Seventh Session: 28.11.2006

Summary of the session: *-*

Quizzes: *-*

Homework: *-*

GO TO THE NEXT LECTURE: Lecture 7 *-*

• With this lecture we start filling the microstructure, namely the appearance/modality/rendering/media of a dictionary as a kind of a sign or text.

• SURFACE STRUCTURE: it is the pronunciation and orthography (also the rendering, appearence, etc.)

  • Two levels: 1. linguistic description – metalanguage; 2. units of language – object language. We use metalanguage to speak about units of language

    • Surface structure of dictionaries is metalanguage: the typography and the layout of a book, hypertext, etc. ... as a macrostructure (a list, alphabetically ordered words, etc.)

    • Surface structure of words in dictionaries is object language: spelling and pronunciation (visual surface structure). For example: orthography , pronunciation ["edi]

    • Surface structure is what you see!

• TYPES OF LEXICAL INFORMATION: PRONUNCIATION

• Model of types of lexical information:

  • Appearance, rendering, media, modality: Orthography and Pronunciation (in a dictionary entry)

  • Structure, formulation, etc.: Internal (morphology) and external (POS,valency) word structure (in a dictionary entry)

  • Meaning, semantics, pragmatics: Definition, Example, Model (in a dictionary entry)

• Types of rendering information in a dictionary entry: PRONUNCIATION & SPELLING

• Rendering structures: the relation between pronunciation and spelling:

  • pronunciation rules – acoustic modality

  • spelling – visual modality

  • sound-spelling rules – inter-modality conversion

• REPRESENTATION OF SOUNDS (pronunciation) in dictionaries:

• Prosody – the term covers acoustic properties of speech. It has to do with sounds. It is concerned with the intonation, vocal stress, rhythm.

• Prosodic hierarchy: example, ["i:d›m] – 1-st level is sounds and 2-nd is syllables

• phonemes: (they are also sings)

  • function: the smallest word-distinguishing segments

  • internal structure: configuration of distinctive phonetic features

• external structure: (see syllables) it may be at the beginning or at the end of a syllable

• rendering: contextual variants, allophones; it is the appearance, how the phonemes sound acoustically

• syllables:

  • function: word-distinguishing phoneme configuration

  • internal structure: configuration of sequential features (consonantal, vocalic; voiced, unvoiced;...) and simultaneous features (tone, accent)

  • external structure: parts of words; in English a syllable consists at least of an initial consonant + a vowel. Different languages have different syllablestructures.

  • rendering: a function of the rendering of phonemes

• In phonology we have phonemes (this s also what we have as a pronunciation in dictionaries) and in phonetics we have phones (in dictionaries we are not concerned with phones). For example: the "p" sound in the words and are transcribed in the same way in dictionaries (it is the same phoneme) but is actually pronounced in two different ways (it is two allophones of the same phoneme). In dictionaries we have phonemic transcription.

• Basics of English syllable structure :

  • basic syllable structure: CCCVVCCC, e.g. [streIndZ] – but affricates [dz] count as 1 phoneme though phonetically they have two parts

  • a syllable consists of onset and rhyme; rhyme consists of peak and coda

• PHONEMES: there are several ways of defining phonemes, depending on which of the four sign components is focused:

1. the minimal word-distinguishing sound segment

2. the smallest unit of a syllable (based on external sound structure)

3. consists of distinctive features (based on the internal sound structure)

4. consists of a set of allophones (based on the rendering of phonemes)

• DESCRIPTION OF SOUNDS:

  • phonemic transcription supplies just enough phonetic detail to distinguish words

  • phonetic transcription supplies detailed representation of speech pronunciation. It is based on articulatory phonetics.

  • Speech description: 1. articulatory phonetics (about speech production) 2. acoustic phonetics (about speech wave transmission) 3. auditory phonetics (about speech perception)

• SPELLING-TO-SOUND RULES:

  • spelling is visual modality: ghoti [fish]: enough, women, presentation (Bernard Shaw)

  • grapheme – character combination corresponding to a phoneme

Task 1: Transcribe phonemically with stress marks:

If the bread dough is tough, knead it roughly, even though when you are through you"ll have had enough and will throw it at the ceiling.

/If D@ brEd d@U: Iz tVf ni:d It rVfli: i:v@n D@U: wEn ju@ Tru: ju:l @v

h{d InVf @nd wIl Tr@U It {t D@ si:lIN/

Task 2:

Make a list of 5 spelling rules:

1. One syllable verbs ending in a single consonant (drag) in past simple tense double the final letter: dragged.

2. With verbs ending in -y in 3 person Sg -y is replaced by -ie-: try-tries,cry-cries

3. Nouns ending in -y in Pl -y is replaced by -ie-: try-tries, fly-flies

4. The verb in Past Simple is written

5. Adjectives ending in -l when turned into adverbs -l- doubles: whimsical-whimsically

Make a list of 5 main spelling problems:

1. -s in 3-rd person Sg

2. Doubling of certain final letters in different occasions

3. The exceptions of rules for Pl and formation of Simple Past tense

4. The choice between -t- and -c- in cases such as initial and superficial

5. Words from French with retained French spelling.

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Quizzes:

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Homeworks:

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GO TO THE NEXT LECTURE: Lecture 7 *-*