Chapter 1 Introduction PHONOLOGY (Lane 335)
Phonetics & Phonology Phonetics: deals with speech sounds, how they are made (articulatory phonetics), how they are perceived (auditory phonetics), & the physics involved (acoustic phonetics) Phonology: the way sounds are organized into patterns and systems; how the sounds can be combined e.g: ‘tlip’ (not accepted in English)
Phonetics & Phonology Native speakers know (unconsciously) the phonetics and phonology of their language Recognize mispronunciation of non-native speakers. Think of spelling; not actual sounds e.g: ‘tuck’, ‘stuck’ & ‘cut’ (the [t] sound is different)
Phonetics & Phonology The phonological system of a language has two levels: 1- the more concrete level which involves the physical reality of phonetic segments, the allophones (greater number). 2- The abstract level which involves phonemes (small inventory).
Phonetics & Phonology Distinctive Sounds: make a difference in meaning; e.g. /p/ & /b/ in pin, bin. (phoneme) Nondistinctive Sounds: Do Not make a difference in meaning; e.g. /p/ in pin & spin. (allophone)
The generative enterprise Generative Grammar: - associated with Noam Chomsky in 1950s & 1960s - In linguistics, grammar means ‘complete description of a language’ - Generative means ‘specifying as allowable or not within the language’ - Aims at representing in a formal way the tacit knowledge native speakers have of their language (competence that is distinguished from performance).
The generative enterprise Native speakers know which combinations are permissible: ‘the dog chased a cat’ ‘the cat chased a dog’ *’the cat dog a chased’ *’a chased dog cat the’
The generative enterprise Concerned about what kinds of things we know about our language, i.e: syntactic knowledge morphological knowledge semantic knowledge phonological knowledge lexicon (mental dictionary)