Introduction to Phonetics

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Lecture 1

• Introduction to Phonetics
• Introduction to Phonology
• A Brief History of 20th c. Phonology

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Introduction to Phonetics
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Phonetics the study of speech sounds

• How speakers make these sounds
• (articulatory phonetics)
• How the sounds travel in air
• (acoustic phonetics)
• How listeners perceive the sounds
• (perceptual phonetics)

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Phonology the study of sound patterns

• Ways that sounds sequence
• brick blick bnick
• blick - an accidental gap
• bnick - a systematic gap
• Ways that speakers impose other linguistic
  elements on sound
• She gave him a Nprésent.
• He will Vpresént 3 options.
• My name is Sally Crew. ?
• My name is Sally Crew. ?

• Ways that sounds affect each other
• mops mobs mosses
• pats pads passes
• lacks lags latches
• banka bank bankalar banks
• tren train trenler trains
• Turkish vowel harmony

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Phonetics studies

• Segments
• the individual sounds in the language
• (the Consonants and Vowels)
• Suprasegmentals
• the "music" imposed on the segments

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Suprasegmentals

• Pitch
• (1) My name is Sally Crew. ( I'm happy to meet
  you.)
• (2) My name is Sally Crew. (You have a
  reservation for me?)
• Timing
• (1) After he ate, my cat Freddy took a nap.
  (cat is diner)
• (2) After he ate my cat, Freddy took a nap. (cat
  is dinner)
• (ate is longer in (1) than in (2))
• Loudness
• I have a présent to presént.

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The Place of Phonetics in Linguistics

• Language uses gestures to convey meaning
• for spoken languages, the gestures are vocal
  tract articulations

Syntax
Phonology Phonetics
Semantics Pragmatics
Phonetics where abstract theory meets physical
articulation
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Some Current Questions about Segments (1)

• How does the infant learn, from the continuum of
  sounds, which sounds are important in their
  native language? i.e.
• How does the infant move from making phonetic
  distinctions between sounds to making phonemic
  distinctions?
• How does the infant move from continuous
  perception to categorial perception?

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Some Current Questions about Segments (2)

• At what age does a child cue into sounds of
  native language and dismiss non-native sounds?
• What happens in the brain when humans acquire the
  sounds of their native language?

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Some Current Questions about Segments (3)

• Can adults be taught to differentiate the sounds
  of a 2nd language?
• What factors contribute most to a 2nd language
  accent? (duration differences, voicing, timing, .
  . .)
• Different languages have different sound
  inventories. Does the size of the sound
  inventory affect speaking rate?

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Some Current Questions about Segments (4)

• If one vowel is articulated differently in one
  dialect, how does it affect the pronunciation of
  other vowels in the dialect? k?tgtkAt, hAt gt
  hQt
• How much does vision affect the perception of
  sounds? The McGurk effect

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Introduction to Phonology

• Physical facts and perception
• Phonetics and Phonology
• Phonology in the 20th Century

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Physical facts and visual perception

• The eyes lens gives an image to the retina
  upside down, reversed left to right, and flat

Retina
Lens
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Interpreting the visual facts

• But the brain interprets retinal images as
  right-side up, unreversed, and in depth
• This ability to interpret retinal images comes
  from experience that begins at birth

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Physical facts and audial perception
k?pH
k?p
/k?p/
k?p?
k?PfUl
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Interpreting the acoustic facts

• By 10 months, a child can discriminate the sounds
  of her own language. A child in an
  English-speaking environment will respond to the
  difference between r and l, a child in a
  Japanese-speaking environment will not.
• At a later stage the child will
• store one underlying representation for cup
• link this representation with a meaning

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The Organization of Language
Syntax
Phonology Phonetics
Semantics Pragmatics
the signified
the signifier cup
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Phonetics Phonology

• Phonetics
• covers articulatory, acoustic and perceptual
  facts
• concrete
• research based on experiment

• Phonology
• covers the organization of these facts
• abstract
• research based on hypothesis testing

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A Brief History of 20th Century Phonology
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19th century linguistics

• historical linguistics
• emphasis on individual sound changes
• without regard to how the change might fit
  into a sound system
• phonetics
• emphasis on accounts of the articulatory and
  acoustic events associated with the production
  of particular words

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Ferdinand de Saussure (1916)

• emphasized language as a system of related
  elements
• the system connects sound (the signifier) and
  meaning (the signified)
• with respect to sound, the linguist must be
  concerned with the differences between sounds

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The Prague School (1925-1939)

• defined the tasks of phonology
• to identify the characteristics of phonological
  systems in terms of language-particular
  significant differences
• to identify recurrent differences across
  languages (e.g., voicing)
• to formulate laws governing this recurrence
• to account for historical change in terms of the
  phonological system

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Roman Jakobson (1886-1982)

• the fundamental unit of linguistic analysis is
  the feature, not the phoneme
• there is a universal inventory of distinctive
  features that differentiate significant
  oppositions in natural languages
• precise definition of these features will allow
  us to make specific claims about what is and is
  not a possible phonological system

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Feature Oppositions

• Stage 1 /-consonant papa or baba
• Stage 2 /-oral papa, mama
• Stage 3 /-labial mama/nana, papa/tata
• Stage 4 /-high papa, pipi
• Stage 5 /-back pipi, pupu

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Feature OppositionsRoman Jakobson, 1941

• Silence
• -consonantal consonantal
• high -high oral -oral
• -back back labial -labial labial -labial
• apply in language acquisition
• apply in language dissolution
• correspond to the frequency of sounds in the
  worlds languages

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Edward Sapir (1884-1939)

• speech is a human activity that varies without
  assignable limit as we pass from social group to
  social group Language
• language is an abstract, psychological activity
  rather than a physical activity
• The Psychological Reality of the Phoneme

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Taxonomic Phonemics

• developed by American linguistics
• (Leonard Bloomfield, Bernard Bloch, Zellig
  Harris)
• divorced sound from meaning, since meaning was
  unobservable
• assumed certain principles that would lend a
  scientific precision to phonemics
• abstract systems are not testable
• psychological entities are not testable
• only sound discrimination is testable

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The Phoneme

• A phoneme is a family of similar sounds which
  language treats as being the same.
• If there is a contrast between two sounds in one
  environment, then these two sounds must be
  considered different phonemes in all
  environments.
• Bernard Bloch. 1941. Phonemic overlapping.

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In most environments, the presence of A and
A? is predictable

• The long/short distribution in
• pAt pA?d
• lAk lA?g
• mAp mA?b
• suggests that theA vs. A? distribution
• is predictable. What causes the long/short
• difference?

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But in some words, A vs. A? is the only
contrasting sound

• The contrast of /A/ and /A?/ in
• bomb bAm balm bA?m
• indicates that /A/ and /A?/ are phonemes in
  contrast, i.e., that English speakers distinguish
  these two words only on the basis of the short
  vs. long vowel.

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Asymmetry in Phonemic Representations

• To account for the phonemic contrast of
• bomb A balm A?
• Taxonomists had to claim that the distinction in
  pAt pA?d
• was also phonemic even though the variation is
  predictable from context (see slide 28)

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Features

• Chomsky pointed out that we could have both the
  predictability of pAt pA?d and the contrast
  of bAm bA?m by describing the sound variation
  with
• a unit smaller than the phoneme (the feature)
• a lexicon that contained underlying features
• rules to describe the variation
• Chomsky, N. 1964. Current Issues in Linguistic
  Theory.
• Chomsky, N. M. Halle. 1968. The Sound Pattern
  of English.

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A Feature Account of the A A? Distinction

• Lexicon Phonological Rule Pronunciation
• /bAm/ bAm
• /bA?m/ bA?m
• /pA?t/ V?-long/__-voiced pAt
• /pA?d/ pA?d
• -long, -voiced are called distinctive features

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Generative Phonology (SPE)

• based on The Sound Pattern of English. 1968. Noam
  Chomsky Morris Halle.
• assumes
• a universal set of features
• assumes a systematic phonology
• assumes an abstract representation of words in
  terms of features
• assumes a surface representation of words derived
  by rules

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Trends since 1968

• Generative (Linear, or SPE) Theory
• Autosegmental (non-linear) Theory
• Expansion beyond sound inventories to
• Syllable structure
• The Phonology-Morphology interface
• Metrics and rhythmic structure
• Tone and Intonation
• Prosodic Phonology
• Optimality Theory

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References

• Bloch, Bernard. 1941. Phonemic Overlapping.
  American Speech 16278-84 (reprinted in Joos
  195793-96).
• Chomsky, Noam and Morris Halle. 1968. The Sound
  Pattern of English. Harper Row.
• Joos, Martin. 1957. Readings in Linguistics
  One.. Univ. of Chicago Press.
• Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language. Harcourt, Brace
  World.
• Sapir, Edward. 1933. The Psychological Reality
  of the Phoneme. in Selected Writings of Edward
  Sapir, ed. David Mandelbaum. 1986. Univ. of
  California Press.
• Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1916. Cours de
  linguistique generale. Paris Payot. see Course
  in General Linguistics, translated by Wade
  Baskin. McGraw-Hill.
• Jakobson, Roman. Kindersprache, Aphasie, und
  allgemeine Lautgesetze.
• Trubetskoy, N.S. 1939. Grundzuge der Phonologie.
  Travaux du cercle linguistique de Prague 7.