Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology, and Semantics in Spanish
Phonetics and Phonology
Phonetics
Phonetics is the study of sound production. The units of study are:
- Brackets: Represent the minimal articulatory organs involved.
- Ablation phenomena: The study of how sounds are produced.
Phonology
Phonology is the study of phonemes. A phoneme is the minimum unit differentiating meaning.
- Bars: Represent the traits studied.
The Spanish Phonological System
The Spanish phonological system consists of 24 phonemes, which can be divided into two subsystems:
- Vowels: 5 vowel sounds that vibrate the vocal cords. The air encounters no obstacle and can constitute syllables. They are classified according to the degree of opening and articulation.
- Consonants: 19 consonant phonemes are classified according to their place and mode of articulation.
Place of Articulation
- Bilabial: Lips together.
- Labiodental: Lips to teeth.
- Interdental: Tongue between the teeth.
- Dental: Tongue behind the teeth.
- Alveolar: Tongue to the alveolar ridge.
- Palatal: Tongue to the hard palate.
- Velar: Tongue to the soft palate (velum).
Mode of Articulation
- Stop/Plosive: Complete closure of the airflow, followed by a sudden release.
- Fricative: Airflow is constricted, creating friction.
- Affricate: A combination of a stop and a fricative.
Suprasegmental Units
These are phonic units that go beyond individual sounds:
- Pause: A break in the flow of speech.
- Accent: Emphasis on a particular syllable.
- Intonation: The rise and fall of pitch in speech.
Phonic Features of Andalusian Spanish
- Seseo and Ceceo: Variations in the pronunciation of ‘s’ and ‘c/z’.
- Aspiration of initial ‘h’: Pronouncing the ‘h’ with a breathy sound.
- Yeísmo: Merging the sounds of ‘ll’ and ‘y’.
- Aspiration of final ‘s’ and other consonants: Pronouncing the final ‘s’ (and sometimes other consonants) with a breathy sound.
Morphosyntactic Level
This level requires an analysis of both form (morphology) and function (syntax).
Units of the Morphosyntactic Level
- Text: From a simple greeting to a literary work.
- Paragraph: Contains one complete idea within a text.
- Statement: A group of words with complete meaning, enclosed between pauses.
- Sentence: An autonomous syntactic structure with a subject and predicate.
- Phrase: All words grouped around a nucleus that plays a role in the sentence.
- Word: A phonic group isolated between pauses.
- Moneme: The minimum unit with lexical or grammatical meaning.
Types of Monemes
- Lexeme: Carries lexical meaning (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs).
- Morpheme: Carries grammatical meaning (gender, number, person).
Types of Morphemes
- Independent: Do not need a partner (determiners, conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns).
- Dependent:
- Inflectional: Indicate gender, number, aspect, mood, etc.
- Derivational: Classified by their position relative to the lexeme (prefixes, suffixes).
Lexico-Semantic Level
This level studies lexicology (the meaning of the lexicon) and semantics (the relationships between words).
Units of the Lexical Level
- Seme: A minimal semantic feature.
- Sememe: The set of semes that make up the meaning of a word.
- Lexeme: A word’s core meaning.
- Lexicon: The set of lexemes and sememes of a language.
Organization of the Spanish Lexicon
The Spanish lexicon is organized in two ways:
- According to its formation:
- Words: Present a single graphic unit in writing.
- Phrases: Formed by the combination of two or more lexicalized words, whose meaning is not equivalent to the sum of their parts.
- According to its origin:
- Patrimonial words: Words that have evolved from Latin over time.
- Cultisms: Words borrowed from Latin or Greek with little or no change.
- Loanwords: Words borrowed from other languages.
- Acronyms: Words formed from the initial letters of other words.
- Abbreviations: Shortened forms of words.
- Onomatopoeic words: Words that imitate sounds.
Semantic Phenomena
- Hyponymy and Hyperonymy: When a word (hyperonym) includes the meaning of other words (hyponyms).
- Synonymy: Similarity of meaning between words with different forms.
- Antonymy: Opposition of meaning (gradual, complementary, reciprocal).
- Homonymy: Phonetic coincidence of two different words (homophones sound the same, homographs are written the same).
- Polysemy: When a single word has multiple meanings.