"contrastively" - 1 õppematerjal

Mid-term 1 in English Phonetics and Phonology

Articulatory phonetics ­ the study of how the vocal tract produces the sounds of language. Phonology maybe used by actors, teachers, computer engineers etc. Phonology ­ the description of the systems and patterns of speech sounds in a language. It studies: the abstract or mental aspect of the sounds in a language the actual physical articulation of speech sounds The phoneme. Phoneme ­ is a meaning distinguishing sound in a language; it functions contrastively/ the smallest contrastive unit in the sound system of a language. When there is a contrast in identical environment we must be dealing with separate phonemes - when we replace one sound with another, we get another word with another meaning, therefore that sound must be a phoneme. There are small shades of sounds that don't distinguish meaning ­ phones. The different phones that are the realisations of the same phoneme are called allophones.