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0:00
[Dr. Miller] Hi guys, and welcome to Chapter 2, where we are going to explore the world of phonology.
0:06
In this quick introduction video right here, I'm going to go ahead and introduce you to three new technical terms. You're going to learn a lot of new terms in this chapter, but these will be the first three off the bat that will help you join the conversation. So those three terms are phonology, phoneme, and IPA, which stands for International Phonetic Alphabet. We'll spend a lot of time with these terms over the next couple of lectures,
0:32
but we'll just investigate those real quick. So, we'll start with the term phonology, which is the chapter we're in. And phonology is the study of sounds in a language. And so when we study phonology and we study sounds, we're studying lots of things about sound. Here in the beginning, we're going to just talk about small units of sound, which we call phonemes. And I'll come to that term again later, but there's lots of things that we talk about when we study sound.
0:58
And in that introduction video we had for our class, we used the word like, and we said, "What's the difference between 'I like him' and 'I like him,' So I'm putting stress on different words, which is something we will also look at in phonology. So, phonology is studying sound on so many different levels, and that's what we're jumping into right now. We can quickly explore it by looking at this example. So if we were in class together, I would say,
1:28
"Can you hand me a pen?" And I'd want you to think about what I'm asking for. "Can you hand me a pen?"
1:35
And I know that most of you, especially given the context of we're in the classroom together, would want to hand me the ink pen. I'm guessing most of you would do that. But let's say I didn't say it to you orally. I put it in writing and I send you an email or a text and I say, "Can you hand me a pen?" And so you're looking at the spelling now, P-I-N, and which one would you hand me? Well, the safety pin.
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But this brings us to an interesting thing about sound.
2:05
When I say, "Can you hand me a pen?" or "Can you hand me a pin?" without the spelling associated with it, you're probably not entirely sure which one I'm saying, or you agree that these two words can sound the same. If we were in class together, I'd take a vote. I would say, "How many of you pronounce these two words in an identical way? 'Pen,' 'pin.'" And I'm guessing a majority of you would, but every now and then I have a couple of students who say,
2:32
"Those aren't pronounced the same, Dr. Miller. You're saying one of them wrong." But we just left our chapter on sociolinguistics where we explored time talking about dialect and how a dialect is a study of everything from pronunciation, so accent, all the way through lexical choices. And here is a great example of an accent or pronunciation difference with the Midwest and the Southern dialects or against the rest of American English or English in general.
3:03
So think about it. Do you pronounce these two words the same or is there a subtle difference? And the reality is, is there's technically a difference. So I'll play this clip for you real quick, but let me try to demonstrate it for you real quick. Pen, as in an ink pen, we would say pen, P-E-N. This is going to be one of those chapters where I get really close and you have to watch my lips a lot. So it's going to get a little annoying. But where I say ink pen,
3:36
most people outside of my dialect would say "pen, P-E-N."
3:42
With a safety pin though, people would say P-I-N. P-E-N, P-I-N. Go ahead and take a look at this video and let me know if you can hear the deference. [SPEAKER ONE] Pin. [SPEAKER TWO] Pin, pin. [SPEAKER THREE] Pen, pen. [SPEAKER FOUR] Pen, pen. [SPEAKER FIVE] Pen, pen. [SPEAKER SIX ] Pin, pin. [DR. MILLER] So can you hand me a pen or can you hand me a pin? There's a big difference in these pronunciations. Even though it's subtle, depending on what dialect you come from,
4:19
it's a huge difference. So again, let's talk about what it means by dialect. When we talk about dialect, we're talking about pronunciation, lexical items, and grammar. So in class right now, when we're discussing the difference between pen or PEN and pin, we're talking about a pronunciation difference. And so that's still under this term dialect. We're focusing on pronunciation. And we're talking about this pronunciation difference
4:48
through the lens of phonology, through studying the sounds of a language. And, as you remember, and we've driven home several times now, dialects of rule-governed. They're not arbitrary, they're not random, they follow rules. So, we've decided that. We looked at Appalachian English, we looked at African-American vernacular English, we looked at Southern English. And we've come back to this point time and time again that these dialects are following rules. When we're studying a dialect,
5:20
we're not only studying pronunciation, we're studying like accent, we're studying lexical items and grammar. So when we're looking at dialect, we're looking at all three of these things. So if we're going to say that dialects follow rules, and we're going to say that studying dialects means we're studying pronunciation, so sound, we need to therefore agree that pronunciation follows rules. There's nothing random about saying pin and pen.
5:51
So for speakers, for those of you like me who pronounce the words the same,
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what rule do you think we're following? Because remember, it's not random. Everything follows a rule. So, take a second to think. Can you hand me a pen? Can you hand me a pin? What rule am I following that tells me to pronounce those two vowels the same? Go ahead and think about that. Let me show you a little more. So we got this E and this I in the words pen and pin, and we're pronouncing them the same, whereas other people might say P-E-N and P-I-N. But let's look at some other words
6:28
that have the same I and E conundrum. If you're like me and you pronounce pen and pin the same, then you're probably doing it in these instances as well. So tin and ten, kin and Ken, Lin and Len, windy and Wendy, Sinned and send.
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Again, I know there's a couple of you out there saying, "They're not pronounced the same, stop doing it." Okay, maybe you don't have that dialectal feature. So here again are some example words where I continue to pronounce the I and the E with that same vowel sound. But what about the ones on the right? Because again, we have some more words with the I and the E, but I no longer pronounce them the same. So read these with me. Lit and let, pick and peck, pig and peg, rip and rep,
7:26
litter and letter, litter and letter. So on the left-hand side, we have some words with the I and the E, and I consistently pronounce those as the same vowel sound. But on the right-hand side, I have words also with the I and E, and I give them different vowel sounds. Again, I'm following a rule here. Can you figure out the rule by looking at these two different sets of words. So go ahead and pause that you want a minute to think about it, but let me show you.
7:56
We decide for the speakers that pronounce these words, these vowels sounds the same, we are making this decision following the rule of what is the final consonant or the following consonant sound in the word. So if you look at the words on the left, when the I or the E is followed by an N consonant, so N, we're going to give the I and the E vowel the same sound. In, in, in, in, in, in, indy, indy, ind, ind. So it has to do with the consonant sound in, N.
8:32
But on the right-hand side, you can see that if the I or the E is followed by a T, or a C, K, or a G, or a P, or a T, it doesn't-- as long as it's not an N, we distinguish that vowel sound. We give it two different sounds. So we're following a rule which supports everything we've said so far to this point: that dialects are rule-governed. And if you pronounce those, the I and the E the same in pen and pin, or pen and pin, then you're following that dialect rule.
9:02
Based on this rule, you should be able to look at the five items in the gray box and figure out would a speaker of this dialect pronounced the vowel the same in these two words or different? So, bit and bet. I know that it ends in a T, not an N. The final consonant sound is T, not N. So that speaker of that dialect is going to make those vowel sounds different. So go ahead and try it with the next four.
9:32
We've already talked about other rules back when we did Appalachian English, we talked about the plural S in English. Again we're not talking about spelling. Please keep in mind that as we move through phonology, we're not talking about spelling, we're talking about sound. I'm going to hit that point several times with you. But we talked about the rule with the plural S back in sociolinguistics. So do we make the S sound like s, or do we make the S sound like z?
10:00
So we have weeks, webz. And if you remember, we were also following a rule there and that had to do with the final consonant sound before the plural S. So if it was a K, as in k, then we would give it the KS sound. If it was a B, we were going to give it the Z sound. So BZ, it sounds like a bee. So we were following the rule there, and it had to do with the consonants. Again, driving home that all these phonology discoveries
10:35
we're going to make in the next several lectures, they're all rule-driven. So no matter the dialect we're speaking about, it's coming from some rule. Whether we're aware of it or not, there's a rule there that's being followed.
10:48
So we've talked about the term phonology, which means the study of sounds. But when we're talking about how sounds are different, it's hard to do that in writing, it's absolutely difficult. So if I were to tell you, imagine you're reading this: "pen" and "pin," or "pen" and "pen." No matter how I write the words P-E-N or P-I-N, you're not able to know what sound difference I'm talking about because it's in writing, it's spelled. These are the spelling conventions
11:23
to spell these two words. And the spelling conventions alone don't help me communicate to you that Southern speakers pronounce these two words the same. Or maybe other speakers pronounce these words different. And if I'm going to say they pronounce these two words differently, how do I communicate that to you strictly in writing? Like there's no oral communication, it's strictly in writing. We have the same issue with talking about the plural S in beds and bits.
11:51
How in writing can I communicate that these are different sounds by just using that plural S that we have in the English alphabet?
12:00
And there is a way we can do that. And that's through the International Phonetic Alphabet. I always say, don't confuse IPA with that type of beer that's out there. Deep Ellum sells some great IPA in Dallas. That's not what IPA means to a linguist. IPA, to us, means the International Phonetic Alphabet. And it's a specialized alphabet that we're going to spend a lot of time exploring in the next following lectures, that helps us talk about sound differences
12:28
through writing, and being able and allowing us to write about sound differences
12:34
using this specialized alphabet. So when I want to tell you that speakers pronounce the words pen and pin differently, I can use those specialized symbols, which I am there at the bottom of this screen, to show you that, look, there's a different sound in the middle. I can also use the same specialized International Phonetic Alphabet to show you that the plural S at the end of beds and the plural S at the end of bits gets a different sound.
13:04
And that's what I'm showing you in the second example there. Now, it's a little confusing because they almost look like English letters. And we'll talk more about IPA later, but I want to hammer home with the chance I have now, to tell you that this is not the English alphabet. This is not the alphabet you use to write your school papers in. This is a different alphabet that just so happens to share some letter symbols that look similar to the alphabet we use on our keyboards.
13:32
But it is a different alphabet. I want to take a second to show you the one we're giving to you in your textbook. So right here, you can see from page 65 of your textbook, an example of the International Phonetic Alphabet that we're going to be working with in the next couple of lectures. So yes, again, let me see if I can zoom in for you.
13:53
A lot of these symbols do look somewhat familiar, like the English alphabet. But a lot of them are going to look kind of odd, like this symbol right here. We don't have that in the alphabet we normally work with. But this is a page I'd like you to have available to you. Again, it's page 65 of your textbook. So whether you save that as a separate document on your computer, or save the file that I give to you under the PowerPoint materials, keep this available to you.
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But with these symbols right here, we can talk about all the sounds in the English language. And I specifically say English language for a reason. And that's because there are over 6,000 known languages in the world. And each language has a different sound system. There are no two identical languages in the world. There are some that are seemingly identical in sounds, but still have some small differences, which make it its own language.
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So again, phonology is the study of sounds of a language. And we're primarily going to look at English, a little bit of Spanish, but just know that there are sounds, that there are over 6,000 languages, and all of those languages would have different sound systems. So the one in our textbook on page 65 is specifically talking about the English language. But if we were to look at another language like Spanish, you would find that their phonetic alphabet would look different.
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So here's a couple of examples on the screen of some differences you might see.
15:29
If you go back to page 65 that I just showed you, you will see that there are 14 different symbols representing the 14 different vowel sounds in English. Whereas in Spanish, they would only have five symbols representing the five vowel sounds in Spanish. We'll spend more time talking about the vowels between Spanish and English in a later lecture. But they would only have five vowel sound symbols there. Spanish would also have this N.
16:02
They have a specialized N sound that we do not have in English. So an English speaker might see the word A-N-O and say, "Ano," "Ano," But in Spanish, we're going to give it the N, so "Anyo," more of a nasal sound. Those are two different sounds. That sound in Spanish is not the same N in English. They're two different sounds. So the Spanish phonetic alphabet would have a different symbol to represent that sound. And English would not have that symbol
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because we don't have that sound in the English language.
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Same with the trilled R in Spanish. So an English speaker might see this word, P-E-R-R-O, and say, "Perro,"
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We have one "R" sound in English, and that's R, R, R. Spanish, on the other hand, has two different sounds for the letter R. And this trilled R is one of those. And don't laugh at me, but instead of "Perro," they might go "Perro," and trill it. So because that is a sound unique to Spanish, their phonetic alphabet chart would look different than the English one. And they would have, you can see my IPA in the parentheses, they would have what looks like an R
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representing the trilled R. I'm going to tell you this also several times. When you look at page 65 of your textbook, and you're looking at the symbols representing the sounds in the English language, and you go down to the R, so the R for rat or rabbit, it's upside down. Again, because this is not the English alphabet, that is the symbol, though, the International Phonetic Alphabet has given for the English R. It is upside down. When you look at Spanish, though,
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and they're talking about the trilled R, so Perro, they get what looks like the upright R. So don't confuse the Spanish IPA symbol R, the trilled R, with the English IPA symbol, R. Even one's upside down and one's upright. Because we're going to explore both languages, you'll want to keep those distinct. I haven't shown you the Spanish IPA chart yet, but we will get there. So I'll show you that in a little bit.
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So we've talked about the term phonology. Phonology is the study of sounds in a language.
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IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet, gives us an alphabet to talk about those sounds in writing. But what's another word for sounds? I keep saying on this chart, on page 65, here you have these symbols for these sounds. Well, another word for that is you have phonemes. So I can say that English has 14 vowel sounds
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in the language, or I can say that English has 14 vowel phonemes.
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So a phoneme is the individual unit of sound. English has 14 vowel phoneme sounds.
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So some example sentences I can use with the word phoneme
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Bat and Pat differ by one phoneme. Let's break that down. Say the word "bat," B-A-T, B-A-T. There are three sounds in it. I want you to say the word "pat," P-A-T, P-A-T. There are also three sounds in that word. And the words, these two words, bat and pat, are almost identical except one sound difference:
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B and P, so B and P, those are two different sounds. So when I can say "bat" and "pat" differ by one sound, or I can say "bat" and "pat" differ by one phoneme. So when you hear the word "sound," you can interchange it with the word "phoneme." And when we talk about "sound," we want to say "phonemes." So the International Phonetic Alphabet represents all the sounds in the English language. We could say the International Phonetic Alphabet represents all the phonemes in the
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English language. So all of our terms together that we've just learned in one sentence, we can use IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet, to discuss the phonological systems, the phonology of a language. The IPA consists of phonetic symbols that represent each phoneme in a language. So again, page 65 in your textbook
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is IPA representing all the phonetic symbols
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in the English language. Each phoneme in that language. So again, new terms. Just introducing them to you now so you can start using them and practicing these terms. So that's going to wrap up this quick intro to Chapter 2. Here are some tools you'll want to have on hand. When you click on the PowerPoint in materials, under this,
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in tandem with this lecture, you're going to find five items there. You're going to find this PowerPoint with this lecture. You're going to find page 65 of our textbook, so the IPA chart for the English language. You're going to find the IPA chart for the Spanish language, which we will use a little bit in the upcoming lectures. We didn't explore it yet. And none of these charts did we explore in depth, but we will be. You're also going to find an IPA
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English consonants chart. And you're going to find an IPA English vowels chart. So these are all just different ways to explore or different tools we'll need to explore the remainder of Chapter 2 together. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. But in the meantime, keep moving forward. Talk to you soon.
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