Tuesday 6 December 2011

Day 3

Phonology.

Phonetics deals with the sounds we make. Phonology deals with the underlying mental idea we have of these sounds, and how they're put together. Whereas phonetics deals with phones, phonology deals with phonemes, which are written /laɪk ðɪs/. Notice how it's essentially the same as the broad phonetic transcription I gave? That's because the symbols we give to phonemes, unlike those we give to phones, are broadly arbitrary (as long as they're consistent!); it makes sense to link them with the most common realisation (actual pronunciation) of those phonemes. This doesn't have to be the case though!

Let's take two speakers, C and S. C has (close to) an RP accent, and says (crudely), <like this>. S has a particular accent which alters that /ð/ and says (again crudely) <like dis>.

C: /laɪk ðɪs/ >> [laɪk.ðɪs]
S: /laɪk ðɪs/ >>[laɪk.d̪ɪs]

Crucually, they both have the same underlying representation and understand one another - it is just the realisation that changes.

There's another few crucial differences. Phonology touches on morphology, so we often represent morphology (more on that tomorrow) in the transcription, whereas in phonetics we represent syllables instead.

<he liked this> >> /hiː laɪk-d ðɪs/ >> [hiː.laɪkt.ðɪs]

Phonology comprises lots of interesting things, like phonotactics (how sounds are allowed to fit together), and rewrite rules (how you get from the underlying to surface structures), but you have the crucial concepts together now. Next up: Morphology

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