Ling 20
Phonetics
Week 5, Tuesday
7/27/2016
Ling 20
1
Last week
Semantics
 Syntax-Semantics: binding


Principles A, B and C
Semantics:



7/27/2016
Words
Truth-conditional semantics
Pragmatics
Ling 20
2
The course so far…




Intro
Morphology: morphemes and words
Syntax: Sentence Structure
Semantics: meaning
7/27/2016
Ling 20
3
Coming Up


Phonetics (today)
Phonology (this week and next week)
7/27/2016
Ling 20
4
Today (and possibly next
class)





Intro to Phonetics
How sounds are made (Articulation)
Transcription (IPA)
Suprasegmental Phenomena
Features
7/27/2016
Ling 20
5
Phonetics
Phonetics:
The study of speech sounds (phones).
7/27/2016
Ling 20
6
Sounds as basic units
Human languages are productive and
compositional
In that respect, they are similar to other
systems like the decimal system: there are
infinitely many decimal numerals, and they
are all built from finitely many parts.
7/27/2016
Ling 20
7
Sounds as basic units
In the case of decimal systems, the finitely
many basic parts are the 10 digits :
0123456789
By combining this units we can obtain an
infinite set of numbers.
7/27/2016
Ling 20
8
Sounds as basic units
We could have assumed a larger set of
basic parts, like
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19.
Why don’t we assume this set to be the
set of basic units instead?
7/27/2016
Ling 20
9
Sounds as basic units

The first set covers all the numerals and it is
simpler.

Some elements of the second set have parts
that are common to other elements, and
since this second set does not get us
anything new, the first can be preferred
-> the first can be preferred
7/27/2016
Ling 20
10
Sounds as basic units
Similar sorts of reasoning should be used
when we try to figure out what the basic
elements of language are.
7/27/2016
Ling 20
11
Sounds as basic units


Suppose that we assume that the basic
elements of language are words…
Adults know some 50,000 words (and
they can often recognize many more
than that)…
7/27/2016
Ling 20
12
Sounds as basic units


However, many elements of that set of
words would seem to have parts in
common. (e.g. newt and nude)
There might be a shorter list of basic
sounds which can cover all the sounds
in all the words of the mental dictionary.
7/27/2016
Ling 20
13
Sounds as basic units
We do not necessarily want the simplest
list, though…
… What we want is the list of elements
that people, the users of the language,
actually take to be basic.
7/27/2016
Ling 20
14
Sounds as basic units
DO speakers ‘pay attention’ to the
individual sounds?


Yes: pluralize (newt and nude). What is
the sound of the plural?
Yes: you can tell the difference between
newt and nude because of differences
in individual sounds
7/27/2016
Ling 20
15
Sounds as basic units
Pluralize “crot” and “crod”
7/27/2016
Ling 20
16
Sounds as basic units
Phonetics is the study of these basic
units.
We will see that speech segments
(phones) can be decomposed even
further into features later on today.
7/27/2016
Ling 20
17
Phonetics
･ Articulatory phonetics studies how
speech sounds are made (or
articulated).
･ Acoustic phonetics studies the physical
properties of speech sound waves.
･ Auditory phonetics studies how speech
sounds are perceived.
7/27/2016
Ling 20
18
Articulatory
QuickTime™ and a
Sorenson Video 3 decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
7/27/2016
Ling 20
19
Acoustic
heed, hid, head, had, hod, hawed, hood, who’d
7/27/2016
Ling 20
20
Auditory (Speech perception)



no obvious separation of gestures
No break between words
lack of invariance
7/27/2016
Ling 20
21
Speech Perception
(1)
a. The good can decay many ways
b. The good candy came anyways
(2)
a. The stuffy nose can lead to problems
b. The stuff he knows can lead to problems
(3)
a. Gladly the cross I’d bear
b. Gladly the cross-eyed bear
(4)
a. I scream
b. Ice cream
(5)
a. Was he the bear?
b. Wuzzy the bear?
7/27/2016
Ling 20
22
Speech Perception


The acoustic properties of vowels vary
from one speaker to another.
Ladefoged & Broadbent (1957), and
many other studies, have shown that
our perception of vowels is actually
adjusted to the voice we are hearing
(context and voice in ‘bet’ versus ‘bit’).
7/27/2016
Ling 20
23
Speech Perception


The acoustic properties of consonants vary
much more dramatically even for a given
speaker, depending on the context in which
they are spoken.
If you cut the first consonant sound out of [pi]
(pea) and splice it onto [a] (ah), the resulting
sound is not [pa] but [ka] (Schatz, 1954;
Liberman et al., 1967).
7/27/2016
Ling 20
24
Speech Perception:
McGurk Effect
QuickTime™ and a
Sorenson Video 3 decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
7/27/2016
Ling 20
25
Back to Articulatory phonetics
Articulation is an extremely complex
motor behavior that involves the
orchestration of many independent and
partially independent parts of the vocal
tract (the articulators)
7/27/2016
Ling 20
26
Articulatory Phonetics
Ex. Articulation of the sequence ma [m ] [other
examples, with pictures, on pp. 28-29]
･ Raise the jaw and extend the lower lip
upward, pushing the two lips together
･ Lower the velum so that air can pass through
the nasal cavity
･ Adduct the vocal folds (i.e., press them
together)
･ Force air through the vocal folds, causing
them to vibrate …
7/27/2016
Ling 20
27
Articulatory Phonetics
･ Lower the tongue body into the position for [ ]
After about 80ms
･ The lips come apart as the jaw falls to the low
position for [ ]
･ The velum raises, preventing air from flowing
through the nose
The vowel [ ] lasts for about another 200ﾐ
400ms (depending on stress and other
factors)
7/27/2016
Ling 20
28
Articulatory
Anatomy
http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/anatomy.htm
7/27/2016
Ling 20
29
Vocal Chords
7/27/2016
Ling 20
30
Vocal Chords
7/27/2016
Ling 20
31
Voicing
The words: heed, hid, head, had, hod,
hawed, hood, who’d
In normal voice
Whispered
Creaky voice
7/27/2016
Ling 20
32
Voicing
Voice lag and aspiration:
 ‘top’ versus ‘stop’
 English: not distinctive
 Hindi: distinctive (
 http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/ch
apter6/hindi/hindi.html
 )
7/27/2016
Ling 20
33
Consonant versus Vowels
A consonant is a sound that is made
with a constriction in the vocal tract that
impedes the flow of air to some
significant degree. Vowels do not have
such a constriction.
7/27/2016
Ling 20
34
Consonant
Articulation
http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frameset.html
http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/anatomy.htm
7/27/2016
Ling 20
35
Place of Articulation
http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frames
et.html
7/27/2016
Ling 20
36
Place of Articulation
Active articulators: parts of the vocal tract
that are moveable (Ex. tongue, lips, jaw,
velum (soft palate), vocal folds, …).
Passive articulators: areas that active
articulators can approach or come close to
(Ex. alveolar ridge, hard palate, soft palate,
pharynx, …).
7/27/2016
Ling 20
37
Place of articulation
Exercise:
For each place of articulation, try to
guess what are the active the passive
articulators.
7/27/2016
Ling 20
38
Place of Articulation
7/27/2016
Ling 20
39
Manner of Articulation
http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frames
et.html
7/27/2016
Ling 20
40
Consonants
7/27/2016
Ling 20
41
Manner of Articulation: Clicks
Zulu clicks (
http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/cha
pter6/zulu/zulu.html
)

7/27/2016
Ling 20
42
Vowel Articulation

http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonet
ics/english/frameset.html
7/27/2016
Ling 20
43
Vowel Articulation
7/27/2016
Ling 20
44
Vowel Articulation
7/27/2016
Ling 20
45
Vowel Articulation
http:
.bedfordstmartins.com/linguistics/pages/
bcsmain.asp?v=chapter&s=02000&n=0002
0&i=02020.10&o
7/27/2016
Ling 20
46
Vowel Articulation
7/27/2016
Ling 20
47
Transcription
Transcription of speech involves writing
down the sounds that you hear.
Discussion: Is spelling usually a
reliable guide for transcription?
7/27/2016
Ling 20
48
Transcription
If two speech sounds distinguish two words in
any language, they should be represented as
different phones
Distinctions that are never relevant to
distinguishing two words should not be
represented
e.g.1: Aspiration (Hindi)
7/27/2016
Ling 20
49
Transcription
Example 2: Nasalization
 English: not distinctive
 French

Portuguese
7/27/2016
Ling 20
50
Transcription

http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/ch
apter2/amercons.html

Transcribe the consonants in the
following words:

7/27/2016
at, math, cure, hopping, psychology,
knowledge, mailbox, awesome, damn,
widths, sixths
Ling 20
51
IPA Chart
http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/cha
pter1/flash.html
7/27/2016
Ling 20
52
IPA Chart
http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/cha
pter1/flash.html
7/27/2016
Ling 20
53
Transcription practice

Transcribe the consonants in the
following words, indicating which are
[+voice] and which are [-voice]:
though, thought, form, view, zoom, silk,
pan, boat, huge, choose, judge, buns,
when, pneumatic, winced, splinged,
blurked
7/27/2016
Ling 20
54
Suprasegmentals



Stress
Pitch (tone and intonation)
Lenght
7/27/2016
Ling 20
55
Stress






(an) insult
(to) insult
(a) pervert
(to) pervert
(an) overflow
(to) overflow
7/27/2016
Ling 20
56
Stress
Exercise
Handout
http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/cha
pter5/Bruce%20chapter%205/bruce%20
stresses%20in%20English.aiff
7/27/2016
Ling 20
57
Length
http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/cha
pter9/danish/danish.html
7/27/2016
Ling 20
58
Tones
Chinese:
Mother (H)
Scold (MLH)
7/27/2016
Hemp (LH)
Horse (HL)
Ling 20
59
Tones
Thai tones:
http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/cha
pter10/thai/thai.html
7/27/2016
Ling 20
60
Features
･ A segment is an individual speech sound (a
consonant or a vowel).
･ To transcribe words, we write segments, not
letters
･ Transcription gives a better representation of
speech sounds than spelling, but it still leaves
out an important aspect of articulation. What
is it?
7/27/2016
Ling 20
61
Features
7/27/2016
Ling 20
62
Features
Consonants:
 Place of articulation (POA): specifies
the articulators used to make the
constriction
 Manner features: provide additional
information about the constriction
 Laryngeal features provide information
about the vocal folds (and glottis)
7/27/2016
Ling 20
63
Place Features
･ [LABIAL] + active articulator: one (or both) of the
lips , [round] + articulated with rounded/protruded
lips
･ [CORONAL] + active articulator: the tongue tip or
the tongue blade, [anterior] + passive articulator is
at/before the alveolar ridge (ex. [s]). - the passive
articulator is behind the alveolar ridge(ex. [ ])
･ [DORSAL] + the active articulator is the tongue
body (⇒ All vowels are dorsal.) [high], [low], [front],
[back] used to describe vowels, not consonants.
7/27/2016
Ling 20
64
Manner Features
･ [continuant] + air flows through the oral
cavity (sonorants, fricatives), - air does
not flow through the oral cavity (stops)
(value for [ ]?)
･ [lateral] + produced with air flowing
around the sides of the tongue
･ [nasal] + produced with a lowered
velum
7/27/2016
Ling 20
65
Laryngeal Features
･ [voice] + produced with vocal fold
vibration (sonorants are typically voiced)
7/27/2016
Ling 20
66
Enhancement and
Antagonism
7/27/2016
Ling 20
67