ENG103-ENGLISH PHONOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGY .

ENGLISH PHONOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGY

Prepared by:
Nikka Mae B. Lacar
Cadariya K. Michael
Lady Jane A. Viralio
Rae-ann V. Tayobana
Angelica Stacy A. Flores

BAELS 29-1J

Mindanao State University

College of Social Sciences and Humanities
Fatima, General Santos City
 ENG103-ENGLISH PHONOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGY .

Lesson 1 The Speech Organs, Speech Process and Common

Speech Faults

Objectives: At the end of the lesson, students should be able to:

1. Identify different speech organs;
2. Familiarize speech process; and
3. Recognize the common speech faults

Introduction:

Phonology is the study of a language's sound system. In general,

phonology's fundamental unit is the phoneme, which is a single spoken sound (for
example, /p/) that is frequently represented by a single grapheme, or letter (such
as the letter p) (M.L. Henry, in Encyclopedia of the Neurological Sciences, 2014).
When it comes to phonology, it is typically defined as the study of speech sounds
in a language or languages as well as the laws that govern them, particularly the
laws that govern the composition and combination of speech sounds in
languages. Because of the historical development of the field, this definition
reflects a segmental bias, and we can offer a more general definition: the study
of the knowledge and representations of the sound system of human languages.
As a result, from a neurobiological or cognitive neuroscience perspective,
phonology might be defined as the study of the mental model of human speech.
(Neurobiology of Language, 2016)

Activity: Let’s Get Started!

Multiple choice

Encircle the correct answer.

1.regulates the flow of air from the lungs to the vocal tract.

a. Uvula b. Laryngeal system c. respiratory system d. palate

2. They are responsible for the production of a variety of sounds, primarily labial
 ENG103-ENGLISH PHONOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGY .

a. Teeth b.lips c. palate d. uvula

3.The pitch of the voice is determined by the frequency of these vibrations.

a. Vocal chords b. Larynx c.spinal cord

d.throat

4. consists of structures that lie above the larynx,including the tongue, lips, teeth,
jaw, and velum.

a. Laryngeal system b. Respiratory system c. supralaryngeal system

d.muscular system

5.From time to time, we spontaneously interrupt our speech and correct

ourselves

a. Articulating b. Formulating c. conceptualization d. Self-monitoring

Analysis: Let’s Think About It!

Answer the following questions:

1. What are the human organs that are responsible for speech production?

________________________________________________________________

2. What are the stages in language production?

________________________________________________________________

3. How to address common speech faults using the stages of speech

production?

________________________________________________________________

To answer these common questions, read and analyze the abstraction

below to know more about speech production, specifically the organs that are
capable and responsible for the speech production.
 ENG103-ENGLISH PHONOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGY .

Abstraction: Let’s Explore!

Speech Organs

Figure 1http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jYV9SxK3PDY/T211tgsqbtI/AAAAAAAAAIw/e-
SyLJwdKPQ/s1600/clip_image002.jpg

Speech organs include the lips, teeth, tongue, palate, uvula, nasal and oral
cavities, and vocal cords, as shown above in Figure 1. By manipulating the
speech organs in various ways, human beings can produce an unlimited number
of different sounds. They move, block the air,and assist us in making noises (words,
sentences or languages).

Lips - They are responsible for the production of a variety of sounds, primarily
labial, bilabial (e.g. /p/, /b/, /m/, /hw/, and /w/), and labio-dental consonant
sounds (e.g. /f/ and /v/), and thus form a major part of the speech apparatus.

Teeth - Teeth help form words by controlling airflow out of the mouth. It is
responsible for creating sounds mainly the labio-dental (e.g. /f/ and /v/) and lingua-
dental (e.g. /ð/and /θ/) .

Tongue - The tongue is the most important articulator of speech. By moving the
tongue,changing how much air comes out, and vibrating or not vibrating the
vocal cords, you can make over 40 different speech sounds.

Palate - The soft palate, because of its position in the oral cavity and its flexibility, has
an important function in the production of certain sounds used in human speech.
When the soft palate is down, so that air can still go out through the nose, there is said
to be a nasal stop. Sounds of this kind occur at the beginning of words such as my
and nigh.
 ENG103-ENGLISH PHONOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGY .

Uvula - The uvula is utilized to articulate a variety of consonant sounds known as

uvular consonants in several languages. One example is the voiced uvular trill,
which is transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet and is used in
languages such as French, Arabic, and Hebrew. It has been argued that the
uvula is an auxiliary speech organ due to the high amount of saliva produced by
glands in the uvula that are missing in other mammals.

Nasal and Oral Cavities - Nasalized sounds are those in which the airstream is
emitted partially via the nose and partly through the mouth. Nasalized vowels are
frequent in French, Portuguese, and a number of other languages (for example,
vin "wine," bien "good," and enfant "child"). There are also cases where a nasalized
consonant's nasalization extends to a generally non nasal consonant (for
example, the l in French branlant, "shaky").

Vocal Cords - Either of two mucous membrane folds that run across the larynx's
internal cavity and are principally important for voice production. The pitch of the
voice is determined by the frequency of these vibrations. Women and children
have shorter and thinner vocal cords, which contributes to their higher-pitched
voices.

Speech Process

Speech production is a process that begin when the talker formulates the
message in his/her mind to transmit to the listener via speech. The next step in this
process is the conversion of the message into the message code. This corresponds
to converting the message into a set of phoneme sequences corresponding to
the sounds that make up the words, along with prosody (syntax) markers denoting
duration of sounds, loudness of sounds, and pitch associated with the sounds
(Rabiner & Juang 1993).

Language production refers to the process involved in creating and expressing

meaning through language (Fields, 2004). In daily conversations, we remain
generally unaware of the complexity of our achievement. Psychologists tend to
divide linguistic phenomena into stages. One of the most influential
psycholinguistic models for speech production, developed by levelt (1989) views
is as a linear progression of four successive stages: (1) conceptualization, (2)
formulation, (3) articulation, (4) self-monitoring.
 ENG103-ENGLISH PHONOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGY .

First, we must conceptualize what we wish to communicate. Second, we

formulate this thought into a linguistic plan. Third, we execute the plan through
the muscles in the speech system. Finally, we monitor our speech, to assess
whether it is what we intended to say and how we intended to say it.

(1) Conceptualization:
Conceptualization for language production comprises the selection,
preparation, and linearization of pre-linguistic information. These processes lead
to a conceptual representation which functions as input to a formulator.

(2) Formulation:
We have seen that the initial stage of conceptualization is so far removed
from the words we actually speak and write that it is difficult to determine
this phase of production. But at the second stage of speech production,
formulation , we move close enough to the e eventual output of the process
to allow us to be more precise in our terminology and more convincing in
out use of empirical data. .conceptualization is hard to conceptualize, but
formulation is much easier to formulate .

(3) Articulating:
Once we have organized our thoughts into a linguistic plan, this information
must be sent from the brain to the muscles in the speech system so that they
can then execute the required movements and produce the desired sounds.
Obviously,a thorough explanation of articulatory processes would be too
extended. However, it is useful to understand certain basic aspects of
articulation which is usually performed within three processes :

•Three system of Muscles:

Fluent articulation of speech requires the coordinated use of a large number of
muscles. These muscles are distributed over three systems: the respiratory, the
laryngeal, and the subpharyngeal or vocal tract. The respiratory system regulates
the flow of air from the lungs to the vocal tract. The laryngeal system consists of
the vocal cords or vocal folds. This system is responsible for the distinction between
voiced and unvoiced sounds. E.g. [b] vs [p] (Ladefoged, 1976). The
supralaryngeal system consists of structures that lie above the larynx, including
the tongue, lips, teeth, jaw, and velum. These structures play a significant role in
the production of speech by manipulating the size and shape of the oral cavity
(the mouth and pharynx) and the nasal cavity.
 ENG103-ENGLISH PHONOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGY .

•Motor Control of Speech:

Begins with motor commands from the brain. As we assemble a linguistic plan
for our utterance, the brain structures responsible for speech production send
messages to the muscles in the respiratory, laryngeal, and supralaryngeal
systems. It is generally believed that these motor commands to speech muscles
take the form of commands for the articulators (tongue, lips, and so on) to move
to a particular location. If the next phonetic segment is [b], the muscles
controlling the lips must be brought into action .

(4) Self-monitoring:
From time to time, we spontaneously interrupt our speech and correct
ourselves. These corrections are referred to as self-repairs. According to
Levelt (1983), self-repairs have a characteristic structure that consists of
three parts: First, we interrupt ourselves after we have detected an error in our
speech.
Second, we usually utter one of various editing expressions. These include
terms such as uh, sorry, I mean, and so forth.
Finally, we repair the utterance.

Speech production as a full process:

Production begins with a set of ideas
that the speaker wishes to express; the abstract level or the conceptual
preparation.
The next step is that those ideas are tied to lexical concepts because language
may
have specific words for some of the ideas, but may require combinations of words
to express other ideas. After a set of lexical concepts has been activated.
Lemmas
that corresponds to those lexical concepts become activated, activating
lemmas provide information about morphological properties of words including
information about “how words can be combined’’, after a set of morphemes has
been activated and organized into a sequence. The speech sounds of the
phonemes
required can be activated and placed in a sequence. Phonological encoding
involves the activation of a metrical structure and syllabification organizing a set
of phonemes into syllabized group, whether the specific phoneme comes from
the
 ENG103-ENGLISH PHONOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGY .

same group or not. The outcome of this process is a set of phonological words
consisting of sequence of syllable sized frames, during phonetic encoding, the
speech production system consults sets of representations of specific syllables. The
system activates the appropriate syllable representations and places them in the
appropriate positions in the frame. This representation is used by the motor system
to create phonetic gestural score which is the representation used by the motor
system to plan the actual muscle movement articulation that will create sounds
that the listener will perceive as speech .

Common Speech Faults

Speech disorders or speech faults impair a person's ability to produce the sounds
which allow them to communicate with others. They are not the same as
language disorders.

Speech disorders prevent people from establishing correct speech sounds,

whereas language disorders impair a person's ability to learn words or
understand what others are saying to them.

Some types of speech disorder include stuttering, apraxia, and dysarthria.

Stuttering

- Stuttering is a speech disorder that causes interruptions in the flow of

speech. Stutterers may experience numerous types of disruption:

• Repetitions happen when people unintentionally repeat sounds, vowels, or

words.

• Blocks take place when people know what they want to say but are unable
to make the necessary speech sounds. Blocks can cause someone to feel as if
their words are stuck.

• Prolongations are the stretching or drawing out of specific sounds or words.

Apraxia

- Apraxia is a broad term that refers to brain damage that impairs motor
skills and can affect any part of the body. Apraxia of speech, also known
 ENG103-ENGLISH PHONOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGY .

as verbal apraxia, is a motor skill impairment that affects an individual's

ability to form the sounds of speech correctly, even when they know what
words they want to say.

Dysarthria

- Dysarthria appears to occur when damage to the brain provokes muscle

weakness in a person's face, lips, tongue, throat, or chest. Muscle
weakness in these areas of the body can make conversing difficult.

People who have dysarthria may experience such as:

● Slurred speech
● Mumbling
● Speaking too slowly or too quickly
● Soft or quiet speech
● Difficulty moving the mouth or tongue

Application: Let’s Do It!

Fill in the blank.

Instruction: Write the correct answer on the blank.

1. Teeth is responsible for creating sounds mainly the and

2. These processes lead to a conceptual representation which functions as
input to a
3. The uvula is utilized to articulate a variety of consonant sounds known as
in several languages.
4. regulates the flow of air from the lungs to the vocal
tract.
5. Begins with motor commands from the .
6. f the next phonetic segment is , the muscles controlling the lips must be
brought into action.
7. consists of structures that lie above the larynx,including
the tongue, lips, teeth, jaw, and velum.
8. Conceptualization for language production comprises the ,
,
 ENG103-ENGLISH PHONOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGY .

and of pre-linguistic information.

9. The responsible for speech production send messages to
the muscles in the respiratory, laryngeal, and supralaryngeal systems.
10. are those in which the airstream is emitted partially via the
nose and partly through the mouth.
 ENG103-ENGLISH PHONOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGY .

References:
Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2017, November 8). articulation.
Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/articulation-speech

M.M.M Madrid Ed. D. (2012, May 23) The Organ of Speech and Their
Functions.https://www.slideshare.net/MariaMarthaManetteMadrid/the-organs-of-
speech-and-their-function

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2020, June 26). soft palate. Encyclopedia

Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/science/soft-palate

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatine_uvula

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2018, April 5). nasal. Encyclopedia

Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/nasal-speech-sound

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2017, November 30). vocal cord.

Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/science/vocal-cord

Fields, J. (2004). Psycholinguistics: the key concepts. London: Rutledge.

Ladefoged, P. (1976). A course in phonetics. Newyork

Mahmood, A. K. (2014). Psycholinguistics: The production of language. University

of Baghdad, Iraq.

Rabiner, L. R., & Juang, B. H. (1993). Fundamentals of speech recognition.

Englewood Cliffs, N.J: PTR Prentice Hall.

Phonology - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics. (n.d.). Phonology - an Overview

| ScienceDirect Topics; www.sciencedirect.com. Retrieved March 14, 2022, from
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/phonology

What are speech disorders? | Jamie Eske, 2019

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324764#types