PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY

The course is one of the core educational activities of the MA course in Language Sciences, curricula in Language and Cognition, and Linguistics for Deafness and Language and Learning Disorders. It is one of the linguistic disciplines promoting metalinguistic awareness, through the acquisition of models of speech and their application to the languages spoken by the student. In particular, the course aims to illustrate the principles and rules of phonetic description on the one hand, and, on the other, to present the fundamentals of phonology, in order to promote understanding of the nature and features of speech sounds and how they are exploited to convey linguistic meaning.

Students will acquire the fundamentals of phonetics form different viewpoints, including acoustic and perceptive issues, but with special emphasis on articulatory description. On the other hand, they will understand the fundamentals of the phonological analysis.
On the basis of the acquired theoretical and methodological competence, students will be able to understand the phonetic/phonological structure of the Italian language, applying their knowledge to the IPA transcription. The analysis will be carried out under a contrastive perspective with other languages.
Practice of transcription will develop the critical competence of students, who will phonetically analyse speech, and as a consequence improve their pronunciation skills.

No specific previous knowledge is required.

Phonetics: scope and main areas of interest
Articulatory phonetics
Transcription (IPA)
Acoustic phonetics (fundamentals and representation of phones)
Basic concepts of perceptive phonetics
Fundamentals of phonology
The phonetic/phonological description of the Italian language and some of its varieties

Albano Leoni, Federico / Maturi, Pietro (2018), Manuale di Fonetica. Roma: Carocci.
Maturi, Pietro (2014), I suoni delle lingue, i suoni dell'italiano. Bologna: il Mulino.
Nespor, Marina / Bafile, Laura (2008), I suoni del linguaggio. Bologna: il Mulino.

Further readings will be made available on the Moodle platform of the Course.

Written exam, consisting of 10 questions (2 hours) with the aim of verifying the acquisition of abilities to analyze phonetic and phonological aspects.

Face-to-face lessons; exercises of transcription and phonological analysis. Students are encouraged to class practice.

Italian

written

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Human capital, health, education" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development