a)    The pharyngeal cavity 咽腔
Across the glottis in the throat lie the vocal cords (声带). The vibration of the vocal cords gives the quality of voicing to the sounds produced. When the vocal cords are not vibrating, a voiceless sound is produced.
b)    The oral cavity 口腔
   The oral cavity provides the greatest source of modification. The places involved are the tongue, the uvula, the soft palate, the hard palate, the teeth ridge, the teeth and the lips.
c)    The nasal cavity 鼻腔
   The nasal cavity is connected to the oral cavity at the back of the mouth. When the air is led pass through the nasal cavity, nasal sounds are produced. The nasal cavity is hardly able to provide any other modification apart from this.
1.3    Narrow and Broad Transcriptions 严式标音和宽式标音
   The International Phonetic Alphabet is a standardized and internationally accepted system of phonetic transcription.
Narrow transcription refers to the phonetic transcription with diacritics. Otherwise, it is a broad transcription, which is used in dictionaries and textbooks.
2.4    Some Major Articulatory Variables 一些主要的发音变量
a)    Voicing 浊音化
   Voicing is caused by the vibration of the vocal cords. All the vowels and some of the consonants are voiced.
b)    Nasality 鼻音化
   When the airstream passes through the nasal cavity instead of oral, the sound produced is nasal.
c)    Aspiration 送气
    A sound is aspirated when its production is accompanied by a puff of breath.
2.5    Classification of English Speech Sounds 英语语音分类
The basic difference between vowels and consonants is that in the production of the former the airstream meats with no obstruction (absence of obstruction) of any kind in the throat, the nose, or the mouth, while in that of the latter it is somehow obstructed.
2.5.1    Classification of English Consonants 英语辅音分类
    The English consonants can be classified in terms of manner of articulation and also in terms of place of articulation.
a)    According to manner of articulation 发音方法
English consonants can be classified into: stops (total obstruction), fricatives (partial obstruction), affricates (total obstruction first, then partial obstruction), liquids (the escaping of airstream between part(s) of the tongue and the roof of the mouth), nasals ( with the soft palate lowered), glides (semivowels)
b)    According to place of articulation 发音部位
English consonants can be classified into: bilabial (lips brought together), dental (between the tip and the upper teeth), alveolar (between the tip and the teeth-ridge), palatal (between the back of the tongue and the hard palate), velar (between the back of the tongue and the velum and glottal (the vocal cords) .
2.5.2    Classification of English vowels 英语元音分类
Vowels can be differentiated by a number of factors:
a)    According to the place of the tongue 舌头的部位
Vowels can be distinguished as front, central or back..
b)    According to the shape of the tongue 舌头的形状
Vowels can be classified as rounded vowels (with lip-rounding) and unrounded vowels (with no lip-rounding).
c)    According to the openness of the mouth 张口度
Vowels can be classified into open vowels, close vowels, semi-open vowels, semi-close vowels.
d)    According to the length of the vowels 元音的长度
Vowels can be described as long vowels and short vowels.
2.    Phonology 音系学
3.1 Phonetics and Phonology 语音学与音系学
   Both phonetics and phonology are concerned with the same aspect of language---the speech sounds. But they approach the subject from different point of view.
   Phonetics is general, descriptive and classificatory; it studies speech sounds as they are. On the contrary, phonology is concerned with the sound system of language; it studies the functioning of the speech sounds.
   Phonetics provides the means for describing speech sounds while phonology studies the ways in which speech sounds form systems and patterns in human languages. Thus, the phonology of a language is the system and pattern of the speech sounds used in that particular language.
   Phonological knowledge permits a speaker to produce sounds which form meaningful utterances, to recognize a foreign “accent”, to make up new words, to know what is and what is not a sound in one’s language.
3.2 Phone, phoneme and allophone 语音、音位与音位变体
   A phone is a phonetic unit or segment. The speech sounds we hear and produce are all phones. But phones do not necessarily distinguish meaning.
   A phoneme is a phonological unit, a unit of distinctive value. It is abstract unit. It is not any particular sound, but rather it is represented by a certain phone in a certain phonetic context.
   Allophones refer to the phones that can represent a phoneme. How a phoneme is represented by a phone, or which allophone is to be used, is determined by the phonetic context in which it occurs.
2.3    Phonemic Contrast, Complementary Distribution, and Minimal Pair 语音对立、互补分布与最小对立体
a)    Phonemic contrast 语音对立 
   If phonetically similar sounds are two distinctive phonemes, they are said to form a phonemic contrast.
b)    Complementary distribution、互补分布
If phonetically similar sounds are allophones of the same phoneme, then they do not distinguish meaning, but complement each other in distribution. The allophones are said to be in complementary distribution.
c)    Minimal Pair 最小对立体
    When two different phonetic forms are identical in every way except for one sound segment which occurs in the same place in the string, the two forms are said to form a minimal pair.
2.4    Some Rules of Phonology 音系学规则
a)    Sequential rules 序列规则
   There are rules that govern the combination of sounds in a particular language. These rules are called sequential rules.
b)    Assimilation Rule 同化规则
   The assimilation rule assimilates one segment to another by “copying” a feature of a sequential phoneme, thus making the two phones more similar.
c)    Deletion Rule 省略规则
   The deletion rule tells us when a sound is to be deleted although it is orthographically represented.
2.5    Suprasegmental Features 超音段特征
   The phonemic features that occur above the level of the segment are called supramental features. They include stress, tone, and intonation.
a)    Stress 重音
   Stress, including both word stress and sentence stress, distinguishes meaning in English.
b)    Tone 声调
   In some languages the pitches of words can make a difference in their meaning. Such languages are called tone language.
c)    Intonation 语调
   Intonation plays an important role in the conveyance of meaning in almost every language. Three tones are frequently used in English: the falling tone, the rising tone, and the fall-rise tone.

 
Exercises
I.Match each of the following terms in column A with one of the appropriate definitions in column B:
       Column A                           Column B
1.    acoustic phonetics              A. The phonemic features that occur above the level of the
                                  segment are called suprasegmental features. They include
                                  stress, tone, and intonation.
2.    International Phonetic Alphabet   B. The assimilation rule assimilates one segment to another by
                                 “copying” a feature of a sequential phoneme, thus making
                                  the two phones more similar.
3.    articulatory phonetics           C. If phonetically similar sounds are two distinctive phonemes,
                                 they are said to form a phonemic contrast.