Chapter 2: Sounds of Language: Phonetics and Phonology Flashcards
acoustic phonetics
The study of the physical properties of speech sounds.
articulatory phonetics
The study of how speech sounds are produced by the vocal apparatus.
auditory phonetics
The study of the perception of speech sounds by the ear.
phone
Smallest phonetic segment that can be isolated in a stream of speech, for example, /p/, /ae/.
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
The alphabet of the International Phonetic Association designed to represent the sounds of all the world’s languages.
vocal tract
The body organs that are involved in the production of speech sounds, including the lungs, glottis, pharynx, and oral and nasal cavities.
egressive airstream mechanism
An airstream produced by forcing air out of the vocal tract. Most sounds of most languages are produced on the egressive pulmonic airstream.
ingressive airstream mechanism
An airstream produced by drawing air into the oral or nasal cavity. Ingressive airstream may be used when speaking while taking a breath; it is also used with glottalic and velaric airstream in the formation of implosive a and clicks.
vocal folds
A set of muscles in the larynx resembling a pair of flaps that can be brought together more or less tightly to modify the stream of air passing through. Also called vocal cords.
voiced phone
A speech sound produced by the vocal apparatus of an animal, for example, barking of a dog, bird songs.
voiceless phone
A speech sound produced with the glottis open, without vibration of the vocal folds.
oral cavity
The mouth.
nasal cavity
The chamber behind the nose through which air passes when the velum is lowered.
velum
The soft part of the roof of the mouth behind the hard palate.
nasal
A sound produced when the velum is lowered, permitting air to pass into the nasal cavity, which acts as a resonating chamber.
consonant
A speech sound produced with a narrowing or closure at some point in the vocal tract.
vowel
A resonant speech sound that is produced without significant constriction in the oral cavity.
place of articulation
The location in the vocal tract of the constriction of airflow in a consonant, for example, dental, palatal.
manner of articulation
The way the airstream is obstructed and modified as it passes through the constriction in the vocal tract in the production of a consonant. Manners of articulation include stop, nasal, fricative.
bilabial
A sound made with both lips, for example, [m], [b].
labiodental
A sound articulated with the bottom lip in contact with the upper teeth.
dental phone
A consonant with the teeth as the place of articulation.
interdental
A sound produced with tip or blade of the tongue between the upper and lower teeth, for example, the initial segment of the.
alveolar
A speech sound produced by bringing the tip or blade of the tongue towards or against the alveolar ridge, for example, [t], [n].
palatal
A consonant produced with constriction in the region of the palate.
alveopalatal
A sound produced with constriction in the region just behind the alveolar ridge, for example, the initial phone of she.
velar
A consonant produced with constriction in the region of the velum.
uvular phone
A speech sound made with the tongue making contact or approximating to the uvula, as in [q].
uvula
The small appendage hanging down at the back of the soft palate or velum.
pharyngeal
A consonant sound with the pharynx as its place of articulation, for example, the Danish rhotic is a pharyngeal approximant.
pharynx
The tubular cavity in the vocal tract located above the larynx and oriented roughly at right angles to the oral cavity.
glottal
A sound produced with constriction in the glottis, e.g with complete closure a glottal stop results.
glottis
The opening between the vocal folds.
voice onset time (VOT)
The period between the release of a stop and the onset of voicing in a following vowel. Vocal onset time can be negative, zero, or positive.
aspirated
A feature of a voiceless stop in which a puff of air follows its release, caused by a brief sound delay between the release of the stop and the beginning of voicing a following vowel.
fricative
A consonant produced with a narrow but incomplete obstruction in the vocal tract, resulting in a friction sound as the airstream passes through.
affricate
A sound produced by a stop followed by slow release accompanied by friction noise, for example, the first segment of chap, written ch.
lateral
A manner of articulation of a consonant whereby the air escapes via one or both sides of an obstruction in the oral cavity, for example, [l].
rhotic
An r-like speech sound.
glides
Vowel like consonant sounds produced with minimal obstruction the passage of air at its point of articulation. Also called a semivowel.
vowel
A resonant speech sound that is produced without significant construction in the oral cavity.
vowel height
The relative height of the highest point of the tongue in the mouth in the production of the vowel, for example [i] is a high vowel because the highest point of the tongue is very high in the mouth (cf. [ae] where the high point is lower).
high vowel
A vowel with the high point of the tongue relatively high in the oral cavity, for example, [i], [u].
mid vowel
A vowel in the production of which the high point of the tongue is in a relatively neutral position in the mouth, neither high nor low.
back vowel
A vowel produced by moving the body of the tongue towards the back of the mouth, so that its high point towards the back of the mouth, for example, [o], [upside-down omega thing].
central vowel
A vowel produced with the high point of the tongue in the centre of the mouth on the front-back axis.
rounded vowel
A vowel accompanied by rounding of the lips, as with [u] and [y].
glottalic airstream mechanism
An airstream produced by forming a cavity above the larynx, which is compressed or rarified by raising or lowering the glottis; then the upper obstruction is released.
adjective
A speech sound produced on an egressive glottalic airstream. The air in a cavity above the larynx is compressed by raising the glottis, and the pent-up air is then released.
implosive
A speech sound produced on an ingress ice glottalic airstream. The air in a cavity above the larynx is rarified by lowering the larynx, and closure in the oral cavity is released, allowing air to be sucked in.
velaric airstream mechanism
An airstream produced by placing the back of the tongue against the velum and making a second closure further forward in the oral cavity. The enclosed space is then enlarged, radiating the air within; the second closure is next released, and the air flows inwards.
click
A speech sound produced by a velaric airstream mechanism. The back of the tongue makes a closure at the velum, and a second contact is made further forward in the oral cavity. The enclosed space is next enlarged so that the air within it is rarified; the second closure is then released, and the air flows inwards with a clicking noise. English tut! tut! is made up of clicks; clicks are part of the regular phonology of Khoisan and nearby Bantu language.
coarticulation
The simultaneous production of a speech sound at two places of articulation (e.g. the labio-velar /w/ of English) or with two manners of articulation (e.g. affricates).
diphthong
A vowel sound involving significant movement of the tongue from one vowel position to another.
syllable
A minimal unit of speech production, normally composed of a vowel or vowel-like consonant that is optionally preceded and/or followed by a consonant.
prosody or suprasegmental
A phonetic quality that is spread over a sequence of phones, for example, stress, intonation, tone, loudness.
pitch
The frequency of vibration of the vocal folds.
tone
The contrastive pitch on a syllable in a tone language, in which minimal pairs may exist that differ only in syllable tone.
tone language
A language in which tone is phonemic, as in many languages of Africa, America, and South-East Asia.
intonation
The pitch contour of a phrase or sentence.
stress, stressed syllable
A syllable perceived as prominent due to greater length, loudness and/or higher pitch than other syllables in a word.
phonology
The sound system of a language, including the inventory of phonemes and their paradigmatic and syntagmatic patterning; also the study of the sound systems of languages.
allophone
One of the alternative phonetic realizations of a phoneme.
phoneme
A minimal unit in the phonology of a language that is capable of making the difference between words; a distinctive phone.
free variation
Where one sound can replace another in a given environment without giving rise to a new word.
complementary distribution
When two speech sounds do not share any environments of occurrence they are said to be in complementary distribution.
conditioning factor
A circumstance that, when met, leads to the choice of one allophone or allomorph, for example, a conditioning factor for the unaspirated allophone [p] is that it follows a word initial [s] as in [spin].
suspicious pair
A pair of phones that are sufficiently similar to be potentially allophones of a single phoneme.
minimal pair
Two words that are identical except for a single phoneme in a certain position, for example, pin and bin in English.
transcription
The representation of a spoken or signed utterance in the written mode.
broad transcription
A transcription of a spoken utterance that indicates the major phonetic features, usually using a limited range of basic symbols.
narrow transcription
A detailed phonetic transcription.
