The acceptable sound combinations of a language are specified in its which rules
Answers
DIFFERENT LANGUAGES, DIFFERENT SOUNDS
It is often said that languages differ by sound or melody. What does this mean? Only when one begins consciously the process of learning a foreign language, does one notice that the language in question possesses sounds far removed from those in one’s own, and not even produced in the same manner. Sometimes, there are also sounds which sound similar, yet prove to be different by a minute, but essential, detail. Those sounds cannot simply be replaced by sounds one knows from their own language. Such a replacement could change the meaning of a word or phrase, or even cause the sentence to become incomprehensible. Correct articulation can prove to be of great difficulty and may require arduous and repetitive practice. Several different sounds may sound the same to a non-native speaker, and at the same time, deceptively similar to a sound from their own mother tongue. Although awareness of such phenomena increases with every new foreign language learnt, only a few realise just how much variety of sound exists in the languages of the world.
DIFFERENT SOUNDS, DIFFERENT MANNER OF ARTICULATION
The differences in sound are the result of different manners of articulation – the way they are pronounced. Speaking in a native or a very well-known language doesn’t require much thought about the positioning of the lips, the tongue or a possible closing of the air flow through the nasal cavity. Fully conscious articulation would be too slow. There are only a few elements whose position can be controlled by conscious will (see the figure below). Nonetheless, it still allows a great variety of sounds to be pronounced. Apart from speech, this can also be observed, perhaps with greater ease, in singing. Each natural language uses but a small part of the great phonetic potential. As such, languages usually consist of only several dozen such sound units, which are then used to build words and utterances.
The vocal tract cross section
The vocal tract cross section
It is mainly the vocal folds which are responsible for voicing and pitch. The process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds is called ‘phonation’. It is possible to feel them vibrating by placing fingers on one’s Adam’s apple. Women’s vocal folds are of a smaller size than those of men. The rest of the vocal tract, its exact shape differs from person to person, decides on what sound is to be initiated. The changes, be they conscious or automatic, during the articulation process also influence the produced sound. Vowels are the sounds produced with a widely open articulatory tract. If in the process of articulation, an obstruction occurs in the vocal tract (i.e. the tongue touches the palate, the mouth is closed), the produced sound is a consonant. The sounds ‘in-between’, articulated with a narrowed vocal tract are called approximants (for example the English sounds which are represented in orthography by the letters and, and in the phonetic alphabet of the International Phonetic Associacion by the same symbols /w/ and /j/, (slash brackets mean broad transcription, see below). In a sense, they are a bit like ‘incomplete consonants’).
STRANGE SOUNDS OF STRANGE LANGUAGES
‘Strange’ is of course a term used half-jokingly here and should be understood rather as ‘rare’. The readers of this text are probably familiar only with major European languages, thus they might find some of the articulation phenomena or sounds existing in languages of Asia and Africa quite different from their own.
It is often assumed that vowels are always voiced as that is the case in the most commonly spoken languages in Europe. When whispering, however, the vowels of the aforementioned languages can be rendered voiceless, all the while remaining comprehensible and distinguishable. Nevertheless, such cases occur rarely. Languages whose sound systems comprise voiceless vowels include American Indian languages like Zuni or Cheyenne, or Japanese. Laryngealization can be regarded as a particular voice quality. It is realised as a kind of croak, especially at the end of sentences. It appears when the vocal folds vibrate irregularly as a result of low volume-velocity of the air flow. There are, however, languages such as Kedang (an Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia) or Jalapa Mazatec (spoken in Mexico), where a creaky voice is an important sound quality. Although aspirated consonants are quite popular and exist in many languages of the world, aspirated vowels present in Jalapa Mazatec or Gujarati, remain quite a rarity.
The acceptable sound combinations of a language are specified in its Phonology rules, so Phonology is the right answer.
There are three levels of Grammar normally, and they are as follows
Phonology
Syntax
Semantics
Phonology:
It is the rules of how a language sounds normally. It also represents the rule of combining certain sounds. That is why Phonology is the right answer.
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