Articulatory Phonetics Redux

A quick note--I forgot to announce that my office hours this coming Thursday from 2:30-3:45 are cancelled for a department meeting. If this is a problem for you, please email me and we'll arrange another meeting time.

Here are the worksheet questions on articulatory phonetics. You might want to print it out (copy and pasting into MS Word should work) and keep it for a review sheet as the exam approaches.

Consonants:

What physiological feature determines a consonant?

Where can this take place?

Give examples of each type of consonant (dental, palatal)

What is the difference between [f] and [v] or [s] and [z]?

Vowels:

What are the front vowels?

What are the high vowels?

What are the rounded vowels?

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please feel free to comment on this blog if you have any last minute questions about the paper.

Articulatory Phonetics

First, an administrative note: several of you have told me that the bookstore is out of course packets. I'll check into that and let you know what I find out tomorrow.

Here are the points to take away from this reading: You need to be conversant with the IPA, so copy that page and put it up near your computer. You need to know that consonants are produced by an obstruction of the airflow and have an idea where that obstruction takes place (lips, teeth, alveolar ridge, palate). You need to know voice/unvoiced. And you need to know where vowels are formed (front, back, high, etc), so flag p. 254. This will come up again when we discuss Middle and early Modern English. The rest of it is cool, and interesting, but you needn’t memorize it.

Here are some really useful web sites:

This one provides the sounds for IPA symbols. You need a machine with a sound card for this.

Phthong is a game that will teach you the IPA symbols used in English. There are other sites out there, but several of them use the entire IPA (including sounds not found in English), or they use British Received Pronunciation as reference points, which can make them confusing to North American speakers. Spend some time playing Phthong, especially if you don't have the course packet yet. I'd appreciate it if you could comment on this post to tell me how useful Phthong and the other web site were (or weren't) to you. I want the feedback, and it will let me see if the comments section is working correctly

See you tomorrow!

Introduction to Language

The reading for today focused on the definition of language. Here are the "take-away" points that I lectured on today:

• from a linguistic point of view, “rules” are a matter of convention, not an external ideal of correctness.
• because of this, grammar in this course is descriptive, not prescriptive. language historians want to discuss the language as it is, not impose rules on how it should be.
• so what are these rules? mostly they try to make speakers conform to the prestige dialect, the language as spoken by the most empowered group in a society (white, educated, upper-class). As a way of confirming and extending their status, the claim evolves that their way of speaking is “correct” and competing dialects are therefore deviant.
• as prestige groups shift, language “rules” can change. they also change through time.
• some theorists note that writing, which is not learned in the same way that speech is (by infants and small children, as a seemingly “natural” part of growing), is in fact more bounded by rules of “correctness.” What is correct in speech perhaps can be called “wrong” in writing (for instance, singular-plural shifts).
• Rules also change because languages simplify over time. Ancient Greek (500 B.C.E.) is more grammatically complex than Latin or Koine (the Greek of the New Testament). Old English is more grammatically complicated than Modern English. This is sometimes viewed as a “decline” but it has happened in every period of English’s history. Not only does grammar simplify itself, but sometimes sounds change in certain, predictable ways.
• Dialects sometimes introduce new, simplified forms of language but sometimes retain older, more complex forms (as in “ye” for a 2nd person plural separate from “you” in Irish English) or just older acceptable forms (double negatives).
• What does this mean for an educator? Knowing that so-called “correctness” dictates are really those of the prestige dialect, do we still enforce them? Why would we?

Here are some links to meta-sites that will give you several electronic sources for English language and linguistics:

The English Language

Linguistics web pages

A Note for Tuesday's reading: this is long and fairly technical. Give yourself some time, and mark any areas where you have questions.

Welcome back to LMU!

Welcome to the course blog for English 360! This is where I will post extra links to augment our reading and assignments, and will put up sample answers and other useful items. Please check in here regularly for updates and links.

Please post a response to this blog if you have any questions about the syllabus or course policies. You will need to form a blogger account--please use one that gives your name so your classmates and I know who you are.

If you have difficulty signing up, come see me in my office (114 Avery) and I'll talk you through it.

Once again, welcome!
Prof. B