Chapter 2

PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY

PRODUCTION OF SOUNDS

Human language displays a wide variety of sounds, but humans are not capable of producing all the sounds with the vocal tract in speech. The class of possible speech sounds is not only finite, but also universal. Any human is able to pronounce these sounds, regardless of racial or cultural background.

SCOPE OF PHONETICS

Speech is a purposeful human activity. Phonetics is the scientific study of speech and is concerned with defining and classifying speech sounds according to how they are produced. A complex set of physical operations takes place when a spoken message goes from a speaker to a hearer.

SCOPE OF PHONETICS

First, there is physiological activity in the brain of the speaker. Then the brain sends instructions to a variety of muscles of vocal organs. The result is a range of muscle contractions and physical movement of structures such as the rib-cage(), the larynx (), the tongue and so on. In turn, these movements give rise to an aerodynamic phase of the speech chain, whereby air flows through the vocal tract. This airflow interacts with continued movement of structures such as the vocal folds, tongue, lips and soft palate() to produce the different features of speech. This modified airflow through the vocal tract impinges on the air surrounding the speaker.

SCOPE OF PHONETICS

Eventually, the sound waves reach the ear of the hearer, and again we have a series of physical operations that allow the hearer to convert sound waves (basically the movement of air molecules) into a message understood in the brain. The ear contains a number of sections (the outer, middle and inner ear) whose function is to convert sound waves into physical movement, and then physical movement into electrochemical activity along the neurological pathways from the inner ear to the relevant parts of the brain. Here the message is decoded by the different speech and language components of the brain.

From this speech chain, we can see that the speech chain consists of three stages: the production of the message, the transmission of the message and the reception of the message. Alveolor ridge Mandible Velum Uvula Epiglottis

SCOPE OF PHONETICS
Phonetics studies the above facets of speech. However, the neurological facets of production and reception are often considered falling outside the scope of phonetics proper. Generally, the study of phonetics is composed of three separate fields: articulatory phonetics acoustic phonetics auditory phonetics .

Articulatory phonetics deals with the identification and classification of individual sounds. It attempts to provide a framework of the nature of speech sounds and how they are produced. Acoustic phonetics focuses on the analysis and measurement of sound waves. Auditory phonetics is concerned with the perception of speech.

ARTICULATION OF SOUNDS
A wide range of physical activity is involved in the production of the speech sounds in human language. Vocal organs often articulate or move against each other in the production of speech. Vocal organs refer to all the parts of the human body that are related to speech production.

Most speech in natural language involves a pulmonic egressive airstream, which flows upwards from the lungs, through the larynx and then into the pharynx , oral and/or nasal cavities. Phoneticians use the term phonation to refer to the range of modifications to this airflow as it passes through the glottis within the larynx. The glottis is the space between the vocal folds, which can be pulled together, kept apart, and subject to varying degrees of tension.

ARTICULATION OF SOUNDS
Voice: Sounds may be either voiced and voiceless, that is, the vocal folds are either vibrating or not. With voicelessness the glottis is open, resulting from abduction of the vocal folds. Voiced phonation is produced through the vibration of the vocal folds which are produced with the cooperation of both muscular and aerodynamic forces, with the balance of these forces altering subtly during the vibratory cycle.

When describing individual sound segments, phoneticians and linguists often employ two parameters to examine how sounds are articulated: manner of articulation place of articulation

MANNER OF ARTICULATION

The manner of articulation is very important during the production of the sound. It is based on the size of the air passage. When the articulators are brought close together and the airflow in the oral cavity is completely blocked, the resultant manner of articulation is termed a stop Stops are divided into two types: oral stops (plosives), and nasal stops (nasals). Plosives are formed by creating a complete closure. Nasal stops have a complete closure in the oral cavity, but air is allowed to escape freely through the nasal cavity because the velum is lowered.

MANNER OF ARTICULATION

Fricative : When the articulators close together but not so

close as to block the airflow completely, fricatives are produced.

Affricates are produced by stopping the airstream from the lungs and then slowly releasing it with friction.

Affricative :

MANNER OF ARTICULATION

Approximant : Approximants are produced with a much wider

passage of air so that the airflow for voiced approximants remains smooth and does not become turbulent. Approximants can be central (e.g. [r]) or lateral (e.g. [l]).

Trill : Trills involve a series of rapid repetition of one articulator

striking another (or both articulators striking each other in the case of the two lips). This sort of trill can be found in English 'r' in certain regional accents (e.g. some Scottish accents).

Tap :

The tap (or 'flap' or 'flick') is a momentary variant of the trill. Taps can involve an active articulator striking a passive one, and then returning to its place of rest. This is the type of tap found in American English, where it is used for 't' in words like 'better', or in older forms of British English for 'r' in 'Harry'.

PLACE OF ARTICULATION

The place of articulation is another way to observe how sounds are articulated. When describing the place of articulation, we usually consider is the place within the vocal tract where the articulators form a stricture. Bilabials are articulations made with the upper and lower lips brought together. Dentals are produced by the front of the tongue touching the back of the upper front teeth. Post-alveolars are produced right at the back edge of the alveolar ridge, just before its boundary with the arch of the hard palate.

PLACE OF ARTICULATION

Retroflex sounds are produced with the tongue tip or blade curled back to touch or nearly touch the hard palate at the top of the mouth. For example, some speakers use a retroflex approximant as their realization of 'r' in words like 'red'. Uvular sounds are made by raising and retracting the back of the tongue to the very end of the soft palate (the uvula). None of these sounds occur in English, but the voiced uvular fricative and trill are both varieties of 'r' in standard French. Glottals are produced with the two pieces of vocal folds pushed towards each other. The English sound [h] in such words as 'hat' and 'hold' is thought to be a glottal stop.

PLACE OF ARTICULATION

Labiodentals are articulations produced with the lower lip approximating to the underside of the upper front teeth. For example, in English the [f] in fat and the [v] in vat are labiodental fricatives. Alveolars are produced by the tip and/or blade of the tongue touching or nearly touching the gum ridge behind the upper teeth. [t, d] Palatal sounds are produced by the front upper surface of the tongue and the hard palate at the top of the mouth. English has only one palatal sound, [j], as in 'yes' and 'yet'.

PLACE OF ARTICULATION

Velar sounds are produced with the back of the tongue dorsum raised up to the soft palate (or velum) at the back of the mouth. [k] [g] Pharyngeal sounds are produced with the back and root of the tongue retracted into the upper pharynx. Pharyngeal consonants are not common.

VOWELS

Vowels are made by egressive pulmonic airflow through vibrating or constricted vocal folds and through the vocal tract, and the sound is modified in the oral cavity. However, vowels are more difficult than consonants to describe articulatorily. The primary criteria for the classification of vowels are: (1) the distance between the top of the tongue and the roof of the mouth and (2) the retraction and extension of the tongue. A secondary criterion is the rounding of the lips.

The distance between the top of the tongue and the roof of the mouth is defined in terms of the relative degrees of openness of the oral cavity. Openness corresponds to jaw opening, as well as to the relative height of the tongue. Thus, we have close vowels, open vowels, low vowels and high vowels. Vowels may be subdivided into monophthongs and diphthongs .

ENGLISH SPEECH SOUNDS

English has many vowel sounds. According to Roach (1991), there are: seven short vowels five long vowels eight diphthongs five triphthongs English is said to have 24 consonants

English has six plosive consonants: /p/, /t/, /k/, /b/, /d/, /g/. nine fricatives.

two affricates: three nasals: three approximants: r, j, w. one lateral consonant: l

THE TRANSCRIPTION OF SOUNDS

Phoneticians try to transcribe as accurately as possible, i.e. by recording all the articulatory details that exist in speech. Since the sixteenth century, efforts have been made to devise a universal system for transcribing the speech sounds. The best-known system, the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), has been developing since 1888. IPA transcription uses these symbols to write the sound in whichever language it is heard, whether it is English, Spanish, Turkmen or any other.

The sounds symbols allow us to represent many nuances of articulation. There are two kinds of transcription: narrow transcription and broad transcription .

PHONOLOGY

Phonology is the study of the sound patterns in human language.

Each word differs from the other words in both form and meaning.
Each lexical entry includes, along with information about the semantic and syntactic nature of the morpheme, an underlying representation. The underlying representation contains that information about the pronunciation of a morpheme that is not predictable on the basis of general rules. The segments of an underlying representation are called phonemes.

PHONOLOGY

For example, the difference in meaning between "seed" and "deed" lies in the fact that the initial sound of the first word is s [s] and the initial sound of the second word is d [d]. The forms of the two words are identical except for the initial consonants. What makes the two words different in meaning is the consonants [s] and [d]. Thus, these are called distinctive sounds, or phonemes in English. Phoneme is the minimum phonemic unit that is not further analyzable into smaller units susceptible of concomitant occurrence. However, a phoneme is the abstract set of units as the basis of our speech. The phonemes themselves are abstract, but there are many slightly different ways in which we make the sounds that represent these phonemes.

Allophone the phonetic variants of a phoneme In phonemic analysis, we may come across sounds that do not change the meaning when we make a substitution. For example, the consonants at the beginning of "shoe" and "she" have very different sound qualities. For "shoe", the lips are rounded, because of the influence of the following vowel [u]; for "she", the lips are spread. If we now substitute one of these sounds for the other, we do not get a change of meaning - only a rather strange-sounding pronunciation. In a similar way, when we pronounce the l sounds of such words as "leaf" and "pool", we can feel that the first l is articulated much further forward in the mouth than the second. In English, these are allophones of a single /l/ phoneme.

MINIMAL PAIR

Traditionally, the term 'phoneme' is used to refer to a speech sound that, when substituted for another, brings out a change in meaning. For example, in the English word 'tip', there are three separate speech sounds or phonemes, that is /t, i, p/. In a further English word 'lip', there are three speech sounds, /l, i, p/. The only difference between 'tip' and 'lip' is the initial sound in each word and the meaning of the words. When we substitute /t/ for /l/ in this way and bring about a change in meaning, we say that the sounds in question are phonemes and that there is a phonemic distinction between them. A pair of phonemes is also known as a minimal pair. For instance, "deed" and "seed" are minimal pairs, but "deed" and "dog" are not because the vowel and final consonant in these two sounds are different.

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES

Every language has a limited number of phonological oppositions. In order to find out these oppositions, distinctive features can be used to distinguish one phoneme from another or one group of sounds from another group. Distinctive features are often shown in the form of a binary opposition. The features can be shown either present [+] or absent [-]. Tongue body features The three features related to the position of the body of the tongue are [high], [low], and [back]. The neutral position is approximately the position at which the vowel of the English word bed is articulated.

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES

The Features Rounded The feature [rounded] distinguishes sound with lip rounding from those without.

The Features High and Back in Consonants

Manner Features There are a number of features which distinguish sounds on the basis of the manner of their articulation. For instance, the feature [interrupted] characterizes sound in which the airstream is completely blocked during part of their articulation. Thus, stops and affricates are [+interrupted] whereas fricatives, nasals, liquids, glides and vowels are [-interrupted]

SEQUENTIAL CONSTRAINTS

It is not difficult to show that speakers have knowledge of such sequential rules. For example, the four different phonemes of English of k, b, l, i can be arranged to form the English words in the following picture.

SEQUENTIAL CONSTRAINTS

In English, these are the only permissible arrangements of these phonemes, but *[lbki], *[bkil], *[ilkb] and so on are not possible in the language. Our knowledge of English tells us that certain strings of phonemes are permissible and others are not. Thus, we can see that after a consonant like [b], [g], [k], or [p], another similar consonant is not permitted by the rules of the grammar. If a word begins with an [l] or an [r], every English speaker knows that the next segment must be a vowel. *[lbik] does not sound like an English word because it does not conform to the restrictions on the sequencing of phonemes.

Another sequential constraint in English pertains to clusters (one or more consonants) of nasal consonants followed by nonnasal (oral) stops within words. This constraint states that only homorganic nasal + nonnasal consonant clusters may occur. Homorganic consonants are those which are articulated at the same place of articulation, that is, labial, alveolar, palatal, velar. For example,

COMPLEMENTARY DISTRIBUTION

When two or more sounds never occur in an identical phonemic context or environment, they are said to be in complementary distribution. That is to say, complementary distribution refers to the case in which one of two or more sounds occur in a context to the exclusion of other sound(s), i.e. in a context in which the other sound(s) never occur(s). For example, [h] and in English, as in hat and ring, are not only in noncontrastive distribution but also in complementary distribution since [h] never occurs in English in word-final position and never in word-initial position.

When occurring after a word (or syllable) initial [s], the voiceless stops are shown in the following:

SYLLABLE

Structurally, the syllable may be divided into three parts: the onset, the peak, and the coda.

Some syllables have an onset and no coda. Some syllables may have no onset but a coda. In this case, we say the initial syllable has a zero onset.

STRESS

Stress is generally defined as syllable prominence. In other words, a syllable that is more prominent than the other syllables in a word or phrase is said to be stressed. In many languages, including English, some syllables within a word are relatively more prominent than others. For example, in the word 'message', the first syllable is more prominent than the second. In the word 'massage', however, the reverse is true.

PITCH

Pitch is a suprasegmental quality which extends over individual segments and longer stretches of speech. Pitch is the perceived frequency of a sound wave. Perceived pitch is largely determined by the frequency of vibration of the vocal folds, and to some extent by the intensity of the sound. Falling pitch is more common in language than rising pitch. (1) John's going to tonight's party. () (2) John's going to tonight's party? ()

INTONATION AND TONE

Intonations refer to the pitch differences that extend over phonetic units larger than the syllable. By means of intonation, syllables are grouped into phrases, and phrases into sentences. In English a phrase usually has one or two different terminations. The most common phrasal intonation ends on a falling pitch; the other ends on a more or less level pitch. Tone refers to pitch variations. In some languages, the same sequence of segments may have different meanings if uttered at different relative pitches. Putonghua, probably the most widely studied tone language, has four contrastive tones, high, rise, fall and fall-rise. These tones distinguish four different meanings of some sound sequences.

INTONATION AND TONE

Tone refers to pitch variations. In some languages, the same sequence of segments may have different meanings if uttered at different relative pitches. The function of tone is quite different from that of stress. Tones do not mark the beginning and ending of words, nor do they even indicate to the speaker how many words there are in an utterance.

End of Lecture

Thank you for your attention