HLA 102_C Lecture

Phonetics & Phonology

The IPA
27 Sept 2018
 Representing speech in writing
• difficult issue sometimes you need divine intervention: Indra & the vedic
myth:

• logographies: Ancient Egypt: words & phrases

• syllabaries: Japanese (kana): syllables

• logosyllabic: Chinese: words & syllables

• alphabets: French: sound symbols

• abjads: Arabic: consonants

• abugida: Hindi (devanagari): C + V sequences

 G. B. Shaw on English spelling

The English have no respect for their language, and will not
teach their children to speak it.
They cannot spell it because they have nothing to spell it
with but an old foreign alphabet
of which only the consonants—and not all of them—have
any agreed speech value.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Preface to Pygmalion, 1912

 Spelling & Pronunciation 1

• Did he believe that Caesar could see the people seize the
seas?

• The silly amoeba stole the key to the machine.

• The same sound is represented variously by e, ie, ae,

ee, eo, ei, ea, y, oe, ey, and i.

• It’s a nightmare.
 Spelling & Pronunciation 2

• My father wanted many a village dame badly

• the same letter a represents 7 different sounds, in

order: ɑː, ɒ, e, ɪ, eɪ, æ

• It’s a nightmare
 Spelling & pronunciation 3

• Making the spelling waters yet muddier, we find that a

combination of letters may represent a single sound:

• shoot character Thomas physics :

• either deal rough nation

• coat glacial theater plain

• It’s a nightmare.
 Spelling & Pronunciation 4
• Some letters have no sound in certain words (so-called silent
letters):

• mnemonic, autumn, asthma, corps

• honest, chthonic, hole, Christmas

• psychology, sword, debt, gnaw

• bough, phthalate, island, knot

• It’s a nightmare.
 Spelling & pronunciation 5
• Or, conversely, there may be no letter to represent
sounds that occur. In many words, the letter u
represents a j type sound followed by a u sound:

• cute (sounds like kjut; compare: coot)

• fume (sounds like fjum; compare: fool)

• use (sounds like juz; compare: umlaut)

• It’s a nightmare.
 Ghoti = Fish ???

• enough

• women

• nation
 1888: the birth of the IPA

• Dhi Fonètik Tîtcerz' Asóciécon 1886, Paul Passy & les

profs d’anglais en France

• 1888 publication of the first Standardized Alphabet

• IPA: International Phonetic Association

• or: International Phonetic Alphabet

 The IPA
• regularly updated

• transcription system for 6K human languages

• not really an alphabet (randon order): organized according to

articulation

• 1 sound = 1 symbol

• C&V

• Suprasegmentals

• Diacritics
 Where is airflow interrupted?
Places of articulation
• place of articulation for consonants
 Plosives / Stops
• How? Complete obstruction of the airflow

• Where? Places of articulation

• Else? Voiced & voiceless

 Nasals
• like stops, but air escapes through the nose

• they’re all voiced

 Trills
• repeated vibration of articulators

• they’re all voiced

 Tap
• single touch of articulators
 Fricatives
• forcing the airstream through a narrow gap: turbulence

• voiced / voiceless pairs

 Approximants
• like vowels, nearly no constriction, just move articulators
closer

• all voiced
 Clicks
• sucking in the air from outside, complete closure, like
stops

• all voiceless: air does not go through the vocal chords

The click song: Miriam Makeba
 Implosives
• sucking in air in throat / larynx

• all voiced
 Ejectives
• throaty / glottalic egressive sounds
 Suggested Readings

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Al
phabet

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_system