Phonetics Exam 1 Flashcards
Phonetics
The scientific study of the production, transmission, and reception of the sounds of speech.
Speech sounds
All possible speech sounds in all different languages.
Phone(s)
Individual speech sounds; most basic unit in phonetics. Do NOT necessarily have to be meaningful. Can be the same as phonemes.
Articulatory Phonetics
Branch looking at how sounds are produced.
Acoustic phonetics
Branch looking at transmission of the speech sounds/how sound travels.
Auditory/Perceptual Phonetics
Branch looking at how we receive & perceive sounds.
Clinical phonetics
Branch that deals with disordered speech. Investigation can be: impressionistic (listen to & transcribe sounds) or instrumental (using equipment to analyze sounds/articulatory position.
Linguistics
The study of human language.
Phonology
Studies the rules of organizing speech sounds in a language.
Phonemes
Smallest units of sound (linguistic units) that can change the meaning of a word.
Phonemes: minimal pairs
Words that only differ by 1 sound; tells us those sounds are important in a language. Example: cat vs bat, cake vs take.
Phonemes: allophones
2 types of a sound; little variations on sounds. Not the same as phonemes. Example: /p/ sound in peak vs. speak.
Phonotactics
Where sounds are permitted to occur/which can combine. Example: no English word exists that begins with the /ng/ sound.
Phonemes: allophones: complementary distribution
Phonetically similar sounds that occur at a certain place in a word. Predictable, dependent on the context, and occur in mutually exclusive contexts.
Phonemes: allophones: free variation
Just depends on how the person says it; can be exchanged for one another in similar contexts.
Articulation disorders
Problem with phonetics; not placing mouth in right position for the sound to be made (form).
Phonological Disorders
Problem with how the sound functions/using them in meaningful ways to get the message across.
Airstream mechanisms chart
What happens physiologically in the respiratory system during a pulmonic egressive airstream?
The lungs decrease in volume, which generates positive pressure in the whole vocal tract. Air flows out to equalize this pressure. External intercostals brake collapse of lungs and provide longer exhalation for speech. Air can flow for up to 25 seconds, but normally in speech we use 2-10 seconds of any one exhalation.
What is the most common airstream? Why?
Pulmonic egressive; all languages use it, and even if they use other mechanisms, most sounds will be pulmonic egressive. It’s especially suited to phonation, since vocal folds operate best with air from underneath.
What are some qualities of the pulmonic ingressive airstream?
Vocal folds are not well adapted to air flow from above, so sound is rough. Not easy to use for more than a few seconds, and not used in any known language.
Glottalic egressive airstream
The initiator is the larynx; the glottis is closed tight; the larynx is jerked upwards by the extrinsic laryngeal muscles. This process acts like a piston: the pressure of air above the glottis (and up to the articulatory stricture) is compressed. When the articulatory stricture is released, the air is ‘ejected’ swiftly.
Ejectives
Use glottalic egressive airstream. The amount of air used is small, so only one ejective sound at a time is used; other surrounding sounds are pulmonic. Ejective stops, fricatives and affricates are found in natural language. They are quite common: Georgian, Gujerati, Korean, Zulu etc, and many native American languages
Glottalic ingressive airstream
Reverse ejectives are formed by drawing down the larynx with the glottis shut. However, the glottis is not tight shut, and as the larynx is lowered, lung air beneath leaks through causing voicing. These sounds (implosives) are very rare in natural language. However, a combination of glottalic ingressive with pulmonic egressive is commonly encountered.
