Linguistics week 6
Phonetics 3
1
Aspiration

Aspirated and unaspirated consonants
–
–

English: spit vs pit (aspiration difference)
–
–

ㄅ is unaspirated [p]
ㄆ is aspirated [ph] (puff of air)
Compare pit vs bit
That is a voicing difference
Aspiration is much less important in English than
in Chinese
–
Can you explain why?
2
Mandarin sounds (not yet)

http://www.wfu.edu/~moran/Cathay_Cafe/I
PA_NPA_4.htm
3
How many words, morphemes, syllables,
consonants and vowels in the following?
Count semivowels as consonants.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
Greenhouse
Red houses
Women
我們
Those sheep
老鼠
老太太
玻璃
John drinks coffee
他不喝咖啡
4
Syllable patterns (actually this is
part of Phonology)


With few exceptions, all syllables have exactly
one vowel (V)
In Mandarin, there exist 3 possible patterns
–
–
–

V
CV
CVC, where the last C must be [n] or [ŋ]
English is more flexible
–
CCCVCCCC is possible, but still only one vowel
5
Check
table 6.2,
p243
6
Parameters for describing
consonants

So far (this is not complete yet) we have
–
–
–
–

Airstream (usually the same for all consonants)
Place of articulation
Voicing
Manner of articulation
So, [p] is …
–
–
–
–
egressive pulmonic
bilabial
voiceless
plosive
7
Homework: consonants

For all the plosives, nasals and fricatives
that exist in English
–
–
Learn the IPA and Fromkin phonetic symbols
Learn how to describe each one in terms of the
four parameters, like we just did for [p]
8
9
Clarification re [ʃ] and [ʒ]

Fromkin says these sounds are palatal
–


also known as alveopalatal
The IPA chart says they are postalveolar
In the class (including today’s quiz) any of
these will be OK
–
Aathough actually I don’t like the use of
palatal here!
10
Clarification 2


Sounds like [t,d,n] are normally alveolar
But they can be dental or postalveolar
–
It depnds on the speaker, and the shape of their
mouth.
11
12
More manners of articulation:

Trills (articulators collide rapidly and
repeatedly)
–
–
–

Bilabial (brrr: not really part of English) [ʙ]
Alveolar (perro dog, in Spanish) [r]
Uvular (Paris, in French) [ʀ]
Tap (usually alveolar)
–
–
Like a trill, but only one collision
In Spanish pero but [ɾ]
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And glottal consonants…

The glottal stop [ʔ]
–
–
–
–

Usually without plosion
Used in Cantonese 識唔識, 得唔得
Taiwanese?
And English, in London accent!
The glottal fricative [h] is generally used to
represent English “h”, and ㄏ spoken by
Taiwanese
–
In mainland Mandarin, it’s [x], a velar fricative
14
15
Some other fricative sounds

Mandarin has a voiceless retroflex fricative
–
–

There is also a voiced retroflex fricative
–
–
–

It is [ʂ], representing ㄕ
Retroflexion means that the tongue is curled
[ʐ], aka ㄖ
However, some people transcribe this as [ɻ]
They believe it is a retroflex approximant
And, there is a voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative
–
[ɕ], or ㄒ (only the consonantal part)
16
Affricates

A plosive followed by a homorganic
fricative
–
–
–
–
Homorganic = “same place of articulation”
so [kf] in breakfast is not an affricate, because
[k] and [f] do not have the same place of artic.
[ʣ] and [ʦ] are affricates, but are not normally
treated so in English phonology
The only affricate English phonemes are /ʤ/
and /ʧ/
17
Affricates in Mandarin



/tsʰ/ and /ts/
/tʂʰ/ and /tʂ/
/tɕʰ/ and /tɕ/
–
–
–



Can you guess what they are?
What is the ʰ?
Why have I suddenly started using /asd/ instead of
[asd]? (slant brackets instead of square brackets)
ㄘ and ㄗ
ㄔ and ㄓ(retroflex affricate)
ㄐ and ㄑ(alveolo-palatal affricate)
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19
IPA: approximants (all voiced)

An approximant
–
–

2 common realizations of /r/ (in addition to the trills
described earlier)
–
–



occurs as a consonant in syllabic patterning (CVC)
but, it’s like a vowel, because the articulators usually don’t touch.
[ɻ] retroflex approximant of Mandarin
[ɹ] alveolar approximant of English
A palatal approximant [j], often corresponding to the
English spelling “y”
A labial (=with rounded lips) velar approximant [w]
Then there is lateral approximant [l]
–
Lateral = “side”, that is where the obstruction is
20
Glides and liquids in Fromkin

The treatment of approximants in Fromkin
is different
–
–
You can read about it yourself on pp 249-50
Or you can just use the IPA treatment
21
This week


Sound description, recording and
animation. Take a look at
http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/
about.html# and click on “English library”.
Read about vowels, pp252-256. What are
the parameters for describing vowels (like
voicing, airstream etc with consonants)?
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