Chapter Two

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Chapter Two Speech Sounds
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• As human beings we are capable of making all
  kinds of sounds, but only some of these sounds
  have become units in the language system.
• We can analyze speech sounds from various
  perspectives and the two major areas of study are
  phonetics and phonology.

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• Phonetics studies how speech sounds are produced,
  transmitted, and perceived.

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• Articulatory Phonetics is the study of the
  production of speech sounds.
• Acoustic Phonetics is the study of the physical
  properties of speech sounds.
• Perceptual or Auditory Phonetics is concerned
  with the perception of speech sounds.

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• Phonology is the study of the sound patterns and
  sound systems of languages.
• It aims to discover the principles that govern
  the way sounds are organized in languages, and to
  explain the variations that occur.
• In phonology we normally begin by analyzing an
  individual language, say English, in order to
  determine its phonological structure, i.e. which
  sound units are used and how they are put
  together.
• Then we compare the properties of sound systems
  in different languages in order to make
  hypotheses about the rules that underlie the use
  of sounds in them, and ultimately we aim to
  discover the rules that underlie the sound
  patterns of all languages.

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1. How speech sounds are made

• 1.1 Speech organs

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Position of the vocal folds voiceless
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Position of the vocal folds voicing (initial
the widest aperture)
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Position of the vocal folds glottal stop
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1.2 The IPA

• In 1886, the Phonetic Teachers Association was
  inaugurated by a small group of language teachers
  in France who had found the practice of phonetics
  useful in their teaching and wished to popularize
  their methods.
• It was changed to its present title of the
  International Phonetic Association (IPA) in 1897.

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• One of the first activities of the Association
  was to produce a journal in which the contents
  were printed entirely in phonetic transcription.
• The idea of establishing a phonetic alphabet was
  first proposed by the Danish grammarian and
  phonetician Otto Jespersen (1860-1943) in 1886,
  and
• the first version of the International Phonetic
  Alphabet (the IPA chart) was published in August
  1888.

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• Its main principles were that
• there should be a separate letter for each
  distinctive sound, and
• that the same symbol should be used for that
  sound in any language in which it appears.
• The alphabet was to consist of as many Roman
  alphabet letters as possible, using new letters
  and diacritics only when absolutely necessary.
• These principles continue to be followed today.

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• The InternationalPhonetic Alphabet (Revised to
  2005)

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2. Consonants and vowels

• Consonants are produced by a closure in the
  vocal tract, or by a narrowing which is so marked
  that air cannot escape without producing audible
  friction.
• By contrast, a vowel is produced without such
  stricture so that air escapes in a relatively
  unimpeded way through the mouth or nose.

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• The distinction between vowels and consonants
  lies in the obstruction of airstream.
• As there is no obstruction of air in the
  production of vowels, the description of the
  consonants and vowels cannot be done along the
  same lines.

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2.1 Consonants

• In the production of consonants at least two
  articulators are involved.
• For example, the initial sound in bad involves
  both lips and its final segment involves the
  blade (or the tip) of the tongue and the alveolar
  ridge.
• The categories of consonant, therefore, are
  established on the basis of several factors.

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• The manner of articulation refers to ways in
  which articulation can be accomplished
• the articulators may close off the oral tract for
  an instant or a relatively long period
• they may narrow the space considerably or
• they may simply modify the shape of the tract by
  approaching each other.

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• Stop (or Plosive)
• Oral Nasal
• Fricative
• (Median) Approximant
• Lateral (Approximant)
• Trill
• Tap or Flap
• Affricate

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• The place of articulation refers to the point
  where a consonant is made.
• Practically consonants may be produced at any
  place between the lips and the vocal folds.
• Eleven places of articulation are distinguished
  on the IPA chart

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• Bilabial
• Labiodental
• Dental
• Alveolar
• Postalveolar
• Retroflex
• Palatal
• Velar
• Uvular
• Pharyngeal
• Glottal

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2.2 Vowels

• Cardinal Vowels, as exhibited by the vowel
  diagram in the IPA chart, are a set of vowel
  qualities arbitrarily defined, fixed and
  unchanging, intended to provide a frame of
  reference for the description of the actual
  vowels of existing languages.

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Jones An Outline of English Phonetics (1918)
Black IPA Red English
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• The problematic area is that the initial sound in
  hot gives little turbulence, depending on how
  forcefully it is said, and in yet and wet the
  initial segments are obviously vowels.
• To get out of this problem, the usual solution is
  to say that these segments are neither vowels nor
  consonants but midway between the two categories.
  For this purpose, the term semi-vowel is often
  used.

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• Languages also frequently make use of a
  distinction between vowels where the quality
  remains constant throughout the articulation and
  those where there is an audible change of
  quality.
• The former are known as pure or monophthong
  vowels and the latter, vowel glides.
• If a single movement of the tongue is involved,
  the glides are called diphthongs.

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• A double movement produces a triphthong, which is
  a glide from one vowel to another and then to a
  third, all produced rapidly and without
  interruption.
• They are really diphthongs followed by the schwa
  ?, found in English words like wire wa?? and
  tower ta??.

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2.3 The sounds of English

• Received Pronunciation (RP)
• General American (GA)
• English consonants

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• The consonants of English can be described in the
  following manner
• p voiceless bilabial stop
• b voiced bilabial stop
• s voiceless alveolar fricative
• z voiced alveolar fricative

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English vowels
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• The description of English vowels needs to
  fulfill four basic requirements
• the height of tongue raising (high, mid, low)
• the position of the highest part of the tongue
  (front, central, back)
• the length or tenseness of the vowel (tense vs.
  lax or long vs. short), and
• lip-rounding (rounded vs. unrounded).

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• We can now describe the English vowels in this
  way
• ?? high front tense unrounded vowel
• ? high back lax rounded vowel
• ? mid central lax unrounded vowel
• ? low back lax rounded vowel

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3. From phonetics to phonology

• Speech is a continuous process, so the vocal
  organs do not move from one sound segment to the
  next in a series of separate steps. Rather,
  sounds continually show the influence of their
  neighbors.
• For example, map, lamb.

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3.1 Coarticulation

• When such simultaneous or overlapping
  articulations are involved, we call the process
  coarticulation.
• If the sound becomes more like the following
  sound, as in the case of lamb, it is known as
  anticipatory coarticulation.
• If the sound shows the influence of the preceding
  sound, it is perseverative coarticulation, as is
  the case of map.

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• The fact that the vowel ? in lamb has some
  quality of the following nasal is a phenomenon we
  call nasalization.
• To indicate that a vowel has been nasalized, we
  add a diacritic to the top of the symbol ?, as
  ??.

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• p is aspirated in peak and unaspirated in
  speak.
• This aspirated voiceless bilabial stop is thus
  indicated by the diacritic h, as ph, whereas
  the unaspirated counterpart is transcribed as
  p.

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• When we use a simple set of symbols in our
  transcription, it is called a broad
  transcription.
• The use of more specific symbols to show more
  phonetic detail is referred to as a narrow
  transcription.
• Both are phonetic transcriptions so we put both
  forms in square brackets .

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3.2 Phonemes

• Phonology is not specifically concerned with the
  physical properties of the speech production
  system.
• Phoneticians are concerned with how sounds differ
  in the way they are pronounced while phonologists
  are interested in the patterning of such sounds
  and the rules that underlie such variations.

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• Crystal Phonological analysis relies on the
  principle that certain sounds cause changes in
  the meaning of a word or phrase, whereas other
  sounds do not.
• Minimal pairs test
• Phonemes

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• The word phoneme simply refers to a unit of
  explicit sound contrast the existence of a
  minimal pair automatically grants phonemic status
  to the sounds responsible for the contrasts.
• By selecting one type of sound instead of another
  we can distinguish one word from another.

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• Languages differ in the selection of contrastive
  sounds.
• In English, the distinction between aspirated
  ph and unaspirated p is not phonemic.
• In Chinese, however, the distinction between /p/
  and /ph/ is phonemic.

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• By convention, phonemic transcriptions are placed
  between slant lines (/ /) while phonetic
  transcriptions are placed between square brackets
  ( ).
• In phonetic terms, phonemic transcriptions
  represent the broad transcriptions.

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3.3 Allophones

• p, ph are two different phones and are variants
  of the phoneme /p/. Such variants of a phoneme
  are called allophones of the same phoneme.
• In this case the allophones are said to be in
  complementary distribution because they never
  occur in the same context
• p occurs after s while ph occurs in other
  places.

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• /p/ ? p / s _____
• ph elsewhere
• This phenomenon of variation in the pronunciation
  of phonemes in different positions is called
  allophony or allophonic variation.

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• Velarization clear l and dark l
• /?/ ? ? / _____ V
• ? / V _____
• Think about tell and telling!

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• Phonetic similarity the allophones of a phoneme
  must bear some phonetic resemblance.
• Free variants and free variation

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4. Phonological processes, phonological rules and
distinctive features

• 4.1 Assimilation

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• Nasalization, dentalization, and velarization are
  all instances of assimilation, a process by which
  one sound takes on some or all the
  characteristics of a neighboring sound.
• If a following sound is influencing a preceding
  sound, we call it regressive assimilation.
• The converse process, in which a preceding sound
  is influencing a following sound, is known as
  progressive assimilation.

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English Fricative Devoicing
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• /v/ ? f /z/ ? s etc.
• voiced fricative ? voiceless / ____ voiceless
• Nasalization rule
• -nasal ? nasal / ____ nasal
• Dentalization rule
• -dental ? dental / ____ dental
• Velarization rule
• -velar ? velar / ____ velar

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4.2 Epenthesis, rule ordering and the Elsewhere
Condition

• a hotel, a boy, a use, a wagon, a big man, a
  yellow rug, a white house
• an apple, an honor, an orange curtain, an old
  lady
• Epenthesis (Insertion) Rule

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Plurals in English
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• a. The ? appears after voiceless sounds.
• b. The ? appears after voiced sounds.
• c. The ?? appears after sibilants.
• /?/ ? ? / voice, C _____ (Devoicing)
• ? ? ? / sibilant _____ ? (Epenthesis)

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Rule ordering
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• The Elsewhere Condition
• The more specific rule applies first.

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4.3 Distinctive features

• The idea of Distinctive Features was first
  developed by Roman Jacobson (1896-1982) in the
  1940s as a means of working out a set of
  phonological contrasts or oppositions to capture
  particular aspects of language sounds.
• Since then several versions have been suggested.

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• Some of the major distinctions include
  consonantal, sonorant, nasal and voiced.
• The feature consonantal can distinguish between
  consonants and vowels, so all consonants are
  consonantal and all vowels consonantal.
• sonorant distinguishes between what we call
  obstruents (stops, fricatives and affricates) and
  sonorants (all other consonants and vowels), with
  obstruents being sonorant and others
  sonorant.
• nasal and voiced of course distinguish nasal
  (including nasalized) sounds and voiced sounds
  respectively.

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• These are known as binary features because we can
  group them into two categories one with this
  feature and the other without.
• Binary features have two values or specifications
  denoted by    and    so voiced obstruents
  are marked voiced and voiceless obstruents are
  marked voiced.

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• The place features are not binary features they
  are divided up into four values
• PLACE Labial
• PLACE Coronal
• PLACE Dorsal
• PLACE Radical
• They are often written in shorthand forms as
• Labialp
• Coronalp
• Dorsalp
• Radicalp

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• A useful feature for consonants not found here is
  spread (for spread glottis), which
  distinguishes between aspirated and
  unaspirated voiceless obstruents.
• Aspirated sounds are spread and unaspirated
  sounds are spread.
• Now we can represent the rule that governs the
  unaspiration of /p/ after s in terms of
  features

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• This is a more general rule, which also applies
  to /t/ and /k/. It means that /p, t, k/
  (voiced, cont) are all unaspirated
  (spread) after s and aspirated (spread)
  in all other positions.

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Past tense forms in English

• stopped, walked, coughed, kissed, leashed,
  reached
• stabbed, wagged, achieved, buzzed, soothed,
  bridged
• steamed, stunned, pulled
• played, flowed, studied
• wanted, located, decided, guided

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• The regular past tense form in English is
  pronounced as t when the word ends with a
  voiceless consonant, d when it ends with a
  voiced sound, and ?d when it ends with t or
  d.

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5. Suprasegmentals

• Suprasegmental features are those aspects of
  speech that involve more than single sound
  segments.
• The principal suprasegmentals are

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5.1 The syllable structure

• s
• Onset Rime
• Nucleus
  Coda
• k r æ
  k t

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• Open syllable bar, tie
• Closed syllable bard, tied
• English Syllable (((C)C)C)V((((C)C)C)C)
• Chinese syllable (C)V(C)
• Maximal Onset Principle (MOP)
• When there is a choice as to where to place a
  consonant, it is put into the onset rather than
  the coda.

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5.2 Stress

• Stress refers to the degree of force used in
  producing a syllable. In transcription, a raised
  vertical line is often used just before the
  syllable it relates to.
• A basic distinction is made between stressed and
  unstressed syllables, the former being more
  prominent than the latter, which means that
  stress is a relative notion.

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• At the word level, it only applies to words with
  at least two syllables.
• At the sentence level, a monosyllabic word may be
  said to be stressed relative to other words in
  the sentence.

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Changing English Stress Pattern

• Becoming norm
• inTEGral
• coMMUNal
• forMIDable
• conTROVersy

• Considered conservative
• INtegral
• COMMunal
• FORmidable
• CONtroversy

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RP vs. GA

• GA
• LABoratory
• deBRIS
• gaRAGE

• RP
• laBORatory
• DEBris
• GARage

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V vs. N

• Verb
• conVICT
• inSULT
• proDUCE
• reBEL

• Noun
• CONvict
• INsult
• PROduce
• REbel

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Compound vs. Phrase
Compound Phrase

• black BOARD
• black BIRD

• BLACKboard
• BLACKbird

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Primary vs. Secondary Stress

• epiphenomenal
• unsatisfactory
• discrimination
• standardization
• communication
• industrialization

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Sentence Stress

• John bought a red car.
• JOHN bought a red car.
• John BOUGHT a red car.
• John bought a RED car.
• John bought a red CAR.

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5.3 Intonation

• Intonation involves the occurrence of recurring
  fall-rise patterns, each of which is used with a
  set of relatively consistent meanings, either on
  single words or on groups of words of varying
  length.
• For example, the fall-rise tone in English
  typically involves the meaning of a contrast
  within a limited set of items stated explicitly
  or implicitly.

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• (Isnt her name Mary?) No / ? Jenny
• The old man didnt come / whereas the ? young man
  / did come and actually enjoyed himself
• ? I didnt do it

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5.4 Tone