Grammar
I've been asked several times already to explain shortly the difference between phonetics and phonology. If you think of it, it's easy. Pronounciation can be always studied and analysed from two different points of view: the phonetic and phonological. Phonetics concerns the way we produce (articulate), transmit and receive speech sounds while phonology concentrates on the general properties displayed by systems of languages. In other words, phonetics studies all possible sounds humans can make and phonology studies only those phonemes (I explain the term phoneme in one of my previous posts "Phones, phonemes and allophones") that bring about the differences of meaning within language.It's a bit as if (and this is a big simplification) you had a girl and first were concerned about her appearance only - this would be phonology but as soon as you find out more about her and her personality, it's phonetics.
To seperate the two approaches, phonetic and phonological, linguists use different kind of brackets when using their written representations - transcriptions. Square brackets [ ] indicate a phonetic point of view (only as sounds articulated in a particular way without taking their role into consideration), whereas slant brackets / / indicate phonological point of view (only as parts of the sound system). Generally, phonetic transcriptions are much more detailed and used when, for instance, describing the regional differences in pronounciation. However, phonemes are often satisfactory enough when presenting transcriptions.
- It's Not What You Said. It's How You Said It.
Intonation provides speech with an amazing degree of expressiveness. We often hear people say ‘it’s not what you said, it’s how you said it’ – intonation allows us to detect sarcasm, helps us to read one’s true intentions and is therefore...
- Glottal Stop, Clipping And Elision
I got into a conversation with somebody on Twitter yesterday about the phonetic processes. To be truthful, it wasn’t much of a conversation and rather a question asked by them followed by my monologue with possible answers. They wanted to know ‘’what...
- Lost For Words?
The idea of a word has been always considered to be of a great importance and has troubled linguists since the beginnings of linguistic studies. There appears to be a problem with defining a word and each definition we may come up with will be likely...
- Morphology
What is morhology? ‘Morphology’ literally stands for ‘ the study of forms’ and was originally used in biology but since the middle of 19th century it’s been used to describe the analysis of basic elements used in a given...
- Vowels And Consonants
There are two types of meaning associated with the words 'vowel' and 'consonant'. First, the phonological definition says that consonants are simply those segments that occur at the edges of syllables, unlike vowels which occur at the...
Grammar
Phonetics versus Phonology
I've been asked several times already to explain shortly the difference between phonetics and phonology. If you think of it, it's easy. Pronounciation can be always studied and analysed from two different points of view: the phonetic and phonological. Phonetics concerns the way we produce (articulate), transmit and receive speech sounds while phonology concentrates on the general properties displayed by systems of languages. In other words, phonetics studies all possible sounds humans can make and phonology studies only those phonemes (I explain the term phoneme in one of my previous posts "Phones, phonemes and allophones") that bring about the differences of meaning within language.It's a bit as if (and this is a big simplification) you had a girl and first were concerned about her appearance only - this would be phonology but as soon as you find out more about her and her personality, it's phonetics.
To seperate the two approaches, phonetic and phonological, linguists use different kind of brackets when using their written representations - transcriptions. Square brackets [ ] indicate a phonetic point of view (only as sounds articulated in a particular way without taking their role into consideration), whereas slant brackets / / indicate phonological point of view (only as parts of the sound system). Generally, phonetic transcriptions are much more detailed and used when, for instance, describing the regional differences in pronounciation. However, phonemes are often satisfactory enough when presenting transcriptions.
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- It's Not What You Said. It's How You Said It.
Intonation provides speech with an amazing degree of expressiveness. We often hear people say ‘it’s not what you said, it’s how you said it’ – intonation allows us to detect sarcasm, helps us to read one’s true intentions and is therefore...
- Glottal Stop, Clipping And Elision
I got into a conversation with somebody on Twitter yesterday about the phonetic processes. To be truthful, it wasn’t much of a conversation and rather a question asked by them followed by my monologue with possible answers. They wanted to know ‘’what...
- Lost For Words?
The idea of a word has been always considered to be of a great importance and has troubled linguists since the beginnings of linguistic studies. There appears to be a problem with defining a word and each definition we may come up with will be likely...
- Morphology
What is morhology? ‘Morphology’ literally stands for ‘ the study of forms’ and was originally used in biology but since the middle of 19th century it’s been used to describe the analysis of basic elements used in a given...
- Vowels And Consonants
There are two types of meaning associated with the words 'vowel' and 'consonant'. First, the phonological definition says that consonants are simply those segments that occur at the edges of syllables, unlike vowels which occur at the...