 Welcome. This e-lecture introduces some central concepts of phonology and discusses the main differences between phonetics and phonology. The relationship between these two branches of linguistics can be adequately described and illustrated by a famous quotation. Phonetics gathers the raw material, phonemics cooks it. What does this quotation by the famous Kenneth Pike mean? Well in a nutshell, whereas phonetics studies speech in general and provides the general material that is speech sounds and suprasegmental information. Phonology, where here the term phonemics, which is slightly outdated, has been used. Phonology uses this material in order to discover patterns, formulate rules or to investigate the principles governing the sound systems of particular languages. Phonetic and phonological studies can be subdivided into two levels. Level one, the segmental level, or as my teacher David Crystal would have said it, this means basically what you say and the suprasegmental level, which can be associated with how you say something. Let us illustrate the difference between phonetics and phonology and start with the segmental level. Speech sounds are the product of human anatomy and physiology. One goal of segmental phonetics is to define the articulatory properties of all human speech sounds. For example, a phonetician discusses the articulation of a voiceless dental fricative. To pick just one example. Then a phonologist who studies the sound systems of particular languages or the sound inventories of particular languages would ask, what is the function of this sound, this voiceless dental fricative in languages such as Ebo, German or English? You all know the answer, don't you? A voiceless dental fricative is clearly part of the English sound inventory, but it is not used in German and it is not used in Ebo. In other words, a phonetic study reveals how sounds are made. Phonology works out how these sounds are used in particular languages in order to convey meaning. Let us elaborate this difference between phonetics and phonology on the basis of German, my mother tongue and English. Part of a phonetic study of German, for example, will include a statement that this sound here, which is listed here, a voiceless palatal fricative occurs in German, but not in English. So here is an example, first of all, to show the articulation. Again. Okay, so this exists in German, but it is not really found in English. Likewise, a phonetic study of both languages will include a statement that these sounds, t, s and s, occur both in English and in German, so much for the phonetic analysis. However, the main phonological question is whether the sounds in question are functional sound units, that is, units that affect the meaning of words in that language or not. A phonetic study then provides an inventory and a description of the occurring segments. Phonology discusses the function of these segments in particular languages. In the case of our first example, the palatal fricative here, the answer is pretty clear. It exists in both languages. In German, it occurs in context where a front vowel precedes words such as ich, Pech, möchte Küche, or at the beginning of words such as China or Chemie. A phonologist would also say it is in complementary distribution with the Wieler fricative ch, which only occurs after back vowels, as in Buch, doch or Dach. In English, however, it is, if it is used at all, highly restricted to contexts where a written H precedes. It is the same palatal fricative as in human, huge, or humid. Phonologically, however, it is mostly analyzed as a combination of a glottal fricative plus a palatal approximate. Since languages may have the same inventory, but different realizations of these sound segments, a mere segmental phonological study that states which segments occur in a language and which ones do not is only superficial. Consider our second example, the status of zh, in English and German. Well, we have two options. It could be one sound unit or two. Whereas German lists zh as one segment, English does not. Why? Well, here is the answer. The German example is, in this case, zalz. And in English, we are using the example, salts, the plural form of this word, the plural form of salt. Both German zalz, which means salt, and English salts involve the same final segment zh. However, a structural analysis reveals that native speakers of English identify two consonants, whereas in German, this is clearly one consonant, where in German you have one letter and in English you have two. Maybe orthography influences their decision. Furthermore, and this is more important, zh has only a limited distribution in English. It normally crosses morphine boundaries as in what's, which stands for what is, states, which stands for state plus plural, or kit, which stands for kit plus plural. State, by the way, could also be a verb. State plus third person singular. So in each case, we have a morphine boundary between the base form and the affix zh. Thus, distributional and structural arguments support the different phonological analysis of zh in English and German. One unit in German, two units in English. And what about the suprasegmental level? Well, again, there are suprasegmental inventories with clearly definable functions. The structures and phenomena beyond the segments are among others, tonal phenomena, where, for example, in the so-called tone languages such as Chinese, tonal patterns express lexical distinctions or have a morphological role expressing such features as tense or aspect. And then there are stress phenomena, where for example, in words of more than one syllable, at least one syllable has more prominence and can thus influence the meaning of that word. These suprasegmental aspects are often discussed under the heading of metrical phonology. Again, let us look at these aspects first from a phonetic angle and then from a phonological one. Suprasegmental phonetics investigates aspects such as loudness, pitch or length. Take pitch as an example. In English, pitch is changing continuously. There are no steady state pitches. Here are some examples, which I am going to discuss in a second. As we will see, throughout every syllable in a normal conversational utterance, the pitch is going up and down. As most languages, English uses the whole range of pitch variation. Let us listen to these examples first. The pitch is going up and down. However, and this is a central question of English suprasegmental phonology, can the meaning of an utterance be determined by the type of pitch variation used? Has pitch variation a particular function in English? Well, tonal variation exists in English. However, it is difficult to generalize. Imagine someone says, I saw a pink elephant and your answer is really, does your answer really said with a level tone always express boredom or does a rise such as really express excitement? Surely, one can associate specific emotions with certain tones, for example, boredom with level tones. Yet, there is no rule based pattern. Thus, apart from a few examples where tonal variation leads to predictable meaning differences, the function of tone is restricted in English. As far as stress, the phonological correlate of loudness and pitch is concerned, the situation is more obvious. Clearly, in present day English, the placement of stress can lead to differences in meaning, at least in three ways. The first type is referred to as lexical stress, where the placement of stress can lead to a distinction between nouns and verbs. In contrast, the first syllable is stressed and we have a noun, whereas in contrast, we have a verb with the second syllable receiving the stress. Or take shift stress as an example where words such as 13 can be stressed on the first syllable in cases such as a 13 year old girl, whereas the second syllable has to be stressed if you want to say something like she is 13. And last but not least, there is weakening, where in sentences such as he asked for questions, the stress of four leads to an interpretation that he asked for. Four questions are not five, whereas in he asked for questions, the interpretation where the word for is unstressed, he asked for question, the interpretation is that he wanted some questions to be asked. Okay, so much for the main differences between phonetics and phonology. Perhaps the best way to remember these differences is the quotation with which I started, phonetics gathers the raw material, phonology cooks it. Right, that's it for now. Thanks for your attention.