ASL 1300F Phonetics 1 2025 Flashcards
What is phonetics?
Phonetics is the study of speech sounds.
What are the three main topics covered in the introduction to phonetics?
- Introduction to phonetics
- Place of articulation
- Manner of articulation
What are the aims of phonetics?
- To understand and describe speech sounds
- How they are produced
- How they are classified
What are the branches of phonetics?
- Acoustic Phonetics
- Auditory Phonetics
- Articulatory Phonetics
What does articulatory phonetics study?
The shapes that the mouth makes when producing sounds and the speech organs involved.
What are the two types of air flow in speech production?
- Egressive – Air flowing outwards from the vocal tract
- Ingressive – Air flowing inwards into the vocal tract
What is a speech sound segment?
A language is made up of a combination of speech sounds.
Fill in the blank: A speaker can segment the sounds to make sense of the _______.
word
What does it mean to not know a language in terms of sound segments?
Not knowing the sound segments.
True or False: No two speakers speak the same.
True
What are some factors that affect how individuals speak?
- Age
- Gender
- Other spoken languages
What is orthography?
The writing system of a language.
How can the same sound be represented in different ways?
The same sound can be represented with different letters.
Provide examples of words that include letters not pronounced.
- Autumn
- Honest
- Sword
- Psychology
- Island
- Bough
- Debt
What challenge does the English spelling system present to learners?
The representation of sounds is complex.
Fill in the blank: Phonetics is scientific and symbols for sounds need to be _______.
replicable
What is an example of how pronunciation can differ from spelling in English?
- ‘gh’ pronounced /f/ as in enough /ɪˈnʌf/
- ‘o’ pronounced /ɪ/ as in women /ˈwɪmɪn/
- ‘ti’ pronounced /ʃ/ as in nation /ˈneɪʃən/
What is one of the concluding remarks about phonetics?
Phonetics is about speech sounds.
What is necessary to understand speech sounds in languages?
Knowledge of the sounds.
What is the penalty for academic misconduct?
Zero
In the strictest sense, what does Phonetics mean?
Articulatory phonetics
What are the two meanings of articulation?
- Movements of articulators in the oral tract that produce segments
- Includes phonation, the activities of the laryngeal or vocal folds
What are suprasegmentals in phonetics?
- Stress
- Pitch
- Intonation
- Tone
What is true about the selection of sounds in languages?
Each language has its own particular selection of sounds
What is the relationship between the human speech apparatus and the hearing mechanism?
They are the same all over the world
What is the significance of common sounds in languages?
Some sounds are so common that they are found in almost all languages
Give an example of a sound found in Afrikaans.
The ‘rh’ sound in ‘Goeie More’
What consonant sounds are common across many languages?
- Sounds like those at the beginnings of the English words: tea, key, pea, see, fee, me, knee
What vowel sounds are commonly found in many languages?
Sounds resembling those heard in ‘seat’ and ‘sat’
What is the scientific study of speech sounds called?
Phonetics
What are the three types of phonetics?
- Acoustic
- Auditory
- Articulatory
What can our brains do with individual speech sounds?
Segment them and make meaning of them
What do orthographies fail to do consistently?
Represent sounds consistently
What was created to represent sounds across all languages?
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
When was the International Phonetic Alphabet developed?
In 1888
What does the IPA use to represent sounds?
Ordinary letters and invented characters
How are IPA symbols written?
In square brackets [ ]
What are the two classes of sounds in all languages?
- Consonants
- Vowels
How are consonants produced compared to vowels?
Consonants are produced with some restrictions in the vocal tract, while vowels are not
What is an example of a phonetic transcription for ‘enough’?
[ɪnʌf]
What is the schwa symbol in IPA?
[ə]
What are monophthongs?
Vowels with a single sound
What are diphthongs?
Vowels with two ‘linked’ sounds
What is a phoneme?
Any distinct speech sound
Is transcription perfect? True or False?
False
What is a challenge when transcribing names?
Names can be pronounced in many different ways
