The Difference Between Phonetics And Phonology

PHONETICS: is the study of human sounds in general without saying what function which sounds may have in a particular language The term ‘phonetics’ is, however, 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 Irish correctly and not necessarily about the functions which the sounds may have in the phonological system of the language.                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Phonetics was studied by the 4^th century B.C,E. But started growing in the late 19^th century due to the invention of phonograph. Studding phonetics involves not only learning theoretical material but also undergoing training in the production of speech sound, student must also learn to control of articulator variables. So it will help them develop the ability to recognize the different between the  vowel and consonants, and also become expert in using phonetic symbol, those of the international phonetic alphabet(I.P.A)

         Where symbols appear in pairs, the one on the right represents a voiced consonant, while the one on the left is unvoiced. Shaded areas denote articulations judged to be impossible.

    It is customary to divide the field of phonetics into three branches as follows.

Articulator phonetics (emission of sounds)

Acoustic phonetics (transmission of sounds)

Additive phonetics (reception of sounds)

ARTICULATORY PHONETICS

This describes how vowels and consonant are produced or “articulated” in various part of the mouth and throat. It is the study of production of speech sounds. To produce speech, air must flow from the lungs through the vocal tract, which includes the vocal folds (popularly called the vocal cords, though they are more like thick elastic bands than strings), the nose or nasal cavity, and the mouth or oral cavity (See Figure 1). The vocal folds vibrate for some sounds but not for others. Air flows through the nose for certain sounds but not others. But the main creator of speech sounds is the mouth. The production of vowels sounds and the production of consonants sounds differs from each other when it comes to articulation. 

Vowels

Vowels include the sounds we ordinarily represent as the letters <a, e, i, o, u>, as well as a number of other sounds for which the ordinary alphabet has no unique symbols. Vowels are distinguished from consonants in several ways, consonants are produced by constricting the air stream to various degrees as it flows through the oral tract. Vowels are produced with a smooth, unobstructed airflow through the oral tract. Differences in vowel quality are produced by different shapes of the oral cavity. Characteristic vowel qualities are determined by

the height of the tongue in the mouth

the part of the tongue raised (front, middle, or back)

the configuration of the lips; and

the tension of the muscles of the oral tract.

CONSONANTS

Consonants include the sounds we represent as <p, b, t, d, m, n, f, v, s, z, l, r, h> in the ordinary alphabet. All consonants are produced by entirely or almost entirely stopping the air stream coming from the lungs. When we almost entirely stop the air stream we force it through such a narrow opening that the airflow at that point is turbulent and noisy. We classify consonants according to the following characteristics: (a)whether or not the vocal folds are vibrating (voicing); (b) whether the sound is made with a fully stopped or merely constricted air stream (its manner of articulation); (c) where in the mouth the stoppage or constriction is
made (its place of articulation); (d) whether or not air is flowing through
the nasal cavity (nasality); and (e) whether or not the lips are pursed (lip-rounding).

Voicing

Sounds produced with vibrating vocal folds are said to be voiced; those produced without vocal cord vibration are voiceless. Table 1 lists the voiced and voiceless consonants of English. The letters in [ ] are the phonetic symbols for the sounds.

NASALITY

Make the sound represented by <m> in the word Pam and continue it for some seconds. As you continue it, pinch your nose and observe what happens to the sound. It should stop immediately. This shows that air was flowing through your nose as you produced this sound. Now try the same little experiment with the <n> of pan and the <ng> of pang. You should find that the air flows through the nose in these two cases also. Sounds in which air flows through the nose are called nasal sounds. The air is allowed into the nose by lowering the velum, the soft palate at the back of the mouth. English has three main nasal sounds:

Manner of articulation

By manner of articulation we mean the kind of closure or constriction used in making the sound. We classify English consonants according to three manners of articulation: stops (full stoppage of the air stream somewhere in the oral cavity between the vocal folds and the lips, as in [p], [b], [m]); fricatives (constriction of the air stream in the oral cavity producing turbulence and noise, as in [f], [v]); affricates (full stoppage of the air stream followed immediately by constriction, as in [tS], [dZ]). Table 2 summarizes the different manners of articulation.

Place of articulation

by place of articulation we mean the area in the mouth at which the consonantal closure or constriction occurs. English uses only seven places of articulation (see Figure 1) which we describe and illustrate below.

Bilabial sounds are made by bringing both lips together to stop the airstream:

Labiodental sounds are made by bringing the top teeth into contact with
the bottom lip and forcing air between the two to create the fricatives:

Interdental sounds are made by placing the tip of the tongue between
the top and bottom teeth and forcing air through. Again, these are both
fricatives:

Alveolar sounds are made by bringing the tongue and the alveolar ridge
(the bony ridge just behind the top teeth) together to create either a stop or
fricative:

(Alveo-)palatal sounds are made by bringing the blade of the tongue to,
or close to, the alveo-palatal area of the roof of the mouth to create fricatives
and affricates:

Velar sounds are created by stopping the air stream by bringing the back
of the tongue into contact with the velum:

Glottal sounds are created by either narrowing the vocal folds sufficiently to create a fricative or closing them to create a stop:

Acoustics Phonetics

This is the study of how speech sounds are transmitted: when sounds travels through the air from the speakers mouth to the hearers ear it does so in form of vibrations in the air; it is the study of physical production and transmission of speech sounds. Spectrographs are the visual representation of acoustical information. The display concentrations of physical energy in the spoken signal. These concentration, which shows up as dark bands, are called formants. Multiple formants make up each intelligible speech sound.

AUDITORY PHONETICS

This is the study of how speech is perceived: looks at the way in which the hearer’s brain decodes the sound waves back into the vowels and consonants originally intended by the speaker. It is the study of perception of speech sounds. The actual sound produced, such as a simple vowel or consonant sound is called phone.  

  

                                                   

   PHONOLOGY

The word phonology came from Ancient Greek. PHONOLOGY can also refer to the phonological system of a given language,it is also one of the fundamental system which a language is considered like syntax and it its vocabulary.

        Phonology describes the way sound function within a given language to encode meaning for many linguist.Phonology belongs to a descriptive linguistics.

Phonology is the study of sound patterns,especially different pattern of sound in different language.Phonolgy is a branch of linguistics concerned with the systematic organization of sound in language. Phonology deals with the way speech sounds behave in particular languages or in languages generally. This focuses on the way languages use differences between sounds in order to convey differences of meaning between words.                          Phonology also include the study of equivalent non oral languages such as ASL.

Some term to take note in phonology include:

Phone: This is the smallest unit of human sound which is recognizable but not classified. The delimiters used are square brackets: [ ]. Examples: [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.

Phoneme: The smallest unit of language which distinguishes meaning – the organizational unit of phonology – is termed a phoneme. The brackets used are slashes: / /. Examples from English are: /k/, /u:/, /l/, as seen in the word cool /ku:l/. Both consonants and vowels are phonemes, for instance /i:/, /ai/, /u:/, /au/ are phonemes in English and can be seen in beat, bite, boot, bout respectively. The distribution of phonemes in English is fairly regular (see consonant and vowel charts below), the consonants tend to come in pairs of voiced and voiceless members and the vowels in sets of long and short vowels.

The phoneme is an abstract term (a speech sound as it exists in the mind of the speaker) and it is specific to a particular language. e.g in English the /p/ sound is phoneme because it is the smallest unit of sounds of bill,till or drill making the word pill. The vowel sound of pill is also a phoneme because its distinctness in sound makes pill, which means one thing, sound different from pal, which means another. Minimal pairs are pairs of words that have one phonological element that is different.

Examples of minimal pairs

lit – light	read – red	sing – sang
bed – bad	saw – sought	boot – boat
soot – suit	but – boot	why – way
know – now	wreath – wreathe	leak – lick
look – luck	sock zx- suck	vest – vast
cod – card	dug – dog	thirst – first
fair – fear	pay – bay	read – lead
need – mead	zoo – sue	near - ne'er
catch – cash	azure – assure	jet – chet
leige – lease	whistle – thistle	beige – bays
fur – fear	care – chur	noon – nun

 A phoneme may have several allophones, related sounds that are distinct but do not change the meaning of a word when they are interchanged. The sounds corresponding to the letter "t" in the English words 'tea' and 'trip' are not in fact quite the same. The position of the tongue is slightly different, which causes a difference in sound detectable by an instrument.

Overlapping distribution: when we find phonetic environments (the sounds before and after)where both phones occur.[p] and [b] in ‘’pat’’ and ‘’bat’.  

Complementary distribution: when we find no overlapping phonetics environments. They are allophones of the same phoneme.[pʱ] and [p] in ‘’pin’’ and ‘’spin’’.

PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY 

Phonetics and phonology are related in language. Phonetics is the study of sound in speech, Phonology is the study of sound patterns to create meaning. Phonetics focuses on how speech is physical created and received, including the study of human vocal and auditory tract, acoustics, and neurology. Phonology relies on phonetic information for its practice, but focused on the non verbal communication creating it meaning on how such patterens are interpreted.

The Difference Between Phonetics And Phonology

Phonetics is about the physical aspect of sounds, it studies the production and the perception of sounds, called phones. Phonetics has some subcategories, but if not specified, we usually mean "articulatory phonetics": that is, "the study of the production of speech sounds by the articulatory and vocal tract by the speaker". Phonetic transcriptions are done using the square brackets, [ ]

         

Phonology is about the abstract aspect of sounds and it studies the phonemes (phonemic transcriptions adopt the slash / /). Phonology is about establishing what the phonemes are in a given language, i.e. those sounds that can bring a difference in meaning between two words. A phoneme is a phonic segment with a meaning value, for example in minimal pairs:

My advisor, Dennis Preston, used to tell students that the ear hears phonetics, but the brain hears phonology. That is, your ear is capable of processing whatever linguistic sounds are given to it (assuming someone with normal hearing), but your language experience causes your brain to filter out only those sound patterns that are important to your language(s)

Generally, phonetics is the study of fine grained details of those sounds, while phonology has traditionally dealt with analysis of greater abstractions. For understandable reasons, the line between the two disciplines is blurring, particularly as our modeling capabilities become more sophisticated. Still, the distinction is useful.

    BY                                                                                              

ADEGBITE.A.SHALLOM,

            AND 

ODETOLA FARUK