2015م - 1444هـ
Phonetics_and_Phonology



Phonetics and phonology

1.1 Characterising articulations

1.1.1 Consonants

1.1.2 Vowels

1.2 Phonotactics

1.3 Syllable structure

1.4 Prosody

1.5 Writing and sound

The level which concerns itself with the smallest units of language is phonetics.

Phonology on the other hand is the functional classification of the sounds of a

particular language. It is the system of sounds by means of which meanings are

differentiated in a language and which serve as the building blocks for the higher

linguistic levels, e.g. morphology.

Phonetics is the study of human sounds in general without saying what

function which sounds may have in a particular language. The term ‘phonetics’

is, however, often used with reference to one language when the emphasis is on

the pronunciation of this language. For instance, a book on The phonetics of

Irish would be about how to pronounce Irish correctly and not necessarily about

the functions which the sounds may have in the phonological system of the

language.

It is customary to divide the field of phonetics into three branches as

follows.

1) articulatory phonetics (emission of sounds)

2) acoustic phonetics (transmission of sounds)

3) auditive phonetics (reception of sounds)

In any language there will be sounds which are used to differentiate meaning and

those which do not serve this function. To cope with this situation descriptively

one needs three terms to start with.



Raymond Hickey