Hello tonight we're going to talk about linguistic phonetics and that's chapter
two in your book.
So you've already gotten kind of an overview in chapter 1 about clinical
phonetics and now we're going to get to the more specific information, so the fun
stuff.
Ok, so let's start overall there's an estimate of anywhere from 3,000 of 5,000
different languages in our world, that's a lot, and what we're going to talk about
is a system in which you can actually transcribe any one of those languages
using one alphabet and that's what the international phonetic alphabet does. It
allows us to to transcribe any sound we hear and anyone around the world using
the international phonetic alphabet will be able to understand what that word
sounds like. Okay, so before we get there we have a lot of terminology and
different steps we have to go through and definitely some training before that
can happen. So let's start there. Speech and language are very complex and that's
probably the understatement of the year. When we're talking about speech today we're
talking about the patterns of movements of the speech organs as well as the
pattern of acoustic vibration. And when we're talking about today we're going to
talk mostly about spoken language. But of course there are sign language where were
not using the spoken word and so that increases the amount of languages we
have as well. First spoken language, it's essential to who we are in our culture's.
Speech allows us to develop a really powerful bond with others so we get to
communicate with others and we do that in our culture's in our communities and
people recognize our speech
and sometimes they can even by our speech recognize where we live.
So that's where we start talking about when people live close together
geographically and they need to speak to one another they tend to use a common
language. OK, and the speech community that's going to be a group of people
living in within a geographic boundary of each other who are also using the
same language. Now to break that down even further
you're going to have your dialects so that's going to be a difference of
pronunciation vocabulary etc and then you have regional dialects which break
it down even more. So for instance I'm from Michigan so I would have a more
Midwestern dialect so characteristics of that might be our speech is a little bit
more nasal. Sometimes we drag out Os. Whereas when I moved to Tennessee
there's a lot different dialect here. So i would say the I's are dragged out much
longer.
There's not as much nasal speech here. So that's your dialect can be determined by
your region now granted even though I'm from Michigan i've definitely picked up
some characteristics of Tennessee dialect as well. So you can adapt based
on where you're living and and pick up different regional dialects but it's
usually based on geographically where you live and the people that you're
communicating with. And then an idio dialect is going to be uniquely to just
you.
So that is how your speech patterns distinguish up its how speech patterns
distinguish us as individuals. So it's how your world has influenced your
speech specifically.
And if we go to slide 3, let's see if my computer wants to work, ok, now let's talk
about morphemes. So a morpheme is a minimal unit of meaning. It's the
smallest unit that changes the meaning or semantics of words. So we're talking
about prefixes, suffixes, sometimes tense endings, plurals. I want to give you an
example because this takes some examples i think to understand what it means.
So in the word cat, we have one morpheme but if i make it plural and add an S so
cats and add that S, S changes the meaning of cat to a plural form and
therefore that s is adding an additional morpheme. So there are now two morphemes
in that. Cat and then the S for the plural together making cats there's two
morphemes in that word.
Ok, let's try another one, for instance in the word touch we can add the morpheme
ed and it's going to become touched it changes it to the past tense
so we go from the present to the past
so those morphemes are changing. If they're just small units but they're
changing the meaning of the word just because we've added that small that
small change to the word. Now let's talk about morphology so morphology is simply
the study of morphemes. Pretty easy right? And when we're using morphemic
transcription it's typically to help us analyze a language sample from a child
for instance. So let's say I have a child who has difficulty with past tense verbs
or even plurals or possessives, whatever I want to do
or whatever I want to track i can use morphemic transcription to get a very
clear picture of what morphemes are they using which ones are they using
incorrectly. So this is really helpful as far as a language aspect not only you
know is transcription helpful for the actual phonemes that they're using in
the speech aspect but it also helps the language so it's kind of it offers a
dual role in that instance. Let's get some examples and some practice so in
the word tractors were adding an S and that would make it plural so if
we have tractor we're adding an s now we have tractors that that's going to be
plural.
You can also look at boy and hood if we combine those two words and say boyhood
that's going to be two morphemes coming together creating a different word. The
same thing with cloudy we're adding the y at the end to cloud. Standing so we go
from stand to standing that's changing the form of the verb. Dress and maker
when we add those together and get dressmaker that's changing the word based on
adding that morpheme.
Okay now I want you to stop the video and I want you to take some time to go
through these eight words and I want you to practice. So show me where each
morpheme is where do you break it to get the the smallest unit of language and
then once you're finished come back and restart the video
ok?
Alright, so hopefully you practiced let me know if you have any questions with
those words we're going to move on now to morphemes, so I'm sorry we already
talked about morphemes,we're going to move onto phonemes so morphemes if those
are the smallest unit of language morphemes are going to be the smallest
unit of sound. Ok so very different we talked about transcription can help both
in language and speech now we're going to talk about the speech portion.
Ok do note the word at the bottom of the page on page seven in your books and i'm
talking about the second paragraph there's a little note at the bottom
be sure to look at that because that sometimes can be confusing when you're
first learning. So I'm gonna have you look at that on your own.
Let's look at some of these words with cat,mat, fat, rat, that, Pat, that and hat.
The only thing that's different about those words is the very initial sound
for the very initial phoneme so remember we're talking about sounds not graphemes
when we're using graphemes that is a sound
excuse me that's going to be the alphabetic letter how we write it
ok so that would be like our abcdefg etc. The difference with phonemes is it's not
necessarily how we write it although some are the same like the sound Ba it
does have the letter B but there are a lot of sounds that are different and
have unique symbols. So be very careful when you're looking at when you're
looking at phonemes that you're not just using the graphing that goes with it.
We talked about this in earlier in chapter one but for instance if I'm
using
car and circus--so they both start with the C if we're talking about the
grapheme or the alphabetic letter written.
However the Ca in-car would be a K sound and then the C in circus it actually
makes the SSS sound so the s okay. So be careful there because that's where it
can really trip you up. And then what we're going to do is with the minimal
contrast down at the bottom this is the last point on your slide those are going
to be the smallest differences between your phonemes. So that's when you're
contrasting between two morphemes and they're only different by one sound. So
for instance with that whole list cat, mat, fat, rat those are minimal contrast
they are only changing by one phoneme. Ok there's only one phoneme that's
different and that's the initial one. And we'll keep talking about that in a
minute. Okay now onto the international phonetic alphabet i talked about this a
little bit earlier in this video. It was established in Paris and 1886. How cool
is that? It's been around for a long time it has gone through lots of changes
since then but it has stayed consistent and allowing us to represent any
language in the world and know what sounds a certain word makes or a group
of words. So it's pretty remarkable and i absolutely love phonetics so I'm really
excited to start getting into actual transcription because i think it's a lot
of fun.
Let me give you some background about IPA. So I already talked about it was
introduced in the late 1880s. We have a hundred and seven symbols that
represent all the worlds consonants
and vowels. So 107. We have 31 diacritics those are going to be marked a specific
marks to identify modifications to the sounds. We have 19 sounds for super
segmental qualities we will also talk about this later in the semester but
that has to do with tone stress and intonation. Then here when we are
using phonemes so the international phonetic alphabet has phonemes and each
of those phonemes when we represent them we put them in slash marks and the
reason we do that is to distinguish it from the graphemes. So if i put a /p/
that's going to represent P sound not necessarily the graphing P okay.
Especially when we get to the S's the C's the K's when you get to those
graphemes it's going to be really helpful to make sure you put those slash
marks because it can be very different.
Let's see now to the fun part.
Let's go so now I'm on slide eight. Phonology and phonetics so when we talk
about phonology it's simply the sound of the study of sound systems of languages.
We're looking at the structure and the function of sounds in those languages. I
did want to talk a little bit about the different parts so we have articulatory
that's going to be phonetics and that is the how sounds are formed. We have the
acoustic phonetics and that's the acoustic properties of those sounds. And
then clinical phonetics and that's those are the sounds that are of concern for
SLPs and audiologists.
So the phonetic symbols are placed within brackets when we're talking about
a whole words. What we're going to do is if we transcribe a single phoneme we're
going to use the slash marks and then we move into whole word transcription we're
going to use the brackets like you see in the word cat and the word [cat]. There
you can see what it looks like an IPA if you look in your book on page, what page is
that? on page eight in the second column it shows you how you break down each of
those sounds. So that can be really helpful. And the last page so i want to
talk very briefly about placements and voicing. When we're talking about a word
we have initial medial and final position of words. So i'm going to use a
really simple word so in the word cat we were just talking about that you'll see
in the initial position there is a K. Initial position simply means the very
beginning sound, the first sound in the word. And then if we're looking at the
final sound in the word the final consonant is going to be the sound at
the end of the word so in the word cat it's going to be the T the "t" sound ok?
And then before talking about medial sounds that's going to be the consonant
that's in the middle of the word so for instance in cat we don't have a medial
sign
excuse me sound. However in the word calm as you see there that L is the medial
consonant. The consonant in the middle. We also have prevocalic and post vocalic
sounds, excuse me, consonants. So when we're talking about a prevocalic consonant
that simply is going to be a consonant before a vowel. So in this instance with
cat again the K comes before a vowel the K sound.
The "ka" comes before the "a" and so that's going to be a prevocalic sound.
When we use that same word a post vocalic sound, so a sound coming after a
vowel consonant after a vowel it is going to be theT the "ta" sound. So
hopefully that makes sense
let me know if you have questions there. Last thing i want to talk about
there are two types of syllables. So you know what syllables are in the word cat
it cat one syllable for talking about kitchen, kitch-en (two claps) two syllables
however there are two types of syllables.
So the first is going to be open syllables and that basically is just a
syllable that doesn't end in a consonant. And then a closed syllable is going to
be a syllable that ends in a consonant ok. Any questions with this section i'm
just going to kind of wrap it up here feel free to post in the discussion
board under chapter 2 and don't forget your chapter 2 quiz.
Alright thank you.