəʊp
ktɪ ʃəz: kɔɒnvəseɪʃənz ntɪ ɪəŋd wɒt z ðɪəju:səvəbʊk θ :tæl s w ðɔɪɪ ɑʊt p ktɪ ʃəz:ɔkɒnvəseɪʃənz

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank and of having
nothing to do. Once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading but it had no
pictures or conversations in it and what is the use of a book thought Alice without pictures or
conversations.
E. In the third line of the passage in D, had occurs twice, once transcribed // h əd/ and
once/hӕd/.What is the phonological reason why?
Phonologically speaking, the two “had” differ in the passage above. The first “had” is
transcribed as /həd/ because it is an auxiliary verb. As a rule, auxiliary verbs are unstressed
and the vowels will have to be reduced to schwa sounds. However, the second “had” is
transcribed as /hӕd/ because it is a main verb, therefore it is stressed in the sentence.
F. Write this sentence in a phonemic script.

Mrs Thatcher flew to New York to have talks with President Reagan- is is REEgan or

RAYgan, by the way?

/Mɪsi:z ɵættʃə flu: tə nu:jək tə hæv tɒks wɪð prezɪdent réigən- ɪz ɪt Ri:gən ɔ: Reagən baɪ
ðə wei?/

G. Write down some minimal pairs which distinguish the sounds

i) /f/ and /v/

fail-veil fast-vast
fan-van leaf-leave

face-vase ferry-very

ii). / θ / and /f/

free-three fug-thug

deaf-death oaf-oath

fought-thought

iii) /æ // ai /

fast-fair van-vain

trap-trail scarp-scared
H. Would you teach your Elementary class bucket or a pail, or would you teach both
words and why?
When a teacher teaches vocabulary, it is important to consider few factors such as the

familiarity of the words, frequency, availability of the words and others. I believe the teachers

should teach the word bucket first before she introduces the word pail for two reasons. First,

in terms of familiarity and availability, I think bucket is more common. Students must have

seen bucket even in their own house or even in their set of toys. We put ice cubes in buckets

and they even use bucket when they go to the beach and play with their beach toys. It would

be easier for the students to remember a certain vocabulary if the object is common in their

environment. The next step is to teach the synonym “pail”. The teacher needs to explain and

show the difference between the two words, their function and their usage. This way, it

would be easier for the students to remember when to use bucket and when to use pail.

I. What is the mistake in each of these sentences? If you can, suggest how it might have

arisen

i) One speaks English here. (On a notice outside a shop)

-Everyone speaks English here.

Indefinite pronoun was wrongly chosen.

ii) No one of them answered my letters

-None of them answered my letters.

-The pronoun chosen was wrong. The author must have generalize the rule. No one means

nobody. It doesn’t refer to a noun in the sentence. None on the other hand, must actually refer

to a noun in a sentence.
iii) He’s used up all what I gave him.

-He’s used up all that I gave him. The connector used to modify was wrong. The word that is

used as a defining clause to modify the word all. However, “what” is useds

iv) After lunch we went to shopping.

=After lunch we went shopping. : caused by generalization of the rules like the infinitive “to

+ verb”. However, the word shopping here does not function as verb. The word “shopping”

here is a gerund.

v) I have finished the composition this morning.

=I finished the composition this morning. :’There is a confusion in tense. The author must

have been confused with the usage of present perfect tense and the simple past tense. There is

a specific time this morning, therefore, the author should have used the simple past because it

pertains to the action that took place in the past and finish in the past.

vi) Please take your dinner with us.

=Please eat your dinner with us. : ‘take’ is an incorrect verb choice. The word take means to

get something away from the speaker or from the speaker is talking to. The sentence implies

an idea that the speaker wants to have dinner together with the person she or he is talking to.

So the correct verb is eat.

vii) I didn’t ate it because I am not eating pork

=I didn’t eat it because I don’t eat pork. Incorrect tense was used in this sentence. This

sentence is about the habit or factual information so the word ‘do’ has to be used in here.

viii) We enjoyed so much at the beach.

=We enjoyed ourselves so much at the beach. A reflexive pronoun must be inserted.
ix) The driver damaged his arm and three passengers were destroyed. Only one was not

wounded in the accident.

=The driver broke his arm and three passengers were injured. Only one was not wounded in

the accident. : Wrong choice of vocabulary. The word damaged can’t be used with the word

arm.

x) She leaves in an apartment.

=She lives in an apartment. : Incorrect choice of the vocabulary. The word leaves has a

similar sound to the word lives but they have different part of speech, meaning, and spelling.

J. How transparent do you feel these words are, supposing students know at least one
meaning of the constituent morphemes:

Word Transparency
Firework Not transparent
Lamppost Transparent
Right-hand man Not transparent
Half-heartedly Transparent
Left-winger Not transparent
Birthday card Transparent
Leave out Not transparent
Good looking Transparent
First class Not transparent
Make off with Not transparent
K. Describe as precisely as you can what happens (in manner and place of articulation)
when saying the phrase Queen of Spades.
s Manner Place of Voicing
articulation
K Plosive Velar Unvoiced
W Semivowel Bilabial Voiced
N Nasal Alveolar Voiced
V Fricative Labiodentals Voiced
S Fricative Alveolar Unvoiced
p Plosive Bilabial Unvoiced
d Plosive Alveolar Voiced
z Fricative Alveolar Voiced
i: Medial Voiced
ə Initial Voiced
e Medial Voiced
ɪ Medial voiced

L. How many embedded sentences are there in the following sentences? If you can,
analyze them by means of a tree diagram or any other way. Comment on the overall
complexity

i). Alice was just beginning [to think to herself,] ‘ Now, what am I [to do] with this

creature [when I get it home?’][when it grunted again,][so violently, that she looked

down into its face in some alarm.]

>There are 5 embedded sentences.

1. [to think to herself] : infinitive phrase

2. [to do] : infinite phrase

3. [when I get it home] : adverb clause presenting relationship

4. [when it grunted again] : adverb clause presenting relationship

5. [so violently, that she looked down into its face in some alarm] : coordinating conjunction

presenting result
ii). This time there could be no mistake about it: it was [neither more nor less than a

pig,][ and she felt][that it would be quite absurd for her][to carry it any farther.]

>There are 4 embedded sentences

1. [neither more nor less than a pig,] : coordinating conjunction saying negative

2. [and she felt] : conjunction to slow additional information

3.[that it would be quite absurd for her] : noun clause, item of the verb felt.

4. [to carry it any farther.]- infinitive phrase

M. The following passage from ‘The History of Mr Polly’ contains a number of words
which are surely beyond a 20,000 word vocabulary. They have been changed into
nonsense words so that you are in the same position as an advanced student reading the
book. What can you deduce from the context(including grammatical clues) about the
italicizes words?

:Slowly, argumentatively, and reluctantly, Uncle Jim waded down-stream. He tried

threats, he tried persuasion, he even tried a belated note of sorrow; Mr. Polly remained stiff,

if in secret a little perplexed as to the outcome of the situation. "This cold's getting to my

nerve!" said Uncle Jim. "You want cooling. You keep out in it," said Mr. Polly. They came

round the bend into sight of Nicholson's lat, where the backwater runs down to the Potwell

Mill. And there, after much negotations and several drills, Uncle Jim made a desperate effort

and struggled into clutch of the overhanging vines on the island, and so got out of the water

with the mil-stream between them. He emerged dripping and muddy and spiteful. "By

vengeance!" he said. "I'll skin you for this!"

N. Explain the difference between the following pairs of sentences. Are there any
pronunciation differences?
i) She read the letter which upset me

She read the letter, which upset me

>The two sentences implied a different meaning. The firs one implies that the speaker is

upset of the content of the letter. However, the second sentence implied that the speaker is

upset because somebody read her letter.

ii). He keeps his canary in the bathroom

He keeps his canary in the bathroom?

The first sentence is simply a statement of fact. The intonation goes down at the end of the

sentence. The second one ends in a question mark. It is an interrogative sentence but implies

a tone of surprise so the intonation goes up.

iii). They went to Austria and Italy

They went to Austria and Italy…

The first sentence is a declarative sentence and the intonation used is falling which means

that the author has no further information. The second sentence has a rising intonation which

implies that the author has more information to tell.

O. Analyze this sentence into morphemes. Curly brackets {} are often used to indicate
morphemes, and you can do so if you wish:

First the put his dirty sweater and socks into the washing machine, then returned to the

armchair in front of the television.

{First} {he} {put} {his} {dirt}{y} {sweat}{er} {and} {sock}{s} {into} {the} {wash}{ing}
{machine}, {then} {re}{turn}{ed} {to} {the}{ arm}{chair} {in} {front} {of} {the} {tele}

{vision.}

P. Are there any differences between the italicized words?

You have made absolutely no progress.

If you want to progress, you’ll have to work harder

There are several differences between the italicized words. The first progress is a noun and

the stress falls on the first syllable. It means movement forward or toward a place. On the

other hand, the second progress is a verb and the stress falls on the second syllable. It means

to move forward.

Q. Is ‘room’ in these sentences on word or two? Are there any teaching implications?

This room is quite small; we could use it as the office

There’s not enough room in the case for your dressing gown.

In any language you know, do these translate into one word or two?

The word "room" in here functions as two words. The first one being an area you could use to

occupy for something. The other room means space.

R. Give an example of a word in another language, whose semantic field is different

from the nearest English equivalent. How do they differ in meaning, and would the
difference pose any problem for a learner (of English or the other language)?
Jumbo-from Swahili (jambo (hello) or from Kongo nzamba "elephant")

Safari- from Swahili travel, ultimately from Arabic

The Arabic "islām" has a generic meaning of "peaceful submission, piety". The term as

loaned into English, "Islam," has a meaning strictly confined to the religion (deen) initiated
by Muhammad, replacing the now deprecated term Mohammedanism." 
 MARIA PRINCESS OLOTEO CALAYCAY
B50 L32 P2 Cityhomes Resortville Dasma, Cavite
Contact Number: 0997-371-4848
Email Address: [email protected]

Career/Job Objectives:
To secure for a challenging position that will ensure professional growth and where
my knowledge, experiences and qualifications can be utilized effectively for the benefit of the
company.

Summary Qualifications:

 Equip with professional knowledge, skills, qualifications, and attitude in accordance

to professional standards.
 Can work under great pressure with exceptional tact and focus on the task at hand.
 Can finish the task given within the allotted time.
 A professional health care provider with a cheerful disposition, high tolerance for
stress and can think and assess situation critically.
 Can easily adapt to new environment and work religiously.
 Works with high regard for the rules and laws of the company
 Computer/ Internet application skills, Microsoft office.
 Takes responsibilities seriously.

Job Experiences:

 Brand’s Hope Community Services

4021 Chicot Street Pascagoula, MS 39581
August 26, 2014 - Present

Job Description:
 Provide daily support to individuals with varying degrees of
development/intellectual disability.
 Assist these persons within the following areas: Job supports, self-care,
recreational activities and community inclusion.
 Depending on needs of the client, I could be transported to
appointments, report to work assignment with client as a job advocate or
could be assisting with feeding and hygiene.
Nursing Student (June 2008 – October 2013)

Hospital Ward
 University of Perpetual Help Medical Center (4th Floor Ward), Las Piñas City
 University of Perpetual Help Medical Center ( Doctor’s Wing), Las Piñas City
University of Perpetual Help Medical Center (3rd Floor Ward), Las Piñas City
 San Lazaro Hospital, Manila

Operating Room
 University of Perpetual Help Medical Center (OR), Las Piñas City
 Medical Center Imus (OR), Imus Cavite
 San Pedro Hospital (OR), San Pedro Laguna
 Our Lady of the Pilar Hospital (OR), Imus Cavite

Emergency Room
 University of Perpetual Medical Center (ER), Las Piñas City

Intensive Care Unit

 Medical Center Imus (ICU), Imus Cavite

Delivery Room / Lying-In Clinic

 University of Perpetual Help Medical Center, Las Piñas City
 Medical Center Imus, Imus Cavite
 Parong Angeles Maternity Clinic, Taguig City
 Achaas Lying-In, Silang Cavite

Community / Health Center

 National Housing Association, Parañaque City
 La Huerta Health Center, Parañaque City
 Talaba VII, Bacoor Cavite

Psychiatric Ward
 National Center for Mental Health, Mandaluyong City
PERSONAL INFORMATION:

Date of birth : February 28, 1987

Place of birth : Manila Philippines
Age : 29 years old
Sex : Female
Civil Status : Single
Height : 5’0”
Religion : Roman Catholic

EDUCATIONAL BACGROUND:

Tertiary : University of Perpetual Help System DALTA

Las Piñas City

Course : Bachelor of Science in Nursing

2008 – Oct. 2013

: Mapua Institute of Technology School of IT

Makati, City

Course : Bachelor of Science in Computer Science

2004 – 2008

Secondary : Immaculate Conception Academy

Dasmariñas, Cavite
2000 – 2004
 Primary : Francisco E. Barzaga Memorial School (FEBMS)
Dasmariñas, Cavite
1994 – 2000

I hereby attest that the above information is true and correct.

Maria Princess O. Calaycay

Applicant
Subjects and Objects in a Sentence
We will now look more closely at the ways in which words and phrases are grouped
together and ordered within clauses and sentences to convey a particular meaning.

The main elements of sentences

To begin this section, we will, first of all, examine the two most vital parts of the clause
structure and then move on to the other elements. Again, it will be useful to use a few
examples to illustrate the grammatical ideas.

 He sneezed.
 Accidents happen.
 Speed kills.
 Yvonne left.
 Snakes crawl.
These clauses are all simple sentences consisting of only two words each. The first element
in each sentence is called the Subject, while the second is the Verb. (Notice that I am using
a capital letter here to talk about the verb as a clause element as opposed to the verb as a
word class.) The Subject and the Verb are the minimum requirements for constructing a
basic English clause (with the exception of directives like sit! and go!) and appear in that
order in the vast majority of positive and negative statements. Although single words have
been used to fill the Subject and Verb ‘slots’ in the examples above, much more complicated
phrases can, of course, be made:

Subject Verb

The tall, dark stranger was singing

The retail prices index has been rising

Shouting and screaming in arguments doesn’t help

The newly-arrived refugees weren’t able to understand

Being rejected by work mates hurts

The poor grasshopper couldn’t sleep

The Subject

As noted earlier, the subject of a positive or negative statement is usually the first element of
a clause or sentence. The Subjects in the following sentences are in bold and the type of
Subject is given in brackets:
  The tall, dark stranger  was singing. (noun phrase)
 She  stood still.(pronoun)
 To err  is human. (verb)
 What he told me  turned out to be a lie. (subordinate clause)
By far the most commonly used types of Subject are the noun phrase and the pronoun (I is
the most frequently occurring word in the spoken language), while the verb – more correctly
the verbinfinitive with to – is seldom used in modern English. A subordinate clause as
Subject is quite common both in speech and writing and usually begins withwhat(ever)…, the
fact that… or that…:

 The fact that he likes skiing  doesn’t interest me at all.

 That Jane failed her exam  is a great disappointment.
 Whatever I hear about him  surprises me.
The way to test whether a clause is functioning as the Subject is to try replacing it with a
simpler grammatical element such as a pronoun or basic noun phrase and then checking
the grammaticality of the clause. Applying this test to the sentences above would give:

 It  doesn’t interest me at all.

 It  is a great disappointment.
 It  surprises me.
… all of which are grammatically acceptable. Notice that, although the Subject may consist of
several words, a long phrase or even a subordinate clause, there can only be one
grammatical Subject per clause.

Up to this point we have been discussing only positive and negative statements where the
Subject is the first element of the clause. However, there is one very common situation
where this word order is not used – namely, in questions. Here the Subject and part of the
verb phrase constituting the Verb element are inverted. From some of the examples above
we get:

 Was  the tall, dark stranger  singing?

 Has  the retail prices index  been rising?
 Doesn’t  shouting and screaming in arguments  help?
 Weren’t  the newly-arrived refugees  able to understand?
 Couldn’t  the poor grasshopper  sleep?
The Verb has a pivotal role in sentence structure. As with the Subject, the Verb can, and
often does, consist of more than one word, but is treated as a single unit expressing not
only the basic meaning of the main word (run, decide, imitate etc.), but also, among other
things, the time that the action took place, whether the action is finished or not and the
certainty of the action. In the examples below, the Verb is in bold:
  The cat  sleeps  all day.
 He  is talking  rubbish.
 We  will be seeing  each other next week.
 The wallet  might have been lost  at the party.
So, although there may be up to four, possibly even five words in the verb phrase of a
clause, they are usually analysed as one Verb as an element of the clause. To demonstrate
the importance of the Verb in a clause, try omitting the verb phrases from the examples
above. Having done that, now omit each of the other elements in turn and see how the
sense of the clause is affected.

The choice of the verb itself will often largely dictate what other elements may or may not
be used in the clause. Verbs like yawn, sleep and scratch would seem to require an animate
Subject, whilelaugh, talk and read usually need human Subjects (although the actions of
animals are sometimes described in the same terms). Some verbs need only a Subject to
make a complete clause (he yawned, the cat is sleeping, Barry jumped), while others appear to
need some more elements – *he hit…, *they like…, *cars cost…; we will look at these other
elements in the next section.

Other elements in the clause

Apart from the two main clause elements, Subject and Verb, there are three others which
may or may not appear in the clause. These are the Object, the Complement and
theAdverbial. The following sentence contains examples of each of these:

 The agency considered Harry indispensable for most jobs.

Using the definitions from the previous section, the agency is the Subject and considered is
the Verb. The remaining elements are: Object – Harry, Complement – indispensable,
Adverbial – for most jobs. We will now examine these in turn.

The Object

Here are some more examples of both people and things as Objects:

 He loves  football.
 The dog bit  the postman.
 The police have arrested  three people.
 Sally opened  the door to the dining room.
 The company sacked  one hundred of its employees.
 Fifteen children from the school choir will be singing  African folk songs.
As with the Subject, the Object can be anything from a single word (football) to a phrase (the
door to the dining room). You will notice that the Object in each case directly follows the Verb.
This is by far the most common position for the Object element in English, although, again,
there are exceptions. English is, therefore, usually referred to as an SVO type language,
meaning that the expected and most natural order of clause elements is Subject + Verb +
Object. If you are a native speaker of English, this might seem so obvious as not to be worth
comment. However, there are many languages in the world that do not follow this pattern;
for example, Welsh and Irish are bothVSO languages, while Japanese and Turkish are SOV. It
appears that this latter type is more common than the English SVO.
The examples given so far contain what is usually called a direct object; that is, there is only
one object in the clause and this is the main focus. But how do we analyse the Objects in the
following sentences?

 A young boy showed her  the way here.

 Several friends have told me  the same story.
 The shop is sending my father  a replacement.
 You gave them  no warning.
The direct object is shown in bold; but that still leaves us with an extra element immediately
following the Verb in each sentence which we have not accounted for. While the direct
object is the main focus of the verb action, the remaining elements (her, me, my father, them)
seem to be the recipients of the direct object. So, in the third
example, my father will be receiving the replacement. All of these sentences can in fact be
rewritten to illustrate this idea of recipient with very little change in meaning:

 A young boy showed the way here to  her.

 Several friends have told the same story to  me.
 The shop is sending a replacement to  my father.
 You gave no warning to  them
The preposition to indicates the target of the action of the verb. These targets, given in bold,
are referred to as indirect objects. Notice that in the second set of examples the indirect
object is formed by using a prepositional phrase with to and also follows the direct object,
whereas in the first set the indirect object precedes the direct object without to.
What is phonology?
 

1. Definitions

Phonology is that branch of linguistics which studies the sound system of

languages. The sound system involves

 the actual pronunciation of words, which can be broken up into the smallest units of

pronunciation, known as a segment or a phoneme. ( The words pat, chat and fat have
different phonemes at the beginning, and so phonemes contrast with each other to
produce different words.)

 prosody – pitch, loudness, tempo and rhythm – the ‘music’ of speech. (Other terms
used are non-segmental phonology or supra-segmental phonology.)

We shall focus more on the former because there is very little information about
historical prosody!

(It might also be relevant to say here that we will

distinguish phonetics from phonology. The former concentrates on the actual
sound-making and could be thought of as being more akin to physics; the latter
concentrates on how sounds are organised in individual languages. In order to do
phonology, therefore, you will necessarily need to know at least some of the
phonetics.)

2. The IPA 
Phonologists and phoneticians generally have to use special symbols – usually the
IPA, or International Phonetic Alphabet.

This module does not attempt to teach you the IPA, although we will introduce you
to the symbols used for English.

 
One word of warning: we said that English spelling was phonetic, more or less; we
also said that English spelling sometimes represents morphemes as well. We need
to careful, therefore, and not assume that every letter represents a phoneme. For
example, people often talk about ‘dropping the g’ in words
like talking and running (often written as talkin’ andrunnin’), whereas <ng>
in talking represents one sound /N/, and <n’> in talkin’ represents another sound
/n/; ‘dropping’ suggests that one sound has been left out.

Another convention that might be useful to mention here is that orthographic

symbols (including spelling) are indicated by the use of angle brackets, as in <ch>;
phonetic symbols are indicated by the use of square brackets, as in [k]; and
phonemes are indicated by the use of oblique strokes, as in /k/.

There are a number of websites that you can go to for further information.

         You can go to a web page maintained by Michael Quinion for a quick

introduction: http://www.quinion.com/words/pronguide.htm 

         You can also go to Peter Ladefoged’s website that also contains sound files

for you to listen to how the phonetic symbols are
pronounced:http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/Vowelsand
Consonants/vowels/contents.html (Peter Ladefoged is a British-born linguist
in the University of California, Los Angeles.)

(It might also be useful to add that a number of American linguists use a modified
version of the IPA, so be forewarned if you have consulted or are consulting
American texts.)

First of all, the letters b, d, f, h, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, w, z are given their

conventional values as in normal English spelling.

Here are some other symbols for consonants with examples of the sounds
(italicised) from English words. The alternative symbols have been included for
information and will not be used in this module.
Phonology What is Phonology? Phonology can be described as an aspect of language that deals
with rules for the structure and sequencing of speech sounds. Every language has a wide variety
of speech sounds (phonemes). For example in English, the ng sound, as in ring, will never appear
at the beginning of a word. Phonology rules also determine which sounds may be combined. For
example, the combination of dn will not appear in sequence in the same syllable. What are
phonological Processes? Phonological processes are patterns of speech found in many typically
developing children. For example, weak syllable deletion is when a child deletes syllables from a
multisyllabic word. A child may say, nana rather than saying, banana, a child may also delete final
consonants from words, cu for cup. Phonological processes become problematic when they do
not disappear by a certain age. There is developmental data that indicates when phonological
processes typically disappear. There are different norms for different processes. What is the
difference between an articulation disorder and a phonological disorder? Most professionals
characterize a child with an articulation disorder as someone who has difficulty producing a few
phonemes and the child’s errors may be linked to oral motor weakness and/or normal
development. A phonological disorder may be characterized as a child who has numerous
phoneme errors that can usually be grouped into categories (phonological processes), and they
are usually not linked to oral motor difficulties and/or normal development. What may speech
therapy be like for a child with a phonological disorder? There are various therapy approaches for
phonological disorders. One approach is to focus on the phonological processes rather than
focusing therapy on remediating errors phoneme-byphoneme. For example, if a child presents
with final consonant deletion, then all final consonants may be targeted during therapy. The goal
is to teach the child that the meaning changes when final consonants are left off. This may be
done through play, using pictures, and/or using minimal word pairs. Minimal pair therapy is when
you show a child two pictures representing words that differ by only one sound. If you are
targeting the phonological process of final consonant deletion, then the target pictures would be
one picture of an object ending in a vowel and one picture of an object ending with a final
consonant. For example, toe/toad, my/mile, ray/rain etc. The clinician would show the child the 2
pictures and ask the child to point to toe and then point to toad. The clinician would be looking
to see if the child understands that the two words have different meanings. The clinician would
then move on to have the child practice saying the words appropriately. What is phonological
awareness? Phonological awareness can be described as an understanding of the ways in which
speech can be manipulated and divided into smaller parts. This includes: rhyming; segmenting
words and syllables; along with blending sounds and syllables. Improving phonological awareness
skills has been shown to help with reading readiness skills and improve literacy development.

What is phonology?

Phonology is the study of the sound system of languages. It is a huge area of language theory and it
is difficult to do more on a general language course than have an  outlineknowledge of what it
includes. In an exam, you may be asked to comment on a text that you are seeing for the first time in
terms of various language descriptions, of which phonology may be one. At one extreme, phonology
is concerned with anatomy andphysiology - the organs of speech and how we learn to use them. At
another extreme, phonology shades into socio-linguistics as we consider social attitudes to features of
sound such as accent and intonation. And part of the subject is concerned with finding objective
standard ways of recording speech, and representing this symbolically.

For some kinds of study - perhaps a language investigation into the phonological development of
young children or regional variations in accent, you will need to use phonetic transcription to be
credible. But this is not necessary in all kinds of study - in an exam, you may be concerned with
stylistic effects of sound in advertising or literature, such as assonance, rhyme or onomatopoeia - and
you do not need to use special phonetic symbols to do this.
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The physics and physiology of speech

Man is distinguished from the other primates by having the apparatus to make the sounds of speech.
Of course most of us learn to speak without ever knowing much about these organs, save in a vague
and general sense - so that we know how a cold or sore throat alters our own performance. Language
scientists have a very detailed understanding of how the human body produces the sounds of speech.
Leaving to one side the vast subject of how we choose particular utterances and identify the sounds
we need, we can think rather simply of how we use our lungs to breathe out air, produce vibrations in
the larynx and then use our tongue, teeth and lips to modify the sounds. The diagram below shows
some of the more important speech organs.

This kind of diagram helps us to understand what we observe in

others but is less useful in understanding our own speech.
Scientists can now place small cameras into the mouths of
experimental subjects, and observe some of the physical
movements that accompany speech. But most of us move our vocal
organs by reflexes or a sense of the sound we want to produce, and
are not likely to benefit from watching movement in the vocal fold.

The diagram is a simplified cross-section through the human head -

which we could not see in reality in a living speaker, though a
simulation might be instructive. But we do observe some external
signs of speech sounds apart from what we hear.

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A few people have the ability to interpret most of a speaker's utterances from lip-reading. But many
more have a sense of when the lip-movement does or does not correspond to what we hear - we
notice this when we watch a feature film with dubbed dialogue, or a TV broadcast where the sound is
not synchronized with what we see.

The diagram can also prove useful in conjunction with descriptions of sounds - for example indicating
where the airflow is constricted to produce fricatives, whether on the palate, thealveolar ridge,
the teeth or the teeth and lips together.

Speech therapists have a very detailed working knowledge of the physiology of human speech, and of
exercises and remedies to overcome difficulties some of us encounter in speaking, where these have
physical causes. An understanding of the anatomy is also useful to various kinds of expert who train
people to use their voices in special or unusual ways. These would include singing teachers and voice
coaches for actors, as well as the even more specialized coaches who train actors to produce the
speech sounds of hitherto unfamiliar varieties of English or other languages. At a more basic level, my
French teacher at school insisted that we (his pupils) could produce certain vowel sounds only with
our mouths more open than we would ever need to do while speaking English. And a literally stiff
upper lip is a great help if one wishes to mimic the speech sounds of Queen Elizabeth II.
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So what happens? Mostly we use air that is moving out of our lungs (pulmonic egressive air) to speak.
We may pause while breathing in, or try to use the ingressive air - but this is likely to produce quiet
speech, which is unclear to our listeners. (David Crystal notes how the normally balanced respiratory
cycle is altered by speech, so that we breathe out slowly, using the air for speech, and breathe in
swiftly, in order to keep talking). In languages other than English, speakers may also use non-
pulmonic sound, such as clicks (found in southern Africa) or glottalic sounds (found worldwide). In the
larynx, the vocal folds set up vibrations in the egressive air. The vibrating air passes through further
cavities which can modify the sound and finally are articulated by the passive (immobile) articulators -
the hard palate, the alveolar ridge and the upper teeth - and the active (mobile) articulators. These are
the pharynx, the velum (or soft palate), the jaw and lower teeth, the lips and, above all, the tongue.
This is so important and so flexible an organ, that language scientists identify different regions of the
tongue by name, as these are associated with particular sounds. Working outwards these are:

 the back - opposite the soft palate

 the centre - opposite the meeting point of hard and soft palate
 the front - opposite the hard palate
 the blade - the tapering area facing the ridge of teeth
 the tip - the extreme end of the tongue

The first three of these (back, centre and front) are known together as the dorsum (which is Latin for
“backbone” or “spine”)

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Phonology, phonemes and phonetics

You may have known for some time that the suffix “-phone” is to do with sounds. Think, for instance,
of telephone, microphone, gramophone and xylophone. The morpheme comes from Greek phonema,
which means “a sound”.

 Telephone means “distant sound”

 Microphone means “small sound” (because it sends an input to an amplifier which in turn
drives loudspeakers - so the original sound is small compared to the output sound)
 Gramophone was originally a trade name. It comes from inverting the original
form,phonograph (=sound-writing) - so called because the sound caused a needle to trace a
pattern on a wax cylinder. The process is reversed for playing the sound back
 Xylophone means “wood sound” (because the instrument is one of very few where the
musical note is produced simply by making wood resonate)

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The fundamental unit of grammar is a morpheme. A basic unit of written language is agrapheme. And
the basic unit of sound is a phoneme. However, this is technically what Professor Crystal describes as
“the smallest contrastive unit” and it is highly useful to you in explaining things - but strictly speaking
may not exist in real spoken language use. That is, almost anything you say is a continuum and you
rarely assemble a series of discrete sounds into a connected whole. (It is possible to do this with
synthesised speech, as used by Professor Stephen Hawking - but the result is so different from
naturally occurring speech that we can recognize it instantly.) And there is no perfect or single right
way to say anything - which is just as well, because we can never exactly reproduce a previous
performance.

However, in your comments on phonology, you will certainly want sometimes to focus
onsingle phonemes or small sequences of phonemes. A phoneme is a sound segment of words or
syllables. Quite a good way to understand how it may indicate meaning is to consider how replacing it
with another phoneme will change the word - so if we replace the middle sound in “bad” we can
make “bawd”, “bed”, “bid”, “bird” and “bud”. (In two cases here one letter is replaced with two letters
but in all these cases it is a single vowel sound that changes.)

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The first people to write in English used an existing alphabet - the Roman alphabet, which was itself
adapted from the Greek alphabet for writing in Latin. (In the Roman empire, Latin was the official
language of government and administration, and especially of the army but in the eastern parts of the
empire Greek was the official language, and in Rome Greek was spoken as widely as Latin, according
to F.F. Bruce, in The Books and the Parchments, Chapter 5). Because these first writers of English
(Latin-speaking Roman monks) had more sounds than letters, they used the same letters to represent
different sounds - perhaps making the assumption that the reader would recognize the word, and
supply the appropriate sounds. It would be many years before anyone would think it possible to have
more consistent spelling, and this has never been a realistic option for writers of English, though
spelling has changed over time. And, in any case, the sounds of Old English are not exactly the same
as the sounds of modern English.

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As linguists have become aware of more and more languages, many with sounds never heard in
English, they have tried to create a comprehensive set of symbols to correspond to features of sound
- vowels, consonants, clicks and glottalic sounds and non-segmental or suprasegmental features,
such as stress and tone. Among many schemes used by linguists one has perhaps more authority
than most, as it is the product of the International Phonetic Association (IPA). In the table below, you
will see the phonetic characters that correspond to the phonemes used in normal spoken English. To
give examples is problematic, as no two speakers will produce the same sound. In the case of the
vowels and a few consonants, the examples will not match the sounds produced by all speakers -
they reflect the variety of accent known as Received Pronunciation or RP. Note that RP is not specific
to any region, but uses more of the sounds found in the south and midlands than in the north. It is a
socially prestigious accent, favoured in greater or less degree by broadcasters, civil servants,
barristers and people who record speaking clock messages. It is not fixed and has changed
measurably in the last 50 years. But to give one example, the sound represented by θ is not common
to all UK native speakers. In many parts of London and the south-east of England the sound
represented by f will be substituted. So, in an advertisement, the mother-in-law of Vinnie Jones
(former soccer player for Wimbledon and Wales; now an actor) says: “I fought 'e was a big fug” (/ aɪ
fɔət i: wɒz ə bɪg fug/).

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You may also wonder what has happened to the letter x. This is used in English to represent two
consonant sounds, those of k and s or of k and z. In phonetic transcription these symbols will be
used.
“Consonant” and “vowel” each have two related but distinct meanings in English. In writing of
phonology, you need to make the distinction clear. When you were younger you may have learned
that b,c,d,f and so on are consonants while a,e,i,o,u are vowels - and you may have wondered
about y. In this case consonants and vowels denote the letters that commonly represent the relevant
sounds. Phonologists are interested in vowel and consonant sounds and the phonetic symbols that
represent these (including vowel and consonant letters). It may be wise for you to use the
words consonant and vowel (alone) to denote the sounds. But it is better to use an unambiguous
phrase - and write or speak about consonant or vowel sounds, consonant or vowel
letters and consonant or vowel symbols. In most words these sounds can be identified, but there are
some cases where we move from one vowel to another to create an effect that is like neither - and
these arediphthongs. We also have some triphthongs - where three vowel sounds come in succession
in words such as “fire”, “power” and “sure”. (But this depends on the speaker - many of us alter the
sounds so that we say “our” as if it were “are”.) For convenience you may prefer the term vowel
glides - and say that “fine” and “boy” contain two-vowel glides while “fire” contains a three-vowel glide.

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IPA symbols for the sounds of English

The examples show the letters in bold that correspond to the sound that they illustrate. You will find
guidance below on how to use these symbols in electronic documents. The IPA distributes audio files
in analog and digital form, with specimen pronunciations of these sounds.

 The document in the frame below uses unicode symbols. If you do not see them, then you
can open a PDF version of the page. Click here to open the PDF file in a new window.

A phoneme is a speech sound that helps us construct meaning. That is, if we replace it with another
sound (where this is possible) we get a new meaning or no meaning at all. If I replace the initial
consonant (/r/) from rubble, I can get double or Hubble (astronomer for whom the space telescope is
named) or meaningless forms (as regards the lexicon of standard English) like fubble and wubble.
The same thing happens if I change the vowel and get rabble, rebel, Ribble (an English river) and the
nonsense form robble. (I have used the conventional spelling of “rebel” here, but to avoid confusion
should perhaps use phonetic transcription, so that replacements would always appear in the same
position as the character they replace.)

But what happens when a phoneme is adapted to the spoken context in which it occurs, in ways that
do not alter the meaning either for speaker or hearer? Rather than say these are different phonemes
that share the same meaning we use the model of allophones, which are variants of a phoneme. Thus
if we isolate the l sound in the initial position in lick and in the final position in ball, we should be able
to hear that the sound is (physically) different as is the way our speech organs produce it. Technically,
in the second case, the back of the tongue is raised towards the velum or soft palate. The
initial l sound is called clear l, while the terminal l sound is sometimes called a dark l. When we want
to show the detail ofphonetic variants or allophones we enclose the symbols in square brackets
whereas in transcribing sounds from a phonological viewpoint we use slant lines. So, using the IPA
transcription [l] is clear l, while [ɫ] is dark l.

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If this is not clear think:

 Am I only describing a sound (irrespective of how this sound fits into a system, has meaning
and so on)? If so, use square brackets.
  Am I trying to show how the sound is part of a wider system (irrespective of how exactly it
sounds in a given instance)? If so, use slant brackets.

So long as we need a form of transcription, we will rely on the IPA scheme. But increasingly it is
possible to use digital recording and reproduction to produce reference versions of sounds. This
would not, of course, prevent change in the choice of which particular sounds to use in a given
context. When people wonder about harass (hærəs) orharass (həræs) they usually are able to
articulate either, and are concerned about which reveals them as more or less educated in the use of
the “proper” form. (For your information, the stress historically falls on the first syllable, to rhyme
with embarrass - thus in both Pocket Oxford [UK, 1969] and Funk & Wagnalls New Practical
Standard [US, 1946]. The fashion for hu-rass is found on both sides of the Atlantic and we should not
credit it to, or blame it on, US speakers of English.)

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Phonologists also refer to segments. A segment is “a discrete unit that can be identified in a stream of
speech”, according to Professor Crystal. In English the segments would correspond to vowel sounds
and consonant sounds, say. This is a clear metaphor if we think of fruit - the number of segments
varies, but is finite in a whole fruit. So some languages have few segments and others many - from 11
in Rotokas and Mura to 141 in !Xu. The term may be most helpful in indicating what non-segmental or
supra-segmental (above the segments) features of spoken language are.

The sounds of English

Vowels

Front vowels | Central vowels | Back vowels

English has twelve vowel sounds. In the table above they are divided into seven short and five long
vowels. An alternative way of organizing them is according to where (in the mouth) they are produced.
This method allows us to describe them as front, central andback. We can qualify them further by how
high the tongue and lower jaw are when we make these vowel sounds, and by whether our lips are
rounded or spread, and finally by whether they are short or long. This scheme shows the following
arrangement:

Front vowels

 /i:/ - cream, seen (long high front spread vowel)

 /ɪ/ - bit, silly (short high front spread vowel)
 /ɛ/ - bet, head (short mid front spread vowel); this may also be shown by the symbol /e/
 /æ/ - cat, dad (short low front spread vowel); this may also be shown by /a/

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Central vowels

 /ɜ:/- burn, firm (long mid central spread vowel); this may also be shown by the symbol /ə:/.
 /ə/ - about, clever (short mid central spread vowel); this is sometimes known asschwa, or the
neutral vowel sound - it never occurs in a stressed position.
  /ʌ/ - cut, nut (short low front spread vowel); this vowel is quite uncommon among speakers in
the Midlands and further north in Britain.

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Back vowels

 /u:/ - boob, glue (long high back rounded vowel)

 /ʊ/ - put, soot (short high back rounded vowel); also shown by /u/
 /ɔ:/ - corn, faun (long mid back rounded vowel) also shown by /o:/
 /ɒ/- dog, rotten (short low back rounded vowel) also shown by /o/
 /ɑ:/ - hard, far (long low back spread vowel)

We can also arrange the vowels in a table or even depict them against a cross-section of the human
mouth. Here is an example of a simple table:

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  Front Central Back

High ɪ    i:   ʊ    u:

Mid ɛ ə    ɜ: ɔ:

Low æ ʌ ɒ    ɑ:

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Diphthongs

Diphthongs are sounds that begin as one vowel and end as another, while gliding between them. For
this reason they are sometimes described as glide vowels. How many are there? Almost every
modern authority says eight - but they do not all list the same eight (check this for yourself). Simeon
Potter, in Our Language (Potter, S, [1950] Chapter VI, Sounds and Spelling, London, Penguin) says
there are nine - and lists those I have shown in the table above, all of which I have found in the
modern reference works. The one most usually omitted is /ɔə/ as in bored. Many speakers do not
use this diphthong, but use the same vowel in poured as in fraud - but it is alive and well in the north
of Britain.

Potter notes that all English diphthongs are falling - that is the first element is stressed more than the
second. Other languages have rising diphthongs, where the second element is stressed, as in
Italian “uomo” (man) and “uovo” (egg).
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Consonants

Voicing | Articulation described by region | Articulation described by manner

Some authorities claim one or two fewer consonants than I have shown above, regarding those with
double symbols (/tʃ/ and /dʒ/) as “diphthong consonants” in Potter's phrase. The list omits one
sound that is not strictly a consonant but works like one. The full IPA list of phonetic symbols includes
some for non-pulmonic consonants (not made with air coming from the lungs), click and glottal
sounds. In some varieties of English, especially in the south of Britain (but the sound has migrated
north) we find the glottal plosive or glottal stop, shown by the symbol /ʔ/ (essentially a question mark
without the dot at the tail). This sound occurs in place of /t/ for some speakers - so  /botəl/ or /botl/
(bottle) become/boʔəl/ or /boʔl/.

We form consonants by controlling or impeding the egressive (outward) flow of air. We do this with

the articulators - from the glottis, past the velum, the hard palate and alveolar ridge and the tongue, to
the teeth and lips. The sound results from three things:

 voicing - causing the vocal cords to vibrate

 where the articulation happens
 how the articulation happens - how the airflow is controlled

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Voicing

All vowels must be voiced - they are caused by vibration in the vocal cords. But consonants may be
voiced or not. Some of the consonant sounds of English come in pairs that differ in being voiced or
not - in which case they are described as voiceless orunvoiced. So /b/ is voiced and /p/ is the
unvoiced consonant in one pair, while voiced /g/ and voiceless /k/ form another pair.

We can explain the consonant sounds by the place where the articulation principally occurs or by the
kinds of articulation that occurs there. The first scheme gives us this arrangement:

Articulation described by region

 Glottal articulation - articulation by the glottis. We use this for one consonant in English. This
is /h/ in initial position in house or hope.
 Velar articulation - we do this with the back of the tongue against the velum. We use it for
initial hard /g/ (as in golf) and for final /ŋ/ (as in gong).
 Palatal articulation - we do this with the front of the tongue on the hard palate. We use it
for /dʒ/ (as in jam) and for /ʃ/ (as in sheep or sugar).
 Alveolar articulation - we do this with the tongue blade on the alveolar ridge. We use it for /t/
(as in teeth), /d/ (as in dodo) /z/ (as in zebra) /n/ (as in no) and /l/ (as inlight).
 Dental articulation - we do this with the tip of the tongue on the back of the upper front teeth.
We use it for /θ/ (as in think) and /ð/ (as in that). This is one form of articulation that we can
observe and feel ourselves doing.
  Labio-dental articulation - we do this with the lower lip and upper front teeth. We use it for /v/
(as in vampire).
 Labial articulation - we do this with the lips for /b/ (as in boat) and /m/ (as in most). Where we
use two lips (as in English) this is bilabial articulation.

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Articulation described by manner

This scheme gives us a different arrangement into stop(or plosive) consonants, affricates, fricatives,
nasal consonants, laterals and approximants.

 Stop consonants (so-called because the airflow is stopped) or plosive consonants(because it

is subsequently released, causing an outrush of air and a burst of sound) are:
o Bilabial voiced /b/ (as in boat) and voiceless /p/ (as in post)
o Alveolar voiced /d/ (as in dad) and voiceless /t/ (as in tap)
o Velar voiced /g/ (as in golf) and voiceless /k/ (as in cow)
 Affricates are a kind of stop consonant, where the expelled air causes friction rather than
plosion. They are palatal /tʃ/ (as in cheat) and palatal /dʒ/ (as in jam)
 Fricatives come from restricting, but not completely stopping, the airflow. The air passes
through a narrow space and the sound arises from the friction this produces. They come in
voiced and unvoiced pairs:
o Labio-dental voiced /v/ (as in vole) and unvoiced /f/ (as in foal)
o Dental voiced /ð/ (as in those) and unvoiced /θ/ (as in thick)
o Alveolar voiced /z/ (as in zest) and unvoiced /s/ (as in sent)
o Palatal voiced /ʒ/ (as in the middle of leisure) and unvoiced /ʃ/ (as at the end
of trash)
 Nasal consonants involve closing the articulators but lowering the uvula, which normally
closes off the route to the nose, through which the air escapes. There are three nasal
consonants in English:
o Bilabial /m/ (as in mine)
o Alveolar /n/ (as in nine)
o Velar /ŋ/ (as at the end of gong)
 Lateral consonants allow the air to escape at the sides of the tongue. In English there is only
one such sound, which is alveolar /l/ (as at the start of lamp)
 Approximants do not impede the flow of air. They are all voiced but are counted as
consonants chiefly because of how they function in syllables. They are:
o Bilabial /w/ (as in water)
o Alveolar /r/ (as in road)
o Palatal /j/ (as in yet)

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Syllables

When you think of individual sounds, you may think of them in terms of syllables. These are units of
phonological organization and smaller than words. Alternatively, think of them as units of rhythm.
Although they may contain several sounds, they combine them in ways that create the effect of unity.

Thus splash is a single syllable but it combines three consonants, a vowel, and a final
consonant /spl+æ+ʃ/.
Some words have a single syllable - so they are monosyllables or monosyllabic. Others have more
than one syllable and are polysyllables or polysyllabic.

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Sometimes you may see a word divided into its syllables, but this may be an artificial exercise, since
in real speech the sounds are continuous. In some cases it will be impossible to tell whether a given
consonant was ending one syllable of beginning another. It is possible, for example, to
pronounce lamppost so that there are two /p/ sounds in succession with some interval between them.
But many native English speakers will render this as /læm-pəʊst/ or /læm-pəʊsd/.

Students of language may find it helpful to be able to identify individual syllables in

explaining pronunciation and language change - one of the things you may need to do is explain
which are the syllables that are stressed in a particular word or phrase.

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Suprasegmentals

Prosodic features | Paralinguistic features

In written English we use punctuation to signal some things like emphasis, and the speedwith which
we want our readers to move at certain points. In spoken English we use sounds in ways that do not
apply to individual segments but to stretches of spoken discourse from words to phrases, clauses and
sentences. Such effects are described asnon-segmental or suprasegmental - or, using the adjective
in a plural nominal (noun) form, simply suprasegmentals.

Among these effects are such things as stress, intonation, tempo and rhythm - which collectively are
known as prosodic features. Other effects arise from altering the quality of the voice, making it breathy
or husky and changing what is sometimes called the timbre - and these are  paralinguistic features.
Both of these kinds of effect may signal meaning. But they do not do so consistently from one
language to another, and this can cause confusion to students learning a second language.

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Prosodic features

 Stress or loudness - increasing volume is a simple way of giving emphasis, and this is a crude
measure of stress. But it is usually combined with other things like changes in tone and
tempo. We use stress to convey some kinds of meaning (semantic and pragmatic) such as
urgency or anger or for such things as imperatives.
 Intonation - you may be familiar in a loose sense with the notion of tone of voice. We use
varying levels of pitch in sequences (contours or tunes) to convey particular meanings. Falling
and rising intonation in English may signal a difference between statement and question.
Younger speakers of English may use rising (question) intonation without intending to make
the utterance a question.
 Tempo - we speak more or less quickly for many different reasons and purposes.
Occasionally it may be that we are adapting our speech to the time we have in which to utter
it (as, for example, in a horse-racing commentary). But mostly tempo reflects some kinds of
 meaning or attitude - so we give a truthful answer to a question, but do so rapidly to convey
our distraction or irritation.
 Rhythm - patterns of stress, tempo and pitch together create a rhythm. Some kinds of formal
and repetitive rhythm are familiar from music, rap, poetry and even chants of soccer fans. But
all speech has rhythm - it is just that in spontaneous utterances we are less likely to hear
regular or repeating patterns.

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Paralinguistic features

How many voices do we have? We are used to “putting on” silly voices for comic effects or in play.
We may adapt our voices for speaking to babies, or to suggest emotion, excitement or desire. These
effects are familiar in drama, where the use of a stage whisper may suggest something clandestine
and conspiratorial. Nasal speech may suggest disdain, though it is easily exaggerated for comic effect
(as by the late Kenneth Williams in many Carry On films).

Such effects are sometimes described as changing timbre or voice quality. We all may use them
sometimes but they are particularly common among entertainers such as actors or comedians. This is
not surprising, as they practise using their voices in unusual ways, to represent different characters.
The performers in the BBC's Teletubbies TV programme use paralinguistic features to suggest the
different characters of Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, La-La and Po.

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Accent

Everyone's use of the sound system is unique and personal. And few of us use sounds consistently in
all contexts - we adapt to different situations. (We rarely adapt our sounds alone - more likely we mind
our language in the popular sense, by attending to our lexical choices, grammar and phonology.)

Most human beings adjust their speech to resemble that of those around them. This is very easy to
demonstrate, as when some vogue words from broadcasting surf a wave of popularity before settling
down in the language more modestly or passing out of use again.

This is particularly true of sounds, in the sense that some identifiable groups of people share (with
some individual variation) a collection of sounds that are not found elsewhere, and these are  accents.
We think of accents as marking out people by geographical region and, to a less degree, by social
class or education. So we might speak of a Scouse(Liverpool), Geordie (Newcastle)
or Brummie (Birmingham) accent. These are quite general descriptions - within each of these cities
we would differentiate further. And we should also not confuse real accent features in a given region
with stereotyped and simplified versions of these which figure in (or disfigure) TV drama - Emmerdale,
Brookside, Coronation Street and Albert Square are not reliable sources for anything we might want to
know about their real-world originals. And the student who hoped to study the speech of people in
Peckham by watching episodes of John Sullivan's situation comedy Only Fools and Horses was
deeply misguided.

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Thinking of social class, we might speak of a public school accent (stiff upper lip and cut glass
vowels). But we do not observe occupational accents and we are unlikely to speak of a baker's,
soldier's or accountant's accent (whereas we might study their special uses of lexis and grammar).

This is not the place to study in detail the causes of such accents or, for example, how they are
changing. Language researchers may wish to record regional variant forms and their frequency. In
Britain today (perhaps because of the influence of broadcasting) we can observe sound features
moving from one region to another (like the glottal stop which is now common in the north of
England), while also recording how other features of accent are not subject to this kind of change.

Studying phonology alone will not answer such questions. But it gives you the means to identify
specific phonetic features of accent and record them objectively.

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Received Pronunciation

Received Pronunciation (or RP) is a special accent - a regionally neutral accent that is used as a

standard for broadcasting and some other kinds of public speaking. It is not fixed - you can hear
earlier forms of RP in historical broadcasts, such as newsreel films from the Second World War.
Queen Elizabeth II has an accent close to the RP of her own childhood, but not very close to the RP
of the 21st century.

RP excites powerful feelings of admiration and repulsion. Some see it as a standard or the correct
form of spoken English, while others see its use (in broadcasting, say) as an affront to the dignity of
their own region. Its merit lies in its being more widely understood by a national and international
audience than any regional accent. Non-native speakers often want to learn RP, rather than a
regional accent of English. RP exists but no-one is compelled to use it. But if we see it as a reference
point, we can decide how far we want to use the sounds of our region where these differ from the RP
standard. And its critics may make a mistake in supposing all English speakers even have a regional
identity - many people are geographically mobile, and do not stay for long periods in any one place.

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RP is also a very loose and flexible standard. It is not written in a book (though the BBC does give its
broadcasters guides to pronunciation) and does not prescribe such things as whether to stress the
first or second syllable in research. You will hear it on all the BBC's national radio channels, to a
greater or less degree. On Radio 3 you will perhaps hear the most conservative RP, while Radio 5 will
give you a more contemporary version with more regional and class variety - but these are very broad
generalizations, and refer mainly to the presenters, newsreaders, continuity announcers and so on.
RP is used as a standard in some popular language reference works. For example, the  Oxford Guide
to the English Language (Weiner, E [1984], Pronunciation, p. 45, Book Club Associates/OUP,
London) has this useful description of RP:

“The aim of recommending one type of pronunciation rather than another, or of giving a word a
recommended spoken form, naturally implies the existence of a standard. There are of course many
varieties of English, even within the limits of the British Isles, but it is not the business of this section to
describe them. The treatment here is based upon Received Pronunciation (RP), namely 'the
pronunciation of that variety of British English widely considered to be least regional, being originally
that used by educated speakers in southern England.' This is not to suggest that other varieties are
inferior; rather, RP is here taken as a neutral national standard, just as it is in its use in broadcasting
or in the teaching of English as a foreign language.”
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Accent and social class

Accent is certainly related to social class. This is a truism - because accent is one of the things that
we use as an indicator of social class. For a given class, we can express this positively or negatively.
As regards the highest social class, positively we can identify features of articulation - for certain
sounds, upper class speakers do not open or move the lips as much as other speakers of English.
Negatively, we can identify such sounds as the glottal stop as rare among, and untypical of, speakers
from this social class.

Alternatively we can look at vowel choices or preferences. For example, the upper classes for long
used the vowel /ʌ/ in some cases where /ɒ/ is standard - thus Coventry would be /kʌvəntri:/. C.S.
Lewis in The Great Divorce depicts a character who pronounces“God” as “Gud” -“ 'Would to God' he
continued, but he was now pronouncing it Gud...”

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We may think of dropping or omitting consonants as a mark of the lower social classes and
uneducated people. But dropping of terminal g - or rather substituting /n/ for /ŋ/ was until recently a
mark of the upper class “toff”, who would enjoy, for example, huntin', fishin'and shootin'. The British
actor Ian Carmichael did this in playing the part of Dorothy L. Sayers' detective, Lord Peter Wimsey.
In writing the dialogue for her novels Miss Sayers indicates Lord Peter's dropping of the terminal g by
the use of an apostrophe:

“It's surprisin' how few people ever mean anything definite from one year's end to another...”

Gaudy Night, Chapter 4

Among real life speakers in whom I have observed this tendency I would identify the late Sir Alf
Ramsey. (I do not know whether Alf Ramsey was brought up to speak in this way or acquired the
habit later.)

Investigating the connection can be challenging, however, since social class is an artificial construct.
Assuming that you have found a way to identify your subjects as belonging to some definable social
group, then you can study vowel choices or frequencies. Even the most cursory attention tells us that
the Queen has distinct speech sounds. But can we explain them in detail? Does she share them with
other members of her family? Do other speakers share them?

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 Pronunciation and prescription

The English Language List is an Internet discussion forum for English language teachers. Recently
(2001) a student, not a native speaker but clearly a very competent writer of English, asked where he
could get help to learn to speak in a standard British accent. Many of the responses came from
people who were not answering his question but trying to persuade him to stick with his current accent
(which he felt would disadvantage him in his business career). Yet we are not disparaging regional
accents when we try to learn the neutral and prestigious standard form. (What the discussion never
really revealed was how many of the list members would identify themselves as RP speakers.)

The prescriptive tradition in English grammar was unscientific and perhaps harmful. But setting down
authoritative standard forms is not always so unwise. In spelling they are useful, and the same may
be true of pronunciation. Dictionaries do not compel the reader to learn and use the pronunciations
they show - but they do give a representation of the pronunciation according to RP. Some show
variant pronunciations as well as the principal RP form.

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If you are a student (or even a teacher) you may find RP an unfamiliar accent - maybe you can see
that the phonetic transcription indicates a pronunciation different from the one you normally use. No
one is forcing you to change your own speech sounds, in which your sense of identity may be
profoundly located. But you can become aware that the local norm is not the universal standard.

Now that English is an international language, its development is certainly not controlled by what
happens in the UK. So British RP may cease to be a useful standard for learners of English.
Increasingly, language learners favour a mid-Atlantic accent, which shares features of British RP and
the speech of the eastern USA.

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Language acquisition

Very young children do not produce the sounds they will use as adults partly because they are unable
to form them (physically their speech organs have not developed fully) and partly because they may
not know exactly what the sound is that they wish to produce. Children may also be less subtle in
controlling the flow of egressive air, so that they will continue speaking, rather than pause briefly,
while drawing more air in.

Young children may have a sense of stressed syllables as more important - so they may omit
unstressed elements before or after. So, for example, a child may ask for a  'nanarather than
a banana. (Alternatively, the child may know that there is some repetition of sound here, but limit it to
two syllables.) I am supposing that the non-standard form is spoken by a child, but perhaps repeated
back by adults. But one often observes adults (unhelpfully) using what they suppose to be an easier
form of a word and offering the child a 'nana. On the other hand, some children have resisted this
tendency. Though they may not articulate a word in full or exactly, they can recognize it as an
incomplete or mistaken form when an adult repeats it back to them. We see this in this exchange
between an adult and a four year old, recorded by George Keith and John Shuttleworth:

Adult: What do you want to be when you grow up?

Child: A dowboy.
Adult: So you want to be a dowboy, eh?
Child: No! Not a dowboy, a dowboy!
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The child cannot articulate the /k/ initial sound but knows that what he hears from the adult is not the
form of the word he is used to hearing, so protests.

Since children learn by imitation of examples it may be helpful when they begin formal education to
give them such examples, but not by continually rebuking them for saying things “wrongly”. Children
do not learn to articulate all sounds at the same stage in their development. Teachers of children in
early years (nursery and reception) classes should be able to identify the few cases where there is a
disorder or problem for which some specialist intervention is appropriate.

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Language change

Change happens in language - and the sounds of English are not exempt. Of course, basic sounds do
not change in the sense that the phonemes represented in the IPA transcription will not go away. And
it is rare, but not impossible, for speakers of a given language to begin to use phonemes they did not
use before. Thus, most English speakers faced with French -ogne (as in Boulogne or Dordogne)
anglicise to Buloyn (/bəlɔɪn/). And Welsh double l in initial position (as in Llanfair and many other
place names) they sound simply as /l/ rather than a voiceless unilateral l.

What does change is the choice of which sound to use in a given context - though choice may
suggest that this is voluntary whereas the change normally happens unnoticed. At a very simple level
we can see, from rhymes in poetry that no longer work, that one or more words has acquired a new
standard pronunciation. So John Donne writes (1571-1631) “And find/What wind/Serves to advance
an honest mind”. We have retained the vowel sound in wind (verb, as in wind up) but not in wind
(noun, as in north wind). We can still observe vowel change. In my own lifetime  envelope was
pronounced with the initial vowel /ɒ/ (as if it were onvelope). This pronunciation is becoming more
rare, and persists mostly among older speakers. Turquoise was once commonly sounded as in
French /tɜ:kwæz/ - but now it is more or less uniformly /tɜ:kɔɪz/ or /tɜ:kɔɪs/ (perhaps by analogy
with tortoise).

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Far more common are changes in stress patterns. So research (more or less universal in the UK
when I was a child) has given way to re-search. In the case of harass the stress has shifted the other
way, giving harass. We cannot sensibly say that the new form is “wrong” or “bad English” (even if we
prefer the older form). But we can observe the frequency with which the new form occurs, and see if it
does come to supplant the older form or whether both forms persist.

Change happens within regional varieties, too - so the glottal stop has moved its way northwards from
London and southwards from Glasgow (where it has been found for 150 years). This is one feature of
what Paul Kerswill calls dialect levelling. Similarly use of /f/ or /v/ in place of /θ/ and /ð/ is spreading
north from London.

Perhaps the most well documented change occurring now is in sentence intonation. This is especially
common among younger people, but not exclusively so. The change lies in a tendency to use rising
(question) intonation more frequently. What is not clear, in contexts that allow either, is whether the
speaker intends to ask a question or means to make a statement. We cannot be sure if the rising
intonation conveys meaning, or is habitual.

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One common way for pronunciation to change is by elision - compressing the word to remove a
syllable. Once it was common to sound the -ed ending on past tense verbs, whereas now these verbs
end with a /t/ sound. We do still sound the -ed ending on adjectives, even when these are formed from
the past tenses - as in naked, wicked andlearned. We can contrast the learned professor with what
her pupils learned in the lecture. (The first has two syllables, the second only one.)

Police is often pronounced as a monosyllable /pli:s/ for example by the newsreader Sue Lawley.

Recently I have observed several newsreaders eliding the middle syllable ofterrorist, producing the
form /tɛrəɪst/ or sometimes /tɛrɪst/. On the other hand, literacy may alter pronunciation. The n
in column is silent, and in the Second World War, people would often speak of the Fifth Columnist
(/kɒləmɪst/). But now broadcasters speak of those who write columns in newspapers
as /kɒləmnɪsts/ - thereby sounding what was silent /n/.

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Phonology for exam students

Phonology as an explicit subject of detailed study is not compulsory for students taking Advanced
level courses in English Language. But it is one of the five “descriptions of language” commended by
the AQA syllabus B (the others are: lexis, grammar, pragmaticsand semantics). In some kinds of
study it will be odd if it does not appear in your analysis or interpretation of data.

In written exams, you may want to comment on some features of phonology in explaining example
language data - these may be presented to you on the exam paper, or may be your own examples,
which illustrate, say, some point about language change, language acquisition or sociolinguistics. You
may wish to use diagrams, models or the IPA transcription - and if you are able to do so, this may be
helpful. But if you do not feel confident about using these, you can still make useful points about
phonology - you can show stress simply by underlining or highlighting the stressed syllable. And you
can show many aspects of phonology by using the standard Western (Roman-English) alphabet
appropriately - as in contrasting pronunciations of “harass” as:

 ha-russ (first syllable stressed, vowel is a; second syllable unstressed vowel is neutral) or
 huh-rass (first syllable unstressed, neutral vowel; second syllable stressed, vowel isa)

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Phonetic symbols and electronic documents

Representing phonetic symbols in electronic documents can be a challenge, unless you have the right
software. Assuming that you have a word-processing program, you need to use special fonts that will
represent the IPA symbols. These are either the SIL IPA fonts (such as SILdoulosIPA)
or Unicode fonts (like Lucida Sans Unicode, which I have used in this document).
If you are producing work that will be printed, then you can add things by hand later, but this is messy
and best avoided. There is a lot of guidance on the IPA homepage about how to cope with this
problem.

If you do find a way to reproduce the symbols you need, it may make sense to paste them all at the
end of the document on which you are working. Then, you can copy and paste as you need to use
them. If you do not do this, then you will have to use the Alt key and the numeric keypad, since the
keys on the normal keyboard will only give you the symbols that resemble ordinary letters.

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Different ways of representing sound

Conventions of language science and lexicographers

If you study reference works you may find a variety of schemes for representing different aspects of
phonology - there is no single universal scheme that covers everything you may need to do.

And many dictionaries may not even use the IPA alphabet, for the very obvious reason that the reader
is not familiar with this transcription and can cope without it.

The text above comes from the Pocket Oxford Dictionary - this shows a simple phonetic
representation based on the standard Western alphabet, with accents to show different vowels. Look
in any dictionary you have and you may find something similar.

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Literary models

In representing speech - for example in drama, poetry or prose fiction - some authors are interested
not merely in the words but also in how they are spoken. One of the most familiar concerns is that of
how to represent regional accents. Here is a fairly early example, from the second chapter
of Wuthering Heights (1847), in which the servant Joseph refuses to admit Mr. Lockwood into the
house:

“'T' maister's dahn I't' fowld. Goa rahnd by the end ut' laith, if yah went to spake tull him”

Tennyson (1809-1892) has a similar approach in his poem, Northern Farmer, Old Style:

“What atta stannin' theer fur, and doesn' bring me the aäle?
Doctor's a 'toättler, lass, and 'e's allus i' the owd taäle...”

Joseph comes from what is now West Yorkshire, while Tennyson's farmer is supposedly from the
north of Lincolnshire. Here is an earlier example, from Walter Scott's Heart of Midlothian (1830),
which shows some phonetic qualities of the lowlands Scots accent. In this passage the Laird of
Dumbiedikes (from the country near Edinburgh) is on his deathbed. He advises his son about how to
take his drink:

“My father tauld me sae forty years sin', but I never fand time to mind him. - Jock, ne'er drink brandy in
the morning, it files the stamach sair... ”

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George Bernard Shaw, in Pygmalion (1914), uses one phonetic character (ə - schwa) in his attempt to
represent the accent of Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl:

“There's menners f' yer! Tə-oo banches o voylets trod into the mad...Will ye-oo py me f'them.”

However, after a few sentences of phonetic dialogue, Shaw reverts to standard spelling, noting:

“Here, with apologies, this desperate attempt to represent her dialect without a phonetic alphabet
must be abandoned as unintelligible outside London”.

In Pygmalion Professor Higgins teaches Eliza to speak in an upper-class accent, so as to pass her off
as a duchess. In the course of the play, therefore, her accent changes. Theactress playing the part,
however, may have a natural accent closer to that with which Eliza speaks at the completion of her
education, so in playing the part she may doing the reverse of what Eliza undergoes, by gradually
reverting to a natural manner of articulation. (Eliza's pronunciation improves ahead of her
understanding of grammar, so that at one point she says memorably: “My aunt died of influenza: so
they said. But it's my belief theydone the old woman in.”) In Pygmalion Shaw does not merely
represent accent (and other features of speech) but makes this crucial to an exploration of how
speech relates to identity and social class.

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Charles Dickens is particularly interested in the sounds of speech. He observes that many speakers
have difficulty with initial /v/ and /w/. Sam Weller, in The Pickwick Papers, regularly transposes these:

“ 'Vell,' said Sam at length, 'if this don't beat cock-fightin' nothin' never vill...That wery next house...' ”

Mr. Hubble, in Great Expectations does, the same thing when he describes young people as
“naterally wicious”. Joe Gargery, in the same novel, has many verbal peculiarities, of which perhaps
the most striking is in his description of the Blacking Warehouse. This is less impressive than the
picture Joe has seen on bills where it is “drawd too architectooralooral”.

In Chapter 16 of Our Mutual Friend, Betty Higden is proud of Mr. Sloppy (an orphan she has fostered)
not only because he can read, but because he is able to use different voice styles for various
speakers.

“You mightn't think it, but Sloppy is a beautiful reader of a newspaper. He do the Police in different
voices.”

Dickens also finds a way to show tempo and rhythm. In Chapter 23 of Little Dorrit (and elsewhere in
the novel), Flora Finching speaks at length and without any pauses:

“Most unkind never to have come back to see us since that day, though naturally it was not to be
expected that there should be any attraction at our house and you were much more pleasantly
engaged, that's pretty certain, and is she fair or dark blue eyes or black I wonder, not that I expect that
she should be anything but a perfect contrast to me in all particulars for I am a disappointment as I
very well know and you are quite right to be devoted no doubt though what am I saying Arthur never
mind I hardly know myself Good gracious!”