语言学02Chapter 2_sound.ppt

As human beings we are capable of making all kinds of sounds, but only some of these sounds have become units in the language system. We can analyze speech sounds from various perspectives and the two major areas of study are phonetics and phonology. Phonetics studies how speech sounds are produced, transmitted, and perceived. Articulatory Phonetics is the study of the production of speech sounds. Acoustic Phonetics is the study of the physical properties of speech sounds. Perceptual or Auditory Phonetics is concerned with the perception of speech sounds. Phonology is the study of the sound patterns and sound systems of languages. It aims to ‘discover the principles that govern the way sounds are organized in languages, and to explain the variations that occur’. In phonology we normally begin by analyzing an individual language, say English, in order to determine its phonological structure, i.e. which sound units are used and how they are put together. Then we compare the properties of sound systems in different languages in order to make hypotheses about the rules that underlie the use of sounds in them, and ultimately we aim to discover the rules that underlie the sound patterns of all languages. 1. How speech sounds are made 1.1 Speech organs Position of the vocal folds: voiceless Position of the vocal folds: voicing (initial the widest aperture) Position of the vocal folds: glottal stop 1.2 The IPA In 1886, the Phonetic Teachers’ Association was inaugurated by a small group of language teachers in France who had found the practice of phonetics useful in their teaching and wished to popularize their methods. It was changed to its present title of the International Phonetic Association (IPA) in 1897. One of the first activities of the Association was to produce a journal in which the contents were printed entirely in phonetic transcription. The idea of establishing a phonetic alphabet was first proposed by the Danish grammarian and phonetician Otto Jespe