How are English consonant and
vowel sounds described? Give examples of three different types each of
consonant and vowel sounds. / Define the vowel sound. How are English vowels
classified and described? / Classify English consonants in terms of the articulators
involved.
Language
is an organization of sounds, of vocal symbols-the sounds produced from the
mouth with the help of various organs of speech to convey some meaningful
message. Language has a very important social purpose, because it is mainly
used for linguistic communication. It is the most powerful, convenient and
permanent means and form of communication. A language can be used in two ways
for the purposes of communication. It can be spoken or written but the medium
of speech is more important than writing. This is because speech comes first in
the history of any language community – in fact, it came centuries before
writing in the history of any language community. Secondly, speech comes first
in the history of any individual. We started speaking long before we started
writing. Speech as a medium of communication is used much more than the medium
of writing. I n every language, a letter of the alphabet represents a
particular sound. Lastly, modern technology has contributed tremendously to the
importance of speech- modern inventions like the telephone, the radio, the tape
recorder and several such devices have raised problems of communication
primarily concerned with speech.
Linguistics
is a systematic study of language. Phonetics is a branch of linguistics and it
is the branch dealing with the medium of speech. It deals with the production,
transmission and reception of the sounds of human speech. For the production of
speech sounds, we need an air-stream mechanism. There are three main air-stream
mechanisms, such as, pulmonic, glottalic and velaric air-stream mechanisms.
When the air-stream mechanism is used to push out, it is called egressive and
when it is used to draw air in, it is called ingressive. Most sounds of most
languages in the world are produced with a pulmonic egressive air-stream
mechanism. The author described in detail the various organs that are
responsible for converting the lung-air into speech sounds before it escapes
into the outer atmosphere. For instance, if we say a prolonged ssss, a
prolonged zzzz, a prolonged ffff and a prolonged vvvv, we see at once two
things. We recognize these as speech sounds because these sounds occur in the
various words we use in our English speech. The other thing we notice is that
each one of these sounds is different from the others............................................................................
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