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Li1 Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology > Phonetics > Flashcards

Phonetics Flashcards

1
Q

What is the primary medium of language?

A

Speech

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2
Q

What is the difference between phonetics and phonology?

A

Phonology refers to the abstract cognitive conception of ‘sound’ in language: the inventory of sounds and principles guiding their arrangement into meaningful units (which combinations are possible + how addition of morphemes changes sound).

Phonetics focuses on sound substance: production (articulatory features), perception (auditory features) as well as fine variation (allophonic variation).

The boundary is by no means clear, and the two fields are mutually dependent.

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3
Q

What is the commutation test?

A

Finding minimal pairs to identify phonemic distinctions.

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4
Q

The steps of the speech process

Which are affected by indexical factors?

A

Communicative intent: The information the speaker intends to convey.

Linguistic Mechanism: The linguistic resources at the speaker’s disposal. (Affected by indexical factors)

The Phonetic Plan

The Vocal Mechanism: All physical mechanisms controlling speech production (respitatory system, vocal tract, brain and nerves) (affected by indexical factors).

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5
Q

Different types of information within ‘communicative intent’

A

Cognitive - facts or propositions (informative)
Affective - feelings towards a fact or proposition
Social - indicative of relationship with interlocuter
Self-presentational - the choice of certain linguistic features associated with a specific identity / subculture
Discourse regulative - signals to manage the turn taking interaction that is conversation.

map onto different linguistic resources

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6
Q

Resources within the ‘linguistic mechanism’?

A

Linguistic (explicitly expresses the infomation): Lexicon, Syntax, Morphology, Prosody (e.g for questions)
Para-Linguistic (information is implied): Prosody (e.g surprise), tone of voice

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7
Q

Interactions between indexical factors and the vocal mechanism.

A

Physique, sex and age - size and shape of speech organs.
Longer vocal tract = larger range of resonant frequencies.
Length & Mass of vocal folds = comfortable pitch range

Health - nasal resonance, phonation

State of mind - tension, tremor, drunk speech

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8
Q

Interactions between indexical factors and the linguistic mechanism.

A

Social background, age and sex - sociolinguistic factors

also gender in langs e.g j’suis amoureux/j’suis amoureuse

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9
Q

What is the ‘voice breaking’

A

vocal cords are in the process of growing, causing a difference between expectation and reality, therefore an incompetence in pitch control.

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10
Q

The consonant-vowel dichotomy (definitions)

A

Vowels: Vowel production involves UNIMPEDED airflow along the mid-line of the oral vocal tract.

Consonants: A stricture in the midline of the vocal tract which causes audible turbulence affects the airflow of the sound.

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11
Q

The grey area of the C-V dichotomy?

A

Approximant consonants.

/j/ & /w/

Satisfy the definition of vowels.
Fulfil the consonantal role of appearing at syllable boundaries.

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12
Q

The four key specifications when describing consonants?

A

1) air stream mechanism
2) place of articulation
3) manner of articulation
4) state of the glottis

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13
Q

Types of airstream mechanism:

A

Pulmonic: egressive airstream from the lungs
(rarely ingressive)
Velaric: ingressive sucking (like English tuts)
Glottalic ejective (egressive) and implosive (ingressive)

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14
Q

Which ‘places’ of articulation are different and which are arbitrarily defined?

A

Discretely different: labial, dental

Arbitrarily defined: palatal, velar, uvular

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15
Q

What is the active articulator? And do you need to specify it when describing consonants?

A

The active articulator is the body part which moves to create the stricture in the vocal tract:

Apico: tip of tongue
Lamino: blade of tongue (just behind tip)
Dorso: back of tongue

Only needs to be specified in ‘displaced articulations’, where the tongue tip is moved from its resting position (e.g in retroflex consonants which if the tongue was in resting position would not be pronounced using the tongue tip).

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16
Q

Is the horizontal axis of the IPA table strictly referring to ‘place of articulation’?

A

‘Retroflex’ is not place but rather the nature of the active articulator… (displaced articulation)

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17
Q

3 key elements of ‘manner of articulation’?

A
  • how narrow is the stricture (stop/fricative etc)

- aspects of articulation

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18
Q

What are these ‘aspects of articulation’?

A

Conformational:

  • oral or nasal
  • central or lateral
  • displaced articulation?
  • secondary articulation?

Transitional:
- dynamic events e.g trills, taps

Topographical:
- shape of tongue - retroflex, grooved

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19
Q

What is a tap?

A

One articulator is thrown against another (and then removed)

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20
Q

Relationship between the position of the velum and whether articulation is oral or nasal?

A

If the velum is raised, air is prevented from travelling through the nasal cavity.
If the velum is lowered, air can travel both through the oral (unless there is a blockage like closed lips) and nasal cavities.

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21
Q

What is secondary articulation?

A

A different part of the tongue creates a second narrowing.

Velarisation/uvularisation

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22
Q

How does the state of the glottis affect consonant production.

A

If the glottis is open: voiceless consonant

If the glottis is tightly closed: glottal stop

If the glottis is loosely closed: bernouilli effect creates vibrations > voiced consonant

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23
Q

How does timing of glottis opening and closing affect aspiration?

A

no change to glottis during oral closure - fully voiced
glottal opening during oral closure - voiceless unaspirated
glottal opening during and slightly after oral closure - voiceless aspirated
glottal opening during and slightly before oral closure - voiceless preaspirated
tight glottal closure during oral closure - voiceless glottally reinforced.

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24
Q

What is the glottis?

A

The space between the vocal folds.

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25
Q

What is in control of the state of the glottis?

A

The arytenoid cartilage.

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26
Q

What is the larynx?

A

The area of the vocal tract with the vocal folds. (above the trachea and below the pharynx)

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27
Q

What is the pharynx?

A

The cavity between the uvula and larynx.

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28
Q

Explain the vibration process (the bernouilli effect)

A
  • folds are closed
  • air beneath pushes them up forcing them apart
  • a burst of air flows through but begins to be cut off as the folds recoil back to the closed position
  • as the glottis narrows the last bit of air escaping leads to suction, closing the folds.
  • the cycle repeats.

(remember the vocal folds have vertical thickness, so closure can roll up from bottom)

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29
Q

state of the glottis with relation to wave forms

A

Voiceless sounds have aperiodic waveforms (created by the turbulence in the oral tract) - Noise

Voiced sounds have periodic waveforms (due to periodic vibration of the vocal folds) - Voice

Sounds such as voiced fricatives employ voice and noise.

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30
Q

How to know what the active articulator of a sound is?

A

If you’re really desperate it’s chilling in a list in your notebook.

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31
Q

/w/ articulation?

A

labial-velar - double articulation! narrowing at lips and velum. This is distinct from ‘secondary articulation’ because the narrowings are equal in size.

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32
Q

What do you call sounds which have the same articulators (both active and passive)

A

Homorganic sounds.

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33
Q

Ashby & Maidment, frequency of different types of consonants in the world’s languages.

A

alveolar/dental > velar > bilabial&raquo_space; palatal > uvular > retroflex > others

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34
Q

What is VPM consonant labelling?

A

Voice, Place, Manner

remember also to note medial/lateral

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35
Q

Laminar / Turbulent

A

Laminar: air particles flow parallel (no sound)

Turbulent: air particles collide into each other (noise)

36
Q

Sonorants vs Obstruents

A

Sonorants have no turbulence.

Obstruents do.

37
Q

Catford draws a distinction between approximants and vowels, what is it?

A

approximants have some turbulence when voiceless
(it is non-turbulent when voiced but still distinctly modified by articulatory channel)

vowels are not ever turbulent

38
Q

What is a trill?

A

One flexible organ repeatedly taps against another

39
Q

What is a flap?

A

One flexible organ strikes another in passing

40
Q

Can stops be lateral?

A

Yes, stops can be released laterally, e.g in ‘felt’

41
Q

What is an affricate?

A

Stop released as a fricative (full closure to partial closure, rather than full closure to no closure).

42
Q

Voice onset time?

A

Unaspirated voiceless consonants actually have a small period after the oral constriction where the glottis remains open.
If this period is longer than 30ms, the sound is perceived as aspirated.

Thus, this differentiating period between the end of the oral constriction and the closure of the glottis is called the ‘Voice onset time’.

43
Q

Devoicing?

A

German has final devoicing (not followed by a vowel I suppose)
When English approximants follow aspirated consonants, the extended glottal opening has the effect of devoicing the following approximant.

44
Q

Process of Ejectives

A
  • tongue moves into position and glottis closes
  • Whole larynx is raised - reducing the volume of the pharynx
  • the pressure of the air in the pharynx increases
  • tongue is released (as for any stop)
    (-glottis opens after whatever VOT)
45
Q

Process of Implosives

A

ref ejectives

instead of the glottis moving up, it moves down to create suction

46
Q

Process of Clicks (ingressive velaric airstream)

A

using dental click as example

  • tongue tip forms dental closure, back of tongue raised to velum, sides of tongue touch palate and teeth
    (this means a volume of air is trapped between the tongue and the roof of the mouth)
  • body of tongue lowers (decreasing pressure)
  • dental closure released and click heard as air rushes IN to fill gap.

If the click is lateral, closure is released at sides of tongue rather than centre

47
Q

Ashby & Maidment - coarticulation from consonant chapter

A
  • shift forwards or back in place of articulation (advanced / retracted)
  • nasalisation is when velum remains down for non-nasals
  • lip rounding (e.g before w) or consonants rounded before round vowels
  • pre-fortis clipping (vowel length shorter before voiceless consonants)
  • consonants shorter in clusters
48
Q

Fortis

A

strong muscle tension (open glottis) and strong breath force

49
Q

Lenis

A

Weak muscle tension and breath force

50
Q

How is vowel quality determined?

A

By resonances of the vocal tract. (whether it is narrow or wide)

A good indicator of this is the position of the tongue.

Lips can also be rounded or unrounded.

51
Q

Describe the vowel space?

A

roughly a trapezium in the oral cavity

vowels are thus differentiated by ‘height’ (open - close, based on tongue position) and front/back based on which part of the tongue is raised?

52
Q

Vowel tendencies in the world’s language

A

front vowels unrounded, back vowels rounded, rounding more extreme in close vowels

i guess dispersion principle also

53
Q

What are the cardinal vowels?

A

Landmark vowels in relation to which others can be described. Reflect maximal values of height and frontness-backness found in languages.
Primary CVs reflect the back+rounded tendency.

54
Q

Is there an acoustic origin to the Vowel Quadrilateral?

A

The first few resonances (formants) of a vowel are related to its quality.
(The frequency of formants is determined by the shape of the vocal tract for different vowels.)
If you plot F1 against F2 of the prim cardinal vowels on a graph you get a shape resembling the vowel quadrilateral.

This said, X-rays show only an imperfect match to tongue position.
Also secondary cardinal vowels (e.g front rounded, back unrounded) are centralised in the F2/F1 space, unlike on the vowel quadrilateral.

55
Q

additional features affecting vowels?

A 
Nasalisation (open nasal cavity) 
Rhoticisation (retroflex tongue tip - and also secondary constriction in pharynx and lip rounding) 
Advanced/Retracted tongue root. 
Also Vowel length!!! 
Movement (Diphthongs)
56
Q

What is a diphthong?

A

A vowel which changes quality within one syllable. (Durationally similar to long vowels)

(rising or falling)

(can be length distinguished in other langs tho - like OE!)

57
Q

How does consonant ‘secondary’ articulation relate to vowels.

A

It’s thought to be an add on to a consonant, but it isn’t creating turbulence (stricture not narrow enough), its in fact the vowel configuration cooccuring with the consonant.

58
Q

How does formant F2 (the second lowest) correspond to vowel front-backness

A

front - F2 high

back - F2 low

59
Q

Scientific explanation of formants:

A

Vocal fold vibrations excite the resonances of the vocal tract (air in vocal tract vibrates). The excitation spectrum is filtered by the vocal tract giving rise to peaks and troughs in the output spectrum which are known as formants.

the first 3 relate to vowel height, location, lips

60
Q

What is prosody?

A

Phonetic parameters independent of consonants and vowels (suprasegmental!)
Phonetic structures grouping phonetic elements.

61
Q

What is the prosodic hierarchy?

A

Utterance
Intonational Phrase
Minor Intonational phrase
Phonological phrase
phonological word (seems to be a unit with a stressed syllable)
foot
syllable
syllable constituents - onset & rhyme
(rhyme constituents - nucleus & coda)
segments

62
Q 
The phonetic (perceptual) information used in prosodic systems: 
(and their physical property)
A

pitch (fundamental frequency)
loudness (intensity (amplitude))
perceived length (duration)
laryngeal voice quality (mode of v-f vibration (wave shape))

63
Q

Which phonetic elements are used in the prosodic system ‘stress’

A

principally pitch but also the others

64
Q

Which phonetic elements are used in the prosodic system ‘intonation’

A

principally pitch but also the others

65
Q

Which phonetic elements are used in the prosodic system ‘tone’

A

principally pitch but also the others

66
Q

Which phonetic elements are used in the prosodic system ‘quantity’

A

perceived length and also pitch

67
Q

Fixed vs Free stress

A

Fixed: happens on a specific syllable - e.g Finnish has 1st syllable stress
Free: stress can happen on different syllables, (each word has its own stress pattern) (allows lexically contrastive stress)

68
Q

Stress & Accent

A

Stress is the potential of a given syllable to carry accent (it’s a system)

Accent is the realisation of stress in context through duration, pitch, loudness

69
Q

Accent clash resolution

A

Languages may prefer to avoid adjacent accents
e.g stress of 13 changes when phrase is ‘13 men’
(accent shift)

70
Q

Lexical Pitch Accents (Word Tones)

A

Words are distinguished by fixed pitch patterns. (cannot change according to intonation)

71
Q

Tone languages

A

K Pike, 1948 - Tone languages have lexically significant, contrastive (but relative) pitch on each syllable.

72
Q

A contour tone language

A

Has ‘tonemes’ - pitch patterns which span the length of a syllable. (can also be affected by other phonetic factors e.g duration)
Tonemes are lexically contrastive

73
Q

Register Tone Language

A

Have different relative pitch ‘levels’ so a syllable’s level is contrastive.

74
Q

What is intonation?

A

prosodic patterns with a domain larger than a syllable or a word.

helps signal grammatical structure (intonational phrase boundaries)

75
Q

What can prosodic features indicate

A

information structure (emphasis new info)
discourse function (question? not if it’s Wh)
attitude
discourse regulation (turn taking)
dialect/accent - Cambridge falling nucleus, Belfast rising nucleus, Northern Irish rise-plateau at end of IP.

76
Q

2 types of lexical prosody (Ashby & Maidment)

A

stress & tone

77
Q

2 types of utterance prosody (Ashby & Maidment)

A

rhythm (ashby says it emphases content words) (crystal says it’s the perceived regular pattern of accented syllables) & intonation

78
Q

What is the nucleus and what are nuclear tones?

A

the nucleus is the last accented syllable of an intonational phrase
the nuclear tone is the change in pitch between the nucleus and the end of the IP

they can signal end of turn, can signal that information is new or old

79
Q

Two foundations of allophonic variation

A 
structural position (e.g stop aspiration) 
environment (influence of adjacent segments, e.g nasalisation)
80
Q

Criteria for same phoneme membership

A
  • complementary distribution
  • phonetically similar
    (check for minimal pairs)
81
Q

Symbols in autosegmental metrical analysis

A
  • accent (obviously apostrophe in IPA)
    % end of phonological phrase (boundary tone)
    + change within (word?)
    H & L (high and low)
82
Q

Things you DO represent in PHONEMIC transcription

A

adjacency effects if they cause use of a different PHONEME (e.g engma) (Linking r!)
continuous speech effects in the same way (as in unstressed vowels as schwa and I for i)
syllabified consonants
stress
clause and sentence structure

83
Q

Other coarticulation things in English from the lecture

A
  • fortis stops may be glottally reinforced when not preceding a vowel
    -lenis obstruents devoiced (or partially) when not intervocalic
  • velars adjust to adjacent vowel (advance for front vowels and retract for back)
  • fortis affricates optionally glottalised
  • Alveolars — stops adopt place of following consonant [t̠ɹ̥aɪ, wɪdθ, ɹɛɡ kɑː] — fricatives largely stable except for /s,z/ before /ʃ/ [ðɪʃ ʃɒʔ͡p]
    -Labials — may be labiodental before labiodentals [kæɱfə, ɹɒb vɪktɪmz]
    — the lateral is ‘dark’ if the following sound is not a vowel [bɛɫbɔɪ]
84
Q

Factors affecting vowel length?

A

— phonological type: tense /iː/ > lax /ɪ/
— syllable type: open or closed by ‘lenis’ C [siː, siːd; sɪˑd] > closed by fortis C [siˑt; sɪt]
— foot structure: shorter if more syllables in foot [siːd] > [siˑdɪŋ]
— prosody: nuclear accent > (nonnuclear) accent > unaccented full ([ˈɪnsɛns, ˈdʒɪmnæst])
> unaccented reduced ([ˈnɒnsəns, ˈmɒdəst]) — pause: prepausal > non-prepausal

85
Q

Allophonic and phonemic variation between accents

A

in some IrEng, /θ ð/ can be [t̪ d̪]

L always clear in geordie, southern irish, generally dark in some lancashire accents
Accent specific t allophony
Some accents have a larger / smaller phoneme inventory - scottish more, northern less

Phonotactic variation in international englishes like singlish
But also with j in initial cluster varies between rp and east anglian and ameng

86
Q

How to indicate sentence and clause structure in IPA transcription

A

| || sentence ends

clause ends

Li1 Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology (3 decks)

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