Yule, Chapter 5 Summary

In Chapter 5, Yule discusses the sound types of speech, and how they are influenced by mouth movements, and vowel sound pronunciations. Puffs of air that get released in certain words, such as tar, and star are called aspirations(43) which represent how the word gets it's "oomph", and emphasis, also called physical evidence(43). Each word has it's own physical sound that validates its usage and meaning when it is used in context with a coherent sentence. These physical sounds are also called Phonemes(44) which are single sound types that represent a written symbol. Minimal pairs, and sets are like the homophones of spoken language. However, instead of words that are spelled differently, and sounding the same they are words that are spelled differently, and share the same form of articulation. Phonoactics are limits that are put on sounds, which can also be related to Slurvian or accents in general that may give a sound more meaning than another.

One part that I found interesting was on page 47, that displayed the chart that broke down the formation of the Syllables and the elements of how they are formulated, with the consonants being on the ends acting as buns of a sandwich, and the vowel or the nucleus acting as the meat. On page 48 Yule describes how Elision blends words, and how they are pronounced. When I played on my baseball team we used a lot of phrases that omitted stop sounds when we chanted, or called out plays. As a result, "Turn two!" (when turning a double play) became "turnto" and "atta boy!",(good job, that's the way!) became "AaaBoi".

The one question I would have for this chapter would be how to be more "efficient" in my speech, and understand my slurs, and vibrations so that a character like the Englishmen in "My Fair Lady" would find it difficult to pick up where I was from. Although I don't want to sound like a robot, or even worse a telemarketer.