Phonetics / Phonology / Prosody / Phoneme / Diphtong / Glide
Phonetics is the study of the way people physical produce and perceive the different sounds we use to create speech. These sounds are called phonemes and are created by the various ‘organs of speech’ in the body, including the tongue, the soft and hard palate, lips, pharynx, etc. Phonetics, unlike phonology, is not concerned in any way with the meaning connected to these sounds.
Phonology is the study of the way speech sounds are structured and how these are combined to create meaning in words, phrases and sentences. Phonology can be considered an aspect of grammar and, just as there are grammar ‘rules’ that apply to the syntax of a sentence and the morphology of words, there are phonological rules, too.
Even in very early childhood, children are said to be able to produce (i.e. they can articulate) the full range of sounds needed to create all of the words used in any world language, yet as language acquisition progresses, those phonemes that do not apply to their mother tongue become forgotten. This is so much so that in later life, if a second language is then attempted, the pronunciation of non-English phonemes needs to be re-learned – this time at a wholly conscious level, as opposed to the ability to pronounce each English phoneme without any conscious thought. Even ‘non-words’ such as ‘erm’, ‘uh?’, etc. use English phonemes.
An important part of phonology is the study of those sounds that form distinct units within a language. The smallest unit of sound that can, in itself, alter the meaning of a word is called a phoneme. Although there are 26 letters in the English alphabet, it’s interesting to note that there are around 44 phonemes in the dialect called Standard English. This means that letters cannot represent phonemes as such and so other symbols are used. Each phoneme is given a symbol so that the accurate pronunciation of any English word can be represented in writing. Here is the (American) English phonetic alphabet – version of the International Phonetic Alphabet or IPA:
The extra sounds we have above the number of letters we have available in part explains the complexities of English spelling (see orthography). Consider the word might, in which there are three phonemes m-ight-t (represented as m/ai/t using the Phonetic Alphabet), changing just a single phoneme can completely change the meaning of this word, e.g. mate, m-a-te (represented as m/ei/t phonetically).
Some of the extra sounds are there because we use phonemes that are called diphthongs. If the tongue has to move significantly to make a vowel sound, the result is a diphthong; it sounds like a rapid blend of two vowel sounds. The letter ‘i’ in the word ‘kite’ is a diphthong – it is a rapidly made blend of an ‘a’ and an ‘i’ sound. The movement of sound from the ‘a’ to the ‘i’ is called a glide.
Phonology also covers the study of important sound features such as rhythm, pitch, tone, melody, stress and intonation. These phonological features of language are aspects of prosody – they are referred to as the prosodic or suprasegmental features of language.
