Contrastive Analysis of the phonological systems of English and German
Language differs significantly even when they are closely related. The form, meaning, and distribution of the grammatical structures can make it easier of harder to learn the structure of a foreign language. If the structures are similar it will be easier to learn the language because you can transfer from your native language to the foreign language. However, if the structures are different it will be difficult to transfer and if you do transfer it may not work the same. My goal in this paper is to make a comparison of two different languages, and to show how the structure of one can make the learning process of the other much easier or harder.
For instance, the phonemic distinction of the vowel length of German and English are the same, making it easier to maintain the distinction in vowel length when speaking English. On the other hand, there are other transfers that will interfere with the learning process. Before going into the phonemes and how it can differ or be the same from one language to another, I will first like to consider certain articulatory settings. This is according to John Benjamins “a modern term for component of a speaker’s voice quality that derives from a habitual muscular adjustment (such as tending to keep the tongue low in the mouth).” This explains the foreign accents in speakers by the difference in the basis of articulation.
Articulatory settings
English and German share some of the articulatory settings, although others are very different. It will be difficult to develop high levels of proficiency in the pronunciation of English with the previously develop articulatory settings of German. This is because of the differences i...
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...an words are divided before single consonants and between double consonants. Some examples are Va-ter, Da-me, Te-le-fon. The only exception is st, which is never separated. It is simpler than English syllabication. German does not consider suffixes independent units; as in Wo-nung-, not [Wohn-ung]. Compound words are divided according to their individual parts Brief-trä-ger, and Glas-au-ge.
Punctuation
Most of the German punctuation marks are used as in English except for the comma. The comma may be used to separate main clauses if the second clause contains a new subject, especially in front of the coordinating conjunctions. The comma must be used to separate dependent clauses from main clauses. Also the first pair of quotation marks in English appears below the base line in writing or printing, and the second appears at the top.
In conclusion, German and English
different accents because of their language and the way they say words. In Allison Joseph’s “On
This paper explores - with illustrative demonstrations - four queries concerning different aspects of phonemic restoration:
The primary role of the phonological loop is to store mental representations of auditory information (in Passer, 2009). It has limited capacity and holds information in a speech based form. It is further subdivided into two more components; the articulatory rehearsal system which has a limited capacity of 2 seconds and rehearses information verbally and is linked to speech production and the phonological store which temporarily holds speech based information (in Smith, 2007)
Further analysis, he demonstrated difficulty with fricative phonemes produced by forcing air through a narrow channel. The other phonemes which produced in error placement of the articulators from interdental, to palatal, to velar, and to labiodental sounds. He was not able to produce correct sounds follow direct instruction by
Minimum sonority distance restriction on English onset siblings is equal to a minimum of 2.
In Chinese, the reason why having tones is that there are far fewer variations in sounds compared to most other languages, such as English. The source of difficulty in learning tones has generally been attributed to interference from first language features, with knowledge of the function of pitch in the English stress and intonation systems found to highly influence American listeners’ perception of Chinese tones (White, 1981; Broselow et al., 1987).
Garrett (1975) represented four characteristics of slips of the tongue. The first one is that the exchange exists between linguistic units of the same positions. For example, initial linguistic segments are replaced by another initial linguistic segment. The same generalization is applied to the middle and final linguistic segments. Additionally, slips appear in similar phonetic units. This means that that the consonants are replaced by consonants and vowels are replaced by vowels. Furthermore, the slips occur in similar stress patterns, which signifies that stressed syllables are replaced by stressed syllables and unstressed syllables are replaced by unstressed syllables. Finally, slips of the tongue follow the phonological rules of a language (cited in Carroll, 2007, p. 195).
The differences in one language are referred to as a dialect. The factors contributing to a dialectical variation include grammar (syntax), vocabulary, and the pronunciation of words (phonology). Geographical areas and social and ethnic groups also contribute to the differences in dialect. Primary stress of words is an important factor to the phonological aspect of a word. Although we know how to correctly stress words in the production of speech we are not used to thinking about stress patterns in the perception of speech. Differences in word stress, such as the incorrect placement of stress in a word, is what causes us, the listener, to hear an “accent” in an individual.
Sethi.J. and Dhamija.P.V. A Course in Phonetics and Spoken English. Prentice-Hall of India Private Limited, New Delhi, 2007.
In conclusion, the main point reinforced by all these points is that there are a plethora of complications in language variation, on both a regional level, and in social groups. It is also evident that there are several perspectives and critical viewpoints that can be applied to investigations, making a study into results such as those in Figure A and B all the more interesting and rewarding.
Due to the phonetic differences between the Arabic and the English language, Arab ESL learners often experience difficulty in pronouncing English vowels. The vowel quantity and the vowel quality are the two phonetic parameters through which vowels are described. The vowel quantity refers to the duration of the phonetic segment that is symptomatic of phonetic identity. On the other hand, the vowel quality means the knowing the precise way of articulating a vowel, which includes the shape of lips, position of the tongue in the vocal tract or the nasalization of vowels. Every vowel has its own pattern of speaking.
Phonemes are realized in the competence level because they are what a person think he is producing; an abstract realization of a sound. In this case, people think that they are producing a schwa + a liquid or a nasal sound. On the other hand, allophones are realized in the performance level because they are the concrete representation of the sound. In performance, sounds are subjected to change of a random nature according to individual preferences and social practices (Fisiak, 1987, p.146). Therefore, usually what people produce is actually the allophones, which are the syllabic
The human languages are arrangements of distinctive symbols that helps in communicating, conveying feelings and thought, stating facts or in addressing a certain idea about the language itself. Linguistics is ‘the scientific study of language and its structure, including the study of grammar, syntax, and phonetics.’ Linguistics can be divided into subfields such as psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, descriptive linguistics and much more. Contrastive linguistics is one of the many branches; it explores the similarities and differences between two languages or more on the same phonological, semantical and grammatical level.
...day communication, defective intonation can sound absurd and flaws in intonation can give rise to misunderstandings. This study tries to investigate to what extent the knowledge of second language is influential in acquiring the proper intonation patterns of second language and whether realizing the intonation pattern has been paid enough attention or not. It goes without saying that it is vital for second language learners in order to master all the aspects of second language to be totally aware of the prosody and intonation patterns of target language. Here we want to analyse whether the difference in level of target language proficiency play any role in learning intonation patterns of second language. In other words, to see knowledge of prosody and suprasegmental features of second language would be improved accompanying with other aspects of second language.
Phonetics sounds (phones) are actual speech sounds classified by the manner and place of articulation (that is by the way in which air is forced through the mouth and shaped by the tongue, teeth, palate, lips and in some languages by the uvula. The [r] of run and far are phonetically different because they are articulated differently. A phonetic system must indicate whether a vowel sound is long or short, runded, diphthongal (that is consiss of two sounds) or retroflex (made with the tip of the tongue curled up toward the palate). In addition the movement from one position to another, or glides, must be represented must be reprensented, stress pattern and pauses must e more exactly indicated, and pitch or intonation may also be noted.