Phonetic and Phonology II

Modern Languages

Handout

Phonetic and phonology II

Phonetic: is the study of speech sounds, by the description of all sounds human apparatus can produce. (Vowels
and consonant)
Phonology: is the study of how speech sounds function in a language (phonological process and features of
pronunciation)

organs of speech
All the sounds we make when we speak are the result of muscles contracting.
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. Here the air from lungs escapes
into the atmosphere. We all have a large set of muscles that
can produce changes in 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 the vocal tract,
these different parts are called articulators.
D flexi
“The most important and flexible of all organs of speech is the tongue, which is situated in the oral cavity
and makes the greatest contribution to the articulation process”.
English vowel sounds
α: long a ӕ happy a Ә unstressed ^ stressed e short e ɝ rhotecized

ᶛ short o
I short i: long O: long U short U: long

A vowel sound is an open sound produced by not blocking the breath with the lips, teeth or tongue. It is
always voiced and can form syllable by itself.
Consonants sounds

Place of articulation: refers to where the narrowing occurs, which activate articulator gets close to which passive articulator. “The
place of articulation is related to the location of the narrowest part of the vocal tract in producing a sound”.

 Bilabials. Bilabials are produced through upper and lower lips.

 Labiodentals. Labiodental sounds are produced through the upper teeth and the lower lip.
 Dentals. Dental sound is produced by placing the tongue tip behind the upper front teeth.
 Alveolar. Alveolar sound is produced through the front part of the tongue placed on the alveolar ridge.
 Retroflex. It is a consonant formed when the tongue rises toward the roof of the mouth and then retracts toward the back of
the oral cavity.
 Palatal. A palatal consonant is pronounced with the body (the middle part) of the tongue against the hard palate (which is
middle part of the roof of the mouth), there is only one palatal consonant in English which is [j], which is the sound for “y” in
the English Word “yes”, “you”, “young”.
 Labiovelar. Labial – velar consonants are doubly articulated at the velum and the lips such as /w/.
 Velars. The production of velar sound is done by placing the back of the tongue against the velum
 Glottal. This is produced without the active of the tongue and other parts of the mouth. This sound is produced in the glottis-
a space between the vocal cords and the larynx.

Manner of Articulation: manner of articulation refers to where the narrowing occurs, which activate articulator gets close to which
passive articulator. On the other hand, manner of articulation refers to how close they get

 Stops or plosives. The active articulator touches the passive articulator and completely cuts off the airflow through the mouth.
English stops include: p / d / k / m
 Fricatives. The active articulator does not touch the passive articulator, but gets close enough that the airflow through the
opening becomes turbulent. English fricatives include: / f/ v /z /.
 Affricates. Can be seen as a sequence of stop and fricative which have the same or similar places of articulation. / ʤ / and /ʧ/
are affricative sounds in English.
 Nasals. The soft palate is lowered, allowing the air to flow out through the nose. In English we find: /n / m / ŋ /.
 Laterals: the air stream escapes through the side of the tongue such as /l/
 Approximants: articulators approach and this narrowing cause friction. / r / j / w / are approximant sounds in English.

Voicing: “voiced, voiceless”

In phonetic voice or voicing is one of the parameters used to describe a sound. It is usually treated as a binary parameter with
sounds being described as either voiceless (unvoiced) or voiced. A voiced sound is one in which the vocal cords vibrate, and voiceless
sound is one in which they do not. Voicing is the different between pairs of sounds such as /s/ and /z/ in English.
Phonological process

Definition:

They are charged in pronunciation that occurs within or between words to relation with neighboring sounds. They are
used to facilitate the articulation and simplify the production of complex words.

The most common phonological process in fast speech is “the linking.”

Linking is made to connect the final sound of a word to the initial sound of a neighboring word

 Glide linking: word or syllable ends in a tense vowel like I or u sounds, and the next word begins with a vowel too.

Be a sport boy / how are you?

/j/ /w/

 Consonant – vowel linking: word or syllable which ends in a single consonant and the next word begins with a vowel.

Stop it

 Consonant cluster – vowel linking: this phonological process occurs when a word or syllable ends in a consonant cluster and
the next word or syllable begins in a vowel
A cluster is two or three consonants together in a word.

Find out

 Consonant – consonant linking: is a word or syllable which ends in a consonant stop sound and the next word or syllable
begins with a consonant stop or affricative sound. Also, it can happen when we find two identical consonant sounds in both
words.

Black door / sick child / hot tea

A vowel sound is an open sound produced by not blocking the breath with the lips, teeth, or tongue. It is always voiced and can from
syllable by itself.

Here’s the chart for the vowel sounds in English.

Front central back

High i: u: round

I ᶷ
Mid ᵉ Ə O

ɝ ᶺ ᶛ

Low ᴂ
 English vowel symbol Example Comparison

/ᴂ/ Cat – bat - happen a

/ ɑ:/ Car – fast Sonido entre a y o en español

Cup – cut Parecida a la a española

/ ᶺ/
/ e/ Egg – bed “e” más abierta en inglés,
más cerrada en español
/ Ә/ Present El sonido se llama schwa es
suave y a menudo se pierde
/ɝ/ Bird – turn Parecido a “er” en español
pero más alargado
/I/ Fish – if - English
/i:/ Tea – sheep – we – bee – Sonido más agudo y largo
que la I española
/ᶛ/ Box – fox – ball Sonido más abierto que la o
española
/Ɔ: / Short - saw Pronunciación de la o
española más alargado
Bull – football U
/ᶷ/
/u:/ Boot – book Parecido a la u española pero
más alargado

Unit I hand out

Suprasegmental: also called Prosodic Feature, in phonetics, a speech feature such as stress, tone, or word juncture that accompanies or
is added over consonants and vowels; these features are not limited to single sounds but often extend over syllables, words, or phrases.

The languages of the world may be classified in many ways. One distinctive classification is how the timing of tone groups are arranged.
Tone groups in speech are bursts of sound, or sound frames, which contain a chunk of coded language patterns. A tone group is said in
a single breath. These chunks seem to be rather similar to the 'packets' of information which are sent through packet-switching networks
on the internet, and their size is closely related to the needs of our human processor, the brain.

There are various options for arranging the sounds in tone groups. We usually recognize these choices as rhythm, intonation
and stress; (actually intonation contains a large number of more detailed features). Stress is essentially anything which marks one bit of
sound out from the surrounding speech stream. It is typically made up from a subtle combination of duration, speed, pitch and loudness.

The feature of sound duration is often called timing. The timing method of sound chunks varies is in a continuum amongst
languages. At one extreme of this continuum are so-called stress-timed languages, and the at the other extreme are so-called syllable-
timed languages. In practice, no language is entirely syllable-timed or entirely stress-timed.

In syllable-timing, each syllable has the same time duration. This means that tone groups vary in duration, depending upon the
number of syllables they contain. Because a tone group is said in a single breath, in practice this variation in tone group length is limited.
Thus in a tone group with more syllables than usual, all the syllables might be said more quickly to 'fit within a single breath'.

In stress-timing, each tone group has more or less the same time-duration, (a single breath) regardless of the number of syllables
it contains. This means that some syllables will be spoken very quickly, while the stressed syllable or syllables will often have a much
longer time duration. If the tone group has an unusual number of syllables, everything might be speeded up, but stressed syllables will
usually take relatively longer to say than unstressed syllables. In English, tone groups average about five syllables (though it is possible
to have a tone group of only one syllable). Usually (but not always) the stressed syllable in a stress-timed language is the one containing
new information. By changing the time taken to say any particular syllable in a stress-timed language, the meaning of that tone group
can be changed. This is a very tricky game indeed, Native speakers do it automatically, but the speaker of a syllable-timed language
who tries to learn a stress-timed language will probably have great trouble mastering the new arrangement (and meanings) of sound
patterns.

English is very strongly a stress-timed language.

 Rhythm: English is a very rhythmical language, so that a learner who can maintain the rhythm of the language is more likely to
sound both natural and fluent. ... The rhythm produced by this combination of stressed and unstressed syllables is a major
characteristic of spoken English and makes English a stress-timed language.
 Intonation: The definition of intonation is the way the pitch of your voice goes up and down as you talk or reciting
something by singing it. An example of intonation is the way your voice raises in pitch at the end of a question.
 Stress: stress is the degree of emphasis given a sound or syllable in speech, also called lexical stress or word stress. Unlike some
other languages, English has variable (or flexible) stress.

Syllable

A syllable is a part of a word that contains a single vowel sound and that is pronounced as a unit. So, for example, 'book' has
one syllable, and 'reading' has two syllables. Syllable stress is when one syllable in a word is pronounced louder and more clearly than
adjacent syllables. A syllable is unit of pronunciation having one vowel sound, with or without surrounding consonants, forming the
whole or a part of a word; e.g., there are two syllables in water wa-ter

 Words with one syllable

The, cold, quite, bed, add, start, hope, clean, trade, green, chair, cat, sign, pea, wish, drive, plant, square, give, wait, law, off, hear, trough,
eat, rough, trout, shine, watch, for, out, catch, flight, rain, speech, crab, lion, knot, fixed, slope, live, reach, trade, light, moon, wash,
trend, balm, walk, sew, joke, tribe, brooch
 Words with two syllables
Party, special, today, quiet, orange, partner, table, demand, power, retrieve, doctor, engine, diet, transcribe, contain, cabbage, mountain,
humor, defend, special, greedy, exchange, manage, carpet, although, trophy, insist, tremble, balloon, healthy, shower, verbal, business,
mortgage, fashion, hover, butcher, magic, broken
 Words with three syllables
Fantastic, energy, expensive, wonderful, laughable, badminton, idiot, celery, beautiful, aggression, computer, journalist, horrify,
gravity, temptation, dieting, trampoline, industry, distinguished, however, tremendous, justify, inflation, creation, injustice, energize,
glittering, tangible, mentalis, laughable, dialect, crustacean, origin.
 Words with four syllables
Understanding, indecisive, conversation, realistic, American, psychology, gregarious, independence, affordable, memorandum,
controversial, superior, gymnasium, entrepreneur, traditional, transformation, remembering, establishment, vegetation, affectionate,
acupuncture, invertebrate
 Words with five syllables
Organization, uncontrollable, inspirational, misunderstanding, conversational, opinionated, biological, subordination, determination,
sensationalist, refrigerator, haberdashery, hospitality, conservatory, procrastination, disobedience, electrifying, consideration,
apologetic, particularly, compartmentalize, hypochondria
 Words with six syllables
Responsibility, idiosyncratic, discriminatory, invisibility, capitalization, extraterrestrial, reliability, autobiography, unimaginable,
characteristically, superiority, antibacterial, disciplinarian, environmentalist, materialism, biodiversity, criminalization, imaginatively,
disobediently.

Phonation

In phonetics, the physical process of forming audible speech sounds. Phonation, the combined activity of the vocalapparatus,
results in articulation. The term also designates the acoustic features of a sound that result in its aural perceptionand analysis. The prod
uction and perception of sounds interact in accordance with the principle of feedback. Language production starts with the making of
basic sound. In this lesson you will learn about the physical process of sound production, which is called phonation.

Language Production
Have you made any sounds today? Maybe you had a conversation with someone, or even just said 'ouch!' when you stubbed
your toe or burned your tongue. Even when we aren't producing full sentences, humans make sounds all the time.
 Of course, sound production is absolutely vital for our use of language. The physical process behind sound production,
called phonation, works the same way regardless of how much sound is being produced, or the reason for the sound.

The Physical Process and rules

So how exactly does phonation work? To begin with, air is brought into the lungs. Without air, you can't produce sound. Try
letting out a huge breath and then saying something. It doesn't work very well, does it? The more sound you want to produce, the more
air you need to start with. That's why singers take big breaths before beginning a song, and why you need more air to yell than to whisper.
When you make a sound, the air from your lungs is pushed up through the glottis, which is the opening between your vocal
folds, sometimes called vocal chords. Vocal folds are membranes stretched across the larynx, which is the organ that forms a passage
to the lungs. The larynx holds the vocal folds and the glottis.
When air is pushed through the glottis, it causes pressure to drop in the larynx. This in turn makes the vocal folds vibrate, and
this vibration is what produces 'voicing' (another name for physical sound that is produced in this way).
If you were to look at the vocal folds, when they are 'resting', they appear open, so the passage down the layrnx is unobstructed.
When they are vibrating, the opening appears smaller or even closed, as the tension of the vibrating vocal folds stretches them across
the larynx.

Pitch: Changes in pitch are also caused by this process. Pitch is the term we use for our perception of the frequency of sound. Changes
in pitch are caused by changes in the vibration of the vocal folds. Higher pitched sounds are caused by a faster vibration, and higher
tension in the folds themselves. Lower pitched sounds are caused by a slower vibration and less tension.

Consonant endings
The English language can be very confusing, especially when it comes to pronouncing words. There are silent letters and letters
that are pronounced differently depending on how they are written. This post is going to help with pronouncing past simple verbs that
end in ‘–ed.’ The first thing to know is that these ‘-ed’ verbs can be pronounced three different ways. The first way is as /id/, such
as, ’needed,’ or ‘wanted.’ The second way is with a /t/ sound such as ‘watched.’ The third way is /d/ sound such as ‘called.’Now, a lot
of students ask how they can learn which pronunciation is correct. Here are some tips for knowing which pronunciation to use:

1. /id/

The /id/ sound that most students commonly want to use the most is actually only used if the last consonants is a ‘t’ or a ‘d.’ Then by
adding an ‘-ed’ to the verb, you will make a sound like /id/. Examples of this would be verbs like ‘needed’, ‘wanted’, and ‘decided’.

2. /t/

The /t/ sound comes as a surprise to many students. It is a very soft ‘t’ sound such as in ‘carrot.’ The same /t/ sound needs to be made
with verbs that end in the following consonants: ‘p’, ‘k’, ’f’, ‘s’, ‘ch’, ‘sh’, ‘x’ and ‘th’. Examples of this are ‘washed’, ‘mixed’,
‘dropped’, and ‘watched’.

3. /d/

The /d/ sound is very easy for students to get used to. The same /d/ sound needs to be made with verbs that end in the following
consonants: ‘b’, ‘g’, ‘j’, ‘m’, ‘n’, ‘l’, ‘r’, ‘th’, ‘w’, ‘v’, ‘z’. Examples of this include ‘colored’, ‘called’ and ‘loved’.