Linguistics An Introduction

With the exception of the Sign Languages used by the deaf, and written languages, the languages with which most of us are familiar rely on the medium of sound. Sign Languages are extremely interesting, exhibiting all the complexities of spoken languages, but their serious study requires the introduction of a considerable amount of specialised terminology for which we do not have space in an introductory book of this kind. As for written languages, they too have many fascinating features, but they are regarded as secondary to spoken languages for a number of reasons. For instance, children are explicitly taught to read and write sometime after they acquire a spoken language, and many cultures have never employed writing systems. Thus, a focus on sounds is entirely appropriate, and this part of the book is devoted to discussion of the way in which the sound systems of languages are organised and the role of such systems in the acquisition and processing of languages. We will also consider the ways in which sound systems differ from one dialect or variety of a given language to another and the changes that we can identify in the sound system of a given language over time.

Before we can discuss any aspect of the sound system of a language, we need a systematic way of describing and transcribing speech sounds, and in section 2 we introduce a standard transcription system, while explaining how the more important speech sounds are produced.