Paris2006
By acer at 1:09 pm, Dec 12, 2013
Word
Articulatory Phonetic
In Speech, Air Passes
Acoustic Phonetics
Auditory Phonetic
Vocal Organ
The Lungs
Vocal Folds ‫الطياث الصوتيت‬
Vibrating Airstream
Vocal Tract
Lungs ‫الرئت‬
Note::::::
Trachea ‫القصبت الهوائيت‬
Larynx :: ‫الحنجرة‬
Pharynx:: ‫البلعوم‬
‫الجدار البلعوهي‬
‫الوري‬
Oral cavity:: ‫تجويف الفن‬
Lips:: ‫الشفايف‬
Description
Dealing with the production of sound.
Lungs, windpipe, vocal folds, throat, mouth, nose.
Studies the vibrations of speech sounds.
Study of how sounds are heard and perceived.
The parts of the body used in producing speech.
Start the process of speech production by pushing air upwards.
Located in the larynx behind the Adam's apple
According to the shape of the vocal tract.
The throat, mouth, and nasal cavity.
lungs are cone-shape - consist of small air sacs, or alveoli
English speakers do not ordinarily talk while breathing in.
Small tubes of the lungs merge with each other.
Form two large tubes called bronchi. / ‫القصبات‬
One coming from the left lung and one from the right lung.
The two bronchi merge into a single vertical tube called the
trachea or windpipe.
Structure made of several cartilages held together by ligaments
and supporting several muscle.
Cylindrical in shape and rests on top of the trachea.
Adam's apple The front part of the larynx.
The vocal folds lie inside the larynx.
Vocal folds: They are two horizontal bands of ligament and
muscle, lying across the air passage.
Glottis: The opening between the vocal folds.
Glottal is used to describe activities of the vocal folds.
(The adjective for larynx is laryngeal)
Subglottal: The portion below the vocal folds.
Supralaryngeal: The portion above the larynx.
Glottal stop: preventing air from leaving or entering the lungs.
The technical name for the throat.
Pharyngeal wall. Back of the throat.
It can be divided into three parts as: Oral pharynx , Nasal
Pharynx, Laryngeal pharynx.
Esophagus: is a tube, behind the trachea, which leads to the
stomach.
Articulators:
Upper articulator: Upper lip, upper teeth, upper surface of the
mouth, and the pharyngeal wall.
Lower articulator: lower lip, lower teeth, and tongue.
The outermost articulators are the lips.
Bilabial sound, Labiodentals sound.
Teeth::
Paris2006
Tongue articulating with the upper teeth are called dental.
Alveolar ridge ::
Palate:: ‫الحنك‬
Referred to simply as the palate.
Sounds made in this area with-the front of the tongue are called
palatal.
In English, yes begins with a palatal sound.
Velum:: (soft palate
Velum as the upper articulator are called velar.
In English, luck, Lug, and lung all end in different velar
consonants.
English does not use uvular sounds.
Uvula:: ‫اللهاااه‬
Tongue::
Divide into five parts: Tip, or apex, blade , front , back . root.
Sounds made with the tip of the tongue are called apical.
Apico-dentals: are made with the tip articulating with the
upper teeth, as in thin, then .
Apico-alveolar: are made with the tip of the tongue articulating
with the alveolar ridge. as in toe, dead, nun .
Blade: Lying just behind the tip of the tongue is a small surface.
Sounds made with the blade are called laminal.
Front: behind the tip and the blade.
The front of the tongue articulates against the palate; such
sounds are simply called palatal.
YES is palatal, made with the front of the tongue raised towards
the palate.
Back: The hindmost part of the horizontal surface of the
tongue is called the back or dorsum. (the adjective is dorsal)
It articulates against the velum to form dorso-velar sounds.
NOTE:
Be careful not to confuse the back of the tongue with the root.
In English, the final sounds in the words tick, dog, and sang are all
dorso-vela.
Root: tongue is its rear vertical surface facing the pharyngeal
Wall.
* The root is not important in English.
Epiglottis:: ‫لساى الوسهار‬
Nasal cavit::
Paris2006
Has some function in preventing food from going into the larynx.
The pharynx opens upwards into the nasal cavity.
The velum can be raised and lowered to open and close the
opening from the pharynx to the nasal cavity.
When the velum is lowered, air can escape out through the nose.
When the velum is raised, air cannot escape through the nose.
Upper surface of the velum is called the velic surface.
Velic opening and Velic closure.
Velic opening are called nasal or nasalize .
Velic closures are called oral.
Velum which moves against the pharyngeal wall.
* Velic refers to the upper surface of the velum .
*Velar refers to the lower surface of the velum which articulates
with the back of the tongue.
Technical term::
bilabial
Peter Brown picked a bushel of Burpee's Peppers.
labiodental
Verna found five very fine vines.
dental
Ethel thinks that this other thin thing is their thread.
alveolar
Ed edited it, didn't he or did Ted do it?
dorso-vela
King Carl quickly kissed the Greek queen.
Chapter2 : The basic sounds of English
Segments:
Suprasegmentals:
Comprise vowels and consonants .
Include a variety of things such as stress, pitch, intonation, and
length.
Transcription: ‫ الرهوز الصوتيت‬The ordinary orthography, or spelling, of English is often quite
different from the phonetic transcription.
IPA :
International Phonetic Association.
International Phonetic Alphabet.
RP:
English shows a considerable amount of geographic and social
variation. Such variation forms different dialects.
Received Pronunciation.
* RP has a vowel / α / not found in GA.
Paris2006
GA.
General American.
Example:
Both RP and GA have the two vowels /α / and / æ /;however,
the word fast has the vowel /α / in RP, but / æ / in GA.
Consonants:
Sounds that involve a major obstruction or constriction of
the vocal tract; vowels are made with a very open vocal tract.
Consonants are usually classified along three dimensions:
voicing, place of articulation, and manner of articulation .
Bilabial
Include /p b m/, as in the initial sound. are made by
completely closing the lips.
Sound /w/, as in we, simultaneously involves both labial and
velar articulation.
/p/ pea, creepy , Loop
voiceless
/b/ bee, Lobby, rub
voiced
/m/ moo, summer , loam voiced
Labiodental
Sounds in English: / f v / as in the initial sounds.
/f/ is - voiceless
/v/ is - voiced
Dental
Dental sounds occur in English; both are normally written with
the letter,Th words thin and then.
Thin is voiceless / Ɵ/.
Then is voiced /ð/.
The sounds / Ɵ / and / ð / are apical.
/ Ɵ / (called theta)
/ð/
(called eth )
Alveolar
The alveolar include more consonants in English than any other
place of articulation: /t d s z n l/
/t /
/ d/
/ s/
top, return, missed
done, sudden, loved
see, messy, police
voiceless
voiced
voiceless
/z/
/n/
/l/
zap, Lousy, pleas
gnaw, any, done
loaf, relief, dull
Paris2006
Postalveolar
voiced
voiced
voiced
(Called esh)
(Called ezh)
refers to the area at the rear of the alveolar ridge, bordering
on the palate.
English has four sounds in this area:
/ ʃ / is the initial sound in the word shoe.
voiceless
/ Ȝ / in the middle of the word measure.
voiced
/t ʃ / initial sound in the word chop.
voiceless
/ ʤ / initial sound in gem .
voiced
Retroflex
The initial sound in red (ɹ) is called retroflex.
voiced
Palatal
/ j/ The only palatal in English is the sound. YES
/ j/
(called yod)
yell, onion, fuse .
voiced
Velar
Velar sounds are dorso-velar
In English the velars are / k g ŋ /
/kg ŋ /
(called eng)
Glottal
The glottal stop /?/ made in the larynx by holding the vocal
folds tightly together so that no air escape.
If you hold your breath with your mouth open/ you will make a
glottal stop.
Many English speakers use a glottal stop in saying uh-oh:
[?Ʌ?ow].
Labial-velar
The sound /w/ has a double place of articulation labial-velar
being both Iabial and velar.
Manner of articulation
Manner of articulation
is the degree and kind of constriction in the vocal tract.
Stops
A stop involves a complete closure.
/p t k b d g /
In making each of these, a complete closure is made, at the lips,
the alveolar ridge, or the velum, such that no air can escape
through the mouth.
‫االصواث االحتكاكيت‬Fricative
Fricatives are sounds made with a small opening, allowing the
air to escape with some friction.
The fricatives in English are
/ f v Ɵ ð s z ʃ Ȝ /.
The lower articulator is close to the upper articulator.
Paris2006
Appibxihants
Approximants are consonants with a greater opening in the vocal
tract than fricatives. /l ɹ w j /.
* AII approximants in English are voiced
*Both fricatives and approximants are continuants.
** The approximant /I/ is an alveolar lateral.
*** Laterals are sounds that are made with only the mid part
of the articulators touching.
****A sound which is not lateral can be called central.
The glides /w j/ are considered approximants as well .
Although glides function as consonants, phonetically they are
moving vowels.
‫ االصواث االنفجاريت‬Affricates
Affricates are sequences of stop plus fricative.
The English sounds / t ʃ ʤ / are post alveolar affricates.
These are the sounds in church and judge .
Note that although an affricate is a phonetic sequence, it
functions as a single unit in English.
Nasals
The sounds /m n ŋ / are called nasals or nasal stops.
For these three sounds, there is a velic opening.
**Usually the term nasal is sufficien
If we need to be explicit, we can call / m n ŋ / nasal stops and
/p t k b d g/ oral stops .
For a nasal sound, the velum is lowered.
For nasal stops, air escapes through the nose, but not through
the mouth
Other terms
obstruent
includes oral stops, fricatives, and affricate .
Non obstruent
Sonorant : include nasal stops, approximants, glides, and vowels.
The sounds /s/ and /z/ are often referred to as Sibilants.
Sibilants may include / ʃ / and / Ȝ / as well .
Liquids: comprise laterals and r-like sounds. In English, these
are /I ɹ/ .
Paris2006
labial:
coronal
dorsal
bilabial, labiodental.
dental, alveolar, post alveolar, retroflex.
palatal, velar.
How vowels are made??
*
Two elements are primarily
In making vowels, the vocal tract is more open than it is for
consonant.
* shape and position of the tongue.
** shape of the lips.
he
Vowel described as:
Heeeeeeeeeee /i/ key unrounded
high front vowel, transcribed /i/.
ah
low back vowel, transcribed /α /.
* The tongue is a primary factor in determining the quality of a
vowel.
Described vowels by the location of the highest point of the
tongue.
* We always put front vowels on the left and back vowels on the
right.
phoneticians
Articulatory of vowels
height, backness, and rounding.
Be sure to write the back vowel as /α /, and not as /a/.
u
Coo /ku/ rounded.
Glides
are moving vowels; they move rapidly from one vowel position
to another vowels.
**glides function either as consonants before a vowel or as the
final portion of a syllable nucleus after a vowel.
Sequence of a simple vowel and a glide.
A diphthong
Paris2006
Paris2006
Paris2006
Paris2006
Paris2006
Paris2006
Paris2006
Paris2006
For example: Using alphabet flash cards, introduce the letter ‘a’ by name and by short sound.
You ‘read’ the flash card by saying: A says ă, ă apple. *
A says ă, ă apple.
E says ĕ, ĕ egg
I says ĭ, ĭ igloo
O says ŏ, ŏ octopus
U says ŭ, ŭ umbrella
Paris2006
Long Vowels are marked with a symbol called a ‘macron.’
Paris2006
Paris2006
Paris2006
Paris2006
Helpful Rules for Vowel Sounds and Spelling
A. Vowels
1. When there is only one vowel in a word, it usually says its short sound. man, den, pig, mop, dug
2. When there are two vowels in a word, the first vowel is usually long and the second
vowel is silent. make, seat, time, boat, cute
B. Basic Spelling Rules
1. I comes before ‘e’ except after ‘c’ or when sounding like ‘ay’ as in neighbor and weigh.
Exceptions: caffeine, codeine, counterfeit, either, foreign, forfeit, height, leisure, neither, protein,
seize, seizure their, weird.
2. A /k/ sound at the end of a one syllable word with a short vowel is usually spelled with a ‘ck’ letter
combination. pack, deck, kick, clock, duck
3. When ‘c’ comes before ‘e, i, and y,’ it usually has a soft /s/ sound. cent, city, cycle
4. When ‘c’ comes before ‘a, o, and u,’ it usually has a hard sound of /k/. can, cot, cup
5. When ‘g’ comes before ‘e, i, and y,’ it usually has a soft sound of /j/. gentle, gin, gym
6. When ‘g’ comes before ‘a, o, and u,’ it usually has a hard sound. game, got, gum
Paris2006
Paris2006
Paris2006
Chapter3
English consonant
aspiration
Puff of air with the /p/ of pie, but not with the /p/ of spy.
tie and sty , cool and school.
Consonant may be pronounced differently in different situations
In each case when a voiceless stop /p t k/ is at the very beginning
of the word as in pie, tie, and cool, the stop is aspirated.
We transcribe aspiration with a small raised (h) [ph th kh]
NOTE: transcribe aspiration is called a diacritic . / ‫التشكٌل‬
Allophones and phoneme
single /p/
Two [p]-sound
Phonemic transcription
Allophonic transcription
Units at the phonemic
Units at the allophonic
Is called phonemic or phonological.
Is called phonetic or allophonic .
/ P/ enclosed in slant lines, called solidi.
[P]
enclosed in square brackets .
called phonemes.
called allophones.
*Phonemes contrast with each other.
/v/ for /f / in fat /fæt/, we get a different word - vat /væt/.
**Allophones not contrast with each other.
Minimal pair big , pig bell ,bill . ‫اختالف بٌن كلمتٌن فً حرف واحد ٌؤدي الى تغٌٌر المعنى‬
* A minimal pair always shows that two sounds contrast.
Rule [voiceless stop) → [aspirated] / initially in a stressed syllabll.
Broad and Narrow transcription
Phonemic
=
Broad
It uses fewer symbol. And shows little phonetic detail.
Ex: Ten /t ε n / ,
tall / t з l /
= phoneme
Allophonic
=
Narrow
shows more non-contrastive, phonetic detail.
Ex: Ten [th ε n ] ,
tall [ th з ł ]
= allophones
Consonant length consonants at the end of a word are in fact slightly longer
than at the beginning.
* some sounds seem to exert greater influence upon their
neighbours than do other sounds.
Paris2006
Note When an alveolar sound precedes a dental /ð Ɵ/, the alveolar
sound usually becomes dental.
Ex: ten tip of the tongue is during the /n/.It is on the alveolar
ridge.
Now try saying theword tenth, and feel where the tip of your
tongue is for the /n/. You will find it against the teeth instead of
in its usual position at the alveolar ridge.
Assimilates" * We can say that in tenth, the alveolar [n] assimilates to the
dental place.
Assimilation Assimilation is the process by which one sound becomes more
like another sound. Assimilation is a very common phonological
process.
Instead of creating totally new symbols for dental. , we write
the alveolar symbol with a diacritic [ ̪ ] .
Ex: alveolar [ t d n l] tenth, width, filth ,at three ,read these,
in the book.
[ tεn̪ Ɵ]
/ ʃ Ʒ tʃ ʤ /
Dorsal / Fronting
Indicate this lip rounding with the diacritic [ʷ]:
If you say cheat, jack, shell, Giles, and red, you will likely see
that these are pronounced with lip rounding, even before an
unrounded vowel.
we can transcribe the fronted variety with a diacritic [͙ ͙] .
plus sign; this diacritic means that the sound is articulated a
bit more forward than usual.
Ex:
key
[ kI͙ ] ,
kid
The symbol [ ɱ] is used for a labiodental nasal.
Sympathy, Symphony , Synthesis , Syntax ,
Aspiration involves a delay in the onset of voicing.
We use a small circleunder the sonorants to show that they are
voiceless. Pulm [P ͪl ̥Λm ] .
Coarticulation Coarticulation refers to the fact that the gestures of one sound
are notcompletely discrete as to timing from those of its
neighbours.
Paris2006
‫احرف هنغلقت هتداخلت‬
A particular type of coarticulation, called overlapping .
Try saying apt You will probably feel the tip of your tongue
already at the alveolar ridge before the /p/ is released.
we say that in a sequence of two overlapping stops, the first
is released silently. ; we can show this as [p͡t ] .
Voiced at the phonemic level may be voiceless at the phonetic
level.
The raised corner
[ ̚]
release: lab [ læb̥¬ ]
is used to show stops with inaudible
Paris2006
Paris2006
Chapter 4 English vowel
Paris2006
Paris2006
Paris2006
Chapter 4 English vowel
monophthongs Single vowel.
lax vowels only occur in closed syllable.
Schwa is not a typical lax vowel in that it occurs in both open
and closed syllable. vodka, appeal.***
Tense vowels occur in both open and closed syllable.
: pea, peat; purr, purred; car, card; saw, sawed; shoe, move;
pay, pate; go, goat; Lie, line; cow, cowl; boy, coin;
Beer, weird; pair, dared; moor, moored.
The tense vowels are allophonically longer than the lax vowels.
The vowel nuclei /i/ and /u/ contain very short glides.**
That is phonetically they are very short diphthongs [ij] and [uw].
[aw]: high [haj], how [haw],
Smoothing The diphthongs / aj – aw- ɔj - ej – aw / occur before / ə /
***** Fire /faiər / hour/aʊər / joyous / ʤɔiəs/ , player/pleIər/Slower
/ Sloʊər /.
Note: that smoothing tends to reduce two syllables to one,
lengthening the vowel.
Linking
/ɹ/
In the eighteenth century in southern England, /ɹ/was lost at
the end of a phrase or before a consonant. very far
GA: Before / ɹ /
Rule: The general rule in English is that vowels are longer before a
Voiced sound than before a voiceless sound.
Try saying - bee , beat . *you will be able to hear that the
vowel-in an open syllable is also longer than before the
voiceless consonant.
In diphthongs before voiced consonants, the vowel portion is
lengthened, not the glide. [a'j a'w ɔ'j ].
A raised dot [']shows length, and a colon [:] shows even greater
length.
Vowels and stress We distinguished three levels of stress: primary, secondary,
and unstressed.
NOTE:
As we mentioned above, the tense-Iax distinction is found only
in syllables with primary or secondary stress.
In unstressed syllables, the only common vowels are /əɪ/ .
Paris2006
Final /i/ At the end of a word / both RP and GA have an unstressed /i/
even though the syllable is open. Happy, happily.
Before /l/ Before /l/ the vowels /i u/ frequently have a
schwa glide. Peel , pool.
Nasalised vowels Vowels occurring next to a nasal consonant /mnŋ/ are
frequently nasalised. me [mi ͂ ].
*Nasalisation is shown by a tilde [ ͂ ] above the vowel.
schwa glide Ə
Chapter5
English Suprasegmentals.
Suprasegmentals involves
two different aspects.
A. Organized to form larger units, in particular, syllables.
B.the study of phonetic a entity which apply to syllables or longer
stretches of speech.
Syllables AII languages have syllables.
Structure * The vowel of a syllable, and any following semivowel, is
regarded as the nucleus or centre of the syllable.
Nucleus or centre : Can be consonant like [ l r m n ŋ] *bird /bɔ:d/ no vowel sound.
Read /ri:d/ onset= [r ] ryhm[i:d] nucleus =[i:] coda[d] .
‫بدايت الوقطع‬
*The elements before the nucleus are called the onset.
‫ نهايت الوقطع‬/ ‫* ذيل‬The elements after the nuocleus are called the coda.
‫ * قافيت‬The nucleus and coda taken together are known as the rhyme.
Ending with Vowel..PEE
* A syllable with an empty coda is called an open syllable.
Ending with Consonant. TEN *One with a filled coda is called a closed syllable.
Note that * the /j/ or /w/ of a diphthong belongs to the nucleus and
does not close a syllable. /naw/
*
phonotactics The study of the possible combinations of sounds in a language is
called phonotactics.
It is very similar to the words Look and Foot. Both /bnIk/ and /lʊt/
are phonotactics gaps in English.
Onset The beginning sound All consonants except /ŋ / occur as the onset of the syllable.
*The sound / Ʒ/ is found initially in very few words, borrowed from
French: gigue, genre.
Paris2006
**The onset may be empty, as in ice, on, egg.
Consonant clusters also occur in the onset.
Coda The consonant /h/ does not occur in the coda; in RP /ɹ/ does
not occur in the coda.
Note: The coda may be empty in one-syllable words if the nucleus
Contains a tense vowel.
Many clusters occur in the coda; some are described below.
Notice that many of the clusters exist only because a suffix
(such as'plural','third singular present', or 'past') in /s/ or /z/ is
added.
Syllable division Usually syllables are fairly easy to count.
The correct choice is determined by the principle of maximization
of onsets. Break: di-ctate, dic-tate, dict-at .
This principle means that we make the onset as large as possible.
In the case of dictate, the largest onset would be di-ctate.
Note: that /kt / never occurs in English as the onset of the
first syllable of a word.
Therefore, we try the division dic-tate; here, /t/ is a possible onset
for a word.
Note: Second principle of ambisyllabicity.
This principle says that in an unstressed
syllable, the first consonant of the onset
also serves as the coda of the
preceding syllable. Ex: Seven
Stress Greater loudness, higher pitch, greater length contribute to the
perception of stress.
A stressed syllable in English often has all three of these
characteristic.
Levels of stress A word like telegram has three levels of stress.
We mark the strongest or primary stress with a short raised
stroke [ˡ ]
the middle level or secondary stress with a short
lowered stroke [ ͵]
These strokes are placed before the onset of the affected syllable
Pitch and intonation
To distinguish different words; they are called tone languages.
Intonation is the use of pitch in a phonetic phrase.
*The pitch pattern of each sentence is drawn above the sentence.
Note: If a foot has several syllables, the syllables are said faster.
If a foot has only one syllable, the nucleus is lengthened.
This is necessary to equalise the time between stresses.
Paris2006
Paris2006
Paris2006
Paris2006
Paris2006
Paris2006
Paris2006
Paris2006
How Many Diphthongs Are There In English?
Paris2006
Phonemically, I come up with these:
1. /aɪ/ as in price, my, high, flight, mice
2. /aʊ/ as in mouth, now, trout
3. /eɪ/ as in face, date, day, they, grey, pain, reign
4. /ɔɪ/ as in choice, boy, hoist
5. /oʊ/ as in goat, toe, tow, soul, rope, cold
6. /juː/ as in cute, few, dew, ewe
7. /jə/ as in onion, union, million, scallion, scullion
I know of no diphthongs in English that have no glide in them, although whether you write your glides
with /j/ and /w/ or as semivowels makes no great difference. This leads to alternate transcriptions, as
in /eɪ/ for /ej/, and /aʊ/ for /aw/.
If there is no glide, I don’t count it as a diphthong. That means that I don’t read /ʊə/ as a single syllable. Rather,
it has two syllables, as in the programming language named Lua /ˈlʊːə/. I guess I might write that /ˈlʊː.ə/ if I
thought people might misunderstand me. And no, it is not homophonic with monosyllabic lure /ˈl(j)ʊːɹ/.








/eɪ/ as in day, pay, say, lay. (Examples)
/aɪ/ as in sky, buy, cry, tie. (Examples)
/ɔɪ/ as in boy, toy, coy or the first syllable of soya. (Examples)
/ɪə/ in beer (the drink), pier, hear. (Examples)
/eə/ as in bear (the animal), pair and hair. (Examples)
/ʊə/ as in tour, poor (talking posh!) or the first syllable of tourist. (Examples)
/əʊ/ as in oh, no, so or phone. (Examples)
/aʊ/ as in all the words of "How now brown cow!" (Examples)
The English Phonetic Alphabet (EPA) notation describes this clearly:

long a /Ay/ – great, made, day, hey, rain, eight, chaos, suede, gauge …

long e /Ey/ – meat, we, tree, peace, piece, quay, ski, naive, suite …

long i /Iy/ – my, eye, aisle, knife, pie, find, I, choir …

long o /Ow/ – go, know, boat, toe, goal, brooch, sew, bologna …

long u /Uw/ – two, you, who, due, suit, new, cool, ewe, queue, lose …
Two more that could also be considered long for the same reason are:

/Oy/ as in boy, noise, royal and buoy

/Aw/ as in owl, house, drought
The three r vowels were a vowel plus r make a distinct new sound:
 /Ar/ – charcoal, park, heart, R

/Er/ – purple, first, word, were, heard

/Or/ – orange, four, more, war, door
Articulatory phonetics / The speech organs
Paris2006
All the sounds we make when we speak are the result of muscles contacting. The muscles in the chest that we use for
breathing produce the flow of air that is needed for almost all speech sounds; muscles in the larynx produce many different
modifications in the flow of air from the chest to the mouth. After passing through the larynx, the air goes through what we call
the Vocal tract, which ends at the mouth and nostrils; we call the part comprising the mouth the oral cavity and the part that
leads to the nostrils the nasal cavity. Here the air from lungs escapes into the atmosphere. We have a large and complex set
of muscles that can produce changes in the shape of the vocal tract, and in order to learn how the sounds of speech are
produced it is necessary to become familiar with the different parts of them is called Articulatory phonetics or speech
organs.
1. The pharynx is a tube which begins just above the larynx. It is about 7cm long in women and about 8cm in men,
and at its top end it is divided into two, one part being the back of the oral cavity and other being the beginning of
the way through the nasal cavity. If you look in your mirror with your mouth open, you can see the back of the
pharynx.
2. The soft palate or Velum is seen in the diagram in a position that allows air to pass through the nose and
through the mouth. Yours is probably in that position now, but often in speech it is raised so that air cannot escape
through the nose. The other important thing about the soft palate is that it is one of the articulators that can be
touched by the tongue. When we make the sounds k.g the tongue is in contact with the lower side of the soft palate,
and we call these velar consonants.
3. The hard palate is often called the “roof of the mouth”. You can fell its smooth curved surface with your tongue.
A consonant made with the tongue close to the hard palate is called palatal. The sound j in‘ yes’ is palatal.
4. The alveolar ridge is between the top front teeth and the hard plate. You can fell its shape with your tongue. Its
surface is really much rougher than it fells, and is covered with little ridges. You can only see these if you have a
mirror small enough to go inside your mouth, such as those used by dentists. Sounds made with the tongue
touching here (such as t, d, n,) are called alveolar.
5. The tongue is very important articulator and it can be moved into many different places and different shapes. It
is usual to divide the tongue into different parts, though there are no clear dividing lines within the tongue. Fig. 2
shows the tongue on a larger scale with these parts shown: tip, blade, front, back and root. (This use of the word
“front” often seems rather strange at first.).
6. The teeth (upper and lower) are usually shown in diagrams like Fig. 1 only at the front of the mouth, immediately
behind the lips. This is for the sake of a simple diagram, and you should remember that most speakers have teeth
to the sides of their mouths, back almost to the soft palate. The tongue is in contact with the upper side teeth for
many speech sounds. Sounds made with the tongue touching the front teeth are called dental.
7. The lips are important in speech. They can be pressed together (when we produce the sounds p , b ), brought
into contact with the teeth (as in f , v), or rounded to produce the lip-shape for vowels like uù. Sounds in which the
lips are in contact with each other are called bilabial, while those with lip-to-teeth contact are called labiodental.
The seven articulators described above are the main ones used in speech, but there are three other things to
remember. Firstly, the larynx could also be described as an articulator – a very complex and independent one.
Secondly, the jaws are sometimes called articulators; certainly we move the lower jaw a lot in speaking. But the
jaws are not articulators in the same way as the others, because they cannot themselves make contact with other
articulators. Finally, although there is practically nothing that we can do with the nose and the nasal cavity, they are
a very important part of our equipment for making sounds (what is sometimes called our vocal apparatus),
particularly nasal consonants such as m, n . Again, we cannot really describe the nose and the nasal cavity as
articulators in the same sense as (1) to (7) above.