Course handouts Flashcards
What is phonetics?
Loosely speaking, the scientific study of the sounds in a language.
What is phonology?
The study of the sound patterns in a language.
How do phonetics and phonology differ from other liberal arts subjects?
The methodologies and approaches are more like those used in natural sciences with scientific practices.
In what was is phonetics and phonology a rigorous and rigidly accurate field?
It aims for precision in its description and doesn’t tend to have ambiguities.
What are the four main goals of phonetics and phonology?
The main goal is to capture the fundamental phonetic and phonological rules and principles true to all human languages.
It aims to capture what a native speaker knows about the sounds and sound patterns their native language.
it attempts to simulate or build theoretical models of the native speaker’s language
It attempts to explain language phenomena rather than simply describe them.
Why is IPA transcription important in representing language?
Orthography of a language is not a good representation of speech.
What is voicing?
vibration of the vocal cords
how does the glottis affect voicing?
When the glottis is closed, the sound is voiced.
What does a long positive VOT signify?
Aspiration
What is the state of the glottis during aspiration?
open
What kind of VOT result from a voiced stop?
Negative
What does a zero VOT signify?
Unaspirated voiceless stop
What is the state of the velum during a nasal?
Lowered
What is stricture?
The distance between the active and passive articulators.
What is constriction?
The act of creating stricture.
What is the vocal tract?
The entire oral cavity beginning from vocal cords, and the nasal cavity.
How is a sonorant characterized?
No restriction of airflow in the oral tract
How are obstruents characterized?
There is some kind of restriction in the oral tract
What languages only have voiceless stops?
Korean, Mandarin, etc
What languages only have voiced stops?
No languages have only voiced stops.
Which is more marked: voiced or voiceless stops?
Voiced stops. The presence of voiced stops implies that of the voiceless stops, but no vice versa.
What is palatalization?
The addition of a high front tongue gesture
What is glottalization? (example?)
An added brief closure of the vocal cords. The final consonants of cat and mat may be glottalized. Also the middle sounds in “at night” and “Britain”
What details does narrow transcription include?
aspiration, nasality, dentalization, phonetic length, voicelessness, no audible release, labialization, palatalization rhoticity, syllabism
When might a consonant be aspirated?
A voiceless consonant at the beginning of a syllable
When might a vowel be nasalized?
When it is near a nasal consonant.
When might a consonant be dentalized?
When it precedes a dental consonant.
When might a vowel be long in english?
When the following coda consists of a voiced consonant as opposed to a voiceless one.
When might a consonant be devoiced?
When it follows a voiceless obstruent.
When might a consonant be unreleased?
When it is found at the end of a syllable.
What is the rhyme/rime of a syllable?
The nucleus plus the coda
How can languages differ in syllabic constraints?
- some languages have an obligatory onset (Maba, Klamath, Arabela)
- some languages require a simple onset (Finnish, Chinese, Japanese)
- some languages do not allow a coda (hawaiian, Arabela, Fijian)
What are the three areas of phonetics?
articulatory, acoustic, auditory
How is sound generated, transmitted, and received?
- source vibrates, resulting in air pressure fluctuations (sound waves)
- Pressure waves propagate through the air and cause the eardrum to vibrate
- Auditory system translates the vibrations into neural impulses
- Brain interprets the impulses as sound.
what three tools are used to measure sound?
Waveform, spectrum, spectrogram
What is a waveform?
Plots sound pressure fluctuations over time with time (x) and amplitude (y)
What is a spectrum?
Plots frequency content of sound with frequency (x) and amplitude (y)
What is a spectrogram?
plots how the frequency and amplitude domains change over time with time (x), frequency (y), and amplitude (darkness)
What is amplitude?
measures the degree of change (positive or negative) the sound waves affect in atmospheric pressure (force, loudness). Measured in decibel (dB)
What is frequency?
how often a sound wave fluctuates per time unit (pitch). Measured in Hertz (Hz). 1 Hz = 1 cycle per second.
What is a formant?
a resonance region with certain characteristics
