Lecturer: Ms Y. Chorfi 			Sétif-2- University 		1st Year Classes 	2017-2018

					6. Phonetics and Phonology
	1. The Distinction 
	Phonetics is a scientific description of what speech sounds exist in a language. It represents how they are produced and perceived, and what acoustic properties they have. Phonology is concerned with the regularities that govern the phonetic realisations of sounds in words of a language. Phonetics is thus concerned with sound production while phonology studies sound behaviour in realisation in different environment.  
	2. Relevant terminology
	a. Phoneme A phoneme can be defined as the smallest distinctive, or contrastive, unit in the sound system of a language. To put it in other words, a phoneme contrasts meaningfully with other speech sounds. It is a concept used in phonology and linked to a subdiscipline known as phonemics. The study of phonemes is established by finding pairs of words that differ in one sound, they are known as minimal pairs.   
	b. Phone The realisations of phonemes by speakers are referred to as phones. The phone is a concept used in phonetics, and it should be represented between square brackets [ ]. 
	c. Allophone It is one realisation of a phoneme among others. In other words, if a phoneme is represented by one realisation; it is called a phone, but if one phoneme is represented by two or more realisations, each of these is referred to as allophone. Like the phone, the allophone is a concept used in phonetics and represented between square brackets [ ].   
	Allophones in free variation if two allophones can replace one another, they are said to be free variants. 
	Allophones in complementary distribution If two allophones cannot replace one another, they are said to be contextual variants. 
	3. Types of phonetic transcription Phonetic symbols are used to write down speech sounds as accurately as possible; the resultant written text is known as phonetic transcription. There are two types of transcription: the phonemic transcription and the phonetic transcription. 
	3.1. Phonemic transcription It represents spoken language at the level of phonology, through symbols that are taken to represent phonemes, and are thus better known as phonemic symbols. The transcribed text is enclosed between slant brackets / /. In this transcription allophonic variations are ignored completely; it is also known as broad transcription or phonological transcription. 
	3.2. Phonetic transcription It represents spoken language at the level of phonetics showing a lot of articulatory details through a wide range of symbols, known as diacritics, for phones and allophones. The text is enclosed between square brackets, and the transcription is known as narrow transcription.  
	a. The possible phones and allophones
Aspirated fortis plosives and affricates. 
Devoiced consonants
Voicing voiceless consonants
Velarised / l /
Dentalised / l t d n / 
Nasalized vowels 
Shortened vowels, nasals and lateral. 
Glottalisation