30
our language
through its spelling system, and phonetics/phonology
provides a corrective to that”, and, “phonetics and phonology provide
systematic and well-founded understandings of the sound patterns of
English
42
”.
For the benefit of the present investigation both studies have been
taken into consideration since this paper focuses on the phonological
processes that affect the consonant sounds pronunciation of the English
language. Phonetics and phonology are two different
studies within the
field of linguistics; however, they both deal with language sounds.
According to the definition by Crystal (2008:363), “phonetics is the
science which studies the characteristics of human soundmaking,
especially those sounds used in speech, and provides methods for their
description, classification and transcription
43
”. In other words, phonetics
deals with how the sounds of the speech are produced, their articulation
and acoustic properties. B. Mott (2005) considers
that phonetics is not
part of linguistics, nevertheless, it plays an important role in the teaching
of a foreign language. Understanding how the sounds are produced helps
us to produce the targeted sounds.
Phonology on the other hand is “a branch of linguistics which
studies the sound systems of languages. The sounds are organised into a
system of contrasts, which are analysed in terms of phonemes, distinctive
features or other such phonological units, according to the theory used
44
”
(Crystal, 2008:365). Phonology is divided into two branches of study:
segmental and suprasegmental. Segmental level deals with individual
sounds of words, whereas, suprasegmental level embraces such aspects
of pronunciation as sentence and word stress, rhythm and intonation and
so on. Both levels are taken into account in TEFL.
A phonetician, Brian Mott (2005:30) refers to phonology as “a kind
of functional phonetics which employs this data (description of sounds)
42
Delahunty, G.P. and Garvey, J.J. (2010):
Phonetics and Phonology
. Retrieved
February 14, 2015 from http://wac.colostate.edu/books/sound/chapter4.pdf
43
Crystal, D. (2008). Ibid. p. 363.
44
Crystal, D. (2008). Ibid. p. 365.
31
to study the sound systems of languages
45
”. The basic units of phonology
are phonemes. The Dictionary of Language
Teaching and Applied
Linguistics by Richards, J.C. and Schmidt, R.
(2013:432) defines a
phoneme as “the smallest unit of sound in a language which can
distinguish two words
46
”. Phonemes have communicative value, in other
words, correct use of the phonemes within one language is vital from the
point of view of message comprehension. Whenever there is a phonemic
confusion caused by language transfer, we experience misunderstanding
during the process of communication. For example,
the substitution of
the phoneme /p/ in
pat
by the phoneme /b/ leads to semantic change or
another English word,
bat
. On the contrary, when no semantic change
occurs, we talk about the sounds that are called allophones. Crystal
(2008) describes allophones as variants of phonemes that do not change
the meaning of the word, but the sound
47
. Therefore, mispronunciation of
the allophones of one phoneme does not usually
lead to confusion in
meaning but it can suggest a specific non-native accent.
Besides distinguishing the principal concepts of phonetics and
phonology, being aware of the differences between phonemes and
allophones, a teacher of English should possess certain knowledge about
transcription. Finch and Lira Ortiz (1982:29) in their book “A Course in
English Phonetics for Spanish Speakers” affirm that “transcription not
only shows the pronunciation of words in isolation, or in their “lexical”
form, as they appear in pronouncing dictionaries, but it can also show the
modifications that words suffer when used in connected speech
48
”.
Transcription is used in two different ways, depending on being referred
to either allophones or phonemes. The first one refers to “raw material
out of which speech sounds are made.
This aspect studied by
phonetics
49
”. The second one refers to the way this material “can be
organized in order to make it meaningful and systematic for
45
Mott, B. (2005):
English Phonetics and Phonology for Spanish Speakers.
Barcelona:
Edicions Universitat Barcelona, p. 30.
46
Richards, J.C. and Schmidt, R. (2013):
Dictionary of Language Teaching & Applied
Linguistics
. Fourth edition. New York: Routledge, p. 432.
47
Crystal, D. (2008). Ibid. p. 20.
48
Finch, D.F. and Lira Ortiz, H. (1982):
A Course in English Phonetics for Spanish
Speakers
. London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd, p. 29.
49
Finch, D.F. and Lira Ortiz, H. (1982). Ibid. p. 29
32
communication purposes. This second aspect is studied by phonology
50
”.
Allophones are represented by symbols enclosed in square brackets [ ],
while phonemes are represented by symbols between slant lines / /. The
symbols being used in the transcription are based on the alphabet created
by IPA.
Even though theoretically phonetics and phonology are different
studies, for practical purposes they can be combined. “On the one hand it
is essential to know which sounds produce
differences in meaning
between words (phonological study), and on the other, to establish how
the various phonemes are actually produced
(phonetic study)
51
”.
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