Phonology
 Phonology
is the branch of linguistics which
investigates the ways in which sounds are used
systematically in different languages to form words
and utterances.
 In order to understand phonology, one must have a
grasp of the basic concepts of PHONETICS, the study
of the inventory of all SPEECH SOUNDS which
humans are capable of producing
Introduction
Speech is produced and heard normally as a continuous stream of
sounds. How speech sounds are produced and perceived is
described in Phonetics. Phonetics is the scientific study of speech
sounds. It consists of three main sub-fields:
Articulatory phonetics: the study of the production of speech
sounds by the articulatory and vocal tract by the speaker.
Acoustic phonetics: the study of the physical transmission of
speech sounds from the speaker to the listener.
Auditory Phonetics: the study of the reception and perception of
speech sounds by the listener.
This part is concerned mainly with the production of speech sounds
described in terms of articulatory and acoustic phonetics.
Articulation of speech sounds is the second stage of speech production.
Once we have organized our thoughts into a linguistic plan, this
information must be sent from the brain to the articulatory organs in
the speech system so that they can then execute the required
movements and produce the desired sounds.
Articulatory Organs
 Using the articulatory organs in the mouth and throat, speakers
produce various speech sounds by modifying the flow of air
expelled from the lungs.
 The air flow is first modified in the throat, at larynx which
contains the vocal cords. The vocal cords folds come together and
close the glottis, building up a pressure below the blockage. This
built-up pressure forces the vocal folds apart briefly, letting a puff
of air escape . The air flow is also modified in the mouth by the
relation of the mobile organs to the immobile organs.
 The pulse of air contains energy in a wide range of frequencies,
some of which are emphasized by the cavities of the mouth,
throat and nose, which act as resonators. The mouth and the
throat can vary greatly in their size and shape and together form a
double resonator whose changes shape all sounds.
AIRSTREAM MECHANISM
Articulatory Phonetics
Articulatory
phonetics deals with the categorization and
classification of the production features of speech sounds. Thus, In
studying articulation, phoneticians explain and describe how humans
produce speech sounds via the interaction of different
physiological structures.
Speech sounds can be divided into two main classes :
1- Consonants
2- Vowels
Consonants and Vowels Articulation
Consonants are articulated with complete or partial closure of
the vocal tract. Each spoken consonant can be distinguished by:
The place of articulation is where in the vocal tract the obstruction
of the consonant occurs, and which speech organs are involved. Places
include bilabial, labiodentals, dental, alveolar ,velar etc.
The manner of articulation is how air escapes from the vocal tract
when the consonant or approximant sound is made. Manners include
stops, fricatives, affricate, liquids and nasals.
The phonation of a consonant is how the vocal cords vibrate during
the articulation. When the vocal cords vibrate fully, the consonant is
called voiced; when they do not vibrate at all, it is voiceless.
Whereas, to produce vowels such as [I,e,U,], speakers leave the vocal
tact unobstructed outside the vocal folds but mold the cavities of the
mouth and throat into different shapes and sizes by moving the tongue
and the lips. All vowels can be described in terms of tongue height
(high, mid , low) and tongue advancement (front, central, back).
Syllables and Suprasegmental Features
 A Phonetic unit larger than the phoneme is the syllable. A
Syllable consists of an onset and a rime, and a rime in turn
consists of a nucleus and a coda. In fact, syllable must have a
nucleus, though not an onset or coda.
Syllable onset + rime
Rime
nucleus+ coda
According to Taylor, the syllable is a stable phonetic unit. In
speech research, the smallest phonetic unit commonly used as
a stimulus is not the phoneme but the syllable because of its
articulatory and acoustic stability.
 Superimposed on the sequence of vowels and consonants
(segmental) are suprasegmental features- variations in pitch,
stress, and constituent boundaries.
Articulatory Errors
 Some sounds and sound sequences are awkward for
articulation . They tend to be used infrequently and, when
used, may be modified or prone to slips. In fact, words
containing sequence of similar consonants tend to be
avoided or mispronounced by speakers
Read the following:
Three Swedish switched witches watch three Swiss
Swatch watches switches. Which Swedish switched
witch watch which Swiss Swatch watch witch?"
Within the field of psycholinguistics, speech errors fall under the
category of language production. Types of speech errors include
the following :
 ____________________________________________________________
 Type
Example
 ____________________________________________________________
(1) Shift
 (2) Exchange
she dicide to hits it.(decides to hit it).
Fancy getting your model resnosed.(getting your nose






Bake my bike. (take my bike).
He pulled a pantrum. (tantrum).
I didn’t explain this clarefully enough. (carefully enough).
I’ll just get up and mutter intelligibly. (unintelligibly).
At low speeds it’s too light. (heavy).
That child is looking to be spaddled.(spanked\paddled).
remodeled).
(3) Anticipation
(4) Perseveration
(5) Addition
(6) Deletion
(7) Substitution
(8) Blend
 ____________________________________________________________
Why do some people have better
voices than others?
 Articulation produces
 sound waves which
 the ear conveys to the brain
 for processing
16/34
Sound waves and Spectrogram
Sound waves:
When objects move rapidly in air they affect the air molecules in their
vicinity to the point that those molecules cause a disturbance next to
them and a sound wave is formed (similar to throwing a stone in
water).
A sound wave can be described in terms of its frequency, amplitude, and
phase relation.
 As seen in these two images the wave form travels
through the air in “pulses” as the air pressure
fluctuates higher and lower than the ambient air
causing the
“vibration”.
on the receiving end: the
notice the red boxes
where it is compressed
eardrum is moved by the
wave’s pressure changes
 The white line represents the
position of the medium when
no wave is present. This medium
could be imagined as a rope
fixed at one end a few feet above
the ground and held by you at
the other end.
 The yellow line represents the
position of the medium as a
wave travels through it. We
simply say that the yellow line is
the wave.
 A sound wave can be described
in terms of its amplitude,
duration and frequency .
Sound waves: What is amplitude?
 Amplitude is the maximum positive displacement
from the undisturbed position of the medium to the
top of a crest. This is shown in the following diagram:
The wavelength of a wave is the distance between
Crest any
two adjacent corresponding locations on the wave train.
This distance is usually measured in one of twoways:
crest to next crest or trough to next trough.
Trough
The section of the wave that rises above the undisturbed
position is called the crest. That section which lies below
the undisturbed position is called the trough. dB
What is frequency?
Frequency refers to how many waves are made per time interval.
This is usually described as how many waves are made per
second, or as cycles per second.
175 Hz
225 Hz
275 Hz
325 Hz
375 Hz
425 Hz
475 Hz
 The ears of a human (and other animals) are sensitive
detectors capable of detecting the fluctuations in air
pressure which impinge upon the eardrum…the human ear
is capable of detecting sound waves with a wide range of
frequencies, ranging between approximately 20 Hz to
20,000 Hz.
 Any sound with a frequency below the audible range of
hearing (i.e., < 20 Hz) is known as an infrasound
 Any sound with a frequency above the audible range of
hearing (i.e., > 20,000 Hz) is known as an ultrasound.”
Wave Forms
 Wave forms can be simple sine
waves (the oscillations are
regular and periodic – they go
up and down the same amount
over the whole wave) or
complex.
 Speech wave forms are complex
and they are aperiodic. the
complex waveform is the result
of simultaneous presence of
many component frequencies
1-26-09
LING 3330
23
 Any repeating wave form, however complex and
irregular, can be analyzed into a set of sine waves ( the
simplest possible regular oscillations) of different
frequencies. The set of energies in all different
frequencies of a sound is a spectrum. A vibrating body
produces a sound consisting of fundamental frequency
(F0), the frequency with which the waveform repeats,
and its harmonics, which are multiples of F0. The
perceived pitch of a sound usually close to the pitch of
a sine wave of frequency F0 .
Spectrogram
 The spectrum of complex sounds can be analyzed
using an instrument called a sound spectrograph
which produces a spectrum that displays variations in
amplitude at each frequency over time.

See PRAAT
Looking at Vowels
 The waveform– high energy, periodic sounds- of
vowels look like this. In fact, we can’t distinguish
different vowels with this view.
Looking at Vowels
 Spectrogram: bands of energy
 “Formants” high-energy bands that distinguish the
vowels. There are five formants.
The relationship between F1 and F2
Formant 1: reflecting the “high” or “low” of the vowel in
the oral tract
F1
Formant 2: reflecting the “backness” of the vowel in the oral
tract
F2
Looking at vowels on a spectrogram
 What distinguishes one vowel from another?
Acoustic Cues for Consonants
 Most sounds has several formants, caused by different
resonating chambers in the vocal apparatus. Consonants
generally don’t have “formant” structure like vowels, but
they show other characteristic detectable signs:
 1- Transitions : frequency glides produced as the vocal
cavity shifts from one place of articulation to another.
They are realized as rapid movements of formants
through a range of frequencies ( direction and extent of
the second and third formant)
 2- Voice-onset time (VOT) : the difference of timing
between the onset of burst and the onset of voicing (
distinguishes phonation of phonemes)
Voice Onset Time (VOT)
[Pha]
VOT ~85 msec
[ba]
VOT ~0 msec
voicing onset
release
voicing onset and release ~
simultaneous
VOT = Interval between articulatory release and onset of voicing.
Looking at the consonants
The spectral patterns of
noncontinuent consonants tend to be brief, transient, and diffuse.
Continuant consonants have a wide variety of spectra ranging
from wide, high-frequency noises to vowellike spectra with added
low-frequency components.
Examples -- “a bab, a dad, a gag”
SONUS Reviving
34
Example – “led, red, wed, yell”
SONUS Reviving
35
Prosody
 Prosody can signal not only nonlinguistic information such
as the speaker’s sex, age , and geographical origin but also
linguistic information such as the kind of a sentence (
whether interrogative , declarative ,etc)
 Speech has prosody: acoustic variations in frequency,
intensity ( loudness), and timing of sounds ( melody,
rhythm, tempo). That are superimposed on a stretch of
phonemes, syllables or words.
 Thus, there are three acoustic cues for prosody: variation in
F0, timing and loudness.
 High F0, long duration, high intensity contribute to
perceived stress in English.
Conclusion
 Even though researchers have done some research with
high-tech instruments have identified several acoustic cues
to vowels ( patterns of formants), to consonants (e.g.
patterns of transitions, VOTs), and to prosody ( variation in
F0, timing and intensity); the process of speech production
is so complicated that it is still a mystery in
psycholinguistic.