简明语言学教程2.doc

2. Phonology 2.1 the pnonic medium of language Language is abstract Speech and writing Speech is primary and writing is secondary Speech sounds 2.2 Phonetics 2.2.1 What is phonetics? “Phone” I Greek means “sound”, so phonetics refers to the scientific study of sounds. Human beings are capable of making numerous sounds, but not all of them are meaningful in human speech communication. Linguists are only concerned with those sounds that are related by the language system to certain meanings. Although one language may have some sounds which do not exist in another, all the languages of the world together contain a limited number of sounds that the human vocal tract can produce. a branch of ling which studies human speech sounds and provides methods for the description, classification and transcription of these sounds. Three branches of phonetics 1) articulatory phoneticsthe study of the way in which speech sounds are produced by our vocal organs. 2) acoustic phoneticsthe study of the physical properties of speech sounds as they are transmitted between mouth and ear. 3) auditory phoneticsdealing with how speech sounds are perceived by the human ear. 2.2.2 Organs of speech 16 2.2.3 Transcription The widely used symbpls for phonetic transcription of speech sounds is the International Phonetic Alphabit IPA attempts to represent each sound of human speech with a single symbol. The symbols are enclosed in brackets [ ] to distinguish phonetic transcription from the spelling system of a language. Transcription, the use of symbols to show sounds or sound sequences in written form, is divided ito two types: Broad transcription / phonemic transcriptiona kind of transcription which uses only a basic set of symbols to record speech sounds. It does not show te finer points of pronuciation. Narrow transcription / phonetic transcriptiona kind of transcription that shows all or most of the characteristics of speech sounds with the addition of other symbols and m