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 Ling 131: Language & Style
 

Topic 5 (session A) - Sound > Sounds and meaning

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Session Overview
Sounds and meanings
Alliteration and assonance
Rhyme
Alliteration and assonance revisited
Sound symbolism
Meeting at night
Phonetics checksheet
Sound symbolism checksheet
Topic 5 'Tool' summary
 
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Readings
 

Sounds and meaning

On this page we will explore the relationship between spelling and sounds in English. Because this relationship varies a little from one English accent to another, we will use just one accent to avoid confusion. We will use Received Pronunciation (RP), the accent associated with most BBC news readers, as this accent is probably the most widely known in the UK..


Spelling and sounds

When we talk about patterns of alliteration, assonance and rhyme, we are talking about patterns of distinctive speech sounds (phonemes). But people often confuse sound patterns with spelling patterns. The English writing system is based on the idea that a spelling letter represents a phoneme. So, for example, the word 'bed' has three letters in its written version and also three sounds in its spoken version: /bed/ (the 'slash brackets' indicate a phonemic transcription, as opposed to a spelling - which we put in inverted commas in the standard way). A reasonably exact relationship between spellings and phonemes exists for many simple words in English (e.g. 'mat', 'cap', 'lit'), but there are also plenty where things are nothing like so straightforward. The word 'back' has four letters, for example, but only three phonemes: /bæk/, and 'scuffle' has seven letters but only five phonemes: /skʌfl/. Sometimes the numerical relationship is the other way round. 'Fox' has three letters but four phonemes: /fɒks/. There are also lots of inconsistencies in how our spelling system represents phonemes. So, the 'x' in 'fox' represents at the same time both the /k/ and the /s/ in /fɒks/. But elsewhere, /k/ can be represented in spelling terms as a 'k' (as in 'kin') or a 'c' (as in 'can'). There are 26 letters (21 consonants, 5 vowels) in the English alphabet, but approximately 45 phonemes (22 consonants, 3 approximants, 12 pure vowels and 8 diphthongs) in English (exactly how many varies a little from one dialect to another). It is no wonder that children sometimes have difficulties learning to spell!

chuckle stop!

Rhymes and Eye Rhymes

It is this 'lack of fit' between the spelling and sound systems that gives rise to the distinction between rhymes (a property of sounds: what you can hear) and eye rhymes (a property of letters: what you can see). So:

'fine' (/faɪn/) and 'line' (/laɪn/ are rhymes and also eye rhymes
'scoff' (/skɒf/) and 'trough' (/trɒf;/) rhyme, but are not eye rhymes
'bough' (/bɑʊ/) and 'cough' (/kɒf/) are eye rhymes but do not rhyme

 


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