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The Sound of Language :

PHONETIC
Sounds and Spellings: Not the Same Thing
As a reader of English, you are accustomed to seeing language written down as a series
of words set off by spaces, with each word consisting of a sequence of separate letters that are
also separated by spaces of the close association between writing and speaking in the minds of
literate people, it is important to stress that we are interested in the sounds of spoken language,
not in the letters of the alphabet that represent those sounds in writing.

Whys and Wherefores of Sound/Spelling Discrepancies

Written English has diverse origins with different spelling conventions:
Anglo-Saxon The system that evolved in Anglo-Saxon England before the Norman Invasion of
1066 gave us such spellings as ee for the sound in words like deed and seen.

Norman French The system that was overlaid on the Old English system by the Normans, with
their French writing customs, gave us such spellings as queen (for the earlier cwene) and thief
(for earlier theef).

Dutch Caxton, the first English printer, who was born in England but lived in Holland for 30
years, gave us such spellings as ghost (which replaced gost) and ghastly (which replaced gastlic).

Spelling reform During the Renaissance, attempts to reform spelling along etymological (that
is, historically earlier) lines gave us debt for earlier det or dette and salmon for earlier samon.

Phonetics: The Study of Sounds

Phonetics is the study of the sounds made in the production of human languages. It has two
principal branches.
Articulatory phonetics focuses on the human vocal apparatus and describes sounds in terms of
their articulation in the vocal tract; it has been central to the discipline of linguistics.
Acoustic phonetics uses the tools of physics to study the nature of sound waves produced in
human language; it is increasingly important in linguistics with attempts to use machines for
interpreting speech patterns in voice identification and voice-initiated mechanical operations.
Phonetic Alphabets
To refer to the sounds of human language in terms of their articulation, phoneticians have
evolved descriptive techniques that avoid the difficulties of describing sounds in terms of
customary writing systems.
The Vocal Tract
The processes the vocal tract uses in creating a multitude of sounds are similar to those of
wind instruments and organ pipes, which produce different musical sounds by varying the shape,
size, and acoustic character of the cavities through which air passes once it

Describing Sounds
As you explore the inventory of sounds, use your vocal tract to produce the sounds that
are described. Pronounce them aloud, noting the shape of your mouth and the position of your
tongue for each sound.
Speech sounds can be identified in terms of their articulatory propertiesthat is, by
where in the mouth and how they are produced. All English consonants can be described in terms
of three properties:
Voicing (whether the vocal cords are vibrating or not)
Place of articulation (where the airstream is most obstructed)
Manner of articulation (the particular way the airstream is obstructed)
Voicing
Begin by distinguishing between [s] (as in bus or sip) and [z] (as in buzz or zip). When
you pronounce a long, continuous [zzzzz] and alternate it with a long, continuous [sssss], youll
notice that the position of your tongue within your mouth remains the same, even though these
sounds are noticeably different. You can feel this difference by touching your larynx (voice box
or Adams apple) while saying [zzzzz sssss zzzzz sssss]. The vibration that you feel from your
larynx when you utter [zzzzz] but not [sssss] is called voicing; it is the result of air being forced
through a narrow aperture (called the glottis) between two mucosal folds (the vocal cords) in the
larynx. It is like the leaf with a slit in it that children use to make a vibrating noise by blowing air
through.

Manner of Articulation
Besides having a voicing feature, [s] and [z] can be characterized as to their manner of
articulation. In pronouncing them, air is continuously forced through a narrow opening at a
place behind the upper teeth. Compare the pronunciation of [s] and [z] with the sounds [t] and
[d]. Unlike [s] and [z], [t] and [d] are not pronounced by making a continuous stream of air pass
through the mouth. Instead, the air is completely stopped behind and above the upper teeth and
then released (or exploded) in a small burst of air.

Place of Articulation
Of the sounds analyzed so far, [s] and [t] are voiceless, [z] and [d] are voiced. All four are
pronounced with the point of greatest closure immediately behind the upper teeth. Pronounce ten
and den aloud, feeling where the tip of your tongue touches the top of your mouth for the
consonants.
There are three major places of articulation for English stops: alveolar ridge, lips,
and soft palate (or velum). If you say pin and bin, youll notice that for the initial sound in each
word air is built up behind the two lips and then released. Thus the point of greatest closure is at
the lips, and for that reason [p] and [b] are called bilabial stops (bilabial means two lips).

Consonant Sounds
Consonants are sounds produced by partially or completely blocking air in its passage
from the lungs through the vocal tract.
Stops
The principal stops of English are [p], [b], [t], [d], [k], [g]. By pronouncing words with
these sounds in them (see Table 31 on page 81), you can recognize that [p] and [b] are bilabial
stops, [t] and [d] alveolar stops, and [k] and [g] velar stops. Stops are formed when air is built up
in the vocal tract and suddenly released through the mouth.
Fricatives
To pronounce the alveolar fricatives [s] and [z], air is forced through a narrow opening
between the tip of the tongue and the alveolar ridge. English has a large inventory of fricatives,
some articulated in front of [s] and [z] and others behind. Fricatives are characterized by a
forcing of air in a continuous stream through a narrow opening.

Affricates
Two consonant sounds of English are more complex to describe than its stops and
fricatives. These are the sounds that occur initially in chin and gin and finally in batch and
badge. If you pronounce these sounds slowly enough, you can recognize that they are stop-
fricatives, which well refer to as affricates.

Obstruents
Because they share the phonetic property of constricting the airflow through the vocal
tract, fricatives, stops, and affricates are together referred to as obstruents.

Approximants
English has four sounds that are known as approximants because they are produced by
two articulators approaching one another almost like fricatives but not coming close
Nasals
Nasal consonants are pronounced by lowering the velum, thus allowing the stream of air
to pass out through the nasal cavity instead of through the oral cavity. English has three nasal
stops: [m] as in mad, drummer, cram; [n] as in new, sinner, ten; and a third, symbolized by []
and pronounced as in the words sing and singer.
Clicks, Flaps, Trills
Africa have among their stop consonants certain click sounds that are an integral part of
their sound system. One example is the lateral click made on the side of the tongue; it occurs in
English when we urge a horse to move on, for example, but it is not part of the inventory of
English speech sounds; it is represented with the IPA symbol [__]. The middle consonant sound
in the words butter and metal is commonly pronounced in American English as an alveolar flap,
which is a high velocity short stop produced by tapping the tongue against the alveolar ridge. We
represent this flap by [] (a sound discussed further in Chapter 4). Spanish, Italian, and Fijian
have an alveolar trill r, as in Spanish correr to run. In order to keep the familiar symbol [r] to
represent the r of English, North American books represent the alveolar trill by [6] (instead of
the IPA symbol [r]).

Vowel Sounds
Vowel sounds are produced by passing air through different shapes of the mouth, with
different positions of the tongue and of the lips, and with the air stream relatively unobstructed
by narrow passages except at the glottis. Some languages have as few as three distinct vowels;
others have more than a dozen.

Diphthongs
English also has diphthongs, represented by pairs of symbols to capture the fact that a
diphthong is a vowel sound for which the tongue starts in one place and glides to another. Say
these slowly to get a sense of what a diphthong is: [aj] (as in ride); [aw] (as in loud); [j] (as in
boy, toy).

Sound Systems of
Language: PHONOLOGY
Phonology is the study of the sound systems of languages.
A phoneme is a unit in the sound system of a language. It is an abstract element, a set of
phonological features (e.g., bilabial, stop) having several predictable manifestations (called
allophones) in speech.
Allophones are realizations of a single structural element in the sound system of a
language.
Distribution of Allophones
It may be helpful to view a phoneme as an abstract element in the sound system of a
language a skeleton unit of sound that lacks a fully specified pronunciation but will be
pronounced in a specific way depending on where it occurs in a word. For example, while the
phoneme /p/ would have the skeletal features voiceless bilabial stop, one allophone might
be aspirated, another unaspirated, and a third unreleased.
Phonological Rules and Their Structure
Phonological rules have this general form:
A B / C___D
You can read a rule like that as A becomes B in the environment following C and preceding
D or, more simply, A becomes B following C and preceding D. A, B, C, and D
are generally specified in terms of phonological features, although in this book rules are
presented more informally. In cases where it is unnecessary to specify both C and D, one
of them will be missing.
Nasalization rule
vowel nasal
/ ___ nasal
(Vowels are nasalized when they precede nasal sounds.)
We said earlier that in acquiring a word a child must learn the number of phonemes in
the word, what those phonemes are, and the order in which they occur. As the English
cop/keep alternation shows for the allophones of /k/, and as the poke/spoke alternation
shows for the allophones of /p/
Generalizing Phonological Rules
Until now we have considered phonological rules as though they were formulated to
apply to particular sounds; in fact, they are more general. Consider the aspiration that
accompanies the production of initial /p/ in English words like pillow and poke:
1. For /p/:
voiceless
bilabial aspirated
/ word initially and initially in stressed syllables
stop
2. For /t/:
voiceless
alveolar aspirated
/ word initially and initially in stressed syllables
stop
3. For /k/:
voiceless
velar aspirated
/ word initially and initially in stressed syllables
stop
Because these three rules exhaust the list of voiceless stops in English, they can be captured
in a single rule of greater generality covering /p/, /t/, and /k/, as follows:
4. For /p t k/:
voiceless
stop aspirated
/ word initially and initially in stressed syllables

Natural Classes of Sounds

A set of phonemes such as /p t k/ that can be described using fewer features than would
be necessary to describe any of its member sounds individually is called a natural class
of sounds.

Underlying Forms

Rule Ordering
One additional phonological rule will illustrate a point about the organization of phonological
rules in the internalized grammar. Consider the following words:
Syllables and Syllable Structure

MORPHOLOGY
Derivational Morphology
Bound morphemes like -ify and -cation are called derivational morphemes.
When they are added to a base, a new word with a new meaning is derived.
The addition of -ify to purepurifymeans to make pure, and the addition
of -cationpurificationmeans the process of making pure.

Inflectional Morphology
Many languages have large inventories of inflectional morphemes. Finnish, Russian, and
German maintain elaborate inflectional systems