islamization of phonetics and phonology part 3

السلام عليكم

WHY CORRECT PRONUNCIATION IS CRUCIAL?

            As mentioned earlier, phonetics and phonology are one of the branches of linguistics. Both of them deal with sounds as phonetics and phonology are described as the study of sounds. Phonetics is stressed with how sounds are produced, transmitted and perceived or to make it simple, it is about the production of sounds whilst phonology is all about sound systems of language. In order to know more about it, the learners themselves have to know what is place of articulation and manner of articulation in phonetics and phonology first before applying those concepts in our daily life. Thus, phonetics and phonology has become one of the crucial elements for the learner to master in any language. As phonetics and phonology are all about sounds, so they are actually related to the pronunciation. So the question is why correct pronunciation is very important to us?

            As we all know, by having correct pronunciation in speaking, it actually does give us so much advantages. The reason why we said so is because, it helps us to avoid in any misunderstanding between the speaker and listener. By this it means the listener or the receiver can easily interpret the message that have given or said by the speaker or sayer. Not only for that, it apparently can cause the communication become smooth and maybe the conversation will become long. Thus, it shows that when the speaker can pronounce well, it can avoid misunderstanding between two parties occur. This is because different way of production of sounds would probably get different meaning and it may lead to misunderstanding. Hence, to reflect this with Islamic perspective point of view, we know that in Islam, we are taught to avoid misunderstanding in any aspect of life. So if something wrong somewhere we have to make it as clear as crystal in order to prevent from negative thing happen.

            Next, another importance of correct pronunciation is it can aid in increasing individual’s level of self esteem. By this it means, it can help people to have a confident when speaking. Although we are not born as an English native speaker, it does not mean we can’t speak English well. As long as we can pronounce the words correctly and others can understand it, so can use the language in our life. We have to be confident and practice it in order to achieve better communication skill. As for islamization of this point, as a Muslim we have to have guts in order to be successful person. So, when we have confident in speaking we can do some dawah activities and from the power of words, we actually can convince people.

           Last but not least, islamization of phonetics and phonology can be seen in terms of to ponder the beauty of Allah's creation. we know that when we learn phonetics and phonology we are exposed with place of articulation and manner of articulation. From these, we are able to know how the sounds were produced and how the organs work. Indirectly, we could see how wonderful Allah's creations are so as a Muslim we have to take care of all these because they are belong to Allah.

islamization of phonetics and phonology part 2

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

السلام عليكم

PLACE OF ARTICULATION

           First of all, we need to know what is the definition of place of articulation in order for us to understand and get the gist before we go further into the organ that are responsible as a place of articulation. According to Robert Mannel from Macquarie University, place of articulation is defined in terms of the articulators involved in the speech gesture. It is common to refer to a speech gesture in terms of an active articulator and a passive articulator. Besides place of articulation, we also have manner of articulation that work together with each other.

MANNER OF ARTICULATION

The organs that involve as part of place of articulation are nostrils, lips, alveolar ridge, nasal cavity, hard palate, oral cavity, teeth, tongue, velum (soft palate), uvula, pharynx, epiglottis, larynx, vocal folds and glottis. Each of these organs have their own role to produces certain sound of certain alphabets.

PLACE OF ARTICULATION OF ARABIC LETTERS

MEMORIZATION

            Islamization of phonetics and phonology is in term of memorization. Memorization is of phonetics and phonology is important because with it we can only produced the correct sound of the certain words and the alphabets. Like when we read the Qur’an, we read it with tone or called ‘taranum’. It means we read it with different tones or ‘harakat’ based on the makraj. It is the same with the stressed and unstressed words in English pronunciation. There also nasal and non-nasal in Arabic especially when reading the Qur’an. To read the Qur’an correctly one should know on how to differentiate between nasal and non-nasal and long or short the letters to be. Thus, to Islamize phonetics and phonology in term of memorization an individual should keep on learning it with the heart and love it  because without the love or the interest in it then an individual cannot find they way to be close with it.

REFERENCES

About Tajweed. (2007). Place of articulation introduction to articulation points of the arabic letters. Retrieved March 27, 2013, from 

www.abouttajweed.com/articulation-points- areas-of-the-arabic-letters/places-of-articul.html

Mannel, R. (2009). Phonetics and phonology place of articulation. Retrieved March 27, 2013, from

            clas.mq.au/phonetics/phonetics/consonants/place.html

islamization of phonetics and phonology part 1

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

السلام عليكم

In this post and another two posts that follow, we will be discussing on the islamization of phonetics and phonology in general, its application and how we as a Muslim can relate and benefit from this field of linguistics.

Phonetics and Phonology

Introduction

Both phonetics and phonology are the branches of linguistics. They deal with the structure of human language sound. However, the subject under study in both phonetics and phonology is different. Phonetics deals with the physical appearances of speech sounds and theories of speech production and perception. It is basically about sounds and whatever happens in our mouth, throat, oral and nasal cavities, and lungs. It is the description of how sounds are made and where they are produced. For example, the word “bed” is formed by having our lips pressed together. Since the place of articulation of /b/ is on the lips, it is called bilabial.  /b/ is produced by stopping the flow of air at some point in the mouth and suddenly releasing it, thus making the manner of the articulation as plosive.

 Phonology focuses on the sound patterns and their meanings within and across languages. These are among the questions being asked in phonology: How do sounds change due to the sounds around them? (For example, why does the plural of “hat” end with an 's'-sound, the plural of “dog” end with a 'z'-sound, and the plural of “house” end in something sounding like 'iz'?) How do sounds combine in a particular language? (For example, English allows 't' and 'b' to be followed by 'l' - rattle, rabble, atlas, ablative - so why then does 'blick' sound like a possible word in English when 'tlick' does not?) These kinds of questions would be answered in phonology. 

Why should we learn phonetics and phonology?

Some people do not feel interested in learning phonetics and phonology. They think that as long as they can pronounce the words in English correctly, they do not have to worry about anything. Some of them even think that if they pronounce the words with minor mistakes, people still can understand what they are trying to say. We have to bear in mind, all knowledge in this world are beneficial to people. If they are meant to harm and trouble people, others would not struggle to develop that knowledge. This is similar with phonetics and phonology. There are benefits behind learning these two linguistics areas. By learning phonetics and phonology, we are able to:           

1)      Know how to pronounce the words correctly.

It is important to know how to pronounce a word correctly. Wrong pronunciation may cause miscommunication and misunderstanding among people and eventually will cause other problems.

2)      Be familiar with the sounds and symbols in the IPA chart. It is helpful to know how to read these symbols. When we are in doubt on how to pronounce a particular word, we can always refer to the dictionary that provides the transcription of the word.

3)      Learn about the place and manner of articulation of each and every sound in the IPA chart. We get to know where the sound is produced and how to produce it.

         Learning phonetics and phonology can be very helpful in learning Arabic. As the Qur’an is revealed in Arabic, Muslims have to learn that language. They have to learn all the Arabic letters in order to recite the Qur’an. Knowing the letters are not enough. It is important for Muslims to really know how to produce the sounds of the Arabic letters. If they produce it wrongly, the meaning of the words in the Qur’an would change. Muslims also have to know how the sounds in Arabic change when one letter meets another letter in the same word, or in two different words. All these changes of sounds will fall under tajwid (the rules governing pronunciation during recitation of the Qur’an).

References

Pomona College. (2005). Phonetics-Phonology. Retrieved on March 21, 2013 from             http://www.lcs.pomona.edu/page15/page1/page1.html

Your dictionary reference. (2013). The difference between phonetics and phonology. Retrieved on March 21, 2013 from http://reference.yourdictionary.com/word-definitions/differences-between-phonetics-and-phonology.html

videos on the production of speech

video 1: the human voice system

video 2: vocal cord

video 3: the larynx

video 4: the parynx

notes to remember: Allah gives us a lot of miracle. why we still take for granted?

leisure time

trying hard to pronounce in american accent.

stay tuned! more video will be uploaded

leisure time

what say you? 

thanks for watching!

week 10: reflection on computational stylistics and forensic linguistics

assalamualaikum w.b.t

On 11^th April 2013, Dr. Rozina has taught us about computational stylistics and forensic linguistics. Again, computer does give us numbers of advantages and for this topic, we know that computers are used to study the systematic characteristics of particular texts, authors, genres and etc. 

To make it clear, computational stylistics is the sub discipline of computational linguistics and in the area of “stylometry,” the computer is used to generate data on the types, number and length of words and sentences. However there are some challenges on this particular thing. To add it up, computational stylistics is the study of patterns formed in particular texts, author, genres and etc via computational method.

Here are some of the fields of computational stylistics:

·         Machine translation, social sciences and humanity and also literary works.

Not only for that, we also had learnt about the scope of computational stylistics and from that point, we know that the scope of computational stylistics is wider. It can count the frequency of words, detect of idiosyncratic which means to distinguish one writer to another writer, analyze variation in rhetorical style, and determine the sentiment and so on so forth. As we concern, some might say that certain concepts are to abroad and we don’t have any measurement to measure it. But did you know that we can operationalize it?

After finishing the topic computational stylistic, Dr. Rozina continued her lecture for the topic: forensic language. The question is did you know what forensic language is?Forensic language is a branch of applied linguistics and it can be defined as taking linguistic knowledge and methods and applying these to the forensic context of law, investigation, trial, and punishment. There scope of forensic language is involved in areas that relate to crime, both solving crime and assisting wrongly accused people. To conclude of this topic, we can summarize that forensic linguistics deals with understanding language of the written law, language use in forensic and legal processes and the condition of linguistic evidence. It is a very interesting course to study.

For the reflection of this topic, as I mentioned earlier, computers are invented to ease people and help in some ways. So, we as human being should be thankful for this invention because it is really useful to us and we have to benefit it. It aids us in working and makes our life become easier.

thanks for reading :)

week 10: reflection on lexicography

On 9^th April 2013, we learned about lexicography which is one of the areas under the big umbrella of corpus linguistics. Basically, lexicography is the study of words, lexical items or vocabulary.

The experts in this area are called lexicographers. They are linguists and expertise in writing dictionaries. Prof. Kev Nair, who was born in Kerala, South India, in 1949, is the father of fluency lexicographer.

Lexicography does not only focus on English but also other languages. It has two related disciplines which are practical lexicography as well as theoretical lexicography. Practical lexicography deals with the area of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries. Theoretical lexicography is quite intensive than practical lexicography. It deals with the process of analyzing and describing the semantic, syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationships within the lexicon (vocabulary) of a language. It also focuses on developing theories of dictionary component and structures linking the data in dictionaries. Other than that, theoretical lexicography studies the needs of information by users in specific types of situation, and how users may best access the data incorporated in printed and electronic dictionaries. This is also known as ‘metalexicography.’

What is the relevance of lexicography to corpus linguistics?

There is a relevance of linking corpus linguistics with lexicography. As we all know, writing a dictionary is not an easy task. Lexicographers have to do many researches on a particular word before they can put it in a dictionary. To do this, lexicographers need to have a huge amount of data. The solution for this problem is to use concordancer. By using concordancer, lexicographers can go through the words and get data regarding the words, for example, the meaning of the words, the contexts in which they can be used.

As the students of Bachelor of English Language and Literature, who are taking Computer Applications for Language Studies, learning about lexicography can expose us to one of the various fields in linguistics. Even though we were only learning about the introduction of lexicography, it can help to develop our interest in that area of study. When we have interest in something, we would want to know more about it. Thus, we would read more and do some research about it. This interest would later develop to love. Since lexicography is not a very popular field in Malaysia, who knows someday in the future, we can make this field as one of the most wanted jobs among Malaysians. InsyaAllah. 

week 9: reflection on concordancer

On April 4, 2013, Thursday, we learned about concordancer. Concordancer is the basic tool for corpus linguist. Concordancer is defines as a collection of the occurrences of word form. From the lecture, we learn that parts of concordance are on the affixes and the collocation of the words. Collocation is the word that after being join together people will immediately know the meaning of the words or what is the word referred to. In order to understand more on concordance related with collocation, our lecturer asked the students to give some examples of the collocation words that we know. Some example that we and our fellow classmate give to our lecturer is red rose, red light, black coffee and others. We also know now that not all join words is collocation.

            As to make us more understand on what concordance and it is usage, our lecture had asked us to open one software that is related to concordance. The software is called webcorp. Webcorp is one of the examples of software for simple concordance. From the software we learn how to use it. Besides that, we also learn what webcorp is used as by the corpus linguist.

            Not only that, we also gain something that is related with our future. By means of something related to our future is that we know the scope for the concordance for corpus linguist. As our lecturer had said in the class we as in students might want to further our studies to master level can take this course as our course after we have complete our studies and graduated. . This is because not many people have the deep knowledge about corpus studies. Our lecture wants to expose the undergraduate students as similar to what the postgraduate students do. Thus, the lecture today is as an open eyes and minds that there are many more courses other than what have been offered for the students.

week 9: reflection on corpus linguistics

assalamualaikum w.b.t

        

On 2nd April 2013, we learnt about corpus linguistics. during the class hour, the lecturer has discussed on graded assignment task two which she asked us about our progress for the assignment. the discussion too about 40 minutes and based on the discussion we got to know what actually madam wanted for the assignments. after that, we proceeded with the lecture and the topic on that day is corpus linguistics. Before that, let us ask you all, did you know what corpus linguistics is? So to make it clear, corpus linguistics is the study of language express in sample, or it can be described as set of abstract rules which a natural language. Thus, Dr. Rozina has divided this topi into three subs which are scope of studies, types of corpora and list of corpora.

           Corpora or corpus is originated from latin which means body of text and also can be connoted as million of words. Corpus can be both in written and spoken. To add it more, previously people looking manually for the corpus linguistics. however, now it is automated process. corpus linguistics can interpret data from the research as well. This corpus linguistic also can be sorted up or retrieved using software. For the scope of corpus linguistics, it covers on structure of the language or possible words. By this it means, it can work on verb, error and etc. Not only for that, by using corpus we can know how people use the language. there are many types of corpus like spoken, modern newspaper and journal and so on so forth. Hence, here are some examples of corpora:

·         Brown Corpora

·         BNC

·         Quranic Corpus

So as conclusion, we know that corpus linguictics is very useful to us. It facilitates the study of wider patterns and collocation of words.  We can use corpus linguistics to analyze the language, books and so on forth.  Not only for that, it helps us in constructing the structure of and nature in discourse, both in written and spoken. Corpus linguistics also will aid the learner to choose what to retrieve. We have to learn corpus linguistics in order to gain more knowledge

thank you readers :)