Parcial 5 [Karen Viridiana]

FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES LANGUAGE SCHOOL DEGREE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Name of the assignment: Phonology Section: 01 Teacher’s name: Mr. White

Student’s name: COLORADO HERNÁNDEZ, KAREN VIRIDIANA 31-0750-2014

Topic: “PARCIAL 5”

SAN SALVADOR, EL SALVADOR, DEC 4th, 2015.

INDEX Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………….. 3 Consonants……………………………………………………………………………………………….. 4 - 6 Vowels………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 7 - 8 Suprasegmentals………………………………………………………………………………………. 9 - 10 Clusters…………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 11 Ellipsis……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 12 Assimilation………………………………………………………………………………………………. 13 Schwas……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 14 - 15 Homographs and Homophones………………………………………………………………… 16 Minimal Pairs……………………………………………………………………………………………. 17 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………... 18 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………………… 19

2

INTRODUCTION This report will explain each topic from consonants, vowels, clusters, and others important topics that you can study and also you will learn them with examples, images or specific information about it. You can understand all the definitions in easy vocabulary and also find clearly examples that will help you more.

3

CONSONANTS What is a consonant?

A consonant is a speech sound that's not a vowel. The sound of a consonant is produced by a partial or complete obstruction of the air stream by a constriction of the speech organs. In writing, a consonant is any letter of the alphabet except a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y.

There are 21 consonant letters in the written alphabet (B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, W, X, Y, Z), and there are 24 consonant sounds in most English accents.

It´s important to know that Graphemes are letters or a symbolic part using to know the letter in general but Phonemes are good pronunciation of the letter, how we have to pronounce, I mean, the good pronunciation.

PLACE OF ARTICULATION Bilabial consonants: Made by bringing lips together.

Labiodental: Made by lower lip against upper front teeth.

Alveolar: Made by tongue near the alveolar ridge.

Interdental: Made by tip of the tongue between the front teeth.

Palatal: Made by tongue near the hard palate.

Glottal: Produce at the larynx.

Velar: Produce behind hard palate.

4

MANNER OF ARTICULATION IN CONSONANTS Manner of articulation refers to how the air stream from the lungs is directed to the mouth and modified by the various structures to produce a consonant phoneme.

VOICED AND VOICELESS CONSONANTS Voiceless: The air from the lungs doesn´t vibrate vocal cords.

Voiced: The air from the lungs repeatedly vibrates vocal cords as it passes through, creating a vibration effect.

5

Many consonant sounds come in pairs. For example, P and B are produced in the same place in the mouth with the tongue in the same position.

The only difference is that P is an unvoiced sound (no vibration of the vocal cords) while B is a voiced sound (vocal cords vibrate). Put your hand on your throat as you say the pairs below to feel the difference.

The following tables display and describe the different IPA consonants:

6

VOWELS What is a vowel?

A vowel is a letter of the alphabet (a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y) that represents a speech sound created by the relatively free passage of breath through the larynx and oral cavity.

Letters that are not vowels are consonants. As pointed out below, spoken English has approximately 20 distinct vowel sounds, though there are dialectal variations.

Important: All English vowels sounds are voiced.

The position of our lips, our lips can be rounded, can be spread (unrounded) and our lips can be relaxed (neutral).

The position of your tongue, our tongue can be high inside our mouth, it can be low or it can be somewhere in the middle. Also we can talk about our mouth being open or closed, that´s related to the position of our tongue.

7

Vowel length, some vowels are very short and some vowels are longer.

How tense our mouth needs to be to make a vowel sound?

Can be tense or relax, some vowels are tenser than others, for example: /i/ and /I/.

A four-sided vowel chart is often used to demonstrate the front–back and high–low positions.

The chart roughly represents the tongue position in the oral cavity.

8

SUPRASEGMENTAL In speech, suprasegmental refers to a phonological property of more than one sound segment.

Also called nonsegmental. As discussed in Examples and Observations below, suprasegmental information applies to several different linguistic phenomena (such as pitch, duration, and loudness). Suprasegmentals are often regarded as the "musical" aspects of speech.

The term suprasegmental (referring to functions that are "over" vowels and consonants) was coined by American structuralists in the 1940s.

Loudness: Is the intensity of the pronunciation, and we can understand that in a spoken utterance the syllables are never produced with the same intensity.

Example: Erick build flutes. He began building flutes after college. He has one flute of his very own.

Pitch: Is related with the intonation, and the pitch is going up and down in a normal conversation.

Example:

Did you, really?

Length: This measure is the duration of the vowels, syllable or utterance.

Example:

Shoe /ʃu:/

Should /ʃʊd/

9

The most important of the suprasegmentals phonological features is: THE STRESS. The stress syllable is produced with more energy, for example:

What color do you prefer?

STRESS IN PDE   

Lexical Stress Shift Stress Weakening

10

CLUSTERS A consonant cluster is a group of two or more consonant sounds that come before (onset), after (coda), or between (medial) vowels. Also known simply as cluster.

Consonant cluster simplification (or reduction) sometimes occurs when one consonant (or more) in a sequence of adjacent consonants is elided or dropped. In everyday speech, for instance, the phrase "best boy" may be pronounced "bes' boy," and "first time" may be pronounced "firs' time").

Here are some examples of consonant clusters:

o \sp\ and \ts\ in the word Spots o \spr\ in the word Spray Consonant clusters consist of four major categories but there are more:    

r-clusters s-clusters l-clusters 3 letter clusters

Link: http://www.sltinfo.com/syllables-and-clusters/

11

ELLIPSIS What is ellipsis?

The act of leaving out one or more words that are not necessary for a phrase to be understood. The omission of one or more words that are obviously understood but that must be supplied to make a construction grammatically complete.

Examples:

Probably General Business Memory Mineral Margarine Vegetable Average Suppose Conference Federal

12

ASSIMILATION A general term in phonetics for the process by which a speech sound becomes similar or identical to a neighboring sound. In the opposite process, dissimilation, sounds become less similar to one another.

Assimilation is a common phonological process by which the phonetics of a speech segment becomes more like that of another segment in a word (or at a word boundary). A common example of assimilation would be "don't be silly" where the /n/ and /t/ in "don't" become /m/ and /p/, where said naturally in many accents and discourse styles ("dombe silly"). Assimilation can be synchronic being an active process in a language at a given point in time or diachronic being a historical sound change.

/t/ + /y/ = /tʃ/ /d/ + /y/ = /ʤ/ /s/ + /y/ = / ʃ / /z/ + /y/ = / ʒ /

Examples:

13

SCHWAS The most common vowel sound in English, represented as ə in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Only words with two or more syllables may have a schwa. The schwa represents a mid-central vowel in an unstressed syllable, such as the second syllable of woman and the second syllable of buses. Any vowel letter can stand for the schwa sound.

List of Shwas: a) /ʌ/ Stressed b) /ə/ Unstressed c) /ɝ/ = ʌ + r d) /ɚ/ = ə + r

/ʌ/ Stressed Monollysabic words stressed syllable in a multisyllabic word spelling cases: “u” But “o” Love “ou” Cousin “oo” Blood “oe” Does

/ɝ/ = ʌ + r Monosyllabic words stressed syllable in Multisyllabic spelling cases: “ir” Bird “ur” Hurt “er” Fer

14

/ə/ Unstressed Spelling cases a, e, I, o, u unstressed section, unstressed syllables in multisyllabic words. You should find first the stress and then the rest in the word is the schwa. For example: SODA /ə/

/ə/

/ɚ/ = ə + r Spelling cases: “ar” Sugar “er” After “or” Color “ure” Nature

15

HOMOGRAPHS, HOMOPHONES It’s easy to confuse homographs with homophones and homonyms, but if you think about each word, they make more sense. Homo-, as you know, means “same.” But the end of each word tells us what the same is.

Homograph - “Graph” has to do with writing or drawing. When you think about a graph, you envision a picture. If you read graphic novels, you know they have pictures. Someone drew them. So “homograph” means “same picture” or “same writing.” Homographs are written (spelled) the same.

Homophone - “Phone” has to do with sound. When you talk on the telephone, you hear the other person’s voice. When people in the 1800s used a gramophone, they were listening to music. And phonology is the study of a language’s sounds. So “homophone” means “same sound.” Homophones are pronounced the same.

For example:

16

MINIMAL PAIRS A minimal pair is a pair of words that differ in a single phoneme. Minimal pairs are often used to show that two sounds contrast in a language. For example, we can demonstrate that [s] and [z] contrast in English by adducing minimal pairs such as sip and zip, or bus and buzz.

For example:

17

CONCLUSION

The main conclusion was that we can learn doing the report and not only copy and paste, you have to analyze and also search the correct information because if you don’t know what is the topic about you could fail. It was difficult but like student you can learn too much.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3IO5K5ZGB4 Information link: http://grammar.about.com/od/c/g/consonaterm.htm Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuQOc-mMz-U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtH_JBiaKkM