Appunti di Lingua Inglese I: linguistica, fonetica e pragmatica

LINGUA INGLESE I

Prof. Fabio Ciambella
Lunedì 11:00-13:00 aula 105 Marco Polo /
Mercoledì 11:00-13:00 aula 107 Marco Polo

Obiettivo del corso

OBIETTIVO DEL CORSO: Riflessione metalinguistica, ovvero uno studio
che usa la lingua per parlare della lingua e di come questa è fatta, sulla
lingua oggetto di studio (INGLESE).

Struttura del corso

CORSO DIVISO IN DUE MODULI:

• 1º modulo; Foni e fonemi, studi fonologici, morfo-sintattitici,
  lessico-semantici ...
• 2° modulo; uso della lingua in un contesto significativo: ORALE
  (serie TV, film .. ), SCRITTO (libri, post .. ), come si comunica, se la
  grammatica è giusta, se e scelte di vocabolario sono giuste,
  contesto comunicativo ...

Struttura dell'esame

COME VIENE STRUTTURATO L'ESAME:

• 20 quesiti a domanda multipla ABC sulla TEORIA (senza
  decurtazione, rispondere sempre) valore 10/30.
• Esercizi su tutto il MODULO A (es. trascrizioni fonetiche, alberi
  semantici .. ) valore 10/30.
• Scrivere un breve testo di 200 parole su delle domande che
  riguardino il MODULO B (es. di pragmatica tratto da una serie tv, su
  un meme .. ) valore 10/30.

February 27th, Monday

MODULE A: Introduction to English Linguistics

The english language is structured in 5 levels of linguistic analysis:

1. Phonetics/phonology: pronunciation.
2. Morphology: structure of words, how to create words.
3. Syntax: sentence patterns and their structure.
4. Lexis/lexicon and semantics: vocabulary and the meaning of all
   words singularly.
5. Pragmatics: meaning in context.

Why is English so studied and spoken? Its morphology is very
productive.

PHONETICS

Studies the way or the ways sounds are produced, transmitted and
received; the physical aspects.

• ARTICULATORY PHONETICS; how vocal organs are used to
  produce sounds.
• ACOUSTIC PHONETICS; how air vibrates when sounds are
  produced.
• AUDITORY PHONETICS; how sounds are perceived and processed
  by the hearer (physical aspect of pronunciation).

PHONOLOGY

Studies abstract categories that make up the sound system of a
language (single sounds, syllables, words); features, intonation and
accent.
When we study the differences between British English and American
English accent and pronunciation we are in the field of phonology.
When we talk about phonetics and phonology IN GENERAL we talk
about pronunciation: how can I understand how to pronunce a new
word in any language of the world? - > THIS IS the question.
At a certain point we need something to understand that; nowadays if
you look for a word pronunciation on internet sometime might be a
2voice that you can hear to understand that BUT sometime might be not;
at least you can find a "strange" word written by symbols that lets you
know the pronunciation.
At the end of 19th century, linguistics, or better called phoneticians,
were reunited to create a PHONETIC ALPHABET that was shared by
any language in the world. This was meant to be used to reproduced
the speech sounds on a piece of paper or, nowadays, on a screen.
To do so they started talking about transcription, what is it?

IPA: International Phonetic Alphabet

A transcription is a visual representation of speech sounds through
phonetic symbols. There is a universal group of symbols for all
languages in the world but also each language has its own phonetic
alphabet; because for example:

• For those who speaks or studies French, nasal sounds in English
  are not present -> so French language has its own P.A. (sounds like
  GN or GLI similar to the Italian pronunciation, does not exist in
  English).

Just to make it clear, the transliteration that we use with russian from
Cyrillic to latin alphabet it is different from phonetic transcription.
The phonetic alphabet is based on the phonographic relationship, that
is the correspondence of speech and writing, (given the highly
fluctuating spelling of English), so the correspondence between what I
am saying and how a person transcribes my speech -> this is called
phonographic relationship.
It is composed by: forms, writing, sounds, graphic; these are the
correspondents for what I say to what I can write about what I say.
What is transcription and the equal to the international phonetic
alphabet:
The alphabet used to transcribe speech sounds is called IPA, it's an
alphabetic system of phonetic notation to summarise the
representation of the sounds of any language in the world, even click
languages in Africa.
This alphabet has to take in consideration more than 6000 languages.
What are we going to see when we transcribe?
3When you transcribe words or sentences there are pomeries ( ??? )
before the begging of a sentence and after the end of it that are signed
by different brackets.

• Square brackets [ ... ] are used for phonetic transcription,
• Slashes brackets / ... / are used for phonological transcription,
• Pointed brackets <... > signal ordinary written letters.

Example:

• [c] represents concrete sound pronounced by a speaker,
• /c/ represents how do you pronounce -> phonology,
• < c> indicate the letter "c".

Problemi di trascrizione

There is a problem: What are we transcribing?
This happens because sometime the pronunciation is different
according to the standard I adopt for insurance, not talking about
spelling, that is another kind of problem, but we're talking about
pronunciation.
Example:
If we're using the British English, if we say the word "art" the "r" sound
it is not pronounced, but if we say it in American English it is, so;
How do we write it? It's a matter of choice.
For these motivations they had to adopt a standard (the teacher will
tell us which one he has adopted in transcription so we get familiar with
American and British English in practice).

Standard dell'inglese

So, which English do we decide to adopt? There are at least two
fundamentals standards:

1. Standard British English, it is the one adopted in the UK,
   something that actually doesn't exist, it does exist just in
   transcription but none speaks it. The one that is used by BBC
   English or the we ca hear from the tv series "the crown" it's a
   standard pronunciation from the 1980s, but it no longer fits as a
   standard because it is spoken by only 5% of the population; it
   cannot be elected as the English standard in the world.
2. Standard American English, also called general american, is a
   "real" standard, the american population do believe they are
   having it.

4Britain English tv series such as Peaky Blinders, have a strong accent
from Birmingham because it's cool (they don't like standards and really
like and use local dialects),
American English tv series tend to hide the dialect unless the character
is a typical person who requires it (such as the farmer from Texas or the
girl with a New York accent). The standard in these is the general
american, is the same as the one that you can hear in the CNN, films
and so on.

Accenti dell'inglese

*A STUDENT QUESTION*
What would be one accent that we could use to identify a STANDARD
BRITISH ENGLISH?
There is a new standard that is called asperate( ??? ) English, this one
is the accent used in the east part of London and the regions around
it.

Esempi di pronuncia

TWO WORDS
Thames -> témz.
Greenwich -> grenrtf.

February, 28th Wednesday

Metodi di trascrizione

HOW DO I DO THE TRANSCRIPTION?
I can use the two of them but I have to specify which one I am
considering.
There are two kinds of phonetic transcription:

• Active;
• Passive (exam) -> from IPA to latin alphabet;

Differenze fonetiche tra inglese e italiano

The first thing we can notice is the difference between English and
Italian -> the problem is the vowels pronunciation, which are 6 in Italian
and 20 in English.
This is the reason why Italians struggle with English pronunciation,
because there's no correlation between the two vowel system.

Produzione dei suoni

How do we produce sounds? What happens in our body?
The mechanism that allows to produce sound is called "Pulmonic
Ingressive Airstream Mechanism": something that starts from our
lungs, involves an airstream and it is from the inside to the outside.
5There are two groups of sounds:

• Produced in our mouths
• Produced in our noses

The vocal tract goes from the trachea (lungs) through our lips and
involves a lot of organs and spaces: the space above the larynx is
called vocal tract, is followed by two cavities: oral and nasal, the
second one is bigger, even if we can not see it. [Vocal cavity: mouth and
pharynx].
All the parts involved in sound production are called articulators!

• Active articulator that can be moved (tongue);
• Passive articulator that cannot be moved (tooth);
• Tongue: we have to distingue BACK and FRONT;
• Alveolar reage: alveoli;

These are the tools we have to produce sounds.

CONSONANT SOUNDS

Let's start with the "easier part":
Difference between vowels and consonants:
Consonants are letters that represent certain speech sounds,
specifically sounds that involve blocking the air before it leaves the
mouth, such as with the tongue, lips, or throat.
In English consonants are classified according to the VPM LABEL:

• Voicing: we distinguish consonant sounds in voiced and voiceless/
  unvoiced .- we can distinguish it by vibration.
• Place of articulation: the exact point where the air is obstacled,
  according to the place we can say that consonant sounds are:
  bilabial, labiodental, interdental, alveolar, postalveolar, palatal, velar;
• Manner of articulation: the way the air is released- stop, fricative,
  affricate, nasal, lateral, glide.

March 6th, Monday

CONSONANTS (PULMONIC)

C
2015 IPA
Bilabial
Labiodental
Dental
Alveolar
Postalveolar
Retroflex
Palatal
Velar
Uvular
Pharyngeal
Glottal
Plosive
p b
t d
t d
c }
k g
q G
?
Nasal
m
n
n
ŋ
N
Trill
B
r
R
Tap or Flap
V
J
r
Fricative
fv 00 sz § 3
ç j
×
я Х
h Ŕ
Lateral
fricative
Approximant
U
I
j
m
Lateral
approximant
1
l
y
L
Symbols to the right in a cell are voiced, to the left are voiceless. Shaded areas denote articulations judged impossible.
Classify the following consonant sounds according to the VPM label:

• /d3/ alveol- palatal voiced affricate
• /b/ voiced bilabial stop or plosive
• /f/ voiceless alveol-palatal fricative
• /k/ voiceless/ unvoiced velar plosive/stop
• /0/ voiceless interdental fricative

If the label is VPM is because he wants it in this order: Voice, place,
manner.
It may happen sometimes that we can find something like this:
/'kærikte/ -> character
IN PHONETICS <c> DOES NOT EXIST!
If I have this letter how can I transcribe this letter, it can be transcribed
in 3 ways:

• /s/ cesium/Caeser
• /k/ kite
• /tf/ chair

VOWEL SOUNDS

A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in
the vocal tract.
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