English Phonetics and Phonology

1. ENGLISH PHONETICS and
PHONOLOGY I – 2013
Prof. Adriana Gonzalez

2. Let’s Remember…
 What is a PHONEME?
It is the smallest contrastive phonological unit.

3. What are MINIMAL PAIRS?
“Minimal Pairs are words in which all the
sounds or phonemes are the same
except for one. They show that a change
in a phoneme implies a change in
meaning.”
hat /ht/ heart /hA:t/
bit /bIt/
beat /bi:t/
van /vn/
fan /fn/

4. What areALLOPHONES?
 Allophones are sounds, while Phonemes are sets of such sounds;
 They are the variations of those phonemes.

5.  Because the reléase stage is so abrupt when we are producing voiceless plosives /p/ /t/ /k/
in IP in stressed / accented syllables, these sounds have a slight variation:
They are ASPIRATED. Aspiration is a voiceless interral or a puff of air
between the release of the voiceless plosives and the following sound.
complain /km.pleIn/
retain /rI.teIn/
decrease /dI.kri:s/
potato /p.teI.t U/
Stressed
syllable
Unstressed
syllable
Unaspirated

6. Voiceless plosives preceded by /s/ in a syllable, they are
produced without aspiration.
scream /skri:m/
Spain /speIn/
 All plosives in FP can be RELEASED or UNRELEASED, this
means the air that was compressed behind the complete oral
closure can be liberated or not.
tip /tIp/ or /tIp /
Unreleased
Released with a bit
of aspiration
Meg /meg/ or /meg /
talk /tO:k or /tO:k /

7. When there’re two plosives together in a cluster, the 1st is
UNRELEASED and only the 2nd is RELEASED.
stopped /stp t/
marked /mA:k t/
If a consonant is UNRELEASED, it is articulated but not produced

8.  ALLOPHONES of the /l/ phoneme
o clear ^[l]: It resembles the /i/ sound, with the front of the tongue raised. (light, look)
o It occurs before vowels;
o it will never occur before a consonant or a pause;
o dark []: It has a quality similar to the /u/ sound, with the back of the tongue raised. (milk,
hold, call, trial)
o it never occurs before vowels;
o it is found when it precedes a consonant sound;
o devoiced [l]: it means that it is produced without the voicing found in most realisation of this
phoneme. (play, class)
o it is found when it follows /p/ or /k/ at the beginning of a stressed syllable.