Phonological Elements of Identity

Language consists of multiple levels, including grammatical, lexical, semantic, morphological, syntactical, pragmatic, prosodic, and phonological. The grammatical level of language pertains to unconscious rules of a language related to competence and performance. The lexical level encompasses vocabulary. Semantics relates to meaning in its myriad forms, whereas morphological refers to the smallest meaningful units of language. Examples of these small, meaningful units are the past tense marker,-ed, and the third person, singular, present tense marker,-s. The syntactical level of language relates to sentence formation rules, and the pragmatic level considers the importance of context and language use. Although the prosodic level reveals the complex features that accompany the production of speech sounds such as pitch and timing, and the phonological level pertains to the general sound system of language.

Different systems contribute to distinctions in speech and speech sounds. The systems are the phonatory, velopharyngeal, lingual, labial, and mandibular. These systems control vocal fold movement to produce sound, nasality, vowel and consonant articulation, lip action, and jaw movement. Phonetic symbols help graphically distinguish the various sounds produced by these speech systems. Representative phonetic symbols follow: (1)/ə/, /b əI/, boy; (2) /ə/, /əbΛV/, above (3)/ə/, /dIn ə/, dinner; (4) /ε/, /bεt/, bet; (5)/Lambda;/, /kLambda;p/, cup; (6) /Œ/kŒt/, cat; (7) /Ω/, /b Ωk/, book; and (8)/6/, /ti θ/, teeth. Many phonetic symbols resemble the regular vowels, a, e, i, o, u. The symbols, however, present phonetic representations of sounds. To illustrate, the /i/represents the high, front vowel sound in teeth rather than the regular vowel “i” reflected in the word bite. To describe the /i/as “high front” indicates where the sound occurs in the oral cavity as well as tongue, jaw, and lip movement. Vowel sounds are produced without obstruction to airflow in the oral cavity. Consonant sounds are produced with various obstructions to airflow in the oral cavity and may be variously described as interdental, alveolar, fricative, bilabial, stop, and so on. Each term yields information about the place or manner of articulation. Variations in vowel and consonant production contribute to the speaker's identity.