back or posterior ends, where each is attached to 1 of 2 small cartilages, the
arytenoids. As air passes through he space btw. the vocal folds, which is
called the glottis, different glottal states (voiceless, voiced,
murmur/whispery voice, whisper) are produced, depending on their
positioning.
LINGUISTICS
1.
Phonetics and Phonology
The branch of linguistics, which examines the inventory, and structure of the sounds of
language is called phonetics.
Human languages display a wide variety of sounds, called phones or speech sounds. The
class of possible speech sounds is finite, and a portion of the total set will be found in the
inventory of any human language. The class of possible speech sounds is also universal.
Any human, child or adult, can learn how to pronounce these sounds.
There are 2 ways of approaching phonetics:
i)
studying the physiological mechanisms of speech production: articulatory
phonetics
ii)
dealing with speech sounds in terms of how we hear them: acoustic
phonetics
1888 — IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) sys. of transcription; attempts to
represent each sound of human speech with a single symbol. (Symbols: enclosed in
brackets [ ] .)
Many alphabets, including the IPA, represent speech in the form of segments, or
individual speech sounds. The syllable is also represented in some writing systems (e.g.
Japanese). Segments are composed of smaller subunits called features such as ‘nasal’.
Features represent individual aspects of articulatory control or acoustic effects produced
by articulation.
I) The sound-producing system:
Sound is produced when air is set in motion. The air supply is provided by the lungs. The
sound source is in the larynx, where a set of muscles called the vocal folds (or vocal
cords) is located. The filters are the organs above the larynx: the tube of the throat
between the oral cavity and the larynx, which is called the pharynx, the oral cavity, and
the nasal cavity. These passages are collectively known as the vocal tract.
i)
We take air into the lungs and then expel it during speech. A certain level of
air pressure, needed to keep the speech mechanism function steadily, is
maintained by the action of various sets of muscles coming into play during
the course of utterance. These muscles are: the intercostals (the muscles
between the ribs) & the diaphragm (the large sheet of muscles that
separates the chest cavity from the abdomen).
ii)
As air flows out of the lungs up the trachea (windpipe), it passes through a
box-like structure made of cartilage and muscle, the larynx (commonly
known as the voice box or Adam’s apple). The main portion of the larynx is
formed by the thyroid cartilage, which rests on the ring-shaped cricoid
cartilage. Fine sheets of muscle flare from the inner sides of the larynx,
forming the paired vocal folds (vocal cords), which are each attached to the
thyroid cartilage at the front of the larynx, & to the arytenoids cartilages at
the back. They can be pulled apart or drawn closer together, esp. at their
The sound-producing system
The larynx
1
According to place of articulation: labials, bilabials, labiodentals, dentals, interdentals,
alveolars, palato-alveolars (or alveopalatals), palatals, velars, labiovelars, uvulars,
pharyngeals, glottals.
The lips, tongue, velum, & glottis can be positioned in different ways to produce different
sound types. These various configurations are called the manners of articulation.
According to manner of articulation: (voiced, voiceless), oral, nasal, stop, fricative,
affricate, strident, sibilant
PLACE OF ARTICULATION
The glottal states
II) Sound classes:
The sounds of language can be grouped into classes, based on the phonetic properties
they share. Sounds fall into 2 major classes: vowels and consonants. Another class, the
glides, shares properties of both vowels and consonants.
Consonants:
- may be voiced or voiceless
- are made with a narrow or complete closure in the vocal tract
- the airflow is either blocked momentarily or restricted so much that noise is
produced as air flows past the constriction
Consonant articulation:
Each point at which the airstream can be modified to produce a different sound is called a
place (or point) of articulation.
The vocal tract.
MANNERS OF
ARTICULATION
Bilabial
Plosive
[p] [b]
Labiodental
[θ]
[ð]
[s] [z]
[m]
Lateral (liquid)
Approximant
(glide)
Palatal
Velar
Glottal
[k] [g]
[ʔ]
[ʃ] [ʒ]
[h]
[ʧ] [ʤ]
Affricate
Nasal
Palatoalveolar
[t] [d]
[f] [v]
Fricative
Dental Alveolar
[w] (labiovelar)
[n]
[l]
[ŋ]
[r]
[j]
[w] [ʍ]
Vowels:
- produced with little obstruction in the vocal tract & are generally voiced
- more sonorous than consonants, we perceive them as louder and longer lasting
- their greater sonority allows them to form the basis of syllables1
Different vowels are produced by varying the placement of the body of the tongue and
shaping the lips. The shape of the cavity can be further altered by protruding the lips to
produce rounded vowels, or by lowering the velum to produce a nasal vowel. Vowels
may be tense or lax, depending on the degree of vocal tract constriction during their
articulation.
2 major types of English vowels: simple vowels (=pure vowels or monophthongs) and
diphthongs. Simple vowels don’t show a noticeable change in quality; diphthongs show
a change in quality that are due to tongue movement away from the initial vowel
articulation towards another vowel position. In St.BrE there are 9 diphthongs & they fall
into 2 classes: centring diphthongs and rising diphthongs (also called closing
diphthongs. In all cases, the diphthongs are somewhat longer than the short simple
vowels.
1
Syllable: a peak of sonority surrounded by less sonorous segments. A vowel is said to form the nucleus of a
syllable.
2
Simple vowel
pit
[i]
pet
[e]
port
[ɔ:]
pot
[ɒ]
pat
[æ]
putt
[ʌ]
part
[ɑ:]
Diphthong
air
[eə]
beer
[iə]
oar
[ɔə]
poor
[ʊə]
bite
[ai]
say
[ei]
now
[aʊ]
grow
[əʊ]
toy
[ɔi]
The tongue moves from high front [i:]to low back [u:] position.
Basic position for RP vowels:
Front
Central
Back
High
Mid-high
i:
i
u:
u
e
Rounded
Cardinal
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
IPA
[i]
[e]
[ɛ]
[a]
[ɑ]
[ɔ]
[o]
[u]
[y]
[ø]
[œ]
[ɶ]
[ɒ]
[ʌ]
[ɤ]
[ɯ]
[ɨ]
[ʉ]
Description
close front unrounded vowel
close-mid front unrounded vowel
open-mid front unrounded vowel
open front unrounded vowel
open back unrounded vowel
open-mid back rounded vowel
close-mid back rounded vowel
close back rounded vowel
close front rounded vowel
close-mid front rounded vowel
open-mid front rounded vowel
open front rounded vowel
open back rounded vowel
open-mid back unrounded vowel
close-mid back unrounded vowel
close back unrounded vowel
close central unrounded vowel
close central rounded vowel
Mid
ə/
ʌ
Mid-low
ɔ:
ɒ
ɑ
All of the above vowels are tense (except [æ] and [ɒ]). Some vowels of English are made
with roughly the same tongue position as the tense vowels, but with a less constricted
articulation; they are called lax vowels.
Tense vowels: i:, ɑ:, u:, ɔ:, ɜ:, ei, ai, ɔi, əʊ, aʊ, eə, iə, ʊə, ɔə (marginal)
Lax vowels: i, e, æ, ʊ, ɒ, ə
The vowel labelled schwa [ə] is called a reduced vowel. In addition to being lax, it is
characterized by very brief duration.
In English the tense vowels tend to be longer than their lax counterparts. For this reason,
some phoneticians refer to them as long and short vowels respectively. Diphthongs are
longer than simple vowels.
Cardinal vowels: a set of reference vowels used by phoneticians in describing the sounds
of languages. For instance, the vowel of the English word "feet" can be described with
reference to cardinal vowel 1, [i], which is the cardinal vowel closest to it.
Vowel sound produced when the tongue is in an extreme position, either front or back,
high or low. The current system was systematised by Daniel Jones in the early 20th
century, though the idea goes back to earlier phoneticians, notably Ellis and Bell.
Low
æ
Glides:
- may be though of as rapidly articulated vowels — produced with an articulation
like that of a vowel
- pattern or function like consonants
- can also be called semivowels or semiconsonants
III) Stress and intonation:
All phones have certain inherent suprasegmental or prosodic properties that form their
makeup no matter their place or manner of articulation. These properties are: pitch,
loudness, and length.
3
Pitch: auditory property of a sound that enables us to place it on a scale that ranges from
low to high; esp. noticeable in sonorous sounds
All sounds have some degree of intrinsic loudness and occupy a certain stretch of time—
they give the subjective impression of length.
Two kinds of controlled pitch movement found in human language are called tone and
intonation. A lg. is said to be a tone language when differences in word meaning are
signalled by differences in pitch (e.g.: Mandarin Chinese; Sarcee, an Athapaskan lg.).
Level tones that signal meaning differences are called register tones: 2 or 3 register tones
are the norm in most of the world’s register tone lg.-es.
In some lg.-es, tones change pitch on single syllabic elements. Moving pitches that signal
meaning differences are called contour tones. (In Mandarin, both register & contour
tones are heard.)
Intonation: serves to convey information of a broadly meaningful nature. E.g. falling
pitch at end of Fred parked the car is called terminal (intonation) contour. A rising or
level intonation, called a non-terminal (intonation) contour, often signals
incompleteness.
Tone and intonation are not mutually exclusive. Tone lg.-es show intonation of all types.
This is possible, since the tones are not absolute but relative pitches.
Stress: in any utterance, some vowels are perceived as more prominent than others.
Syllabic segments perceived as relatively more prominent are stressed. Stress is a cover
term for the combined effects of pitch, loudness and length. (E.g.: differing stress
placement in Eng.: (an) éxport [éksp̀ɔ:t] — (to) expórt [eksṕɔ:t].)
Moving tones: fall (\), rise (/), fall-rise (\/), rise-fall (/\)
A syllable, which carries a tone, is called a tonic syllable. (E.g.: /You.)Each tone unit has
only 1 tonic syllable. The head is all of that part of the tone unit, which extends from the
1st stressed syllable up to the tonic syllable. (|Bill |called to |give me \these.Head + tonic
syllable). The pre-head is composed of all the unstressed syllables in a tone unit
preceding the 1st stressed syllable. (In an \hour.Pre-head + tonic syllable) The tail: any
syllables btw. the tonic syllable & the end of the tone unit. (\Look at it. One tonic
syllable + tail.) The tonic syllable is often called the nucleus.
IV) Assimilation:
The process of articulation is a complex one, thus speech production often results in the
articulation of one sound affecting that of another. This phenomenon is called coarticulation.
Some processes appear to make articulation less efficient, others may result in more
easily perceivable speech and add a segment under certain conditions.
The processes:
Assimilation: result from influence of one segment on another. It always results from a
sound becoming more like another nearby sound in terms of 1 or more of its phonetic
characteristics. Regressive assimilation: moving backwards to a preceding segment —
e.g.: nasalization pan in N-AmE or Cockney. The nasalization of vowels following
nasal consonants in Scots Gaelic is an example of progressive assimilation, since the
nasality moves forward from the nasal consonant onto the vowel.
Voicing assimilation is also widespread. Devoicing is a kind of assimilation—e.g. for
many speakers of Eng., voiceless liquids & glides occur after voiceless stops in words
such as please [pɫi:z], etc. The opposite of devoicing is voicing (e.g.: in Dutch).
Assimilation for place of articulation is also widespread in the world’s languages (e.g.:
possible—impossible, potent—impotent, tolerable—intolerable  m & n have the same
place of articulation as the stop consonant that follows it). Flapping is a process in which
a dental or alveolar stop articulation changes to a flap [ɾ] articulation. — e.g. in casual NAm. Pronunciations of butter, fatter, etc. The alveolar flap is always voiced.
Dissimilation: the opposite of assimilation, results in 2 sounds becoming less alike in
articulatory or acoustic terms. The resulting sequence of sounds is easier to articulate &
distinguish. One commonly heard example of ~ in English occurs in words ending with 3
consecutive fricatives, such as fifths. The final [fθs] sequence is often dissimilated to
[fts].
Deletion: a process that removes a segment from certain phonetic contexts; it occurs in
everyday rapid speech in many languages. In English, a schwa [ə] is often deleted when
the next vowel n the word is stressed. (E.g.: parade: [pəréid] [préid] in rapid speech)
Epenthesis: a process that inserts a syllabic or non-syllabic segment within an existing
string of segments. (E.g.: warmth[wɔ:rmpθ])
Metathesis: a process that reorders a sequence of segments. Common in the speech of
children — e.g.: spaghettipesghetti [pəsketi:]
Vowel reduction: in many languages, the articulation of vowels may move to a more
central position when the vowels are unstressed. Typically, the outcome is schwa — e.g.:
photograph [fə́ʊtəgrɑ:f]↔ photography [fət΄grəfi].
V) Minimal pairs, phonemes and allophones:
The flow of speech can be divided into segments, i.e. individual speech sounds.
Syllable: the basic unit in which segments are grouped; a unit of linguistic structure that
consists of a syllabic element—normally a vowel—and any segments that are associated
with it. A third unit of phonological analysis is the feature, i.e. the smallest building
blocks of phonological structure:
Wd
Word level
σ
s
- syllabic
- sonorant
- coronal
ɛ
g
●●●
σ
m
Syllable level
ə
n
t
Segment level
Feature level
●
●
●
Segments are said to contrast (or to be distinctive or be in opposition) when their
presence alone may distinguish forms with different meanings from each other. A basic
test for a sound’s distinctiveness is called a minimal pair test. A minimal pair consists of
4
2 forms with distinct meanings that differ by only 1 segment found in the same
positioning each form. E.g.: sip—zip, tap—tab, sum—sun, wet—yet, etc. The phonetic
context in which a sound occurs is called its environment. Pairs that show segments in
nearly identical environments, such as shoulder/soldier are called near-minimal pairs.
They help to establish contrasts when no minimal pairs can be found.
Certain sounds are in complementary distribution. E.g.: voiceless and voiced ls vary
systematically in that all of the voiceless ls occur predictably after the class of voiceless
stops. Since no voiced [l] ever occurs in the same phonetic environment as a voiceless
one (& vice versa), we say that the 2 variants of l are in complementary distribution. (e.g.:
blue, slip, leaf ↔ plough, clap, play).
Predictable sounds that are phonetically similar, and that don’t contrast with each other,
are grouped together into a phonological unit called a phoneme (e.g.:/l/ ). These variants,
which are referred to as allophones (e.g.: [l̥ ] [l] ), are in comp. distr.
We can find at least 3 pronunciations of a word like stop: [stɑp!], [stɑp̚ ] and [stɑʔp].
Since there is no difference in the meaning of these forms, and since the final consonants
are phonetically similar, we say that these sounds are in free variation, and that they are
all allophones of the phoneme /p/. We never pronounce a phoneme, only its allophones.
VI) Syllables and syllabic phonology:
The syllable has internal structure: it is composed of a nucleus (usually a vowel) and its
associated non-syllabic segments:
σ
Onset (O)
Rhyme (R)
Nucleus (N)
Coda (C)
s p r
i
n
t
The nucleus is the syllable’s only obligatory member; it is a syllabic element that forms
the core of a syllable. The coda consists of those elements that follow the nucleus in the
same syllable. The rhyme is made up of the nucleus & the coda. The onset is made up of
those elements that precede the rhyme in the same syllable.
Phonotactics, the set of constraints on how sequences of segments pattern, forms part of
a speaker’s knowledge of the phonology of his or her language. (E.g.: the sequence [fpr]
is never found in English, while [pr] is a permissible Eng. onset.)
Gaps in a lg’s inventory of forms that correspond to non-occurring but possible forms are
called accidental gaps. Occasionally, an accidental gap will be filled in by the invention
of a new word (e.g.: Kodak, perestroika, taco, etc.) Gaps in the occurring syllable
structures of a lg. that result from the exclusion of certain sequences are called systematic
gaps. E.g. certain onset sequences like /bz/, /pt/ are systematic gaps in the pattern of Eng.
 pterodactyl=>*σpt-, but σt-. Such phonotactics are lg.-specific.
Each lg. defines its own syllable structure, although there are universal principles that
interact with lg.-specific factors. One reason for treating syllables as units of phonological
structure is that they are relevant to stating generalizations about the distribution of
allophonic features.
Eng. voiceless stops are aspirated when initial in a stressed syllable (e.g.: pen, tone, kin,
etc.) Some Eng. words, such as upper, happy, walking, don’t show aspiration where it is
expected, given that the syllabification procedure results in the following: /ʌ.pə/, /hæ.pi/,
/wɔ:.kiŋ/. This fact is accounted for by assuming that the voiceless stops in these forms
are simultaneously in both syllables, a phenomenon known as ambisyllabicity. In words
with ambisyllabic voiceless stops, it is assumed that the stress attracts the voiceless stop
into the preceding syllable. This requires us to assume further that a word is resyllabified
after stress has been applied to the appropriate syllable.
Whatever their inherent length, Eng. vowels are phonetically somewhat shorter than they
would normally be, when they occur before voiceless consonants, before sonorant
consonants, & in word-final position ( bat vs. bad; face vs. phase, etc); & they are
longer when occurring before voiced non-sonorant consonants.
Features: the units of phonological structure that make up segments, the most basic
phonological units. They reflect activities such as voicing, tongue position, lip rounding,
etc. The representation of a segment by features captures a coordinated activity by
placing features in an array called a matrix. E.g.:
[ɑ:]
+ syllabic
- consonantal
These features define the segment as consonant, vowel, or glide
+ sonorant
- high
+ low
These features define the placement of the tongue
+ back
- round
 This feature defines lip rounding
+ tense
 This feature defines tenseness/laxness
Each feature may represent a phonologically relevant characteristic of segments. In
phonological terms, features capture natural classes, which are classes of sounds that
share a feature or features. [voice] is a distinctive feature of English. Features may be
grouped into a feature hierarchy, which is a representation of how features are related to
each other:
Major class features
consonantal
sonorant
syllabic
o
o [laryngeal]
[voice]
[CG]
Root node
o[place]
o[manner]
[SG]
o[labial]
[round]
o[coronal]
o[dorsal]
[anterior] [strident] [high] [low] [back] [tense]
[nasal] [continuant] [lateral] [DR]
5