4The souns of language.docVIP

Lecture 4 The sounds of language 4.1 The phonic medium When you know a language you know the sounds of that language, and you know how to combine those sounds into words. When you know English you know the sounds represented by the letters b, s, and u, and you are able to combine them to form the words bus or sub. Although languages may contain different sounds, the sounds of all the languages of the world together constitute a class of sounds that the human vocal tract is designed to make. This chapter will discuss these speech sounds, how they are produced, and how they may be classified. P