Speech organs and systematic description of Spanish sounds. Comparison of English and Spanish patterns of stress, pronunciation, and intonation. Examination of recurrent pronunciation errors. Description of major geographical and social dialects. Practice in pronunciation and transcription of sounds. Given in Spanish.
Athena Title
Span Phonetics Lang Variation
Prerequisite
SPAN(LING) 3050 or SPAN(LING) 3050E
Semester Course Offered
Offered every year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student Learning Outcomes
Examine the field of phonology as a fundamental component of human language (with specific focus on Spanish).
Discriminate between and categorize the sounds making up the Spanish phonetic inventory.
Recognize and describe the physical (acoustic) characteristics of human articulation through the analysis of spectrograms of Spanish consonants and vowels, as contrasted with their English counterparts.
Explore and analyze the patterns that underlie human language in general with specific reference to Spanish through the application of models designed to capture those patterns.
Master the basics of phonological analysis from the perspective of different approaches and models.
Recognize, articulate, and motivate differences in sound patterns and effects across languages.
Compare and critique different analyses of phonological effects in Spanish, English, and other languages.
Beyond the individual sounds of Spanish, students will identify and articulate the communicative function of prosodic effects (accentuation, intonation).
Topical Outline
Week I. Introduction to basic concepts in the linguistic study of Spanish. Sounds and writing systems.
Week II. Phonetic and orthographic alphabets. Languages and dialects.
Week III-IV: Phonems, allophones, phonemic phrases, syllabic structure.
Week V-VIII: Description and distribution of consonantal sounds. Dialectal variation. Phonetic transcription.
Week IX-X: Description of vocalic sounds.
Week XI: English and Spanish stress patterns.
Week XII: Major Spanish dialects.
Week XIII-XV: Sociolinguistics dimension of Spanish variation.
