Phonetics and Phonology - Essay Example

This paper examines the nature and purpose of the traditional system of phonetic notation and analysis which is based upon units of analysis called “segments”. It outlines the usefulness of this concept, and also its limitations, especially in the light of modern technologies which provide a wealth of very detailed scientific data on how sounds are produced by the human organs of speech. The concept of “coarticulation” is presented against the background of these traditional and more modern methodologies for analysing human speech, and finally Laver’s (1994) view of coarticulation is evaluated in depth using examples from English and a few other languages.

When a person speaks in any human language the sound emerges in a stream without any clear breaks between words. This is of course very difficult to analyse in one fluid stream and so scholars over the years have had to devise a method of breaking human speech into component parts. A fundamental distinction between vowels and consonants is one of the most obvious that can be made and forms the basis of standard phonetic notation. Vowels are sounds which emerge in a stream of air coming through the mouth and consonants are sounds which occur when this air is interrupted, or stopped by one or more of the speech organs such as the vocal cord, tongue, lips and teeth.

A vowel and consonant occurring together are termed a syllable. These distinctions are represented in the world’s alphabets by various systems of written symbols, so that most people are familiar with these simple concepts. In phonetics there are more precise terms to describe the nature of the stops, and there are several notational systems such as the International Phonetic Alphabet which capture individual phonemes. These international conventions are very useful for distinguishing between the sounds of different languages, or of different speakers using the same language.

All of these descriptors of small parts