PHONETIC

Phonetic deals with the production of speech , organ of speech , suprasegmental phonemes : stress, intonation, rhythm, pitch, length, and pause, weak and strong pronunciation, transition of sounds, as well as the introduction phonetic symbols and their use in pronunciation.

Phonetic is a science that studies that studying sounds/speech sounds/ phonemes as merely sounds without trying to find out to the function to distinguish meaning.

Phonetics as a research discipline has three main branches:

• Articulatory phonetics is concerned with the articulation of speech: The position, shape, and movement of articulators or speech organs, such as the lips, tongue, and vocal folds.
• Acoustic phonetics is concerned with acoustics of speech: The properties of the sound waves, such as their frequency and harmonics. The study of the sound waves made by the human vocal organs for communication.
• auditory phonetics is concerned with speech perception: How speech sounds are categorized, recognized, and interpreted by the auditory apparatus and the brain. It studying how speech sounds are perceived by the ear, auditory nerve, and brain.

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION

Phonetic transcription (or phonetic notation) is the visual system of symbolization of the sounds occurring in spoken human language. The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet (such as the international phonetic alphabet).

Phonetic transcription:

1.      Picture / ideographic writing: Writing in which each character is a picture of an objects or idea. Example : the hieroglyphs of the ancient Egyptians

2.      Alphabetic writing : Writing in which each character represents speech sounds.

3.      Syllabic writing / syllabery : a writing system in which each character represents a syllable

SEGMENTAL AND SUPRA SEGMENTAL PHONEMES

1.      Segmental phonemes / features

Sound units arranged in a sequential order

Example : murderous       7 segmental features

                  Phonetically [`mə:dәrəz]

2.      Supra-segmental phonemes

Such features as stress, pitch, length, intonation and other features that always accompany the production of segmental.

ENGLISH STRESS AND LENGTH PATTERNS

·         Stress: the degree of force or loudness with which a syllable is pronounced so as to give it prominence (menonjol)

·         Syllable: consist of a vowel or diphthong, with or without one or more than one consonant preceding or following it. The psychological feature at a syllable is that it’s produced with one single impulse of breathe.

·         Degrees of stress:

1.      Strong/primary stress

2.      Medium/secondary stress

3.      Weak/tertiary stress

·         Length: the period of time during which a sound is produced in a given utterance.

1.      The absolute length of that sound: a length of a sound is measured in terms of units of fine such as seconds or tenths of second.

Example: the length of [a:] in [fa:δə] is 0,12 seconds

2.      The relative length of that sounds: measure comparatively in relation to the other sounds in the same utterance.

Example: sound [a:] is longer than [ә] in [fa:δə]

INTONATION PATTERNS

1.      Pitch Levels, Clause Terminals and Intonation Contours

Each syllable is said with some degree of lowness or highness of tone which is called ‘pitch’. The going up and down of pitch over different syllables in an utterance is called ‘intonation’. The highest pitch which usually coincides with the strongest syllable in the utterance is calleeed the head or centre of the intonation contour.

2.      The High-low Falling Intonation [31  ] or [231   ]

It’s used e.g. in orders, decided statements, prohibitions, and questions-word questions

Example :

-          Order, calls and exclamation

      stay here                     

            Good heavens !

            Hi darling.

-          Decided of final statements

      The sun rises in the east

-          Question-word-question ( information question )

What is your name?

What plants live on insects?

3.      The Mid-high rising intonation [23     ]

It’s used in simple (or yes-no ) questions, polite requests, statements implyingconcern, sorrow, apology or other emotions, or other statements of less definite type.

Example :

-          Simple ( yes no questions

Have you got the tickets for us?

-          Polite requests and miscellaneous emotional statements

Please sit down and concentrate on your lesson.

Don’t be afraid.

4.      High-normal Sustained Intonation [23       ]

This intonation pattern is normally used in enumeration or in counting, and is terminated by falling intonation.

Example: When we went to USA we visited Lost Angeles       , Houston      , New Orleans       , Washington       , Alabama       , and Texas.  

However, a distinction in meaning is caused by the presence and absence of a sustained intonation such as in the following sentences.

Are reading Tome Sawyer?                : The question is addressed to Tom Sawyer.

5.      Some additional notes on intonation patterns

Phrases consisting of adjectives and nouns, or nouns and nouns, which level stressing, have a falling intonation with the centre of intonation on the last element.

Example:

a ‘white ‘house   (house that is white)

a ‘green ‘house   (house that is green)

Compound words with primary and secondary stresses also take the falling intonation, but with the centre of the intonation on the first element.

Example:

‘henpecked                  ‘White house

‘headlight                    ‘seaweed

STRONG FORMS AND WEAK FORMS

·         Structural and Content Word

The strong form of a word is that form of pronunciation, which is used when it is found in stressed or final positions, or in isolation. The weak form word is that form of pronunciation, which is used when it occurs in an unstressed position.

Strong and weak forms are commonly called structural or function words, such as auxiliaries, prepositions, articles, and pronouns.

Content words like nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, are always stressed in a sentence.

SOUND TRANSITION

It’s the way of moving from one sound to another sound in speaking .

Examples :

-          Nitrate           [ naitreit ]

-          Night—rate   [ nait + reit ]

-          Nye trait        [ naI + treit ]