Consonants & Vowels Flashcards
Articulatory Phonetics
- Production of sounds
- Speech organs
Acoustic Phonetics
- Transmission of sounds
- Physical qualities: e.g. volume, duration, frequency
Auditive Phonetics
- Perception of sounds; intake through the ear
- Processing in the brain
What is a phoneme?
- “smallest meaning-distinguishing units of a language”
- Notation: slashes //; e.g., /pɪt/
How do I know if it distinguishes meaning? (phoneme)
- Minimal pair test
e.g. bit-pit; dog-dock
What is an Allophone?
- Different realizations of the same phoneme
- Notation: angled brackets [ ]; e.g. [ɫ]
What is a Grapheme?
- Smallest functional unit of a writing system
- Notation: angled brackets < >; e.g., <pit></pit>
- Pronounciation: as the letters of the alphabet (e.g. /pi:/)
Consonants
- Obstruction of the air stream
- Noise element
- Cannot be the centre of a syllable (exceptions)
Vowels
- Air stream is not obstructed
- Harmonic vibrations
- can be the centre of a syllable
Description of consonants - Distinctive features
- Place of articulation
- Manner of articulation
- voicing
Consonants - Places of Articulation
Describes the exact place where the airstream is obstructed.
Places of Articulation - Name all of them (8)
a. bilabial
b. labiodental
c. dental
d. alveolar
e. post-alveolar
f. palatal
g. velar
h. glottal
Manner of Articulation
Describes the type or degree of closure of the speech organs, i.e. how the airstream is modified in the vocal tract
Manner of Articulation - Name all of them
- plosive
- fricative
- affricate
- nasal
- lateral
- approximant
State of glottis
voiced
voiceless
Voiced
Vibration of the vocal folds (vocal folds are close together)
Voiceless
No vibration of vocal folds (vocal folds are far apart)
/d/
plosive, alveolar, voiced
e.g.: dog
/p/
plosive, bilabial, voiceless
e.g.: pull
/b/
plosive, bilabial, voiced
e.g.: burn
/t/
plosive, alveolar, voiceless
e.g.: take
/k/
plosive, velar, voiceless
e.g.: king
/g/
plosive, velar, voiced
e.g.: get
/f/
fricative, labiodental, voiceless
e.g.: fish
/v/
fricative, labiodental, voiced
e.g.: vain
/θ/
fricative, dental, voiceless
e.g.: thin
/ð/
fricative, dental, voiced
e.g.: there
/s/
fricative, alveolar, voiceless
e.g.: sin
/z/
fricative, alveolar, voiced
e.g.: zoo
/ʃ/
fricative, postalveolar, voiceless
e.g.: shine
/ʒ/
fricative, postalveolar, voiced
e.g.: rouge
/h/
fricative, glottal, voiceless
e.g.: high