Phonetics and Morphology notes

Phonetics is the scientific study of speech sounds: how they are made in the mouth, how they travel as sound-waves, and how they are heard. Subramaniam places it inside linguistics as the science of the spoken side of language, not of spelling. English spelling is a weak map of sound: put /pʊt/ and but /bʌt/ look alike and do not rhyme; cough, though and through share letters but not a vowel. Phonetics gives one symbol for one sound, so a dictionary can show the pronunciation of a word.

Three branches make up the introduction. Articulatory phonetics studies how the body makes a sound — lungs, vocal cords, tongue, lips. This unit mainly uses this branch: organs of speech, vowels and consonants. Acoustic phonetics studies the sound-wave: frequency (how high the pitch is) and amplitude (how loud it is). Auditory phonetics studies how the ear and the brain receive the sound. English speech uses a pulmonic egressive air-stream: air is pushed out from the lungs. If the vocal cords in the larynx vibrate, the sound is voiced (/b/, /z/, all vowels). If they stay apart, it is voiceless (/p/, /s/, /h/).

The organs of speech produce the sounds. Lungs supply air; the windpipe (trachea) carries it to the larynx, which holds the vocal cords. Above the larynx, the pharynx is the throat-cavity. The oral cavity is the mouth; the nasal cavity is the nose-chamber. The tongue is the most movable organ: tip, blade, front, back and root. The teeth and lips close or narrow the path. The alveolar ridge is the bumpy shelf behind the upper teeth — RP /t d n s z l/ are made there. The hard palate is the bony roof; the soft palate (velum) rises to shut the nose for oral sounds, or drops for nasals /m n ŋ/. The velum ends in the uvula, the small hanging tip at the back. The glottis is the opening between the cords; /h/ is glottal friction. Active articulators move (lower lip, tongue); passive articulators stay (upper teeth, alveolar ridge, palates). Phonetics studies these sounds. Morphology, later in this unit, studies how they build words.

Phonetics is not the same as phonology. Phonetics describes the sound itself. Phonology asks which differences a language treats as different words. /pɪn/ pin and /bɪn/ bin are two English words because /p/ and /b/ contrast; each contrast-unit is a phoneme. The next lesson writes phonemes in IPA symbols.

Phonetic symbols are the letters of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) used to write speech. Subramaniam writes RP for Indian students: one symbol for one sound. Ordinary English spelling uses 26 letters for far more sounds; the letter c is /k/ in cat and /s/ in city. IPA does not give one letter two jobs of that kind. A dictionary prints the pronunciation of a word in these symbols, so the ear can be read on the page.

Brackets show the job. Slashes / / mark a phoneme, the contrast-unit of the language. Square brackets [ ] mark a fine phonetic detail (for example a slightly different /t/). Transcriptions in this unit are phonemic, between slashes: ship /ʃɪp/, sheep /ʃiːp/. A colon ː after a vowel marks length in RP: /iː/ in seat, /ɑː/ in car, /uː/ in food, /ɔː/ in saw, /ɜː/ in bird. Length is a different vowel, not the same sound said slowly: /ɪ/ and /iː/ make sit /sɪt/ and seat /siːt/. The mark ˈ before a syllable is primary stress; ˌ is secondary stress: education /ˌedʒʊˈkeɪʃn/. A dictionary entry is unfinished without them. Schwa /ə/ is the most common vowel in unstressed syllables: about /əˈbaʊt/, teacher /ˈtiːtʃə/.

RP English has 44 phonemes in Subramaniam’s count: 12 monophthongs (pure vowels) /iː ɪ e æ ɑː ɒ ɔː ʊ uː ʌ ɜː ə/, 8 diphthongs /eɪ aɪ ɔɪ əʊ aʊ ɪə eə ʊə/, and 24 consonants. A diphthong is one gliding vowel, written with two IPA letters that count as one sound: /eɪ/ in day, /aɪ/ in my, /əʊ/ in go. Do not count /eɪ/ as two phonemes. Ordinary capital letters are not IPA. IPA /j/ is the sound in yes, not the letter j in jam (that is /dʒ/). IPA /ŋ θ ð ʃ ʒ/ have no single ordinary letter of their own.

To transcribe a word: write it between slashes, use IPA letters not spelling, mark long vowels with ː, and mark stress on words of two syllables or more. Phonetics itself is /fəˈnetɪks/. Language is /ˈlæŋɡwɪdʒ/. Copying the spelling — cat written as cat — is not a phonetic transcription.

Speech sounds divide first into vowels and consonants. A vowel is made with an open mouth-path: the tongue shapes a cavity, and the air is not stopped or hissed by a narrow gap of the kind that makes /s/ or /t/. A consonant has a closure or a narrow gap somewhere in the mouth or at the glottis. Subramaniam classifies consonants by three labels, and those three labels are how a consonant is named: voicing (vocal cords: /p/ voiceless, /b/ voiced), place of articulation, and manner of articulation. So /p/ is a voiceless bilabial plosive; /s/ is a voiceless alveolar fricative; /m/ is a voiced bilabial nasal.

Place: bilabial — both lips, /p b m/; labio-dental — lower lip and upper teeth, /f v/; dental — tongue and teeth, /θ ð/ as in think, this; alveolar — tongue and the ridge, /t d n s z l/; post-alveolar — just behind the ridge, /r/; palato-alveolar — blade towards the hard palate, /ʃ ʒ tʃ dʒ/; palatal — /j/ in yes; velar — back of the tongue and the soft palate, /k g ŋ/; labial-velar — lips and the velum together, /w/; glottal — /h/. Manner: plosive (stop) — complete close then release, /p b t d k g/; affricate — stop plus a slow fricative release, /tʃ dʒ/ in church, judge; fricative — narrow gap, audible friction, /f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ h/; nasal — air through the nose, /m n ŋ/; lateral — air around the sides of the tongue, /l/; approximant — close but no friction, /r w j/.

Vowels sit on a different grid: tongue height, front–back position, and lip-rounding. The twelve RP monophthongs are /iː ɪ e æ ɑː ɒ ɔː ʊ uː ʌ ɜː ə/. Close (tongue high): /iː ɪ uː ʊ/. Mid: /e ə ɜː ɔː ʌ/. Open (tongue low): /æ ɑː ɒ/. Front: /iː ɪ e æ/. Central: /ə ɜː ʌ/. Back: /uː ʊ ɔː ɒ ɑː/. Rounded lips: /ɒ ɔː ʊ uː/. Unrounded: /iː ɪ e æ ʌ ɑː ɜː ə/. A monophthong stays on one quality: /e/ in bed. A diphthong glides: /aɪ/ in time starts open-front and moves toward /ɪ/. RP’s eight diphthongs are /eɪ aɪ ɔɪ əʊ aʊ ɪə eə ʊə/ — day, my, boy, go, now, here, hair, poor. Indian English often uses a pure /o/ where RP has /əʊ/; the classroom still names the RP symbol because that is Subramaniam’s set.

The same book notes three contrasts Indian speakers often merge, so the RP symbol has to be heard as a different sound. Dental /θ ð/ are friction with the tongue on the teeth: thin /θɪn/ is not tin /tɪn/. /v/ is labio-dental friction; /w/ is a rounded approximant — vest /vest/ is not west /west/. Many Indian languages use retroflex /ʈ ɖ/; RP /t d/ are alveolar, made on the ridge, not curled back. The RP symbol stands for that sound; that is why two words stay two words.

Word stress (word accent in Subramaniam) is the extra force on one syllable of a word. A syllable is a beat with a vowel at its centre: tea has one, teacher two, education four. In a word of two or more syllables, one beat is stronger — the primary stress, marked ˈ before that syllable: /ˈteɪbl/, /təˈdeɪ/, /ˌɪnfəˈmeɪʃn/. A long word may also carry secondary stress ˌ. Stress is not spelling, and it is not the same as intonation. Intonation is the tune of a whole phrase. Stress is which syllable inside the word is strong.

English uses stress to keep words apart. ˈrecord /ˈrekɔːd/ (noun: the disc or the file) against reˈcord /rɪˈkɔːd/ (verb: to put on file). ˈpresent /ˈpreznt/ (noun or adjective) against preˈsent /prɪˈzent/ (verb). ˈobject /ˈɒbdʒɪkt/ against obˈject /əbˈdʒekt/. The shift of the beat is a shift of meaning. Content words — nouns, main verbs, adjectives, adverbs — normally carry stress in a phrase. Function words — articles, prepositions, auxiliary verbs, pronouns — often weaken in connected speech: to /tə/, and /ən/, of /əv/, the /ðə/ before a consonant and /ði/ before a vowel. Those weak forms are the unstressed shape of the same word.

Some suffixes move the stress in regular ways. Words in -tion, -sion, -ic take stress on the syllable just before the suffix: eduˈcation, deˈcision, phoˈnetic, ecoˈnomic. Many two-syllable nouns and adjectives stress the first beat: ˈteacher, ˈhappy, ˈwindow. Many two-syllable verbs stress the second: preˈpare, reˈceive, beˈgin. Compound nouns often stress the first word: ˈblackboard, ˈclassroom. Prefixes such as un-, in-, dis- do not usually take the primary beat: unˈhappy, inˈcomplete.

Swan and Subramaniam both treat stress as part of the word’s identity, like a vowel. Photograph /ˈfəʊtəɡrɑːf/, photographer /fəˈtɒɡrəfə/, photographic /ˌfəʊtəˈɡræfɪk/: three related words, three stress-places. Stress is not merely “saying a word loudly.” It is a marked syllable. A noun–verb pair such as ˈrecord / reˈcord shows both beats.

Intonation is the rise and fall of pitch across a phrase. Subramaniam treats it as the tune that sits on the stressed syllables of connected speech. The stretch of speech under one tune is a tone group (tone unit). Inside it there are four parts, and a group need not fill all four: the pre-head (unstressed syllables before the first stress), the head (from the first stress up to the nucleus), the nucleus or tonic syllable (the main pitch movement, usually the last important content word), and the tail (what follows the nucleus). In “She ˈteaches ˈEnglish,” the nucleus is ˈEnglish. Stress chooses the strong beats; intonation chooses the direction of the last strong beat.

Subramaniam’s classroom uses four kinetic tones. A falling tone (down from high or mid) is the tune of a finished statement, a command, and a wh-question: “She is ˈhere.” “ˈOpen the door.” “What is your ˈname?” The speaker is sure, or is asking for a fact. A rising tone (up from low or mid) is the tune of a yes–no question, of a list that has not ended, and of a polite prompt: “Is she ˈhere?” “Would you like ˈtea?” In the list “ˈapples, ˈmangoes, and ˈoranges,” the early items rise and the last item falls. A fall-rise falls and then rises on the nucleus: reservation, implication, a “yes, but.” “I ˈcan.” (I can, though there is a condition.) A rise-fall rises and then falls: surprise, strong agreement, or a sense that the point is impressive. “ˈReally.” Swan notes the same family of tunes as meaning: fall = closed; rise = open; fall-rise = not the whole story.

Intonation is not word stress with a new name. A one-syllable word still has stress as a beat; in a phrase it may become the nucleus and then carry a fall or a rise. “ˈYes.” with a fall is a complete answer. “ˈYes?” with a rise asks again. The letters are the same; the pitch is different. A question mark on the page does not always mean a rise: “Where do you ˈlive?” is a wh-question and normally falls. “Do you ˈlive here?” is yes–no and normally rises. The grammar of the sentence and the speaker’s attitude choose the tone together.

Morphology is the study of how words are built from smaller meaningful pieces. The smallest meaningful piece is a morpheme. Book is one morpheme. Books is two: book + -s. Unhappy is two: un- + happy. A free morpheme can stand alone (happy, kind, write). A bound morpheme cannot (un-, -ness, -ed). Prefixes and suffixes are bound morphemes added to a base or stem. Thomson–Martinet, Murphy and Swan treat this as word-formation.

A prefix is attached at the front. It usually changes meaning without changing word-class: happy (adjective) → unhappy (still an adjective); write (verb) → rewrite (still a verb). Common negative prefixes: un- (unfair), in- / im- / il- / ir- (incomplete, impossible, illegal, irregular — the last letter of the prefix matches the start of the base: im- before p/b/m, il- before l, ir- before r), dis- (disagree), non- (non-fiction), mis- (misunderstand: wrongly). Other classroom prefixes: re- again (rebuild), pre- before (pre-war), post- after (postgraduate), over- too much (overeat), under- too little (underpaid), anti- against (antisocial), inter- between (international).

A suffix is attached at the end. Two jobs must be kept apart. Inflectional suffixes mark grammar and do not make a new dictionary-word: plural -s/-es (cats, boxes), possessive -’s, 3rd-person -s (walks), past -ed (walked), -ing (walking), comparative -er and superlative -est (taller, tallest). The word-class stays. Derivational suffixes often make a new word and may change class: noun-makers -ness (kindness), -ment (payment), -tion/-sion (education, decision), -er/-or (teacher, actor); adjective-makers -ful (careful), -less (careless), -able (readable), -ous (famous); adverb-maker -ly (quickly); verb-makers -en (widen), -ise/-ize (realise). Care (noun/verb) → careful (adjective) → carefully (adverb) → carefulness (noun): one family, suffixes doing the work.

To identify an affix, separate the base, name the prefix or suffix, and say whether meaning changed, class changed, or only grammar changed. Disagreement = dis- + agree + -ment: prefix of opposition, noun-making suffix. Walked = walk + -ed: inflection, past, still a verb. Spelling often adjusts with the suffix: happy → happiness (y to i); the suffix -ful has one l (careful). A prefix is not a preposition sitting in front of a phrase. In the room is the preposition in plus a noun. Incomplete is the prefix in- plus the adjective complete.

Parts of speech are the classes into which words fall by the job they do in a sentence. Thomson and Martinet, Murphy and Bhatnagar keep the traditional eight: noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection. Identification is not a dictionary label copied once. The same letters can change class: light is a noun in “a light in the room,” an adjective in “a light bag,” a verb in “they light the lamp.” Ask what the word is doing in that sentence. Articles a, an, the sit with the noun. Some books call them adjectives; Murphy groups them with determiners — that heading is treated in full in Unit 2. Here, for identification, name them as articles: the words that mark a noun.

Noun: names a person, place, thing or idea. Kinds: proper (Bikaner, Monday), common (city, day), collective (class, team), abstract (honesty, fear), material (gold, milk). Countable nouns take a/an and a plural (a book, books). Uncountable nouns do not: we say water, some water, advice, furniture — not a water for the liquid itself. Usage: subject, object, complement — “The student reads a book.” Pronoun: stands for a noun. Kinds: personal (I, you, he, she, it, we, they), possessive (mine, hers — stand alone), reflexive (myself), demonstrative (this, those), relative (who, which, that), interrogative (who, what), indefinite (someone, none). Usage: the pronoun must match its noun in number and, where English still shows it, in person — “The girls lost their books,” not her books.

Adjective: modifies a noun. Kinds: quality (honest), quantity (some, much), number (five, first), demonstrative (this, those), possessive (my, their — these sit before a noun; mine as a pronoun stands alone), interrogative (which book), distributive (each, every). Degrees: positive tall, comparative taller, superlative tallest (or more / most with longer adjectives: more careful). Usage: attributive before the noun (a cold wind) or predicative after a link verb (the wind is cold). Verb: states action or being. Kinds for this unit: main against auxiliary (write against is, have, do, can); transitive (takes an object: she writes a letter) against intransitive (she sleeps); finite (shows tense and agrees: she writes) against non-finite (infinitive to write, gerund writing, participle written). Full tense, modal and concord tables sit in Unit 2. Here the skill is to find the verb and say which kind it is in the sentence.

Adverb: modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. Kinds: manner (quickly), place (here), time (yesterday), frequency (often), degree (very). Many manner-adverbs are adjective + -ly (careful → carefully); fast, hard, well are adverbs without -ly. Usage: “She spoke clearly” (manner of the verb); “very clear” (degree of the adjective). Preposition: relates a noun or pronoun to another word — in, on, at, of, to, from, with, by, for, between. Usage: “the book on the table,” “she went to college.” A preposition takes an object; if there is no object, the same word may be an adverb (“she went in”). Conjunction: joins. Coordinating: and, but, or, nor, yet, so (same rank). Subordinating: because, if, when, although, that (a clause depends). Interjection: a sudden feeling, often with an exclamation mark — oh, ah, alas, hurrah. It is not a grammatical part of the clause.