Back to school, back to blogging.

Schedule:
MW: 4:00-5:15 (Phonetics)
TR: 2:00-3:15, 4:00-5:15 (Ling Analysis, Language and Society)

Phonetics notes:
Class is okay. Still a clockwatcher, especially on nice digital clocks. Lecture style is ummy, reminds me of Mrs. Johnson.
Here's hoping the class won't kill me in the end--have yet to peek at textbook or course notes. Need folder/binder for
those.

articulatory phonetics: study of the movements to produce sounds
acoustic phonetics: study of the sounds themselves (waveforms)

Powerpoint--the Ling. prof's best friend.

"Speech is special"
-We have a special ability to process sound
*ability to zero in on one voice despite background noise
*interpret sound as speech even if the voice is not human produced (some people)

"Speech is complex"
-Speech is audible gesture, movement that produces sound
-Simple phrases produced by complex sequences requiring elaborate and precise coordination

"Speech is a continuous signal"
-No breaks between words during speech, unless you deliberately pause, which sounds unnatural
-Oronyms--jokes made on this principle ("the stuffy nose" vs. "the stuff he knows")

"Same sounds not always the same"
lip vs. pill -- light vs. dark "l"
kit vs. cot -- palatalized vs. back "k"
cat vs. can -- plain vs. nasalized "a"
miss you vs. miss her -- palatalized vs. alveolar "s"

"Speech is fast."
Ex: 80 speech sounds in five sec. vs. 63 music notes in five seconds (even at a rapid clip)--rate of sounds is very fast
We hear different sounds as the same by subconsciously compensating for context.
We can talk much faster than we can deal with other sounds.

Speech sounds are part of a system--Duality of Patterning (DoP).
-Combine meaningless units of sound to create units of meaning--words
-Morphemes: smallest unit of meaning. "cat" is a word and morpheme; "s" is the plural morpheme, etc.
-Reorder the sounds, get a different meaning:
slip, pills, lips, etc.

Communication systems without DoP
-Road signs and other types of signs
-All animal communication--play it backwards, doesn't change meaning

All human languages have DoP--why?
-Advantage: Language becomes extensible. Small amounts of sounds make up gigundo vocabularies.
-Consequence: Order of sound becomes crucial.

So, what am I doing in this class?
-Studying sounds as part of a system of language
-How do we produce them?
-How are they put together

Then we're going to learn vocab, how to talk about sounds. Whee.