The sounds of language

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The sounds of language
21 Oct. 2008
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• I take it you already know
• Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
• Others may stumble but not you
• On hiccough, thorough, lough and through.
• Well done! And now you wish, perhaps, to learn of
  less familiar traps?
• Beware of heard, a dreadful word,
• That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
• And dead its said like bed, not bead
• For goodness sake dont call it deed!
• Watch out for meat and great and threat
• (they rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
  

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Phonetics and Phonology

• Phonetics deals with the production of speech
  sounds by humans, often without prior knowledge
  of the language being spoken.
• Phonology is about patterns of sounds, especially
  different patterns of sounds in different
  languages, or within each language, different
  patterns of sounds in different positions in
  words etc.

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Phonetics

• It is the study of the way humans make, transmit
  and receive speech sounds. It is divided into
  three main branches
• articulatory phonetics is the study of the way
  the vocal organs are used to produce speech
  sounds.
• acoustic phonetics is the study of physical
  properties of speech sounds.
• auditory phonetics is the study of the way people
  perceive speech sounds.

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• Voiced consonants are produced with the vocal
  cords drawn together, creating a vibration
  effect
• Unvoiced consonants are produced with the vocal
  cords spread apart, therefore there is no
  vibration of the vocal cords

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In phonetics consonants are classified
considering

• The place of articulation
• (what part of the mouth we use)
• The manner of articulation
• (how we use this part of the mouth)

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Place of articulation

• Bilabial (both lips) BAT POT MORE WORLD
• Labio-dental (lower lip and upper teeth) FAT
  VOICE SAFE SAVE PHOTO COUGH
• Dental (tongue between the teeth) THIN BATH THE
  THERE THEN
• Alveolar (blade of the tongue close to the
  alveolar ridge) TOP DIG SIT ZOO NUT BUS BUZZ
  KNOT RAISE LAP RIGHT RIPPER
• Alveo-palatals (tongue against palate) SHOE
  CHURCH BRUSH JOKE JUDGE TREASURE PLEASURE YOU
  YET
• Velars (soft area beyond the hard palate, called
  soft palate or velum) KID KILL CAT CAR COLD COKE
  GO GUN GIVE MUG PLAGUE SING TONGUE RING
• Glottal (using the space between the vocal cords
  to make audible friction) HAVE HOUSE HOTEL WHO

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Manner of articulation

• Plosive/Stops - complete closure of the vocal
  tract
• PEN BOAT TEN DEN CANDY GOT
• Nasals - no airflow entering the nasal cavity
  NAME MORE RING
• Affricates- complete closure at the beginning of
  the mouth CHARLES JOY
• Approximants- strictly linked to the following
  vowel WE YES LOVE ROUND HI
• Fricatives - 2 vocal organs create a friction by
  coming very close FOR VOICE THAT THREE SOUND ZONE
  SHOW LEISURE

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(No Transcript)
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The glottal stop

• The glottal stop occurs when the space between
  the vocal cords (the glottis) is closed
  completely, very briefly and then released.
• Try it by saying Oh oh!
• Most British English speakers will use it for the
  first "t" in fortnight, where a consonant follows
  immediately speakers of Cockney and many other
  dialects will also use it for the "t" between
  vowels in city. It is variably present at word
  boundaries where a vowel follows at the beginning
  of the next word, as with the final "t" of "sort"
  in sort of.
• Another common usage of the glottal stop as an
  allophone to 't' more commonly found in North
  America is in the environment in which the 't' is
  immediately followed by a non-syllabic 'n' sound,
  as in mutant or important.

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The flap

• Intervocalic alveolar flapping is a phonological
  process found in many dialects of English,
  especially North American English.
• American speakers often pronounce the word
  butter in a way that is closed to budder.
• Many Americans tend to flap the t and d
  consonants between vowels so the following words
  sound the same
• betting/bedding (biancheria da letto),
• boating/boding (presagio) ,
• coating (strato) /coding ,
• grater (grattugia) /grader (selezionatore),
• kitty (anche posta in gioco/kiddie,
• liter/leader,
• latter/ladder,
• matter/madder,
• metal/medal,
• Patty/Paddy,(AmE sbirro)
• rater (nei composti first-rater
  second-rater)/raider (predatore),
• shutter (chi chiude o imposta/saracinesca) /
  shudder (brivido),
• waiter/wader (to wade guadare),
• writer/rider ecc.

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The vowel

• There are 5 vowel symbols in written language and
  20 vowel phonemes in most accents of English (12
  single sounds and 8 diphthong sounds).
• In order to write these phonemes extra symbols
  are necessary

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Vowel properties

• From a phonetic point of view vowels have the
  following features
• the vibration of the vocal cords (they are all
  voiced)
• their distintive sounds depend on the shaping of
  the mouth
• no part of the mouth is closed
• none of the mouth organs come so close to
  generate friction.

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The schwa

• Schwa is the most common vowel sound in English,
  the unstressed vowel in many unstressed
  syllables
• like the 'a' in about and sofa
• like the 'e' in taken and the (if before a
  consonant)
• like the 'i' in pencil
• like the 'o' in eloquent and convince
• like the 'u' in circus ?
• like the 'y' in sibyl

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Types of vowels

• Monophthongs (or pure vowels) are vowels that are
  perceived as single sounds.
• Diphthongs are vowels that are perceived as two
  vowel qualities as in
• time, road, near
• Triphthongs are vowels perceived as three vowel
  qualities as in
• player, fire, royal

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Phonology

• It is the study of the sound system of a given
  language.
• A phoneme is the linguistic utterance of a single
  sound segment. A phoneme is the single sound also
  called segment.
• It is the smallest phonetic unit in a language
  that is capable of conveying a distinction in
  meaning, as the r of rat and the b of bat in
  English.

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Allophones

• When we have a sound which is a version of one
  phoneme we refer to them as allophones.
• An allophone is a phonetic variant of a phoneme
  in a particular language. It is one of several
  similar speech sounds that belong to the same
  phoneme.

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Minimal pairs

• When 2 words such as pet and pat are identical in
  form except for a contrast in one phoneme,
  occurring in the same position, the words are
  described as minimal pairs in the phonology of
  English.
• Fan-van, bet-bat, site-side, etc.
• Big-pig-rig-fig-dig-wig is a minimal set.

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Other examples

• Word 1 word 2 IPA 1 IPA 2
• pin bin /p?n/ /b?n/
• rot lot? /r?t/
  /l?t/
• zeal seal /zi?l/
  /si?l/
• bin bean /b?n/ /bi?n/
  
• pen pan /p?n/ /pæn/
• hat had /hæt/ /hæd/
• ?LOT means destiny

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Syllables

• A syllable is a unit of organization for a
  sequence of speech sounds.
• For example, the word water is composed of two
  syllables wa and ter. A syllable is typically
  made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a
  vowel) with optional initial and final margins
  (typically consonants).
• Syllables are often considered the phonological
  "building blocks" of words. They can influence
  the rhythm of a language, its prosody, its poetic
  meter, its stress patterns, etc.

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• A word that consists of a single syllable (like
  cat) is called a monosyllable (such a word is
  monosyllabic), while a word consisting of two
  syllables (like monkey) is called a disyllable
  (such a word is disyllabic). A word consisting of
  three syllables (such as indigent) is called a
  trisyllable (the adjective form is trisyllabic).
  A word consisting of more than three syllables
  (such as intelligence) is called a polysyllable
  (and could be described as polysyllabic),
  although this term is often used to describe
  words of two syllables or more.

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Prosody

• In linguistics, prosody is the rhythm, stress,
  and intonation of speech. Prosody may reflect the
  emotional state of a speaker whether an
  utterance is a statement, a question, or a
  command whether the speaker is being ironic or
  sarcastic emphasis, contrast and focus and
  other elements of language which may not be
  encoded by grammar.
• Are you going tomorrow?
• Are you going tomorrow?
• Are you going tomorrow?

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• A woman without her manis nothing.
• A womanwithout her man is nothing