ANALYSIS OF WRITTEN AND SPOKEN LANGUAGE

Analysis of Written And Spoken Language

Analysis of Written And Spoken Language

PART A

Phonetic alphabets are wonderful linguistic inventions. They made literacy far, far easier than the symbolic character systems of writing such as the Chinese characters. For example, the Hungûl system of Korean is known as the morning alphabet because a speaker of Korean can in one morning learn the letters and, because Korean words are written perfectly phonetically, becomes literate. Imperfectly phonetic spelling, as for English, requires a much longer time to get acquainted with the idiosyncratic forms. The success of the phonetic alphabets has led people, including linguists, to presume that the basic building blocks of a language are the individual phonemes. Recent evidence coming out of attempts to create computer-generated speech indicates that this is not the case(Bragg, 2004,, 21).

A team of linguists and engineers were engaged in a project to create a computer system for scanning documents and converting the files of characters into speech. The character recognition phase of the project was achieved and the team turned its attention to converting the character groups into spoken words. The strategy that seemed reasonable was to record humans reading text and cut out individual character sounds for assembly into words. For example, the recording of a word, say toad would be cut into [t], [o] and [d]. In theory then these could be reassembled as [d][o][t] for the pronunciation of the word dote. But the reassembled word was unintelligible. The reason was soon found. When a speaker articulates the word toad the speech mechanism anticipates the pronunciation of the [o] while articulating the [t] and anticipates the following [d] while articulating the [o]. Thus the pronunciation of phonemes is context-dependent. Thus the reassembly of the phonemes of toad in an attempt to pronounce dote fails(Ankerl, 8815,, 59).

PART B

The outward difference between speech and writing is a source of much confusion. Mistaken or "flat earth" views about language appear when we apply to speech inappropriate prescriptive ideas about formal written language. However, it is equally mistaken to suppose that speech has no grammar or distinctive structures and forms - it has. Speech is historically prior to writing, and most people speak long before they are literate. But written English is often seen as more prestigious. Here are some reasons for this attitude:

teachers don't teach people to speak, but do teach (most of) them to read

writing is an important medium for advanced and higher education

literature lends its prestige to the written form in which it is published

writing is used by rulers, bureaucrats and lawyers to record, publish and enact important decisions, laws and treaties

spoken English is often spontaneous, while written texts (especially those which are published) are more tidy, structured and subject to editorial revision

in the past the literate were more or less identical with those who enjoyed power, wealth and prestige - for many people, writing retains this supposed superiority

early studies of language were based ...