Phonetics and PhonologyKey words: phonetics, phonology, introduction, difference, relationship, IPA, Consonants, Vowels,Phone, Phoneme, Allophone, Minimal Pair,Phonological RulesIntroductions of Phonetics and Phonology1. PhoneticsPhonetics and phonology are two branches of linguistics that deal primarily with the structure of human language sounds. Without them we will live as deaf or dumb. Phonetics is about the production of sounds, including the production of sound, that is how speech sounds a re actually made, transmitted and received, the description and classification of speech sounds. The study of sounds is divided into three main areas: Articulator Phonetics, Acoustic Phonetics and Perceptual Phonetics. Phonology studies the rules governing the structure, distribution, and sequencing of speech sounds and the shape of syllables. It deals with the sound system of a language by treating phoneme as the point of departure.Phonetics is the study of speech sounds that the human voice is capable of creating whereas phonology is the study of a subset of those sounds that constitute language and meaning. The first focuses on chaos while the second focuses on order.It approache s speech on different levels. “At one level, it studies organs such as tongue and larynx and their function in the production of speech. At another level, it focuses on the speech sounds produced by these organs by identifying and classifying the individual sounds. This is the domain of articulator phonetics. It also investigates the properties of the sound waves—acoustic phonetics. As speech is intended to be hard or perceived, it is therefore possible to focus on the way in which a listener analyses or processes a sound wave—auditory phonetics.Study of Phonetics, we…d better know something about the speech organs. For example, their places their function during an air stream producing speech sounds and so on. The knowledge of speech organs can help us in the further learning of PhoneticsThe most important part of Phonetics is the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which analyses the speech sound in two ways—“the manners of articulation and the places of articulation”. IPA is the basic part of the lear ning of Phonology, too. We can‟t learn consonants without it. There are some important consonants which we should remember their place in IPA, such as [p] voiceless bilabial plosive; [d] voiced alveolar plosive; [f] voiceless labiodentals fricative and so no, especially the English consonants.----Consonants:In the production of consonants at least two articulators are involved. The categoriesof consonant are established on the basis of several factors: the actual relationship between the articulators and thus the way in which the air passes through certain parts of the vocal tract, known as the manner of articulation; and where in the vocal tract there is approximation, narrowing or the obstruction of air, known as the place of articulation. The manner of articulation: stop [p, b, t, d, k, g], nasal [m, n], fricative [f, v, si], approximant [w, j], lateral [l], trill [r], tap and flap, affricate [ts, dz, tr, dr]. The place of articulation: bilabial [p, b, m], labiodentals [f, v], dental, alveolar [t, d, n, s, z], post alveolar, retroflex, palatal [j], velar [k, g], uvular, pharyngeal, glottal [h]. Description: Three parameters to identify a consonant:①place of articulation: place in the mouth where obstruction occurs.②manners of articulation: ways in which articulation can be accomplished.③state of vocal cords: voiced VS. Voiceless--Vowels:A vowel is a sound in spoken language pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. A vowel is also understood to be syllabic: an equivalent open but non-syllabic sound is called a semivowel. In all languages, vowels form the nucleus or peak of syllables, whereas consonants form the onset and (in languages which have them) coda. However, some languages also allow other sounds to form the nucleus of a syllable. The description of English vowels needs to fulfill four basic requirements:①the height of tongue raising (high, mid, low);②the position of the highest part of the tongue (front, central, back);③the length or tenseness of the vowels (tense vs. lax or long vs. short);④the lip-rounding (rounded vs. unrounded)2. PhonologyPhonology is about sound patterns. “It deals with the sound system of language by treating phoneme as the point of departure. A phoneme is the smallest linguistic unit of sound that can signal difference in meaning. English has approximately forty-five phonemes”.Another thing we should know is that the sound segments can be grouped into consonants and vowels. V owels are the speech sound made without audible stopping of the breath by the tongue, lips and so on.-- Phone: the speech sounds we hear and produce during linguistic communication are all phones. It‟s a phonetic unit or segment (in the mouth). Conventionally, phones are placed within square brackets “[]”(phonetic transcription). Phones do not necessarily distinguish meaning. Usually phones of different phonemes distinguish meaning.--Phoneme: A sound which is capable of distinguishing one word or one shape of a word from another in a given language is a phoneme. It‟s a basic unit in phonological analysis. It is not any particular sound, but an abstract segment. In actual speech, a phoneme is realized phonetically as a certain phone. The phoneme is the smallest meaning-distinguishing unit. Phonemes are placed in slashes “//” (phonemic transcription)--Allophone: when we have a set of phones, all of which are versions of one phoneme, we refer to them as the allophones of that phoneme. One phoneme may have several allophones, but the choice of an allophone is rule-governed.--Minimal Pair: When two different forms are identical in every way except for one sound segment, which occurs in the same place in the strings, the two sound combinations are said to form a minimal pair. When two words such as pat and bat are identical in form except for a contrast in one phoneme, occurring in the same position, the two words are described as a minimal pair. Minimal pairs are established on the basis of sound and not spelling. Three requirements for a minimal pair:①same number of segment②one phonetic difference in the same place③different meaning--Phonological RulesThe rules contain three parts: class of sounds affected; phonetic change; phonemic environment. There are several rules. Devoice a voiced consonant after a voiceless consonant. Nasalize vowels before nasals. An alveolar stop becomes a flap when preceded by a stressed vowel and followed by an unstressed vowel. Voiceless stops are aspirated when they occur initially in a stressed syllable. They are called nasalization rule, tantalization rule, and valorization rule and so on. Egg. Voiced fricaive→voiceless /__ voiceless.Difference between Phonetics and PhonologyHowever, there is difference between them. And they focus on different areas.Phonetics focuses on the physical manifestations of speech sounds and on theories of speech production and perception.Phonology is concerned with the systems of rules (or constraints) that determine how the sounds of a language combine and influence one another.For an example: in [leap] and [peel], in phonetics, we focus on the [l].In [leap],[l] is a clear sound. However, in [peel], the [l] is a dark sound. In phonology, we focus on the letters and their positions.The relationship between Phonetics and PhonologyAlthough they have difference, they influent each other in some degree.Phonetics is the basic part Phonology when we learn linguistics. As we learn Phonology step by step we can find it connects with Phonetics closely. For example, consonants and vowels belong to the categories of Phonology, while the ways of telling or naming them bases on the principles of Phonetics.First, we learn consonants by using IPA which belongs to Phonetics. From the definition of consonants we know that realizing how to pronounce them is the best way for us to learn them well. That means we should know enough knowledge about both the organs and the manners of articulation. “In the production of consonants at least two articulators are involved. The most important factors that the categories of consonants are established on are a) the actual relationship between the articulators and thus the way in which their passes through certain parts of the vocal tract—the manners of articulation and b) where in the vocal tract there is approximation, narrowing, or the obstruction of air-- the places of a rticulation” . And the two factors are the basic structures of IPA.Second, the criteria of vowel description bassoon the position of tongue or the kind of opening made at the lips which are analyzed by Phonetics. Concretely, “the description of vowels needs to fulfill four criteria: the part of tongue that is raised—front, center, or back; the extent to which the tongue rises in the direction of the palate—mid-high, mid-low, and low; the kind of opening made at the lips—rounded or unrounded; the position of the soft palate—raised for oral vowels, and lowed for vowels which have been nasalized”.At least since Trubetzkoy many have thought of phonology and phonetics as separate, largely autonomous, disciplines with distinct goals and distinct methodologies. Some linguists even seem to doubt whether phonetics is properly part of linguistics at all. The commonly encountered expression …the interface between phonology and phonetics‟ implies that the two domains are largely separate and interact only at specific, proscribed points.Now I will attempt to make the case that phonetics is one of the essential areas of study for phonology. Without phonetics, I would maintain, (and allied empirical disciplines such as psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics) phonology runs the risk of being a sterile, purely descriptive and taxonomic, discipline; with phonetics it can achieve a high level of explanation and prediction as well as finding applications in areas such as language teaching, communication disorders, and speech technology.In a word, phonetics is one of the disciplines that help to provide answers to phonology‟s questions about why speech sounds behave as they do. Moreover, in its growth over the past couple of centuries it has developed a respectable level o f scientific rigor in creating and testing models of various aspects of the speech mechanism. Phonology can benefit from phonetics‟ methods, data, and theories. Reference: 胡壮麟《语言学教程》语言学论文题目：Phonetics and Phonology。
第二章语音学一、导读2.1 语音研究人类交际包括两种形式：语言交际(linguistic communication) 和非语言交际(paralinguistic communication)。
非语言交际包括手势、表情、眼神或图表等。
语言交际包括口语（spoken language）和书面语(written language)。
在多数情况下，人们主要是通过口语进行交际。
口语交际的媒介是语音(speech sounds)，也就是说人们通过声道（vocal track）发出的音来表达意义。
这种对语音的研究被叫做语音学(phonetics)。
口语交际是一个复杂的过程。
可以想象，当人们交际时，语音首先被说话者发出，然后，它在空气中被传递并被听话者接收。
也就是说，口语交际包括三个基本步骤：语音的发出→语音在空气中的传导→语音的接收。
根据这三个步骤, 语音研究也自然地分成三个主要研究领域。
对第一个步骤的研究是发声语音学(articulatory phonetics)，研究语音的产生。
对第二个步骤的研究是声学语音学(acoustic phonetics)，研究语音的物理特征。
对第三个步骤的研究是听觉语音学(auditory phonetics），研究和语音感知有关的内容。
2.2 发音机制语音是由各种发音器官（speech organ）而产生的。
因此，正确理解语音需要掌握相关的发音系统知识。
人体发声器官（见《语言学概论》杨忠主编，高等教育出版社2002：15）使流出的气流产生各种各样的变化，从而产生不同的音。
肺部的气流是发声的原动力。
肺部扩大时，空气从外流入，形成吸气音（ingressive sounds）。
肺部收缩时，气流流经气管(trachea)、喉头（larynx）、咽腔（pharyngeal cavity）再经口腔(oral cavity)或鼻腔(nasal cavity) 排除，形成呼气音(egressive sounds)。
