Appunti Lingua Inglese 1 - English Language 1

NOUNS

In British English, collective nouns can take either singular or plural verb forms, depending on

whether the emphasis is on the body or the members within it.

i.e. “A committee was appointed.” “The committee were unable to agree.”

VERBS

Morphology

American -- "-ed" vs. British -- "-t" -> i.e. learned/learnt, dreamed/dreamt

British English rarely use gotten, while got is much more common.

Past participles often vary: i.e. saw – American: sawed; British: sawn

Tenses

British English employs the present perfect to talk about a recent event, i.e. “I’ve already eaten,”

“I’ve just arrived home.”

Auxiliaries

British English often uses shall and shan’t American English uses will and won’t

Phonetics

Phonetics is the study of the sounds of speech:

- Physical proprieties of sounds

- How they are produced, i.e. how the different structures of the vocal tract (articulators) interact to

produce sounds (Articulatory Phonetics)

- How they are transmitted. It describes the properties of the sound waves, and how they are

received by the inner ear (Acoustic Phonetics)

- How we perceive them. It studies the way our brains form perceptual representations of speech

sounds (Auditory Phonetics)

Key Concepts: Phone

- Each time a speech sound is produced it is different, i.e. each time you produce a /t/, it will always

be slightly different, also because the same sound in different words is pronounced in a different

way

- Hence the concept of the phone: the physical realisation of a speech sound

- In phonetic transcription, we use square brackets [ ]

Phonology

- Looks at the sounds of the language as a system, looks at the sounds of a particular language that

form a system of sound, the sounds that are present in the English language, and how these sounds

are combined to create words

- While phonetics is more concerned with the physical properties of sounds, phonology deals with

the sounds systems of natural languages.

- How sounds are organised and used in natural languages

- How individual sounds combine to form syllable and words

- How they are interpreted by native speakers

- The distribution and organization of the sounds inventory of a given language, i.e. which sounds

are distinctive units in a language, how they vary in different environments, how they combine to

form syllables and words (Segmental Phonology)

- Aspects of speech that go beyond the production of individual sounds, it deals with the way

sounds, syllables and words are articulated. Prosodic features such as stress, pitch and intonation

(Suprasegmental Phonology)

/stressed syllable it’s pronounced strongly in the word/

- In phonemic transcription, we use slant brackets / /

Key Concepts: Phoneme

- A phoneme is the smallest speech sound with distinctive value. It is an abstract phonological unit.

- Two words that differ in only one phoneme have different meanings. Compare sun and pun which

differ only in the initial phoneme (/s/ vs. /p/). Word pairs of this kind are referred to as minimal

pairs.

- Phonemes are the sounds as they are stored in the mind of speakers.

Key Concepts: Allophone

- Each phoneme may have different actual realisations (outputs), depending on the context in which

it is produced. (each sound is related with the others that precede and follow it, and this leads to

different pronunciations). The physical realisation of a phoneme as it is in practice produced. A

variant in the production of the phoneme.

Consider the different articulations of /s/ in seen and soon. In the first, the phoneme is produced

with spread lips, as /i:/ follows. In the second /s/ is realised with rounded lips, to prepare for the

following rounded vowel, /u:/. This second, rounded /s/ is a variation, or allophone of the phoneme.

w

It is indicated with a special symbol called diacritic /s /.

Phoneme and Allophone w

- If one allophone is exchanged with another, e.g. if seen is produced with a /s /, the word, while

perhaps sounding a bit strange, is still comprehensible (maybe the person has some peculiarity in

the pronunciation, but it’s still understandable, with some uncertainties)

- If one phoneme is exchanged with another the meaning of the word changes, e.g. seen is produced

with a /b/, instead of a /s/, (seen and been)

Phonemes and Allophones

- /ɬ/ and /l/ are two different allophones of the phoneme /l/ and are in complementary distribution,

in fact they occur in non-identical environments, we find dark l in final positions, but we still

understand the word ɬk/

- /ɬ/ is called dark l and refers to word-final /l/, occurring before consonants as in milk /mɪ

- /l/ is called clear l and occurs in initial position, or before vowels, as in light /laɪt/

Irregularity in Spelling

- Phonetics is of particular importance for learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) because

it has a practical application

- English has a far larger repertory of phonemes than languages like Standard Italian

- English is not a phonographic language, the spelling generally does not give a clear indication of

the pronunciation, and also words that have parts written in the same way are pronounced in

different ways, there is not a general standard rule that we can follow to know exactly the

pronunciation

Standard British English vs. Standard Italian

English Italian

Pure vowels 12 7 (5)

Diphthongs 8 15

Consonants 24 19

English is phonetically irregular

Sources of Phonetic Irregularity

- Not enough vowel letters for vowel sounds -> the letters used for the vowels are not enough to

characterize the great number of vowels sounds that there are, all the different nuances

- English does not use additional symbols, like accents, umlauts etc. that tells us how to pronounce

the word

- English spelling reflects many archaic forms of pronunciation

- English has always resisted spelling reforms and does not have academies setting standards

- English spelling became fixed in the 16th -17th c. with the invention of printing. Many of the

printers were Flemish and had little knowledge of the language

- English has borrowed extensively from other languages and has tended to maintain original

spelling, while changing the pronunciation

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

- The absence of a fixed correspondence between sounds and letters led a group of linguists to

introduce a special alphabet in which one symbol is always represented by the same sounds

- The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a set of internationally agreed symbols for

representing speech sounds. Such representations are called phonetic transcriptions. (EX: Phonetic

transcriptions in dictionary entries)

- It’s used as a reference table to characterize the sounds of every language

- In many languages there is not always a fixed correspondence between spelling and pronunciation

led to the creation of the phonetic alphabet in which each symbol can be univocally associated with

a specific sound and phoneme, it’s an association of symbols and sound, that in different languages

can be realized differently and associated with different spellings

- It’s a chart that is designed to comprise the sound of every language, most of the languages of the

world, and the symbols are used in the phonetic transcriptions of all the different languages, of

course not all symbols are used in a language

Consonants:

- On the horizontal axis we find the place where they are produced

- On the vertical axis we have the manner in which the sound is produce

The Production of Speech Sounds

- The muscles in the chest that we use for breathing produce the flow of air that is needed for almost

all speech sounds.

- Air flows up the trachea (windpipe) and out of the body through the mouth or nose. On its way, it

has to pass through the larynx that contains the vocal folds.

- The organs that control the production of speech are contained in the vocal tract, beginning at the

larynx and ending at the lips.

Parts of the Vocal Apparatus

- The larynx is a casing, formed of cartilage and muscles, situated in the upper part of the trachea

- Contained within this structure are the two vocal folds (or vocal chords), two thick flaps of

muscles which may be brought together or parted in the rotation of the arytenoid cartilages (at the

posterior ends of the folds)

- The position of the vocal folds is crucial for differentiating and discriminating the various sounds

of speech

- The opening between the folds is called glottis

- The vocal tract includes the parts related to the mouth

The Vocal Folds

- Their outer edges are attached to muscle in the larynx while their

inner edges are free.

- If the back end of the vocal folds are held apart, a triangular space

opens up between them.

- The space is called glottis.

- If the vocal folds are wide apart, we say that the glottis is open.

This is what happens in normal breathing and in the case of

voiceless sounds. Ex. ‘s’ /s/, ‘sh’ /ʃ/ or ‘f’ /f/

- If they are tightly closed, the air cannot pass between them. When this happens in speech we call it

ʔ

a glottal stop, for which we use the symbol

- If the vocal folds are touching each other, or nearly touching, they vibrate when subjected to air

pressure from the lungs. Vibration gives rise to voiced sounds. Ex. ‘z’ /z/, b /b/ or ‘a’ /ɑː/

(Voiced sounds there is the vibration of the vocal folds they touch each other, voiceless there isn’t,

the vocal folds are open apart. All vowels are voiced.)

Articulators

> organs in the oral tract

-

- The pharynx connects the larynx with the oral cavity (mouth).

- The oral cavity is the most important component of the vocal tract, because it’s where sounds are

shaped and can be varied by adjusting the relative position of the palate, the tongue, the lips and the

teeth.

The Oral Tract

- The air passages above the larynx are known as ‘vocal tract’

- The shape of the vocal tract is very important in the production of speech.

- Made up of:

- Oral cavity (mouth and pharynx)

- Nasal cavity

- The parts of the vocal tract that are used to form sounds are called articulators.

- Upper and lower surface

It contains: (passive or active depending on being movable organs or not)

- Active articulators: lower lip and tongue

- Passive articulators: upper surfaces of the oral tract (non-mobile parts, but they assume different

positions compared to the movable, or active, articulators): upper lip, teeth, pharynx wall and roof

of the mouth which includes:

- Alveolar ridge- behind upper teeth

- Hard palate- bony structure

- Soft palate or velum- at the back of the mouth

The Velum

- Velum (soft palate): a muscular flap at the back of the roof of the mouth

- When the velum is raised, the air flows into the oral tract resulting in oral sounds

- When the velum is lowered, the air flows into