my project on phonetics and English phonology

[OxfordBlues]

Hi everyone!

I've been working on a project using the wordpress blog platform.

I'm hoping to use it as a method of explaining some of the more technical aspects of linguitics (especially those parts that have bearing on teaching ESL) in simple, easy to understand ways.

Phonetics and Phonology is one of the more technical/difficult areas of linguistics, so I have tackled that project first.

I'd appreciate your opinions on what I've gotten done so far:

http://calleteach.wordpress.com

[Stephen Jones]

A very sloppy beginning. You state:
The sound system of English consists of about 2/3 consonants, which are either voiced or voiceless depending on which sounds surround them, and 1/3 vowels, which may be long or short depending on where they fall within a word (phonology).
and
The 30+ consonants in English

and follow it with the standard IPA list for British English which has 20 vowels and 24 consonants.

You also seem to be confusing phonetics with phonemics.

I haven't bothered to check the rest of the details with a textbook, but the question is, presuming the whole section is not a cut and paste job, what does all the detail offer that I can't get from a standard textbook anyway.

And of course the final question: "who is it all targetted at?"

[OxfordBlues]

First of all, there isn't anything in there that is "cut and paste" and its a bit offensive of you to insinuate that, especially without having read the whole thing.

A very sloppy beginning. You state:
The sound system of English consists of about 2/3 consonants, which are either voiced or voiceless depending on which sounds surround them, and 1/3 vowels, which may be long or short depending on where they fall within a word (phonology).
and
The 30+ consonants in English

Had you taken a second to scroll down the page you could have easily counted entries describing the production of 35 consonant sounds (it is discussed that this number varies between 31-33 in most dialects).

and follow it with the standard IPA list for British English which has 20 vowels and 24 consonants.

That graphic appears in the section introducing the IPA and is an easy to decipher visual example of how IPA sounds relate to English spellings.

--------------------------------
I do appreciate your having taken the time to comment, but to write such comments without actually reading through it is not very helpful.

This project would likely not teach you anything you couldn't learn from textbooks. In fact the information given is based on several books on phonetics, phonology, and English.

Some people don't like the very technical and verbose nature of such books. This is meant to simplify these concepts into a single easily understood resource.

[Stephen Jones]

So you are including allophones in your list of consonants. Fair enough but you don't make it at all clear that the IPA diagram you give is of phonemes, but the details given below also include symbols not on the chart because they mention sounds that are not phonemically distinct in English.

Frankly I find that far from making things simpler to understand you are doing the opposite.

Incidentally can we have a link to where Johnson ranted against prepositions at the end of sentences or split infinitives. He often used the latter, and I suspect you're confusing him with Dryden, who is generally considered the originator of both shibboleths.

[OxfordBlues]

Incidentally can we have a link to where Johnson ranted against prepositions at the end of sentences or split infinitives. He often used the latter, and I suspect you're confusing him with Dryden, who is generally considered the originator of both shibboleths.

Thanks for taking the time to read through it. You may be right that I'm mixing up Johnson and Dryden. I'll have to check it. Johnson was pretty bad about purporting his opinions of usage as definitions and rules, but it's been a while since I read that bit of historical ling.

As for the allophones I have included them when they are biomechanically unique sounds (and because I honestly think allophone tends to be a bit of linguistic laziness that groups two similar sounds together without fully examining them). Also if you take a look at some other online info like the wikipedia pages on English and Old English phonology what they are calling allophones is absolutely idiotic.

I will discuss allophones a bit in the phonology section (yet to be completed) as well as covering more of the differences between NAE and BrE.

[Stephen Jones]

You are also somewhat inconsistent; you are giving allophones for /l/ and /r/ but not for /d/ for example.

[OxfordBlues]

You also seem to be confusing phonetics with phonemics.

I've done quite a bit of asking around, and it seems that the term phonemics is more common outside of the US than within (where this field is generally grouped into phonology). But I can see the benefit of using phonemics as well. Here is an additional description which differentiates it (in the into to the phonology section):

"As stated in the introduction, the concepts of phonetics, phonology, and orthography are all interrelated as they involve the sounds of languages and how those sounds are combined to express communication, and represented in writing. Up to this point, our discussion has focussed on phonetics, the study of sounds and how they are produced using the vocal organs. Phonetics itself is an immensely interesting field of study and extends to hundreds more sounds than those standard sounds of English described above. An awareness of English phonetics however, is not sufficient for understanding the sounds of the language and how they are used. Our study of sounds has already branched into another type of study, phonemics. Phonemics is the study of phonemes, or meaningful units of sound and their use in language. So thus far, our discussion has touched on phonetics by describing the methods by which sounds are produced, phonemics by providing an inventory of such sounds in English, and shall now progress to phonology, which unlike phonetics and phonology is not the study of sounds, but instead of the sound system of particular languages — how sounds of that particular language are used to express ideas, and, the rules governing those sounds. The phonology of a language is what makes its speech sound different from that of another language. It also sets rules for pronunciation and which sounds may or may not appear together or in certain positions. The phonology of a language is the reason a word may be spelled the same in two different languages, but have completely different pronunciations. Phonology should not be confused with orthography, the system of representing the sounds of a language using combinations of letters or symbols. Another way to look at this is that in English, phonetics describes sounds and their production, phonemics provides an inventory of available sounds, phonology establishes a set of rules for how to use those sounds, and orthography provides visual representation of those sounds (spellings that make those pronunciations)."