LING 101: Phonetics

This page was prepared by Tom Purnell as a study resource for his LING 101 course at UDel. You may find it useful when pareparing for exams. Note that the material covered by these notes may not exactly match the topics covered in LING 101 when taught by other instructors. To return to the "Study notes" page use the navigation bar at the left.

Objectives

answer the question, What is phonetics?
be familiar with the IPA symbols and production of each sound in English, as well as other miscellaneous sounds in other languages.
able to transcribe English into IPA and IPA into English.

Phonetics
The study of speech sounds (phones).

Areas of phonetics

articulatory phonetics: the study of the production of speech sounds
acoustic phonetics: the study of the transmission and the physical properties of speech sounds (e.g., intensity, frequency, duration, etc.)
auditory phonetics: the study of the perception of speech sounds

these areas correspond with physical aspects of communication (speaking and listening).
we will focus primarily on articulatory phonetics, and in particular, the description and classification of the sounds according to their properties.
to understand phonetics, you should begin by comparing the way we write words with the sounds they represent. What is quickly apparent are a host of othographic consitencies.

Orthographic inconsistencies
1. sometimes the same sound is spelled using different letters
  
  see, sea, scene, receive, thief, amoeba, machine
2. sometimes the same letters can stand for different sounds
  
  sign, pleasure, resign
  
  charter, character
  
  father, all, about, apple,
  
  any, age
3. sometimes a single sound is spelled by a combination of letters
  
  lock, that, book, boast,
  
  shop, apple, special
4. sometimes a single letter represents more than one sound
  
  exit, use
5. sometimes letters stand for no sound at all
  
  know, doubt, though, island, rhubarb, moose
Fortunately for those studying phonetics, we can capture each individual sound in an individual and unambiguous kind of way using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA); turn to pp. 208-209 for listing of sounds. English sounds (with examples) are also on the inside front cover.
three points need to be made:
1. it is important to note that sound is not discrete though it appears to us to be discrete. The discreteness is a perceptual effect. When viewed on an oscillograph or a computer, speech is comprised of a continuous stretch of sound. Yet our brains permit us to segment sound, and thus we represent the discrete linguistic segments we hear.
2. secondly, it is important to note that there are differences between consonants and vowels. The primary difference is acoustic--the consonants act as beginnings and endings of vowels. Say /b/, /æ/, /n/, /l/, and /w/. What is the difference between the sounds? Notice that when you said /b/, it seemed like nothing happened. Say /bæ/ and what happens? All of a sudden, we can hear the /b/. The point of this exercise is to note how vowels carry the sound. (Be forwarned, however, that some consonants are 'hear-able', such as the /n/, /l/ and /w/. We call sounds that fall into this group, sonorants).
3. finally, remember that there is a memory of sound in our head and a sound that we hear; the two sounds may or may not be the same sound (e.g., past tense '-ed'). To represent these sounds we should introduce some formalism: / / and [ ], where the first symbol represents what is phonemic (in our memory) and the latter symbol represents what is phonetic (what comes out of our mouths).
To understand the classification and description of each sound we need to figure out how each sound is made or articulated in the mouth.
look at the picture on p. 188.
All speech sounds can be classified by how the mouth produces the sound, in particular there are only a small number of things we need to pay attention to.

Four aspects of consonant production
1. voicing: whether or not the vocal folds are vibrating
  1. voiced
  2. voiceless
2. nasality whether or not air and sound is coming out the nose.
  1. nasal
  2. oral
3. place of articulation: where in the mouth the primary constriction (narrowest part) occurs
  1. bilabial
  2. labio-dental
  3. interdental
  4. alveolar
  5. palatal
  6. velar
  7. glottal
4. manner of articulation: how the airstream is modified by the vocal tract
  1. stops
  2. fricatives
  3. affricates
  4. glides
  5. liquids
as we noted above, some consonants do in fact have the ability to carry the sound. Recall that these consonants are called sonorants. Notice which class of sounds this includes: nasal stops, liquids and glides. We can further notice that only the stops, fricatives and affricates have a distinction in voicing. This class is the obstruents.
why is this distinction between sonorants and obstruents important? First, knowing that vowels and sonorant consonants are voiced while obstruent consonants are not will help in keeping them straight. However, and more importantly, the groups of sounds (natural classes) pattern alike in other areas (see pp. 233-235).
in sum, we can state explicitly the 'address' of a consonant on the chart:
```
Consonant description = Voicing + Nasality + Place + Manner 
```
For example, [m] is a voiced nasal bilabial stop

Four features of vowels
1. tongue position
  1. height: raising or lowering the body of the tongue
    1. high
    2. mid
    3. low
  2. backness: advancing or retracting the body of the tongue
    1. front
    2. (central)
    3. back
2. lip rounding
  1. rounded
  2. unrounded
3. tenseness: extra muscular effort causing a slight fronting
  (Now known to be muscular effort pushing the Tongue Root forward, expanding the pharynx.)
  1. tense
  2. lax
like consonants, we can state explicitly the 'address' of a vowel on the chart:
```
Vowel description of a vowel = height + backness + rounding + tenseness
    
```
For example, [u] is a high back round tense vowel.
so far we have been dealing with a single sound (monophthong); but some sounds are composite sounds, i.e., they are made up of two sounds (diphthong), such as the diphthong /aj/ in English. Phonetically, it is sufficient to characterize such cases as sound sequences. Phonologically (that is, in terms of our memory of speech sounds in our lexicon), some diphthongs function like single sounds.