Phonetics

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Phonetics

• What is Speech? How do we produce and hear it?

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Sounds vs. Letters

• How many sounds are in the word cat? How many
  letters?
• How many sounds are in the word psycho? How many
  letters?
• How many sounds and letters are in the sound
  someone makes when they sneeze?

3
Identity of Speech Sounds

• Our linguistic knowledge allows us to
• Determine when we judge physically different
  sounds to be the same.
• Example compare tree and hatrack
• Determine which sounds are not lingusitically
  relevant.
• Example How (cough) are you? and How old are
  you?
• Each language has an inventory of sounds that its
  speakers recognize as being linguistically
  relevant these are called phonemes, and they are
  the smallest units of language.

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Phonetic Inventories

• Each languages inventory of phonemes is
  different.
• That is, each language has a different set of
  sounds which are considered linguistically
  relevant and distinct from one another.
• English vs. Thai
• English vs. Korean
• Well begin by mapping out the phonemes used in
  English.

5
Spelling and Sound

• How many different ways can you spell the first
  sound in the word ship in English?
• Clearly, if we want to be able to talk
  scientifically about language sounds, well need
  a more regular set of symbols.

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Speech and SpellingWhy is English spelling the
way it is?

• Spoken language varies tremendously over time and
  space, but written language is fairly constant
  and resistant to change.
• English words like knight actually do represent
  how they used to be pronounced.
• English has been influenced greatly by other
  languages.

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The Phonetic Alphabet

• In English orthography, the symbols we use dont
  always correspond very regularly to the phonemes
  of the language. Likewise, the same symbol can
  represent very different phonemes in different
  languages r, for example.
• In a phonetic alphabet, there is a single symbol
  for each phoneme. Likewise, each phoneme is
  represented by a single symbol.
• This clarity eliminates any possibility for
  confusion when representing sounds.

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Making Sense of Phonetics

• Articulatory Phonetics

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Describing Consonants

• We use three features to describe consonants
• Place of Articulation Where the sound is
  produced.
• Manner of Articulation How the sound is
  produced.
• Voicing Whether the vocal cords are vibrating.

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The Vocal TractA Map of Places of Articulation
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Some Consonants by Place of Articulation

• (slashes around a symbol indicate that its a
  phoneme and not a letter)

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Manner of Articulation

• Consonants with a significant obstruction of air
  are called obstruents. There are three types
• Stops, where the airstream is completely stopped.
  (/p/, /k/, etc.)
• Fricatives, where the airstream is severely
  obstructed and turbulent. (/f/, /s/, etc.)
• Affricates, which are basically just a stop
  followed by a fricative (/tS/, the first sound in
  church, for example).

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Which of the following sounds are stops,
fricatives and affricates?

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Manner of Articulation

• There are two kinds of stops
• Oral stops (stops), where the velum is raised
  and air does not pass through the nasal cavity.
  (/p/, /t/, etc.)
• Nasal stops (nasals), where the velum is
  lowered and air may pass through the nasal
  cavity. (/m/, /n/, etc.)

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Manner of Articulation

• Liquids (in English, /l/ and /r/), have some
  obstruction of the airstream, but not enough to
  cause any real friction.
• Glides (or semivowels /w/ as in we and /j/ as in
  you) also have little obstruction, and the tongue
  moves rapidly either towards or away from a
  neighboring vowel.
• A tap (or flap) occurs when the tongue makes a
  single quick touch on the alveolar ridge, as in
  butter (in most American English dialects).

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Voicing

• The last quality we use to describe consonants is
  voicing in voiced consonants, the vocal folds
  are vibrating, while in voiceless consonants they
  are not.
• A simple test for voicing as you speak, place
  your hand on your throat. If you can feel a
  vibration, the sound is voiced.

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Which of the following sounds are voiced? Which
are voiceless?
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So!

• Every consonant in English can be described by
  three things its place and manner of
  articulation, and its voicing.
• The first sound in mat is a voiced bilabial
  nasal, and the last one is a voiceless alveolar
  stop.
• This is also how the consonants are organized in
  the IPA

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The IPA Consonants (text p. 251)
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New and Troublesome Symbols

• Think of two words containing each of the
  following phonemes

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Practice Description of Phonemes

• ex /t/
• word tell
• description voiceless alveolar stop