Phonology

Speech Sounds

• about 200 different sounds among the world’s languages (that we know of so far)

• English has about 45 different meaningful sounds

Phonetic Features

• voicing

• manner of articulation

• place of articulation

Sounds & Meaning

• Phones

  • phonetic features: voicing, aspiration, manner, place of articulation…

• Phonemes

  • about 45 different phonemes

  • distinctive features: defined by meaning

  • minimal pair

• Allophones

  • variation of a single phoneme - does not change meaning

    • complementary distribution:

    • phonetically natural alternation:

  • example: aspiration

    • 
      

IPA

English Vowels

ʌ cup, luck

ɑ arm, father

æ cat, black

ɛ met, bed

ə away, cinema

ɝ turn, learn

ɪ hit, sitting

i see, hea

ɔ: dog, call

ʊ put, book

u blue, food

Vowel Classification

Diphthongs

/oʊ/  Jo

/aʊ/loud

/aɪ/cried

/eɪ/today

because

/ɔɪ/boys

/ɪəɾ/fear

/ʊəɾ/immature

/ɛəɾ/bears