LESSON 1: INTRODUCTION ENGLISH PHONETICS PHONOLOGY

LESSON 1: INTRODUCTION

Glossary:

acoustic: thuộc thính âm allophone: tha âm vị/ âm  đồng vị articulation/ articulatory: sự phát âm rõ  ràng; sự cấu âm auditory: thuộc thính giác autosegmental theory: lý thuyết tự  chiết đoạn tính contrastive: đối chiếu discipline: ngành học distinctive: khu biệt distinctive feature: nét khu biệt experimental: thuộc thí nghiệm image: hình ảnh instrumental: thuộc công cụ International Phonetic Association: Hội Ngữ Âm học Quốc tế  intonation: ngữ điệu inventory: bản tóm tắt kinaesthetic: thuộc cảm giác vận động (cơ thể) linguistic: thuộc ngôn ngữ học minimal pair: cặp tối thiểu minimal unit: đơn vị tối thiểu neutralised (được): trung hoà non-predictable: không thể đoán trước được phone: âm nói phoneme: âm vị phonemic: thuộc âm vị phonetic: thuộc ngữ âm phonetician: nhà ngữ âm học phonetics: ngữ âm học phonologist: nhà âm vị học phonology: âm vị học phonotactics: kết âm học  (phương thức sắp xếp âm để tạo từ) realization: sự thể hiện rhythm: nhịp điệu speech: lời nói stress: trọng âm/ âm nhấn structuralism: chủ nghĩa cấu trúc suprasegmental phonology: âm vị siêu đoạn tính syllable structure: cấu trúc âm tiết vowel classification: sự phân loại nguyên  âm written symbol: ký tự

Phonetics and phonology
Two terms are (often loosely) used to refer to linguistic disciplines studying that part of the linguistic sign which de Saussure called the acoustic image: phonetics and phonology. The importance of sounds as vehicles of meaning is something people have been aware of for thousands of years. However, systematic studies on the speech sounds only appeared with the development of modern sciences. The term phonetics used in connection with such studies comes from Greek and its origins can be traced back to the verb phōnein, to speak, in its turn related to phōnē, sound. The end of the 18th century witnessed a revival of the interest in the studying of the sounds of various languages and the introduction of the term phonology. The latter comes to be, however, distinguished from the former only more than a century later with the development of structuralism which emphasizes the essential contrastive role of classes of sounds which are labeled phonemes. The terms continue to be used, however, indiscriminately until the prestige of phonology as a distinct discipline is finally established in the first half of the 20th century.
Though there is no universally accepted point of view about a clear-cut border line between the respective domains of phonetics and phonology as, indeed, we cannot talk about a phonological system ignoring the phonetic aspects it involves and, on the other hand, any phonetic approach should take into account the phonological system that is represented by any language, most linguists will agree about some fundamental distinctions between the two.
Phonetics
Phonetics is the scientific study of speech. The central concerns in phonetics are the discovery of how speech sounds are produced, how they are used in spoken language, how we can record speech sounds with written symbols and how we hear and recognise different sounds.
In the first of these areas, when we study the production of speech sounds we can observe what speakers do (articulatory observation) and we can try to feel what is going on inside our vocal tract (kinaesthetic observation).
The second area is where phonetics overlaps with phonology: usually in phonetics we are only interested in sounds that are used in meaningful speech, and phoneticians are interested in discovering the range and variety of sounds used in this way in all the known languages of the world. This is sometimes known as linguistic phonetics.
Thirdly, there has always been a need for agreed conventions for using phonetic symbols that represent speech sounds; the International Phonetic Association has played a very important role in this.
Finally, the auditory aspect of speech is very important: the ear is capable of making fine discrimination between different sounds, and sometimes it is not possible to define in articulatory terms precisely what the difference is. A good example of this is in vowel classification: while it is important to know the position and shape of the tongue and lips, it is often very important to have been trained in an agreed set of standard auditory qualities that vowels can be reliably related to (other important branches of phonetics are experimental, instrumental and acoustic).
Phonology
The most basic activity in phonology is phonemic analysis, in which the objective is to establish what the phonemes are and arrive at the phonemic inventory of the language. Very few phonologists have ever believed that this would be an adequate analysis of the sound system of a language: it is necessary to go beyond this. One can look at suprasegmental phonology - the study of stress, rhythm and intonation, which has led in recent years to new approaches to phonology such as metrical and autosegmental theory; one can go beyond the phoneme and look into the detailed characteristics of each unit in terms of distinctive features; the way in which sounds can combine in a language is studied in phonotactics and in the analysis of syllable structure. For some phonologists the most important area is the relationships between the different phonemes - how they form groups, the nature of the oppositions between them and how those oppositions may be neutralised.