Rizal Technological University
Pasig Campus
College of Education
Learning the study of phonetics and phonology
Submitted by:
Taladua, Reike Alliyah
PCED-02-102A
October 2, 2019
Submitted to:
Prof. Lynn Besa
I. Introduction
Why do we need to learn or study phonetics? What is phonetics? It deals with the
production of speech sounds by humans, often without prior knowledge of the language
being spoken. While phonology is about patterns of sounds, especially different patterns
of sounds in different languages, or within each language, different patterns of sounds
in different positions in words. They are all involve in studying linguistic because
linguistic is the study of the language. It involves an analysis of language form,
language meaning, and language in context. How does pedagogy occur in this study?
What is Pedagogy? Pedagogy refers more broadly to the theory and practice of
learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the psychological
development of learners. What is the implication of this learning? This implies that
learning the basic fundamentals of the language. This study is able to show the learners
on how we can learn phonetics and phonology.
II. Discussion
What is phonetics? Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies the sounds of
human speech, or in the case of sign languages the equivalent aspects of sign. It is
concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs (phones) their
physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory perception, and neurophysiological
status. What is the aim of studying phonetics? To us, speaking and listening to speech
comes so naturally. Have you ever consciously thought about what processes are
involved in this? This is exactly what Phonetics aims to do. It aims to give a “systematic,
conscious consideration of how speech sounds are made, what they sound like, and how
they compare with each other”. Phonetics is an important foundation to many areas of
linguistics. Think about this. Without the study of Phonetics
How could you study a child’s development in their production and
perception of speech sounds? – Child Language Acquisition.
How would you be able to understand and treat speech and hearing
disorders? – Clinical Phonetics.
How would a computer system be able to turn text into speech correctly? –
Speech Synthesis.
How would a mobile phone be able to recognize what you say to it? –
Speech Recognition.
And, in a criminal trial, how could you prove whether a voice recording is or
isn’t the suspects voice? – Forensic Phonetics.
Speech and hearing disorders can have a huge impact on somebody’s social life
and can also affect them in their career, causing them many financial difficulties. This is
where Clinical Phonetics comes into use. In order to help people with their speech and
hearing, we need to be able to understand how things work normally. Thus, knowing how
speech sounds are produced (Articulatory Phonetics) and how they are perceived
(Auditory Phonetics). By knowing what is right, we can recognize what is going wrong
and can finally help the person with their speech or hearing disorder.
First and Second Language Acquisition
Without us consciously realizing, Phonetics was a crucial part of learning language
earlier on in life, with us babbling on like there was no tomorrow and our ears being as
alert as ever. Thanks to Phonetic research being applied to child language acquisition,
we now know exactly how proficient a child’s perception of speech sounds is. Did you
know that very young babies are able to differentiate between alien speech sounds? Try
doing this yourself by listening to a completely unfamiliar language. This will most likely
sound like complete gobbledegook and it should be quite difficult to differentiate between
the sounds. As a matter of fact, it is a skill gradually lost by the age of 12 months, meaning
that we no longer have the perceptual aptitude to do this. Therefore, this has been
described as a “perceptual narrowing” phenomenon. Knowing more about the way
speech sounds are produced also means we can devise better ways of teaching and
learning the oral aspects of foreign languages, in second language acquisition.
Let’s proceed to phonology, what is Phonology? Phonology is the study of the
patterns of sounds in a language and across languages. Put more formally, phonology is
the study of the categorical organisation of speech sounds in languages; how speech
sounds are organised in the mind and used to convey meaning. In this section of the
website, we will describe the most common phonological processes and introduce the
concepts of underlying representations for sounds versus what is actually produced, the
surface form.
Phonology can be related to many linguistic disciplines, including
psycholinguistics, cognitive science, sociolinguistics and language acquisition. Principles
of phonology can also be applied to treatments of speech pathologies and innovations in
technology. In terms of speech recognition, systems can be designed to translate spoken
data into text. In this way, computers process the language like our brains do. The same
processes that occur in the mind of a human when producing and receiving language
occur in machines. One example of machines decoding language is the popular
intelligence system, Siri.
III. Conclusion
Phonology vs. Phonetics – the key differences
Phonology is concerned with the abstract, whereas phonetics is concerned with
the physical properties of sounds. In phonetics we can see infinite realisations, for
example every time you say a ‘p’ it will slightly different than the other times you’ve said
it. However, in phonology all productions are the same sound within the language’s
phoneme inventory, therefore even though every ‘p’ is produced slightly different every
time, the actual sound is the same. This highlights a key difference between phonetic and
phonology as even though no two ‘p’s are the same, they represent the same sound in
the language.
Phonemes V. Allophones
Phonemes are the meaningfully different sound units in a language (the smallest
units of sound). For example, ‘pat’ and ‘bat’ differ in their first phoneme: the “p” and “b”.
Vowels are also phonemes, so “pat” and “pet” differ by a phoneme, too (But phonemes
don’t always match up with spelling!). When two words differ by a single phoneme they
are known as a minimal pair.
Allophones are different ways to pronounce a phoneme based on its environment
in a word. For example, the two allophones of /l/ in “little” are actually produced slightly
differently, and the second one sounds slightly deeper. These different “l”s always occur
in different environments in words, which is known as “complementary distribution”. Why
do related forms differ? ane—Sanity. Electric—Electricity/ Atom—Atomic. Phonology
finds the systematic ways in which the forms differ and explains them. What is stored in
the mind? Phonology studies abstract mental entities, such as structures and processes.
This contrasts with phonetics, which deals with the actual production and acoustics of the
sounds of language. What sounds go together? Looks at what sounds/sound
combinations are accepted and why. How are sounds organized into syllables? With the
use of phonological trees syllables are broken up more easily. Syllables are made up of
a rhyme and an onset (any consonants before the rhyme). The rhyme made up of a
nucleus (the vowel sound(s) in the syllable, the key component of all syllables) and a
coda (any consonants following the nucleus). What are the differences between
languages? For example, different languages can used different phonemes, or different
syllable structures (what sounds can go together to make sequences or words) and
phonology identifies these differences.
References
http://all-about-linguistics.group.shef.ac.uk/branches-of-linguistics/phonetics/why-is-
phonetics-studied/
[1] Hewlett, N. and Beck, B., (2006). An Introduction to the Science of Phonetics. New
Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
[2] Ladefoged, P., (2006). Preserving the sounds of disappearing languages. [online].
Available at:
<http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/ladefoge/Preserving%20sounds.pdf> [Accessed
23.05.2012]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy
https://all-about-linguistics.group.shef.ac.uk/branches-of-linguistics/phonology/
