Phonetics, Phonology, Semantics, and Lexicon

Phonetics, Phonology, Semantics, and Lexicon
1. Acquisition of language structure: Phonetics Phonology Semantics and Lexicon
2. Acquistion of Language Structure 0 It is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language, as well as to produce and use words and sentences to communicate. 0 Refers to human traits as non-human does not use language to communicate with each other. 0 First Language Acquisition 0 The capacity to successfully use language requires one to acquire range of tools including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and an extensive vocabulary.
3. Phonetics 0 Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies the sounds of human speech, or – in the case of sign language --- the equivalent aspects of sign. 0 It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs (phones): their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory perception, and neurophysiological status.
4. Areas of Study Articulatory Phonetics: - The study of organs of speech and their use in producing speech sounds by the speaker. Acoustic Phonetics – the study of physical transmission of speech sounds from the speaker to the listener. Auditory Phonetics: - The study of reception and perception of speech sounds by the listener.
5. Quick View of History 0 First know phonetic studies were carried out as early as 6th century BCE by Sanskrit grammarians. 0 Panini is among the most well-known early investigators. His grammar formed the basis of modern linguistics and described a number of important phonetic principles.
6. Anatomy of the Vocal System Speech sounds are generally produced by the modification of an airstream exhaled from the lungs. The respiratory organs used to create and modify airflow are divided into three regions 0 The vocal tract ( supralaryngeal ) 0 The larynx 0 The subglottal system.
7. Vocal Tract Articulations take place in particular parts of the mouth. They are described by the part of the mouth that constricts airflow and by what part of the mouth that constriction occur. In most languages, constrictions are made with the lips and the tongue. Constrictions made by the lips are called labials. The tongue can make constrictions with many different parts, broadly classified into coronal and dorsal places of articulation
8. Types of Articulation 0 Labial – made by the lips 0 Coronal articulations are made with either the tip or the blade of the tongue 0 Dorsal articulations are made with back of the tongue
9. Labial Consonants Articulations involving lips can be made in three different ways: with both lips (bilabial), with one lip and the teeth (labiodental), and with the tongue and the upper lip (linguolabial).
10. Bilabial Consonants Bilabial consonants are made with both lips. In producing these sounds, the lower lip moves farthest to meet the upper lip, which also moves down slightly. In some cases the force from air moving through the aperture ( opening between the lips) may cause the lips to separate faster than they can come together.
11. Bilabial Consonants
12. Labiodental Consonants Labiodental consonants are made by the lower lip rising to the upper teeth. Labiodental consonants are most often fricatives while labiodental nasals are also typologically common. 3 Labiodental Consonants
13. Watch this Video!
14. Linguolabial Consonants They are made with the blade of the tongue approaching or contacting the upper lip. Like bilabial, the upper lip moves slightly towards the more active articulator. They are formed by combining an apical symbol with a diacritic implicitly placing them in the coronal category.
15. Coronal Consonants These are made with the tip or the blade of the tongue, and because of the agility of the front of the tongue, represent a variety not only in place but in the posture of the tongue. The coronal places of articulation represent the areas of the mouth the tongue contacts or makes a constriction, and include dental, alveolar, and post-alveolar locations. Tongue postures can be apical (top of the tongue tip), laminal (blade of the tongue), sub-apical ( the tongue tip is curled back and the bottom of tongue is used).
16. Dental Consonants (Coronal) It is made up with the tip of the blade of the tongue and upper teeth. They are divided into two groups based upon the part of the tongue used to produce them. Apical dental consonants – tongue tip touching the teeth Interdental consonants – produced with the blade of the tongue as the tip of the tongue sticks out in front of the teeth.
17. Check out this Video!
18. Alveolar Consonant ( Coronal) They are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (sockets) of the superior teeth. It can be articulated with the tip of the tongue (apical), as in English, or with the flat tongue just above the tip (laminal), as in French and Spanish.
19. Check out this Video!
20. Retroflex Consonants ( Coronal) They have a number od different definitions depending on whether the position of the tongue or the position of the roof of the mouth is given prominence. Alveolar Post-alveolar palatal
21. Dorsal Consonants Dorsal consonants are those consonants made using the tongue body rather than the tip or blade. • Palatal consonants • Velar consonants • Uvular consonants
22. Palatal Consonants They are made using the tongue body against the hard palate on the roof of the mouth. They are frequently contrasted with velar or uvular consonants.
23. Velar Consonants This is made using the tongue against the velum. They are incredibly common crosslinguistically; almost all languages have a velar stop. Because both velars and vowels are made using the tongue body. They are highly affected with coarticulation with vowels
24. Uvular Consonants Uvular consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or the near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be stops, fricatives, nasals, trills, or approximants.
25. Phonology In contrast to phonetics, phonology is the study of how sounds and gestures patterns in and across languages, relating such concerns with other levels and aspects of the language. Phonetics deals with articulatory and acoustic properties of speech sounds, how they are produced, and how they are perceived.
26. Phonology Phonology is a branch of linguistics concerned with the systematic organization of sounds in languages. It has traditionally focused largely on the study of systems of phonemes in particular languages. It may also cover any linguistic analysis either at a level beneath the word. ( Including syllable, onset and rime, articulatory gestures,mora, features and more, etc). At all levels of languages where sound is considered to be structured for conveying linguistic meaning.
27. Terminology The word “phonology” as in the PHONOLOGY OF ENGLISH can also refer to the phonological system (sound system) of a given language. This is one of the fundamental systems which a language is considered to comprise, like its syntax and its vocabulary. Phonology is often distinguished from phonetics. While phonetics concerns the physical production, acoustic transmission and perceptions of the sounds of speech, phonology describes the way sounds function with a given language or across language to encode meaning.
28. Derivation and Definitions The word phonology comes from Ancient Greek “phone” means “voice, sound and the suffix – logy ( which is from the greek word logos – word, speech, subject of discussion) According to Nikolai Trubetskoy, phonology is the study of sound pertaining to the system of language as opposed to phonetics which is the study of sound pertaining to the act of speech.
29. Analysis of Phonemes Phonemes are distinctive units within a language. Example: In English, the “p” sound in pot is aspirated (pronounced as phot while that in spot is not aspirated). This are now called sound as variations and therefore are considered “allophones” of the same phonological category, that is of the phoneme /p/. Part of the phonological study of a language therefore involves looking at data ( phonetic transcription of the speech of native speakers) and trying to deduce what the underlying phonemse are and what sound inventory of the language is.
30. Phonemes and Allophones ( and Minimal Pairs) A basic video of Phonology.
31. Other Topics 0 In addition to the minimal units that can serve the purpose of differentiating meaning (phonemes, the phonology studies how sounds alternate, replace one another in different forms of the same morpheme (allomorphs), as well as for example: 1. Syllable structure 2. Stress or mora 3. Feature geometry 4. Accent 5. Intonation
32. Other Topics 0 It also includes topics such as phonotactics (the phonological constraints on what sounds can appear in what positions in a given language) and phonological alternation (how the pronunciation of a sound changes through the application of phonological rules. 0 The principles of phonological analysis can be applied independently of modality because they are designed to serve as general analytical tools.
33. Semantics It is the linguistic and philosophical study of meaning in language, programming languages, formal logics, and semiotics. It is concerned with the relationship between signifiers-like words, phrases, signs, and symbols --- and what they stand for, their denotation.
34. Semantics in Linguistics Semantics is also called semasiology. The word semantics was first used by Michael Breal, a french philologist. It denotes a range of ideas from the popula to highly technical. It is often used in ordinary language for denoting a problem of understanding that comes down to a word selection or connotation. The formal study of semantics intersects with many other fields of inquiry including lexicology, syntax, pragmatics, etymology, and others.
35. Semantics and Syntax Semantics contrasts with syntax, the study of the combinatorics of units of language ( without reference to their meaning), and pragmatics, the study of relationship between the symbols of a language, their meaning and the users of the language. Semantics as a field of study also has significant ties to various representational theories of meaning including truth theories of meanin, coherence theories of meaning, and correspondence of meaning.
36. Semantics in Linguistics Semantics is the subfield that is devoted to the study of meaning, as inherent at the levels of words, phrases, sentences, and larger units of discourse ( termed text, or narratives). The study of semantics is also closely linked to the subject of representation, reference and denotation. The basic study of semantics is oriented to the examination of the meaning of signs.
37. Lexicon Lexicon, word-hoard, wordbook, or wood-stock is the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical) In Linguistics, a lexicon is a language’s inventory of lexemes. The word lexicon derives from the Greek word that means of or for words)
38. Linguistic Aspects Linguistic theories generally regard human languages consisting of two parts: a lexicon, a catalogue of language’s word, and a grammar. A system of rules with allow for the combination of those words into meaningful sentences. The lexicon is also thought to include bound morphemes, which cannot stand alone as words such as most affixes.
39. Size and Organization Items in the lexicon are called lexemes, or lexical items or word forms. Lexemes are not atomic elements but contain both phonological and morphological components. When describing the lexicon, a reductionist approach is used, trying to remain general while using a minimal description. To describe the size of a lexicon, lexemes are grouped into lemmas. A lemma is a group of lexemes generated by inflectional morphology.
40. Lexicalization and other mechanisms in the lexiconA central role of the lexicon is the documenting of established lexical norms and conventions. Lexicalization is the process in which new words, having gained widespread usage, enter the lexicon. Since lexicalization may modify lexemes phonologically and morphologically, it is possible that single etymological source may be inserted into a single lexicon in two or more forms.
41. Mechanisms 0 Innovation, the planned creation of new roots 0 Borrowing of foreign words 0 Compounding, the combination of lexemes to make a single word 0 Abbreviation of compounds 0 Acronyms 0 Inflection 0 Derivation, a morphological change resulting in a change of category 0 Agglutination, the compounding of morphemes to a single word.
42. Neologism (New Words) Neologism are new lexemes candidates which, if they gain wide usage over time, become part of a language’s lexicon. Neologisms are often introduced by children who produce erroneous forms by mistake. Another common source is slang and activities such as advertising and branding.
43. Neologism that maintain the sound of their external source 1st Type 2nd Type Borrowing using source language lexical item as the basic material for neologization: guestwords, foreignisms and loanwords. Borrowing using a target language lexical item as the basic material for the neologization: phono- semantic matching, semanticized phonetic matching and phonetic matching.
44. Guestwords, Foreignisms, and Loanwords Guestword :unassimilated borrowing Foreignism: foreign word, ex: phonetic adaptation Loanword: totally assimilated borrwing, morphemic adapatation
45. Examples of Simultaneous External and Internal Lexical Expansion 0 Phono-semantic matching: the target language material is originally similar to the source language lexical item both phonetically and semantically. 0 Semantacized Phonetic Matching: the target language material is originally similar to the source language lexical item phonetically, and only in a loose way semantically. 0 Phonetic Matching: The target language is originally similar to the source language lexical item phonetically but not semantically.
46. Role of Morphology 0 Another mechanism involves generative devices that combine morphemes according to a language’s rule. For example: the suffix “-able” is usally only added to transitive verbs, as in readable but not cryable.
47. Compounding A compound word is a lexeme composed of several established lexemes, whose semantics is not the sum of that of their constituents. They can be interpreted through analogy, common sense, and most commonly, context. Compounding may result in lexemes of unwieldy proportion. This is compensated by mechanisms that reduce the length of words.
48. Diachronic Mechanism 0 Phonological assimilation, the modification of loanwords to fit a new language’s sound structure more effectively. If, however, a loan word is too foreign, inflection or derivation rules may not be able to transform it. 0 Analogy, where new words undergo inflection and derivation analogous to that of words with a similar sound structure. 0 Emphasis, the modification of words’ stress or accenting 0 Metaphor, a form of semantic extension
49. Second Language Lexicon The term “lexicon” is generally used in the context of single language. Therefore, multi-lingual speakers are generally thought to have multiple lexicons. Speakers of language variants ( Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese, for example) may be considered to possess a single lexicon. Thus a cash dispenser ( British English) as well as an automatic teller machine or ATM in American English would be understood by both American and British speakers, despite each group using different dialects.