phonetics Flashcards
phonetic symbol
symbol representing a speech sound
segment
the individual speech sounds that make up syllables
examples of suprasegmentals
stress and tone
3 categories of writing systems
alphabetic systems
syllabaries
logographic systems
logographic writing system
a writing system, such as that for Chinese, where the symbols used represent whole words, rather than the sounds or syllables that make up the word
3 types of non-pulmonic sounds
ejectives, implosives, and clicks
glottis
space between the vocal folds
airstream mechanism that forms the basis of all normal speech
egressive pulmonic airstream mechanism
Minimal pair
A pair of words that differ in only one phoneme (e.g. Sin/win)
Coronal consonants
Consonants articulated with front part of tongue -> so includes stuff like dental and alveolar consonants
Prosody
the patterns of stress and intonation in a language.
coda
a syllable constituent consisting of any consonant sounds following the syllable nucleus
elision
the omission of a sound (eg droppng ts)
For what consonants do we nasalise the preceding sound?
The velar consonants
What does the phonological system of a language include
an inventory of sounds and their features, and. rules which specify how sounds interact with each other.
Phonetics vs phonology
Phonetics is the study of speech sounds in their physical aspects
Phonology considers the cognitive aspects
Morphology
Study of the formation of words
Pragmatics
Study of language use
Difference between voices and voiceless sound
Voiceless air through open vocal folds
Voiced air through vibrating vocal folds
High (close) vowel
Low fundamental frequency
Low (open)
High fundamental frequency
IPA symbol for the y sound in ‘you’
j
Voice onset time
length of time that passes between the release of a stop consonant and the onset of voicing
Alternation
Situation where a word or word-part turns up in different phonological forms in different environments
Contrast
Where a phonetic difference is capable of signalling a difference between words in a particular language (eg in French there is a contrast between oral and nasalised vowels —> ‘mot’ and ‘mon’)
Aim of phonological theory
Describe and analyse:
- the sound systems of language
- the rules for combining sounds in a language
- general patterns for the pronunciation of words within a language
Natural segment class
A set of sounds with features in common
Why is it useful to be able to characterise natural segment classes
In categorising them we can understand the patterning of segments in language, because all members of a natural class have the same effect on sounds that occur in their environment
Why do words like map pack and cat get suffixed /-s/ whilst computer and paper and mug get suffixed /-z/?
The voiceless plosives in map pack and cat are characterised by devouring a following fricative (so the fricative z is devoiced to s for maps packs and cats)
All distinctive features are binary?
Originally this was the model but now theory proposes that some features, particularly those of place of articulation, may be unary; for example the features dorsal, labial and coronal don’t necessarily have to be mutually exclusive
Vowels distinctive features
Segments which are [+syllabic, - consonantal, + Sonorant]
what stuff gets aspirated (put little H in transcription)
only p, t and k get aspirated and this is at the beginning of a stressed syllable
what happens to t when before an unstressed vowel (as in ‘city’ or before a voiceless consonant
flaps intervocalically
what happens to t in word-final position
unreleased or glottalized
