Universitas Pgri Semarang: English Phonology For EFL
Universitas Pgri Semarang: English Phonology For EFL
Universitas Pgri Semarang: English Phonology For EFL
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English Phonology for EFL UNIVERSITAS PGRI SEMARANG
A. Phonology
Phonology is the study of the sound system of
languages. It is a huge area of language theory and it is
difficult to do more on a general language course than having
outline knowledge of what it includes. In an exam, you may
be asked to comment on a text that you are seeing for the
first time in terms of various language descriptions, of which
phonology may be one. At one extreme, phonology is
concerned with anatomy and physiology – the organs of
speech and how we learn to use them. At another extreme,
phonology shades into socio-linguistics as we consider social
attitudes to features of sound such as accent and intonation.
And part of the subject is concerned with finding objective
standard ways of recording speech, and representing this
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UNIVERSITAS PGRI SEMARANG English Phonology for EFL
B. Phonetics
This is the level of sounds. One must distinguish here
the set of possible human sounds, which constitutes the area
of phonetics proper, and the set of system sounds used in a
given human language, which classifying the sounds of
language and with saying how the subset used in a particular
language is utilised, for instance what distinctions in meaning
can be made on the basis of what sounds.
Phonetics is the study of human sounds in general
without saying what function which sounds may have in a
particular language. The term ‘phonetics’, however, is often
used with reference to one language when the emphasis is on
the pronunciation of this language. For instance, a book on
“The phonetics of Irish” would be about how to pronounce
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English Phonology for EFL UNIVERSITAS PGRI SEMARANG
Phonetics Phonology
Is the basis for phonological Is the basis for further work in
analysis morphology, syntax, discourse,
and orthography design
Analyzes the production of Analyzes the sound patterns of
all human speech sounds, a particular language by
regardless of language. Determining which phonetic
sounds are significant, and
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UNIVERSITAS PGRI SEMARANG English Phonology for EFL
D. Phonemics
The study of the sound system of a given language
and the analysis and classification of its phonemes.
E. Phoneme
Study the following text!
Mark and Mary Brown are both doctors in the same hospital.
One of them is a physician, the other is a biologist. When an
invitation addressed to Dr. M. Brown’s arrives, the secretary
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English Phonology for EFL UNIVERSITAS PGRI SEMARANG
b. /hi:Iz/
These two answers refer respectively to Mary and Mark.
2. a. /ʃi:Iz/ = she is = Mary
b. /hi:Iz/ = he is = Mark
If we permute /ʃ/ and /h/ we change the meaning of the
sentence and hence we are not speaking about the same
person.
In the example above, we produce a change in meaning
through a substitution of segments in a string of sounds. These
segments are called phoneme. Thus, in this case, the
phonemes are /ʃ/ and /h/.
Here is another definition to support the previous explanation.
A phoneme is the smallest contrastive unit in the sound
system of a language.
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UNIVERSITAS PGRI SEMARANG English Phonology for EFL
A phoneme is …
F. Phone
This is the smallest unit of human sound which is
recognisable but not classified. The delimiters used are
square brackets: [ ]. Example: [p], [i] [t] all three of which are
found in peat. Phones are unclassified in that nothing is said
of their function in the sound system of a language. They are
thus different from allophones.
G. Allophone
The realisations of phonemes – or phones – are called
allophones. In another words, an allophone is a phonetic
variant of a phoneme in a particular language.
Examples (English):
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English Phonology for EFL UNIVERSITAS PGRI SEMARANG
H. Minimal pair
A minimal pair is two words that differ in only one sound.
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UNIVERSITAS PGRI SEMARANG English Phonology for EFL
Examples:
Sounds which differ: /p/ and /b/
/læp/ = lap
/læb/ = lab
Let’s go back to the concept of phoneme. Since the substitution
of /ʃ/ and /h/changes she into he, /ʃ/ and /h/ belong
necessarily to two different phonemes. Whereas, /r/ and /R/
which is under no circumstances change the information
given, are said to belong to the same phoneme /r/.
Generally, when we wish to decide whether two segments
belong to the same phoneme or, on the contrary, are
realisations of two different phonemes, we put them in an
identical context, that is the same string of sounds. When
there is a difference between two otherwise identical strings
of sound and this difference results in a change of meaning,
these two strings are said to constitute a minimal pair. Instead
of how /ʃ/ and /h/can be said minimal pair, here is another
example.
/ðә hæt iz ↄn ðә mæt/
The hat is on the mat
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English Phonology for EFL UNIVERSITAS PGRI SEMARANG
phonemes /h/ and /m/ because substituting one for the other
as first element of the string (-æt) gives two different words:
/hæt/ (hat) and /mæt/ (mat).
I. Morphology
This is the level of words and endings, to put it in simplified
terms. It is what normally understands by grammar “(along
with syntax). The term morphology refers to the analysis of
minimal forms in language which are, however, themselves
comprised of sounds and which are used to construct words
which have either a grammatical or a lexical function.
Lexicology is concerned with the study of the lexicon from a
formal point of view and is thus closely linked to
(derivational) morphology.
J. Syntax
This is the level of sentences. It is concerned with the
meaning of words in combination with each other to form
phrases or sentences. In particular it involves differences in
meaning arrived at by changes in word order, the addition or
subtraction of words from sentences or changes in the form
of sentences. It furthermore deals with the relatedness of
different sentence types and with the analysis of ambiguous
sentences.
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UNIVERSITAS PGRI SEMARANG English Phonology for EFL
K. Semantics
This is the area of meaning. It might be thought that
semantics is covered by the areas of morphology and syntax,
but it is quickly seen that this level needs to be studied on its
own to have a proper perspective on meaning in language.
Here one touches, however, on practically every other level of
language as well as there exists lexical, grammatical, sentence
and utterance meaning.
L. Pragmatics
The concern here is with the use of language n specific
situations. The meaning of sentences need not be the same in
an abstract form and in practical use. In the latter case one
speaks of utterance meaning. The area or pragmatics relies
strongly for its analyse on the notion of speech act which is
concerned with the actual performance of language. This
involves the notion of proposition – roughly the content of a
sentence – and the intent and effect of an utterance.
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