Chapter 1 Flashcards
What is Phonetics?
- It is more than: “The study of speech sounds”
- “The scientific study of speech sounds, their form (articulatory), substance (acoustic properties), and perception; and the application of this study to a better understanding and improvement of linguistic expression” (Edwards, 2003, p. 2)
Why do we use Phonetics?
To transcribe exactly what is said.
- Some people are unintelligible
- Some people use English as a second language and have an accent or dialect
- Children - you must record exactly what is said by a child, not what you think they said or are supposed to say.
Experimental Phonetics
- Researchers study speech sounds through this branch of phonetics.
- There is a lot to control for when doing research on speech sounds.
- We won’t be discussing this branch much.
Articulatory (Physiological) Phonetics
- How speech sounds are produced by speakers
- Study of the vocal tract and articulators to describe what happens or how speech sounds are produced.
Acoustic Phonetics
“The study of the physical properties of
speech sounds.”
- The study of the acoustic properties of sounds allows identification of the distinctive features of sounds.
- Primary Dimensions
- Frequency – rate of pulsation of the vocal folds
- Duration – period of time that a sound lasts
- Amplitude – amount of air pressure under vocal folds (vf) and resulting displacement of the vocal folds.
Perceptual Phonetics
- Perceptual Phonetics relates to how speech sounds are heard or perceived by listeners.
- May study for example how speech sounds are heard in noisy environments.
- Discrimination is “one’s ability to identify a speech sound as being different from another speech sound”.
- Important to speech pathologists to accurately transcribe what a person says. e.g. /p/ vs. /b/ we as SLP’s need to hear the difference but so do speaker of a language when they are listener’s
Clinical Phonetics
Using phonetic information to remediate unintelligible or disordered speech.
Linguistic Phonetics
Focuses on analyzing and classifying sound systems within a language and the rules used for combining sounds with other sounds within a language.
Dialectology
Study of causes and characteristics of speech and sound differences of spoken languages.
E.g. dialects
Pragmatic Phonetics
Changes that occur as speakers adapt their speech to the perceived needs of listeners. E.g. adult – child talk
Phonetic Transcription
Using the IPA to transcribe speech of any given language
International Phonetic Association (IPA)
- The major and largest organization for phoneticians
- International Phonetic Alphabet
Linguistics
- An area of study concerned with the nature of language and communication and the principles or rules that govern a particular language. Specifically, the systematic rules determining pronunciation, word formation and grammatical constructions within a particular language.
- Phonology is considered a branch of linguistics.
Phonology
- Study of the structure and the systematic patterning of sounds along with their permissible combinations in a language.
- The rules for how these sounds are organized within a particular language.
Orthography
- Study of spelling and writing systems of a language.
- A system of rules for the written and printed representation of sounds of a language including spelling of words and punctuation.
Phone
Any sound that can be produced by the human vocal tract or one of many possible sounds in a language.
–Examples: clicks, raspberries, a baby cooing, the [d] in “dot”
Phoneme
Speech sound in a particular language or smallest contrastive unit in a language to establish word meanings and distinguish between them. (See Week 1 Bb comparing/contrasting phone vs. phoneme)
–Examples: the phoneme /d/ distinguishes between “bea” “bead” , the /t/ & /m/ in “hat” and “ham”.
Allophone
Aa variant of a phoneme; variations of phonemes used by different speakers in various phonetic contexts, however the meaning of the word is not changed.
–e.g. /t/ in the word “let” vs. “letter”
–e.g. the /p/ in pin vs. hop vs. pop
–/ӕ/ in man vs bat
Morph
General term for unit of meaning
Morpheme
Smallest meaningful unit in grammar of language
Free morpheme
Stand alone units of meaning (think root words).
e.g “cat”
Bound Morphemes
Must be connected to a Free morpheme to have meaning (prefixes and suffixes)
e.g. the /s/ must be connected to a free morpheme such as “cat” to be “cats”
Allomorph
Variation of a morpheme.
For example, 3 allomorphs of the plural phoneme: cats, dogs, horses.
How are they pronounced vs. how are they spelled?
Prevocalic Consonants
Consonants that come before the vowel
Postvocalic Consonants:
Consonants that come after the vowel
Intervocalic Consonants
Consonants that are between vowels
Onset:
The consonant(s) that precede the vowel in a syllable, AKA prevocalic consonants
Coda
The consonant(s) that follow the vowel in a syllable, AKA postvocalic consonants
Open Syllables
Refers to any syllable that ends w/ a vowel sound. No coda is present. e.g. V & CV
Closed Syllables
Refers to any syllable ending with a consonant sound(s), these syllables have a coda.
Rime
Part of the syllable that includes the vowel (nucleus) & the consonant that follows it (coda)
e.g VC & CVC
Clusters/Sequences:
Consonant sequences & clusters are the same.
Two or more consonant sounds produced next to each other in a word. (see p. 19 & Chapter 2 Harbers, 2013)
•Digraph
Two letters together produced as one sound
Examples: th /Ɵ/, ng /ŋ/, ch /ʧ/, sh /ʃ/, oo /u/, ee /i/
Grapheme
A letter or group of letters to represent one sound
–Example: /u/ as in to, too, two
Broad Transcription
This term is often used to designate a transcription that uses the simplest possible set of symbols with less details and is represented by slashes or slash marks / /
Narrow Transcription
This term is used to refer to more phonetic detail, either by using more specific symbols such as diacritics or a diacritic mark (e.g [:]) OR by representing some allophonic differences / p / vs. [pʰ] and this term is represented by using brackets []
Narrow Transcription - is often used in transcribing dialectical differences and phonetic distortions among speakers.
