ENG 143 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Consonant Cluster, Phoneme, Phonotactics
Document Summary
Study of individual speech sounds in many languages. Study of the physical unit of sound (what comes out of the speaker"s mouth) Study of how sounds are organized within a specific language. Study of the psychological unit of sound (what"s in the speaker"s head) The study of the patterns of speech sounds: each language has a sound inventory, each language has a system of rules determining how the sounds combine to form words. Not all sounds are used in all languages: english lacks rounded front vowels, while french has them. We know not only the actual words of our language but we know the possible words of our language. For example, english speakers know that blick is a possible word of english, but ibick is not. All languages impose their own phonotactic constraints on the words of their languages. What kinds of syllables are permissible: some languages have restrictions against syllables ending in consonants (like hawaiian or japanese)
