It studies the linguistic organization of the sounds of the language.
It provides information that has to do with the functional pattern of sounds in the language. functional
pattern of sounds in the language.
It deals with the organization of sound patterns in language.
Suprasegmental
It makes up the rhythm, timing, meter, and stress of the words and sentences that we speak.
The primary pieces of suprasegmental information are
Pitch
The pitch of a sound is how high or low it is.
Examples
Sam got an A in Calculus.
Sam got an A in Calculus!
Sam got an A in Calculus?
Sam? got an A? in Calculus?
All of these sentences contain the same words (and
the same segments) but if we vary the intonation, we
convey something different about the speaker’s
attitude towards the sentence’s meaning.
Loudness
If the amplitude of the sound wave is large, then the sound is said to be loud.
Example
American English tends to be spoken very loudly, and louder than Southern English, while Southern English
tends to be louder than most accents of Scottish English, which in turn are generally louder than accents of
Scottish English from the Highlands and Islands.
Length
Is a feature of sounds that have distinctively extended duration compared
with other sounds.
Example
Beat, bead. The vowel sound in both words is the high front tense vowel [i]. But in
bead, the vowel is a little longer.
Phonetics
Definition
The branch of linguistics that studies all human sounds.
Types of phonetics
Acoustic
Auditive
Articulatory
Is a scientific description of what speech sounds exist in a
language.
Provides a scientific description of the speech sounds that exist in a language.
Describes the ways in which sounds are produced and the points at which they are
articulated.
Articulatory
features
Refers to the obstacle that opposes the outflow of air during the emission of a speech sound.
In other words
is the way in which the articulatory organs of language, such as the tongue and lips, are configured to
produce sounds.
Generally, the concept applies only to consonants, since constriction is always small in vowels.
Articulatory phonetics
Refers to the “aspects of phonetics which looks at how the sounds of
speech are made with the organs of the vocal tract” Ogden (2009:173).
Examples
LABIAL ARTICULATION
Bilabial
The two lips come together.
Pie
Buy
My
Labiodental
The lower lip is raised and nearly touches the upper front teeth.
Fie
Vie
Phonetics studies all sounds regardless of their
imperfection and phonology studies their
functionality.