Phonemes, Syllables, and Word Classes
Phonemes and Sounds
Sounds: Are the actual emissions of each of the speakers, while the mental image of the units to meet these constant acoustic properties are phonemes.
Phonemes: These are made up of a set of distinctive features that distinguish one phoneme from the others.
- Vowel Phonemes: Occur when air passes through the vocal cords, and these vibrate, resulting in a sound that does not encounter any barrier in its path.
- Consonant Phonemes: The air vent is not free, but it encounters an obstacle in the oral cavity.
Consonant features according to the point of articulation:
- Lip: When the sound involves the lips.
- Dental: When speaking involves the tongue and incisors.
- Alveolar: When the tip of the tongue touches the tooth sockets.
- Palatal: When the tongue touches the palate.
- Velar: When the tongue contacts the soft palate.
According to the mode of articulation:
- Sound or deaf: In the first, vocal cords vibrate; in the second, they do not.
- Oral or nasal: In oral, air passes only through the mouth, while in nasal, air also passes through the nostrils.
- Occlusive: When there is a momentary total obstruction of the air, which then comes out abruptly.
- Fricatives: The obstruction never becomes full, and the air passes with difficulty, creating friction.
- Vibrating: When the tongue vibrates like a sheet.
- Side: When the air exits along the sides of the tongue.
The Syllable
The Syllable: This consists of a set of phonemes grouped around a vowel and uttered in a single breath. Types:
- Tonic: Contains the vowel that is pronounced most strongly in a word.
- Unstressed: All others that are not the stressed syllable.
- Open: Ending in a vowel.
- Closed: Ending in a consonant.
Suprasegmental Features
Suprasegmental Features: These are the events that affect more than one phoneme or sound segment.
Emphasis: The accent is the greatest intensity with which we utter one syllable of a word. This is formed by the stressed syllable and the unstressed syllables. Depending on whether or not they have stress, words are classified as tonic (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) and unstressed (articles, atonic pronouns, prepositions, and conjunctions).
Intonation: The melodic path that the voice describes as we speak. The most relevant area is the final part of the melodic line, called tonema. There are three types: anticadence, cadence, and suspension.
Pauses: These are cuts or breaks that interrupt the sequence of speech. There are two types: final pause and intermediate pause. The final pause marks the end of a sentence, and the intermediate pause usually indicates appositions, vocative clauses, etc. Generally, intermediate pauses are marked with commas, pauses between sentences and paragraphs with semicolons, and final breaks with a period.
Word Categories
Category or Class of Word: Is a set of words with common grammatical features. They can be variable or constant.
- Variable Categories: Noun, article, adjective, verb, pronoun.
- Invariable Categories: Adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection.
The Noun
The Name or Noun: A category of speech that can be defined based on different criteria or points of view:
- Morphologically: It is characterized by gender and number morphological traits (feminine, singular, plural, masculine).
- Semantically: Refers to anyone who already has some sense of existence (real or imaginary).
- Syntactically: The substantive core of nominal phrases. They can perform functions such as subject, direct object, and indirect object.