Phonetics: The Sounds of Language

1. Phonetics: The Sounds of Language CONSONANT SOUNDS

2. Three ways of approaching phonetics: • Articulatory Phonetics: • Physiological mechanism of speech production. • Acoustic Phonetics: • The physical properties of sound waves. • Auditory Phonetics: • Perception of the sounds by the brain.

3. Phonetics of languages • You can make a lot of noises with your mouth, but only some of these are used in speech. • Almost every language uses a different set of these possible sounds. • We will mostly focus on English sounds for now.

4. Tomato or Tomahto? • http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUS244&q=gershwin+let%27s+call+the+whole+thing+off&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=lv-aSqeSD82pnAfu-6WWCA&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4#q=+let%27s+call+the+whole+thing+off&hl=en&emb=0

5. Differences in pronunciation • Tomato/Tomahto • Do you say pin/pen in the same way? • Do you say push or poosh? • How do you say ‘car’? How about ‘dawn’?

6. How do you best symbolize the different pronunciation? • There are lots of conventions used. (see p. 41) • How well does the English alphabet represent sounds?

7. 5 problems with English spelling • The same sound can be represented by different letters: sea, see, scene, receive, thief, ameoba, machine • One letter can represent several different sounds: fish, light; chart, character • Two sounds may be represented by a single letter: I; use; judge • Two letters may be used to indicate a single sound: ship, three, leisure, enough • Some letters represent no sound at all: base, knight, psychology

8. International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) • The IPA is consistent, unambiguous, and there is always a one-to-one sound to symbol correspondence. • IPA has been developing since 1888 • These symbols can be used to transcribe the sounds of any language. • The system represents each sound of human speech with a single symbol. • The symbol is enclosed in brackets [ ].

9. IPA, continued • IPA website http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/ipa/ipachart.html • To use a symbol to describe what someone says, we put the symbols in square brackets “[ ]”. • You will need to be able to: • identify the number of sounds in a word • transcribe English words using IPA • translate from IPA into English spelling • See page 43 for examples of symbols

10. Articulation of sound • Articulation is the motion or positioning of some part of the vocal tract with respect to some other vocal tract surface in the production of a speech sound • English uses a pulmonic (=lung) egressive (=blowing out) air stream mechanism. • Vowels are usually the nucleus of the syllable and consonants are usually the onset (start) or coda (end) of the syllable.

12. To describe articulation for consonants: • Is the sound voiced or voiceless? (action of the vocal folds) • Where is the airstream constricted? (place of articulation) • How is the airstream constricted? (manner of articulation) • Descriptions are in the order of Voicing+Place+Manner

16. Places of Articulation • Bilabial  [p], [b], [m] • Labiodental  [f], [v] • Interdental  [], [] • Alveolar  [t], [d], [s], [z], [], [r], [n]

17. Places of Articulation • Palatal  [], [], [t], [d], [] • Velar  [k], [g], [N], [w] • Glottal  [h]

18. Places of Articulation

20. Manner of Articulation • Plosive (Stop): Complete and momentary closure of airflow through the vocal tract. • [p], [t], [k], [b], [d], [g] • Nasal: The airflow passes through the nasal passages. • [n], [m], [] • Fricative: Continuous airflow through the mouth. • [f], [], [s], [], [h], [v], [], [z], []

21. Manner of Articulation • Affricate: The stop articulation is released and the tongue moves rapidly away. • [t], [d] • Liquid: Air escapes through the mouth along the lowered sides of the tongue. • [], [r] • Glide: semi-consonants. • [ j ], [w]

22. The consonant chart • See page 53 for the consonant chart

23. Some practice • Voiced bilabial stop • Voiceless labiodentalfricative • Voiced bilabial nasal • Voiceless velar stop • Describe [n] • Describe [w] • Describe [g] • Describe [m]