Dr. G. Devi
English 280/Linguistics
Phonetics – English speech sounds
Lecture notes
I have posted these on ecampus as well, okay? Study the IPA handout carefully for transcription classwork. Thanks all. GD.
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What is a speech sound? A speech sound is nothing but air that is released from your lungs and modified at the larynx (voice box in the throat – more pronounced in men than in women–boys go through voice change more conspicuously than girls do as their larynx obtains a larger size during puberty—the bump called Adam’s Apple in front of their throat—the standard story is that a piece of the forbidden fruit Adam ate got stuck in his throat giving rise to all those wonderful tenor voices, but in reality, since men live everywhere in the world and not just in communities that are of the Book, the word Adam’s Apple is a Greek corruption of a Hebrew word that means “the male bump”) and at various filters in the oral cavity and nasal cavity. Speech is a continuous smearing of sound waves one after the other. This is why when we hear a new language we cannot hear the word boundaries and everything sounds like so much noise. (In fact, the etymology story goes that we get the word “barbarian” with that unseemly meaning from the Greek word “barbaros” an onomatopoeic word imitating our incomprehensible reaction to a foreign language; the Greeks could not figure out what they were hearing when they traveled overseas—bar-bar, blah blah blah, yaddah yaddah yaddah etc. Now we get back at the Greeks by saying something “sounds like Greek to me” if we don’t understand it!) Writing is a highly idealized instantiation of abstract speech and the alphabet has a discreet form that sound does not. No one ever pronounces the same sound exactly the same way twice, but this does not mean that we cannot classify speech sounds based on certain shared characteristics. We shall review these characteristics based on articulatory configurations below.
Air flow from the lungs during speech differs from ordinary breathing in certain important ways:
• During ordinary breathing the air flow to and from lungs is unobstructed; during speech the airflow encounters resistance at several points—primarily the larynx, the vocal tract, and the nasal cavity.
• Both during breathing and speech production, the chest cavity expands when the diaphragm contracts as the lungs expand to fill up with air. In normal breathing when inhalation is complete, the diaphragm relaxes, the lungs shrink, and the air flows out during the exhalation. During speech, the diaphragm and the muscles of the rib cage continue to be active keeping the lungs filled with air—as long as we are talking, the lungs never deflate completely through a special adaptation of breathing to produce speech sounds.
Articulatory organs: We produce speech sounds based on the unique anatomical structure of our articulatory organs. Theoretically, any child with biologically sound and functioning articulatory organs (and the brain, of course) should be able to produce any of the 600 or so consonant sounds and 150 or so vowel sounds—a rough estimate from languages around the world. The articulatory organs of the human body include the lungs, the trachea, the larynx, the vocal cords, the tongue, the lips, the teeth, the alveolar ridge, the hard palate and the soft palate, and the glottis. Of these organs, the tongue is perhaps the singular most important organ of articulation. In fact, the word language is a cognate of Latin lingua, which means tongue. The relative position—high, mid and low–of the tongue in the oral cavity becomes the criteria for classifying vowel sounds. So also, the different segments of the tongue—the tip, the blade, the body and the back—determine how we classify consonants.
We can produce any number of sounds but only some of them qualify as phonemes, as meaningful units of sounds. For instance, the clicking sound to get a horse started, blowing a raspberry or all the goo-goo gaa-gaa sounds babies make and those adults imitate back to babies—these are all humanly possible sounds, but they are not meaningful discreet sounds. Discreet meaningful sounds are called phonemes.
Sound, not Spelling: English spelling is infamously erratic to represent English speech sounds. Consider these two words: cut and cease. What is the sound of the letter /c/ in these two words? In cut it is /k/ and in cease it is /s/. Or consider the many ways in which the letter /a/ is pronounced in words as common and varied as cat, above, father, park, aid etc. So linguists have devised a phonemic system called the IPA or International Phonetic Alphabet with one symbol to represent one sound. We are not concerned with spelling at all since spelling is unreliable to study sounds. The sound /f/ can be made with “gh” as in enough, “ph” as in physics, and “ff” as in stuff. See the problem? We shall use the IPA system to notate the sounds of the English language.
Speech sounds can be broadly classified into consonants and vowels.
Consonants are sounds produced with complete or severe obstruction of the airflow in the vocal tract. Vowels are produced with relatively open vocal tract.
The articulatory configuration for consonants includes knowing the following three features:
1. Phonation or voicing
2. Place of articulation
3. Manner of articulation
Phonation refers to the vibration of vocal cords as air passes through them. Vocal cords are a set of muscles inside the larynx with a small space called glottis between them. When they are pulled apart air passes through them without resistance. When they are brought close together but not tightly closed then air passing through them causes them to vibrate producing what is called voicing of sounds. Try saying the sound /f/ plugging your ear with one finger. (Alternately you might try placing your hand on your larynx as well. Men might find this method easier than women.) Now try saying the sound /v/. Both of these sounds are articulated at exactly the same place in your vocal tract. But /f/ is voiceless and /v/ is voiced. The buzz that you hear when you say /v/ is called voicing. Voicing is absent in the case of /f/. /f/ is called a voiceless sound.
Place of articulation refers to the place in your vocal tract where the sounds are produced. Based on the place of articulation, English speech sounds are classified as bilabial (using both lips), labiodental (lip and teeth), interdental (between upper and lower teeth), alveolar (on the alveolar ridge—make your tongue touch the hard ridge behind your upper row of teeth), palatal (on the hard palate of the roof of the mouth), velar (on the soft palate of the roof of the mouth), and glottal (in the glottis).
Place of articulation
Bilabial - /p/, /b/, /m/
Labiodental - /f/, /v/
Interdental – /Ø/, /∂/
Alveolar – /t/, /d/, /n/, /s/, /z/, /l/, /ɻ/
Palatal – /∫/, /3/, /t∫/, /d3/
Velar – /k/, /g/, /η/
Glottal - /h/
Manner of articulation means how the organs of articulation can be positioned in different ways to constrict the airflow at the larynx and at the two sound filters—the vocal tract and the nasal cavity. Based on the manner of articulation, English speech sounds are classified as stops (complete closure in the oral cavity or the glottis), fricatives (air passes continuously through the vocal tract but through a narrow opening creating an audible noise), affricates (sounds that begin as a stop but end as a fricative), liquids (air escapes through the sides of the tongue), nasals (oral cavity is closed and air flows out through the nasal cavity), glides (sharing both the properties of vowels and consonants and they go from a vowel articulation to a consonant articulation rapidly).
Stops: when airflow is completely obstructed during
speech /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/
Fricatives: when airflow is forced through a narrow opening
in the vocal tract so that noise produced by friction is
created /f/, /v/, /Ø/, /∂/,/ s/, /z/, /∫/,/ 3/,/ h/
Affricates: beginning as a stop and ending as a fricative
/t∫, d3/
Nasals: voiced stops with complete obstruction of
oral cavity but with air escaping through the nose /m, n/, /η/
Liquids: air flow outwards smoothly without obstruction /l/, /ɻ /
Glides: sound starting out as a vowel with rapid articulation and ending as a consonant articulation /w/, /j/
Study the above definitions and symbols and find out the nature of sounds used to sound your first and last names. What organs are involved in sounding your name out? What are the characteristics of the sounds involved? Transcribe your name phonetically using the IPA notation. When you notate sound, enclose them in slanted lines. If you prefer to type rather than practice by hand, if you are using MS Word as your editor, open up your editor, go to “Insert” on your navigation bar, select “Symbol,” and then select “IPA extensions” from the drop-down menu. Word has many of these symbols, if not you can find the unicode extensions here. We’ll be practicing transcription next week, so please come prepared with the above classifications, definitions and notational symbols. And ask me if you need any help, okay?
