Phonology is the study of the sound system of languages. It is a huge area of language theory. On one hand, phonology is concerned with anatomy and physiology – the organs of speech and how we learn to use them. On the other hand, phonology shades into socio-linguistics as we consider social attitudes to features of sound such as accent and intonation.
Language scientists have a very detailed understanding of how the human body produces the sounds of speech. Leaving to one side the vast subject of how we choose particular utterances and identify the sounds we need, we can think rather simply of how we use our lungs to breathe out air, produce vibrations in the larynx and then use our tongue, teeth and lips to modify the sounds. The diagram below shows some of the more important speech organs.
Speech therapists have a very detailed working knowledge of the physiology of human speech, and of exercises and remedies to overcome difficulties some of us encounter in speaking, where these have physical causes. An understanding of the anatomy is also useful to various kinds of expert who train people to use their voices in special or unusual ways. These would include singing teachers and voice coaches for actors, as well as the even more specialized coaches who train actors to produce the speech sounds of hitherto unfamiliar varieties of English or other languages.
Mostly we use air that is moving out of our lungs (pulmonic egressive air) to speak. We may pause while breathing in, or try to use the ingressive air – but this is likely to produce quiet speech, which is unclear to our listeners. (David Crystal notes how the normally balanced respiratory cycle is altered by speech, so that we breathe out slowly, using the air for speech, and breathe in swiftly, in order to keep talking). In languages other than English, speakers may also use non-pulmonic sound, such as clicks (found in southern Africa ) or glottalic sounds (found worldwide). In the larynx, the vocal folds set up vibrations in the egressive air. The vibrating air passes through further cavities which can modify the sound and finally are articulated by the passive (immobile) articulators – the hard palate, the alveolar ridge and the upper teeth – and the active (mobile) articulators. These are the pharynx, the velum (or soft palate), the jaw and lower teeth, the lips and, above all, the tongue. This is so important and so flexible an organ, that language scientists identify different regions of the tongue by name, as these are associated with particular sounds.
Working outwards these are:
• the back – opposite the soft palate
• the centre – opposite the meeting point of hard and soft palate
• the front – opposite the hard palate
• the blade – the tapering area facing the ridge of teeth
• the tip – the extreme end of the tongue
The first three of these (back, centre and front) are known together as the dorsum (which is Latin for backbone or spine).
The first people to write in English used an existing alphabet – the Roman alphabet, which was itself adapted from the Greek alphabet for writing in Latin. (In the Roman Empire , Latin was the official language of government and administration, and especially of the army but in the eastern parts of the empire Greek was the official language, and in Rome Greek was spoken as widely as Latin. Because these first writers of English (Latin-speaking Roman monks) had more sounds than letters, they used the same letters to represent different sounds – perhaps making the assumption that the reader would recognize the word, and supply the appropriate sounds. It would be many years before anyone would think it possible to have more consistent spelling, and this has never been a realistic option for writers of English, though spelling has changed over time. And, in any case, the sounds of Old English are not exactly the same as the sounds of modern English.
A phoneme is a speech sound that helps us construct meaning. That is, if we replace it with another sound (where this is possible) we get a new meaning or no meaning at all. If I replace the initial consonant (/r/) from rubble, I can get double or Hubble or meaningless forms like fubble and wubble. The same thing happens if I change the vowel and get rabble, rebel, Ribble and the nonsense form robble.
But what happens when a phoneme is adapted to the spoken context in which it occurs, in ways that do not alter the meaning either for speaker or hearer. Rather than say these are different phonemes that share the same meaning we use the model of allophones, which are variants of a phoneme. Thus if we isolate the l sound in the initial position in “lick” and in the terminal position in “ball”, we should be able to hear that the sound is (physically) different as is the way our speech organs produce it. Technically, in the second case, the back of the tongue is raised towards the velum or soft palate. The initial l sound is called clear l, while the terminal l sound is sometimes called a dark l.
Consonant and vowel each have two related but distinct meanings in English. In writing of phonology, you need to make the distinction clear. When you were younger you may have learned that b,c,d,f and so on are consonants while a,e,i,o,u are vowels – and you may have wondered about "y". In this case consonants and vowels denote the letters that commonly represent the relevant sounds. Phonologists are interested in vowel and consonant sounds and the phonetic symbols that represent these.
The sounds of English
a) Vowels:
English has twelve vowel sounds. This scheme shows the following arrangement:
Front vowels:
• /iː/ - cream, seen (long high front spread vowel)
• /ɪ /- bit, silly (short high front spread vowel)
• /ɛ/ - bet, head (short mid front spread vowel); this may also be shown by the symbol /e/
• /æ/ . cat, dad (short low front spread vowel); this may also be shown by /a/
Central vowels:
• /ʒː/- burn, firm (long mid central spread vowel); this may also be shown by the symbol /əː/
• /ə/ - about, clever (short mid central spread vowel); this is sometimes known as schwa, or the neutral vowel sound – it never occurs in a stressed position.
• /ʌ/ - cut, nut (short low front spread vowel); this vowel is quite uncommon among speakers in the Midlands and further north in Britain
Back vowels:
• /uː/ - boob, glue (long high back rounded vowel)
• /ʊ/ - put, soot (short high back rounded vowel); also shown by /u/
• /ɔː/ - corn, faun (long mid back rounded vowel) also shown by /oː/
• /ɒ/- dog, rotten (short low back rounded vowel) also shown by /o/
• /ɑː/ - hard, far (long low back spread vowel)
b) Diphthongs:
Diphthongs are sounds that begin as one vowel and end as another, while gliding between them. For this reason they are sometimes described as glide vowels.
Syllablesc) Consonants:
We form consonants by controlling or impeding the egressive (outward) flow of air. We do this with the articulators – from the glottis, past the velum, the hard palate and alveolar ridge and the tongue, to the teeth and lips. The sound results from three things:
• voicing – causing the vocal cords to vibrate.
• where the articulation happens.
• how the articulation happens – how the airflow is controlled.
When you think of individual sounds, you may think of them in terms of syllables. These are units of phonological organization and smaller than words. Alternatively, think of them as units of rhythm. Although they may contain several sounds, they combine them in ways that create the effect of unity.
Some words have a single syllable – so they are monosyllables or monosyllabic. Others have more than one syllable and are polysyllables or polysyllabic.
Suprasegmentals
In written English we use punctuation to signal some things like emphasis, and the speed with which we want our readers to move at certain points. In spoken English we use sounds in ways that do not apply to individual segments but to stretches of spoken discourse from words to phrases, clauses and sentences. Such effects are described as non-segmental or suprasegmental – or, using the adjective in a plural nominal (noun) form, simply suprasegmentals.
Among these effects are such things as stress, intonation, tempo and rhythm – which collectively are known as prosodic features. Other effects arise from altering the quality of the voice, making it breathy or husky and changing what is sometimes called the timbre – and these are paralinguistic features. Both of these kinds of effect may signal meaning.
Prosodic features
• Stress or loudness – increasing volume is a simple way of giving emphasis, and this is a crude measure of stress. But it is usually combined with other things like changes in tone and tempo. We use stress to convey some kinds of meaning (semantic and pragmatic) such as urgency or anger or for such things as imperatives.
• Intonation – you may be familiar in a loose sense with the notion of tone of voice. We use varying levels of pitch in sequences (contours or tunes) to convey particular meanings. Falling and rising intonation in English may signal a difference between statement and question. Younger speakers of English may use rising (question) intonation without intending to make the utterance a question.
• Tempo – we speak more or less quickly for many different reasons and purposes. Occasionally it may be that we are adapting our speech to the time we have in which to utter it (as, for example, in a horse-racing commentary). But mostly tempo reflects some kinds of meaning or attitude – so we give a truthful answer to a question, but do so rapidly to convey our distraction or irritation.
• Rhythm – patterns of stress, tempo and pitch together create a rhythm. Some kinds of formal and repetitive rhythm are familiar from music, rap, poetry and even chants of soccer fans. But all speech has rhythm – it is just that in spontaneous utterances we are less likely to hear regular or repeating patterns.
Paralinguistic features
How many voices do we have? We are used to “putting on” silly voices for comic effects or in play. We may adapt our voices for speaking to babies, or to suggest emotion, excitement or desire. These effects are familiar in drama, where the use of a stage whisper may suggest something clandestine and conspiratorial. Nasal speech may suggest disdain, though it is easily exaggerated for comic effect.
Such effects are sometimes described as timbre or voice quality. We all may use them sometimes but they are particularly common among entertainers such as actors or comedians. This is not surprising, as they practise using their voices in unusual ways, to represent different characters.
Accent
Everyone’s use of the sound system is unique and personal. And few of us use sounds consistently in all contexts – we adapt to different situations. (We rarely adapt our sounds alone – more likely we mind our language in the popular sense, by attending to our lexical choices, grammar and phonology). Most human beings adjust their speech to resemble that of those around them. This is very easy to demonstrate, as when some vogue words from broadcasting surf a wave of popularity before settling down in the language more modestly or passing out of use again.
Self-correcting (interactive) tests to practise English vowel and consonant sounds:
PRACTICE 1
PRACTICE 2
PRACTICE 3
PRACTICE 4
PRACTICE 5
PRACTICE 6
THE VOWEL MACHINE
RP ENGLISH VOWELS
PLACE THE TONIC