Fundamentals
of Phonology
Beijing Foreign Studies University, 2008
1. From phonetics to phonology

Speech is a continuous process, so the
vocal organs do not move from one
sound segment to the next in a series of
separate steps. Rather, sounds
continually show the influence of their
neighbors.

For example, map, lamb.
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1.1 Coarticulation

When such simultaneous or overlapping
articulations are involved, we call the
process coarticulation.


If the sound becomes more like the following
sound, as in the case of lamb, it is known as
anticipatory coarticulation.
If the sound shows the influence of the
preceding sound, it is perseverative
coarticulation, as is the case of map.
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
The fact that the vowel [] in lamb has
some quality of the following nasal is a
phenomenon we call nasalization.

To indicate that a vowel has been nasalized,
we add a diacritic to the top of the symbol [],
as [].
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
[p] is aspirated in peak and unaspirated in
speak.

This aspirated voiceless bilabial stop is thus
indicated by the diacritic h, as [ph], whereas
the unaspirated counterpart is transcribed as
[p].
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


When we use a simple set of symbols in
our transcription, it is called a broad
transcription.
The use of more specific symbols to show
more phonetic detail is referred to as a
narrow transcription.
Both are phonetic transcriptions so we
put both forms in square brackets [ ].
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