The sound patterns of language.

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The sound patterns of language.

Assimilation

Every consonant and vowel is affected by its neighbouring consonants and vowels.

This regular process happens simply because it’s quicker, easier and more efficient for our articulators as they do their job.

When two sound segments occur in sequence and some aspect of one segment is taken or “copied” by the other, the process is known as assimilation.

Coarticulation effects

There are two well-known coarticulation effects, described as assimilation and elision.

The process of making one sound almost at the same time as the next sound is called coarticulation.

Mostly our talk is fast and spontaneous, and it requires our articulators to move from one sound to the next without stopping.

We have been describing speech sounds in syllables and words as if they are always pronounced carefully and deliberately, almost in slow motion. Speech isn’t normally like that.

Consonant clusters

The first consonant must always be /s/, followed by one of the voiceless stops (/p/, /t/, /k/) and a liquid or glide (/l/, /r/, /w/).

There are many CC onset combinations permitted in English phonotactics, as in black, bread, trick, twin, flat and throw.

Both the onset and the coda can consist of more than one consonant, also known as a consonant cluster.

Phones and allophones

If you put the back of your hand in front of your mouth as you say tar, then star, you should be able to feel some physical evidence of aspiration (the puff of air) accompanying the [t] sound at the beginning of tar (but not in star).

When we have a set of phones, all of which are versions of one phoneme, we add the prefix “allo-” (= one of a closely related set) and refer to them as allophones of that phoneme.

While the phoneme is the abstract unit or sound-type (“in the mind”), there are many different versions of that sound-type regularly produced in actual speech.

Phonology

These sounds must be distinct meaningful sounds, regardless of which individual vocal tract is being used to pronounce them, because they are what make the words tar, car, far and bar meaningfully distinct.

Is about the underlying design, the blueprint of each sound type,which serves as the constant basis of all the variations in different physical articulations of that sound type in different contexts.

Based on a theory of what every speaker of a language unconsciously knows about the sound patterns of that language.

Is essentially the description of the systems and patterns of speech sounds in a language.

Elision

This process of not pronouncing a sound segment that might be present in the deliberately careful pronunciation of a word in isolation is described as elision.

Illustrating the normal pronunciation of you and me, the [d] sound of the word and was not included in the transcription. That’s because it isn’t usually pronounced in this phrase.

Is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant or a whole syllable) ina word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce.

Syllables

When a coda is present, as in the syllables up, cup, at or hat, they are called closed syllables.

Syllables like me, to or no have an onset and a nucleus, but no coda. They are known as open syllables.

Technically, the basic elements of the syllable are the onset (one or more consonants) followed by the rhyme. The rhyme (sometimes written as “rime”) consists of a vowel, which is treated as the nucleus, plus any following consonant(s), described as the coda.

A syllable must contain a vowel or vowel-like sound, including diphthongs. The most common type of syllable in language also has a consonant (C) before the vowel (V) and is typically represented as CV.

Phonotactics

Because these constraints operate on a unit that is larger than the single segment or phoneme, we have to move on to a consideration of the basic structure of that larger phonological unit called the syllable.

Such constraints are called the phonotactics (i.e. permitted arrangements of sounds) in a language and are obviously part of every speaker’s phonological knowledge.

Minimal pairs and sets

For example, one minimal set based on the vowel phonemes of English could include feat, fit, fat, fate, fought, foot, and another minimal set based on consonant phonemes could have big, pig, rig, fig, dig, wig.

When a group of words can be differentiated, each one from the others, by changing one phoneme (always in the same position in the word), then we have a minimal set.

Other examples of English minimal pairs are fan–van, bet–bat, site–side.

When two words such as pat and bat are identical in form except for a contrast in one phoneme, occurring in the same position, the two words are described as a minimal pair.

Phonemes

If we substitute one sound for another in a word and there is a change of meaning, then the two sounds represent different phonemes.

This contrastive property is the basic operational test for determining the phonemes that exist in a language.

As the single stable sound type which is represented by a single written symbol.