Unit 2 Consonants and Vowels - 吉林广播电视大学.pptVIP

Unit 2 Consonants and Vowels The classification of consonants and vowels Classification of Phonemes I.Organs of speech Speech sounds are made with organs of speech .Therefore, to help the study of English speech sounds, it is necessary for us to have a clear idea of the vocal organs and their functions. Fig.1 is a diagram showing a side view of the organs of speech. Classification of English Phonemes 1.Phonemes and Allophones In the study of English Phonetics it is necessary to distinguish between phonemes and allophones. Many linguists agree that English has 44 phonemes , that is,20 vowels and 24 consonants. But in fact each of these can be pronounced in many slightly different ways, so that the total number of sounds actually produced in speech is practically endless. For example: 1) / l / in let is clear, and the / l / in tell, told and always is dark ,the / l / in please is voiceless, etc. 2) the / k / in key, kiss is advanced, the / k / in cop , cook is retracted and the / k / in cup, curl is normal, neither advanced ,nor retracted. However, the native speakers still hold that English has one / l / sound and only one, one / k / sound and one only. Why? The answer is that they have customarily divided all those slightly different sounds they could possibly produce into a definite number of groups. Only those “sounds” which serve to distinguish one word from another are regarded as belonging to different groups, or to different phonemes in our technical term. Phonemes are distinctive and contrastive. So phoneme is “the smallest contrastive linguistic unit which may bring about a change of meaning” as A. C. Gimson defined. The /l/ sounds and the / k / sounds mentioned above are called allophones of the phonemes / l / and / k / respectively. Why use phonemic symbols? The alphabet which we use to write English has 26 letters but (British) English has 44 sounds. Inevitably, English spelling is not a reliable guide t