Phonetics deals with the production of speech sounds by humans, often without prior knowledge of the language being spoken. Phonology is about patterns of sounds, especially different patterns of sounds in different languages, or within each language, different patterns of sounds in different positions in words etc.
2. Phonology as grammar of phonetic patterns
4. Phonemes and allophones, or sounds and their variants
The vowels in the English words "cool", "whose" and "moon" are all similar but slightly different. They are three variants or allophones of the /u/ phoneme. The different variants are dependent on the different contexts in which they occur. Likewise, the consonant phoneme /k/ has different variant pronunciations in different contexts.
LEARNING OUTCOMES:
At the end of this module, you will be asked to identify the Phonetics and its points of importance.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
At the end of the lesson, students should be able to:
a. Familiarize the Dictionary Transcriptions
b. Apply the concept Homographs and Homophones
c. Figure out the Historical Linguistics
ENGAGE
A demonstration
Have a look at our demonstration of the phonetic transcription system. You can read the transcriptions of some English words and listen to their pronunciations at the same time.
Representing differences between British and American English
Many words are pronounced differently in British and American English. Of course, these differences must be reflected in phonetic transcriptions. There are two basic ways to do this:
Separate transcriptions for British and American English, for example:
DOT BrE /dɒt/, AmE /dɑːt/
FARM BrE /fɑːm/, AmE /fɑːrm/
GO BrE /gəʊ/, AmE /goʊ/
MOTHER BrE /ˈmʌðəʳ/, AmE /ˈmʌðər/ (or /ˈmʌðɚ/)
This system is used in advanced learner's dictionaries from Longman, Oxford and Cambridge. The problem with this system is that you have to write two transcriptions for most words, which takes up a lot of space.
One "compromise" transcription for both British and American English. This is done by using mostly British phoneme symbols plus the ʳ symbol.
DOT /dɒt/
FARM /fɑːʳm/
GO /goʊ/
MOTHER /ˈmʌðəʳ/
In this system, transcriptions are shorter, but the reader has to know that, in American English, ɒ changes to ɑ: and ʳ changes to r. This system is used e.g. in the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary and in many places on Antimoon.
EXPLORE
QnA
1. Are you aware of the sysmbols being used in dictionaries as guide in pronouncing the words?
2. What is the difference between Homograph and Homophone?
EXPLAIN
Dictionary transcription
