A problem with linguistic explanations
 A problem with linguistic explanations
 Controlling articulatory movements
 Memory for speech
 The balance between phonetic forces
A problem with linguistic
explanations
 Assimilation: It can describe it by saying that
adjacent sounds come to share some phonetic
properties. If we restrict ourselves to the
terminology and knowledge base of linguistic
phonetics, we are restricted to descriptions of
sound patterns and not their explanation.
 Trap
Reification: acting as if abstract things
are concrete.
For example: 1football
2.grandpa
Controlling articulatory movements
(speech motor control)
 To produce a lip closure movement,
there are two main muscles
-depressor labii inferior(P1)
-incisivus inferior(P2)
 When contracted will move the lower
lip toward the upper lip, there are two
main muscles
-obicularis oris inferior(P3)
-mentalis(P4)
Lip moves up and down as the jaw
moves up and down
 Depress the jaw
-geniohyoid, mylohyoid, and digastricus(P5)
 Raise the jaw
-masseter and temporalis(P6)
Motor equivalences
 Different motor activation patterns producing
the same result.
Explames:
1.When the teeth are held far apart-the muscles
of the tongue raising it up in the jaw when you
say 〔i〕
2.When the teeth are close together, the raising
of the jaw itself contributes greatly to the
lifting of the tongue for 〔i〕
 Speech motor control involves private phonetic
knowledge.
Memory for speech
 One way to account tor phonetic
invariance is phonetic implementation
rules.
 Devoicing is a phonetic reduction process,
in which contrastive phonetic information
is lost or neutralized as a function of
speech rate or style.
Example: potato
Exemplar Theory
 Relies heavily on stored exemplars using
processes of selection and storage rater
than processes of transformation to
define the range of variability found in
speech.
Exemplar Theory: Basic Precepts
Doug Hintzman (1986) sketched out the first working
exemplar model of memory. (MINERVA)
 1. Listeners store in memory every
experience they have in their lifetime.
Including all details of those experiences.
 2. Specific experiences in memory are known as
traces.
They are linked to category labels.
 3. New experiences are known as probes.
 4. When probes are encountered, they activate similar
traces in memory.
Core concepts in phonetics
 Language universal features
 Speaking styles
 Generalization and productivity
 Sound change
The balance between phonetic
forces
 Ease of articulation by using coarticulations
 1.Fricative-following high front vowel


station,nation
2.Nasal-following stop
improper,impossible
3.glottis-whit a voiced consonant between
the two vowels
resist,result
The balance between phonetic
forces
 1. Anticipatory coarticulations: an
articulator not involved in a particular
sound begins to move in the direction of
an articulation needed for a later sound a
sound is affected by its following sound.
for example, station, nation, impossible,
intolerable
The balance between phonetic
forces
2.
Perseverative coarticulations:
the persistence of an aspect of the
articulation of one sound into the following
sound; that is , a sound is affected by its
preceding sound.
for example, the nasalization of a vowel after
a nasal consonant.
e.g. the word "dogs“
is pronounced where the ending
 Articulatory processes are syntagmatic,
affecting adjacent items in a sequence, whereas
perceptual processes are paradigmatic,
affecting the set of items that can occur in a
given place in a sequence.
Thank you for your listening.