Once he has been accepted, Dr Kaufman and his colleagues start chipping away at the language's phonology (the sounds of which it is composed) and its syntax (how its meaning is changed by the order of words and phrases).

一旦他被录用，考夫曼博士其同事就开始不断研究那种语言的音学（即组成这个体系的各种发音）和句法（其词汇和短语的次序如何改变意思）。

This phenomenon of transposing or switching sounds in a word is called metathesis.

这种在单词中换换音的现象被称为 " 音转换" 。

What factors determine whether a phoneme enters common use, or is relegated to silence?

是什么因素决定一个音是常用还是降至不发音呢？

B) Explicit instruction in phonemic awareness.

B) 音意识的明确指导。

One phoneme that occurs in only about 20 percent of the world's languages is the ejective consonant, such as p' or k'.

有一种音仅出现在全世界 20% 的语言中——那就是“爆破辅音”，比如“p”“k”。

So many, in fact, that each individual language contains only a subset of potential sound units, or phonemes.

事实上，其种类之丰富至于每种语言只含有一种潜在音子集。

You could call it phonetic, but it might  be more accurate to call it phonemic.

你可称之为音标，但更准确的说法可能是音。

A century later, and after a few revisions, it's now used around the world by linguists, but also phonologists, speech pathologists, singers, and loads more people.

一个世纪后，经过几次修订，它现在被全世界的语言学家、音学家、言语治疗师、歌手更多的人使用。

Ever since its publication in the middle of the 1960s, this research paradigm has become the mainstream in sociolinguistics and been alternatively termed as " the quantitative paradigm, sociolinguistics proper, variationist studies, urban dialectology and secular linguistics." (Fasold, 1999 [1990])

20 世纪 60 年代中期，著名社会语言学家威廉・拉波夫（William Labov）在纽约市的几个部门进行了一次彻底的查。这项查的目的是研究说话者的音变化如何代表他们的社会地。这项查的结果发表在《纽约市英语的社会分层》（1966）中，该书现已成为社会语言学的经典著作。结果表明，阶级和文体是影响说话者选择一种音变体而不是另一种音变体的两个主要因素。基于这些发现，拉波夫明确阐述了阶级和文体分层的模式。他的工作更重要的是，它成功地将阶级引入社会语言学研究中作为一个不可缺的变量。自 20 世纪 60 年代中期出版来，这种研究范式已成为社会语言学的主流，并被交替称为 “定量范式、适当的社会语言学、变异研究、城市方言学和世俗语言学”（Fasold，1999 [1990]）。

(4) Assimilation: It refers to the change of a sound by the influence of an adjacent sound, which is more specifically called " contact" or " contiguous" assimilation.

(1) 脱落：语音脱落是指音系统中作为音的某个语音的消失。语音脱落也可在语句中发生，往往是某些非重读元音发生脱落。(2) 添加：添加是指把某些语音添加到语音原有的链条上。(3) 换：换是指语流中一种可供选择的方法。(4) 同化：同化是指由于邻近语音的影响而产生的语音变化，更明确的叫法是" 接触" 同化" 邻近" 同化。

First, Phonetics. This level focuses on the smallest unit of structure in language, the phoneme.

首先，音学。这一层面关注语言结构中最小的单，即音素。

The one really big thing that stands out to me in the phonemic inventory of Ket is the fact that it lacks both P and G, which is rather rare to lack both of these at the same time.

在我看来， Ket 音清单中真正引人注目的一点是它缺少 P 和 G，而同时缺少这两个音的情况相当罕见。

(4) Narrow Transcriptional called phonetic transcription, which shows more phonetic details, either just by using more specific symbols or by also representing some allophonic differences. The use of diacritics is a means of increasing precision.

(4) 狭义转录称为语音转录，它通过使用更具体的符号还表示一些音差异来显示更多的语音细节。使用变音符号是提高精度的一种手段。

In English, the " p" sound in " pat" and the " p" sound in " spat" are allophones of the same phoneme.

在英语中，“pat”中的“p”音与“spat”中的“p”音是同一个音素的音变体。

He lowered his voice four or five notches and added " What was the name again" ?

他压低了四五个音， 又加了一句“叫什么名字” ？

Some sociolinguists believe that analyzing such variables as the use of a particular phoneme can predict the direction of language change.

一些社会语言学家认为，分析诸如特定音的使用这样的变量可预测语言变化的方向。

For  example the word " the" has two phonetic sounds, " th" and " uh" , but " the" only has one  " phoneme" : the sound, or syllable " the" .

例如，单词“the” 包含两个音素，“th” 和“uh” ，但“the” 只有一个音，即音音节“the” 。

Definition: Allophones are variant pronunciations of a phoneme in specific contexts.

定义：音变体是音素在特定上下文中的变体发音。

Phonemic transcription is put in square brackets for this purpose.

依照惯例，音转写放在双斜线 (//) 内，而语音转写放在方括号 ([」) 内，音转写也用于不太关注发音细节时的语音讨论（常见于词典和教材中），者关注点在于特定语音对照，而不是每个发音的细节。这种情况下就，音转写又称为宽式转写，给出发音细节的符号则称为严式转写，作为宽式转写的音转写符号也可放在方括号当中。

It utilizes a wider range of IPA symbols, diacritics, and additional notation to capture specific articulatory details, coarticulatory effects, and allophonic variations within speech.

它利用更广泛的 IPA 符号、变音符号和附加符号来捕获语音中的特定发音细节、协同发音效果和音变体。