Unit 1. Introduction to Articulatory Phonetics.

1. Primarily, human language emerged as a means of communication between people in

its oral form (i.e. by word of mouth) to exchange information, feelings and emotions, ideas and
thoughts verbally (Figures 1 and 2).

based on communication channels

image taken from

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/118782508895493735/ designer.mech.yzu.edu.tw

Figure 1. Types of communication Figure 2. The communication process

between two people
2. Forms of oral communication include:
 face-to-face talk
 group discussions
 conversation over the telephone
 speeches and presentations
 interviews
 radio and television broadcast etc.
In this sense, oral communication is influenced by speed of talking, clarity of speaking,
pitch and volume, i. e. pronunciation of a language.

Pronunciation is the way a sound, word, sentence etc. is uttered in an accepted manner

3. The branch of linguistics dealing with pronunciation (and also speech sounds, the
syllabic structure of words, word stress) is phonetics (Figures 3 and 4).

Image taken form https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Major_levels_of_linguistic_structure.svg

Figure 3. Major levels of linguistic structure put into the form of a diagram
 Figure 4.
https://www.uni-due.de/DI/REV_Linguistics.htm

Unless other levels of language, phonetics and phonology are the levels of sounds.

Phonetics is specifically the study of speech sounds and their physiological production

and acoustic qualities in general with no particular reference to any one language.

Thus, phonetics deals with physical description of sounds, focuses on presence vs.
absence of sounds/features, and defines the same transcription symbols in languages.

Phonology is the study of phonemes, its distinctive features and capacity of producing

changes in meaning, distinguished by the speakers of a particular language.

A speech sound or a phone is any audible, elemental, acoustic event occurring in speech
[http://www.dictionary.com/browse/speech-sound] without concern as to whether or not it is a phoneme of
some language.

So, an individual sound unit of speech is what you hear, not the letters used to spell a
word within a given language.
Phones are grouped in phonemes.

A phoneme is an abstract functional unit of the sound system, which distinguishes one
word from another in a given language.

But a phoneme doesn’t have meaning by itself. It is a sound-type “in the mind”.
Each phoneme represents a different sound a person can make.
A human language uses phonemes to build its words. The relationship between
phonemes and other linguistic units in the hierarchical structure of English can be seen in
figures 5 and 6.
 http://slideplayer.com/slide/9145879/
Figure 5. General hierarchy of levels of English language structure

Polk, Thad. 2015. University of Michigan, Psych 240. Cognitive Psychology Lecture 15 lecture handout.
Figure Diagram of language structure.
Figure 6. The hierarchy of the main English language components

4. The phonological system of a language has two levels:

1) the more concrete level, which involves the allophones (variants of a single
phoneme), the physical reality of phonetic segments or units (phones)
2) the abstract level, which involves phonemes.

Allophones are different phonetic realizations of a

For example, the sound or the phone [p] is pronounced differently in the words "pig,
spirit", but the same symbol represents these allophones in transcription: the phoneme /p/
(Figure 7).

phonemic representation /p/

phonetic representation [ph] [p]

Examples “pin” “spirit”

 Explanation: the “p” in “pin” is aspirated (a puff of air escapes from the mouth).
Whereas, the “p” in “spirit” is normally unaspirated.
Figure 7. The allophones of the same phoneme /p/ in English.

The allophones are commonly represented by square brackets [ ], and phonemes are put in
slanted brackets //.

5. The study of phonetics can be divided into three main branches (Figure 8):
a. Acoustic phonetics is concerned with the acoustic properties of sounds (i.e. how sounds are
transmitted via air in the shape of waves). Thus, it deals with the volume, pitch etc. of
speech sounds as they travel in the atmosphere with the help of instruments.
b. Auditory phonetics is concerned with how sounds are received via the ear. Thus it focuses
on the impact that speech sounds make on the eardrum of the listener.
c. Articulatory phonetics is concerned with how sounds are produced by the speech organs.

http://slideplayer.com/slide/4922155/
Figure 8. Three branches of phonetics

6. People use sounds in their speech, and the letters of the alphabet are used to
represent these sounds in writing. But in every world language the system of sounds is limited
and some sounds in one language are not the same in the other.
The English alphabetic principle is that there are 44 phonemes (in the standard British
model) mapped to 26 letters. That’s why very often one and the same letter, occurring in
different positions within a word, may be pronounced in different ways (e.g. the y in fly and
happy, syrup). And a different sequence of letters used can represent the same sound (the ai of
train and the ay of say). While the spelling of an English word does not tell you the way it is
pronounced, dictionaries for English learners use phonetic transcriptions.

A phonetic transcription is a system of graphic symbols to represent speech sounds and

minor distinctions in their pronunciation.

Figure 9 represents the English alphabet with letter spelling correspondences and
pronunciation of each letter below in IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet, invented in 1888 as
a system of a one-to-one correspondence between each sound in language and each phonetic
symbol).
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJV35b4cPgo
Figure 9. The English alphabet pronunciation

In figure 9 a diacritical mark (a symbol attached to some phonemic symbols) gives

further detail: 1) a superscript (a symbol printed just above a letter) h added to /k/ and /p/
indicates aspiration, [kh], [ph]; 2) a superscript j indicates palatalization, [kj]; 3) a turned r ɹ
stands for alveolar approximant, [ɑɹ].
The stress mark ˈ indicates primary stress and it is placed before the stressed syllable in the
word.
Square brackets [ ] (another type obliques // used in pronouncing dictionaries) around a letter
refer to its sound. Phonetic transcriptions (informally known as narrow transcriptions) place symbols in
square brackets to represent the usage of individual speakers. Obliques (i.e. slashes or slanted brackets)
are usually used in phonemic transcriptions (informally as broad transcriptions), which provide a symbol
for each phoneme in a text, and they represent an idealized description of the system of a speech
community.
Positional length of vowels (typical for the English language) is marked in a transcription
by two vertical dots [:].
Such phonemic symbols as [ʤ], [ʧ], [ʌ] represent the specific sounds of the English
sound system.
For further information, please refer to International Phonetic Alphabet.

Exercise 1. Think of the differential features relating to the phonemic system of English
and Ukrainian.

Exercise 2. What is the International Phonetic Alphabet? Look up the history of its
invention.

Exercise 3. Practice writing by dictation. Fill in the columns with the letters of the
English alphabet according to the sounds pronounced.

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

[eɪ] [ju:] [аɪ] [ɑɹ]/[ɑ:] [i:] [ε]/[e] [oʊ]/[əʊ]

Exercise 4. Match the sounds with the words.

 day

music
[аɪ] [ε]/[e]
bee

lend
[eɪ] [ɑɹ]/[ɑ:]
buy

bison
[ju:] [oʊ]/[əʊ]
mute

marrow
[i:]
element

baby

people

car
Exercise 5. Listen and count the words without looking at the sentences below.
a. Her hobby is drawing.
b. I like to swim very much.
c. Did I get you right?
d. This young man is a quick learner.
e. In short, I am afraid you are wrong.
f. Val is my cousin and he is a teenager.
g. Kris is my best friend ever in the entire world.
h. My advice to you is to quit this boring job.
i. Do you have any double rooms available this weekend?
j. He is optimistic and open to change.

Exercise 6. Read the words and match the same sounds 1-10 with a-j. Then write a
sentence of your own using each word.
Example: hen-pen

1. knight 10. men

2. meet
3. maid a. gate
4. pair b. stare
5. pour c. saw
6. allowed d. seat
7. what e. suit
8. this f. loud
9. mew g. miss
h. ten
i. not j. my