Phonetics-Phonology Flashcards
What is a phoneme?
A phoneme is the smallest linguistic unit, which can distinguish meaning.
It is a symbolic representation which allows us to relate specific speech sounds to each other, recognizing their phonological sameness despite their phonetic differences.
(Davenport, Intro to Phonetics and Phon.)
What is an allophone?
One of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds, or phones, or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language.
They are in complimentary distribution and therefore never cause a confusion about meanings. This is language specific however and the same can contain meaning distinction in other languages.
What can be said abt the phonology of English?
wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect.
However, most dialects have vowel reduction in unstressed syllables and a complex set of phonological features that distinguish fortis and lenis consonants (stops, affricates, and fricatives).
on suprasegmental and segmental level
Segmental:
- Phonemes
- Vowels, consonants
- articulation
Suprasegmental:
- phonotactics
- stress
- Lexical stress is phonemic in English (read vs. read, past tense)
- intonation
What is the difference between Phonetics and Phonology?
Phonetics:
Phonetics first of all divides, or segments, concrete utterances into individual speech sounds.
It is therefore exclusively concerned with PAROLE or performance.
Phonetics can then be divided into three distinct phases:
(1) articulatory phonetics,
(2) acoustic phonetics, and
(3) auditory phonetics.
- > (1) Articulatory phonetics describes in detail how the speech organs, also called vocal organs or articulators, in the vocal tract are used in order to produce, or articulate, (specific) speech sounds.
- > (2) Acoustic phonetics studies the physical properties of speech sounds, i.e. the way in which the air vibrates as sounds pass from speaker to listener. A spectrograph is a machine that measures the soundwaves and depicts them as images, called spectrograms or sonograms, showing the duration, frequency, intensity, and quality of the sounds.
- > (3) Auditory phonetics investigates the perception of speech sounds by the listener, i.e. how the sounds are transmitted from the ear to the brain, and how they are processed.
Owing to its close association with physics (and also with medicine), phonetics is sometimes considered a natural science, rather than a branch of linguistics (which belongs to the humanities) in the narrow sense.
But no matter how we classify it, phonetics is an indispensable PREREQUISITE FOR PHONOLOGY, and is therefore an integral part of all introductions to linguistics. In the language departments of most universities, however, the study of phonetics is largely restricted to articulatory phonetics because of its applications to the learning and teaching of pronunciation. For that reason, this manual, too, will only be concerned with articulatory phonetics, and phonology.
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Phonology:
Phonology deals with the speakers’ knowledge of the sound system of a language. It is therefore exclusively concerned with LANGUE or competence.
(Phonology, then, is not the study of telephone manners, as one student once jokingly suggested.)
Phonology can be divided into two branches: (1) segmental phonology and
(2) suprasegmental phonology.
- > (1) Segmental phonology is based on the segmentation of language into individual speech sounds provided by phonetics. Unlike phonetics, however, segmental phonology is not interested in the production, the physical properties, or the perception of these sounds, but in the function and possible combinations of sounds within the sound system.
- > (2) Suprasegmental phonology , also called prosody , is concerned with those features of pronunciation that cannot be segmented because they extend over more than one segment, or sound. Such features include stress [ Betonung ], rhythm, and intonation (also called pitch contour or pitch movement [ Tonhöhenbewegung ]).
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to help visualize…
speaker's brain = phonology speaker's mouth = articulatory phonetics transmission of sound through air = acoustic phonetics listener's ear = auditory phonetics listener's brain = phonology
What can be said abt the phonology in English lg?
- English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect
In general, however, the regional dialects of English share a largely similar (but not identical) phonological system.
most dialects have:
- vowel reduction in unstressed syllables
- a complex set of phonological features that distinguish fortis and lenis consonants (stops, affricates, and fricatives)
Standard English varieties often used as reference point (RP, GenAm, AuE)
Phonemes:
- Orthography: The phonemes in this and many other English words do not always correspond directly to the letters used to spell them (English orthography is not as strongly phonemic as that of many other languages).
Which subfields is Phonetics concerned with?
Acoustic Phonetics
Articulatory P.
Auditory P.
What are the concerns in Phonology in comparison to Phonetics?
While Phonetics deals with the production, properties and perception of the speech sounds of human lg, phonology is concerned with how these speech sounds form patterns in a particular lg.
Phonologists investigate, for example, which function a sound has in a lg and which sounds can be combined - follow each other - and which cannot.
Phonology can be divided into two areas:
- segmental p.
- suprasegmental p.
what is suprasegmental phonology?
suprasegmental level is concerned with larger units than speech sounds, such as syllables, words, intonation phrases.
What is intonation?
What are the basic principles?
intonation is also called ‘pitch contour’ or ‘pitch movement’.
Linguists have found many ways to describe it but they agree on these basic principles:
- All lgs have intonation
- Intonation is principally the variation of pitch, but also prominence, over a stretch of speech.
- Intonation has four functions:
– structural: grammatical or structural role of utterance
(is it a question, exclamation, request, statement?)
– accentual: prominence of syllable
– attitudinal: speaker’s attitude tpward what’s said
– discourse: marks turn-taking point in convo - the set of intonation patterns is limited and can be fully determined, but linguists are not in full agreement on the number of contours
- in order to analyse i., continuous speech can be broken down to smaller units, but the conventions are slightly different on how to break them up.
How can you describe pitch?
pitch in utterance or sound is connected to the frequency of the vibration of the vocal folds. The faster they vibrate, the higher.
In English, it’s not distinctive like in other languages, but it still serves several functions (see intonation).
So the question to ask when analyzing intonation is whether pitch carries linguistic, or communicative, significance.
Pitch is another way to refer to the fundamental frequency (F0) of the voice.
It’s determined by physical size, and the sex of a speaker.
Male speaker around 120 Hz.
Female: 210 Hz.
Parole vs. langue
and
performance vs. competence
parole - language use
langue - the system of language
In order to separate the two meanings of the word language the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857– 1913) proposed the French terms parole to refer to actual language use (i.e. to concrete utterances) and langue for a speech community’s shared knowledge of a language (i.e. for the language system).
performance - actual lg use of a speaker
competence - the knowledge of a speaker of that language
A similar dichotomy was put forward by the American linguist Noam Chomsky (b. 1928), who used the terms performance and competence to refer to largely the same concepts. Chomsky, however, put more emphasis on the individual nature of language. Performance, then, is the actual language use of an individual speaker, and competence is that individual speaker’s knowledge of the language. Chomsky later replaced these terms with E(xternalised)-language and I(nternalised)-language , but the new terms are rarely used.
[A Manual of English Phonetics and Phonology : Twelve Lessons with an Integrated Course in Phonetic Transcription]
What are the vowel spaces? Name examples
How do we describe vowels?
The method usually used is to set up an imaginary “vowel space” and define vowels by their position in the space. We imagine a cross-section of the human head looking to the left, and define the vowels according to the position of the HIGHEST POINT OF THE TONGUE for each vowel.
It turns out that human vowel-sounds in any language can be partly defined in relation to this vowel space.
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High (= close) front
Mid front
Low (=open) front
Central
Low back
Mid back
High back
can also define as close-mid, open-mid, or centralized.
How are vowels classified? What are the basic criteria and what other distinctions can be made?
Why do we need a diff system than that of consonants to describe vowels?
height + backness + rounding
- other additional info:
vowel length, nasality and monophthong/diphthong
Need a diff. system than w/ consonants bc w/ manner of articulation airflow is always unhindered (articulators are far enough apart)
Consonantal place specifications also inappropriate bc produced in smaller area (palatal and velar regions)
Vowels are sonorants so always voiced
consider the words stuck, tuck, cut and duck.
What can be said abt them with a phonetic focus vs. a phonological focus?
phonetically speaking, there are 4 closely related but slightly different sounds.
- The ‚t‘ in ‚tuck‘ is aspirated.
- The ‚t’ in ‚stuck‘ is not.
- The ‚t‘ in ‚cut‘ is accompanied or replaced by a glottal stop
- The ‚t‘-like sound in ‚duck‘ actually sounds a lot like the ‚t‘ in ‚stuck‘ but is voiced
People would generally say that there are only two different sounds, but their focus actually lies on the orthography. However, this also reflects the phonological status of the sounds, bc concerning the English lg system the three ‚t‘-sounds behave quite similar and therefore do not distinguish meaning when replaced, whereas if you substitute the ‚d‘ with a ‚t‘ it does (as in ‚tuck‘ vs ‚duck‘) contrast.
How can the meaning of the term ‚generative grammar‘ be described/specified?
generative is not in the sense of production but comes from a mathematical sense:
‚specifying as allowable or not within in a specific language‘
grammar is often used to describe the structures and rules of a lg, but here it is actually used for all aspects of a specific language. So it‘s sth like ‚the complete description on a language‘.
A generative grammar consists of a set of formal statements which delimit all and only all the possible structures that are part of the language in question.
Basic aim of a generative theory?
- represent in a formal way the tacit knowledge native speakers have of their language. = native speaker competence
Performance not so important to them bc influenced by many factors (tired, speaker, etc)
What is a homorganic stop?
What happens when they occur in sequence, give an example.
When a stop follows another stop with the same place of articulation aka a ‚homorganic stop‘. e.g. in ‚shrimp‘ from [m] to [p] - nasal to oral - voiced to voiceless
but they are both biliabial
in sequence:
„That dog“
What are the major aspects of speech production?
Speech production is part of he study of articulatory phonetics.
4 major aspects:
- the airstream mechanism:
where the air used in speech starts from, and which direction it is traveling in - the state of the vocal cords:
whether or not the vocal cords are vibrating, which determines voicing - the state of the velum:
whether it is raised or lowered, which determines whether a sound is oral or nasal - the place and manner of articulation:
the horizontal and vertical positions of the tongue and lips
What parts of anatomy are involved in the production of speech sounds?
- lips
- teeth
- tongue
- alveolar ridge
- palate
- velum
- uvula
- pharynx (housing vocal cords)
(Lungs)
Give examples that demonstrate distinctions:
Voiced-voiceless
Oral-nasal
Voiced/voiceless:
Hiss - Buzz
Oral/Nasal:
Frog - man (or French word for bread: pain)
How are speech sounds influenced by the oral tract?
The state of the oral tract, in particular, the position of the - active articulators (lower lip and tongue) in relation to the - passive articulators (the upper surface of the oral tract).
Tongue can be considered as having different sections:
tip, blade, front, back and root.
(Front and back are together referred to as the body).
Passive articulators:
Upper lip, teeth, roof of the mouth, pharynx.
Roof of the mouth further divided into:
Alveolar ridge, hard palate, soft palate (or velum) and uvula.
–> The relative positions of the articulators allow to specify the manner of articulation and the place of articulation of a speech sound.
Describe the manner and place of articulation
Manner of articulation:
- Vertical relationship between the active and passive articulators, I.e. the distance between them (usually known as stricture); anything from being close together, preventing air escaping, to wide apart, allowing air to flow through unhindered.
- stops (air pressure builds up behind blockage)
- affricates (also complete closure but different release of air, slower release through a narrow channel)
- fricatives (articulators in close approximation but no complete closure)
- liquids, glides and vowels have free passage of air (open approximation)
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Place of articulation:
where in the oral cavity is the sound produced?
The place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is the point of contact where an obstruction occurs in the vocal tract between an articulatory gesture, an active articulator (typically some part of the tongue), and a passive location (typically some part of the roof of the mouth). Along with the manner of articulation and the phonation, it gives the consonant its distinctive sound.
Active places:
The lower lip (labial)
Various parts of the front of the tongue (coronal):
The tip of the tongue (apical)
The upper front surface of the tongue just behind the tip, called the blade of the tongue (laminal)
The surface of the tongue under the tip (subapical)
The body of the tongue (dorsal)
The base a.k.a. root of the tongue and the throat (pharyngeal)
Passive Places:
The upper lip (labial)
The upper teeth, either on the edge of the teeth or inner surface (dental)
The alveolar ridge, the gum line just behind the teeth (alveolar)
The back of the alveolar ridge (post-alveolar)
The hard palate on the roof of the mouth (palatal)
The soft palate further back on the roof of the mouth (velar)
The uvula hanging down at the entrance to the throat (uvular)
The throat itself, a.k.a. the pharynx (pharyngeal)
The epiglottis at the entrance to the windpipe, above the voice box (epiglottal)
What can be said about the phonetics of stops?
- stops involve complete closure of oral tract
- pulmonic egressive oral stops: plosives (as obstruents either voiced or voiceless)
- In English, three pairs of voiceless/voiced stops:
- Bilabial, alveolar, velar
- and glottal stop in many English varieties (Brit English London, Manchester, Glasgow; AmE New Jersey, upstate and metropolitan NY)
- some lgs have stops other than pulmonic egressive: glottalic egressice = electives, glottalic lowered airstream = implosives; velaric ingressive = clicks
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Production of stops
- for pulmonic egressive oral stops, 3 clearly identifiable stages:
- closing stage
- closure stage
- release stage
what are homorganic stops?
stops that have the same place of articulation. e.g. in ‚shrimp‘ from [m] to [p] - nasal —> oral - voiced —> voiceless but both are bilabial
also in connected speech:
‚that dog‘
Describe what aspirated stops are and when they occur
- an audible puff of air, follows the release (can be made visible by holding a piece of paper in fron of mouth while pronouncing)
Articulatory:
- vocal cords remain wide open after release of plosive
- into initial articulation of following segment
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When?
- occurs when plosive is word-initially, e.g. “pie, tie, core”
- strongest in voiceless stops at beginning of stressed syllables (compare ‚petrol’ and ‚patrol‘)
- since it doesn‘t occur with stops that follow an initial [s], it helps distinguish potentially ambiguous sentences like „peace talks“ and „pea stalks“.
- when aspirated stop is followed by a liquid or glide [l, r, j, w] as in ‘platypus’, the aspiration is realized as the devoicing of the sonorant. (Vocal cords remain open till articulation of vowel starts)
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Phonetically:
English has 3 kind of stops. Voiced, voiceless unaspirated and voiceless aspirated.
In terms of contrast aspiration is not significant and no words are distinguished from others solely by virtue of having an aspirated versus unaspirated stop. (As is in Thai or Korean)
What can be said about glottalisation and the glottal stop in English?
Glottalisation
- voiceless stops may be subject to ‘glottalisation’ or ‘glottal reinforcement’ in many kinds of English
- particularly likely for final stops in emphatic utterances, e.g. “stop that!”
- common to some degree for many word-final voiceless stops
- transcript: [?] after the stop symbol
(- some kinds of English, also have it between two vowels aka. intervocalically, e.g. in North East English English)
- also occur with vowels occurring word-initially, especially if emphatic “go [?]away!” or if there is a hiatus (two juxtaposed vowels in consecutive syllables), e.g. “co-[?]authors”
- may also occur in places where otherwise there would be a linking r
- pre-vocalic glottal stop, also in German, no restrictions here
Articulatory:
- as well as closure of oral tract, there is also an accompanying (brief) closure of the vocal cords –> dual articulation
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Glottal Stop:
- voiceless stops may under some circumstances be replaced by a glottal stop –> no oral closure but only glottal closure
- extent depends on the accent of speaker, where the stop is and what kind of stop it is
When?
- for most kinds of British English (incl. RP) [t] can be replaced by [?] before a nasal
- -> “at night” or “Britain”
- Similarly, voiceless stop replaced when preceding a homorganic obstruent
- -> “great smile” or “grapefruit”
- somewhat restricted but still true for many typed of more recent RP: word-final [t] replaced in “rat”
- word-final [p] or [k] replacement not a feature of standard varieties, but occurs in non-standard, e.g. Cockney
- -> [ra?] could be rat, rap or rack
- more restricted (in terms of varieties but not in numbers of speakers) intervocalic [t] substituted by [?]
- -> “water”
What is a hiatus?
a hiatus (two juxtaposed vowels in consecutive syllables)
How are stops affected in connected speech? What can be said about their variation?
They may be influenced by neighboring segments.
- aspiration
- glottalisation
- assimilation (place or in manner even)
– bilabials remain unaffected
– velar stops only fronted in context of front vowels
– alveolars [t] and [d] show considerable variation, position of closure will be place of articulation of following segment
–> “ho[p p]otato” or “ba[b b]oy” or “sa[b m]an”
–> preceding velars: “ho[k k]rumpet”
–> before dentals diacritic ,, shows closure at teeth
- t-flapping shows influence by vowels ([t] and [d] are neutralised)
- in many Northern English accents, voiceless alveolar stop [t] replaced by an r-sound when after a short vowel and next sound is a vowel (usually across words only)
–> “ge[r] off”
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They may influence the surrounding sounds themselves:
- presence or absence of voicing in a plosive may affect the preceding segment. When a voiced stop followes a liquid, nasal or vowel it causes that sound to lengthen
- -> “gulp” vs “bulb” or “sent” vs “send” or “back” vs “bag”
What can you say about affricates in English?
- produced like plosive (involce a closing, closure and release stage) but the difference lies in the nature of the release. The active articulator remains close to the passive articulator, resulting in friction as the air passes between them, as for fricatives
Phonetically:
- similar to a stop followed by a fricative
- don’t behave like a sequence of two segments though
- -> “catch it” vs “cat shit” the sound represented in “tch” is noticeably shorter than the sequence of sounds represented by “t sh”
- English only has two affricates:
e. g. in “chimpanzee” and voiced counterpart in “jaguar” - both can occur in all positions
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Voicing and Variation
- as with all obstruents, voiced affricate lengthens a preceeding sonorant segment (nasal, liquid or vowel)
compare:
“lunch” vs. “lunge”; “belching” vs. “Belgian”
- affricates undergo little assimilation in English, but the oral stop part may be missing when they follow [n] as in “lunch”, “sponge”
- also some variation among speakers between word-final affricate vs fricative segment in loan words like “garage” or “beige”
Fricatives of English
- close approximation
- can be voiced or voiceless
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Distribution? - labio-dentals [f] and [v]; dentals [] and [], alveolars [s] and [z] and voiceless palato-alveolar [] occur in all positions in English
- although voiced dental fricative is restricted for word-initial position to small set of ‘function words’ such as articels and adverbs (then, there, etc).
- voiced palato-alveolar, glottal h and velar [x] (in those varieties that have it) is somewhat restricted in English
– voiced palato-alveolar never word-initially (e.g. teasure and with exception of loan words like “genre”) and occurs only in few words
– glottal fricative [h] only word-initially or word-medially at the beginning of a stressed syllable, never finally
– velar fricative [x] never word-initially
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Voicing?
- as with stops; voiced fricatives undergo devoicing word-initially and word-finally (typically only fully voiced when between other voiced sounds)
–> “vague” or “save” vs “saving”
- fricatives also affect the length of the preceding sonorant (nasal, liquid or vowel).
Voiced fricatives lengthen the duration of any sonorant they follow; compare “fence and “fens” or “shelf” and “shelve” or “face” and “phase”
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Variation?
- labio-dental fricatives [f] and [v] don’t show great deal of assimilation (though [v] may often become voiceless word-finally preceding voiceless obstruent, e.g. in “ha[f] to” = have to)
–> in fast speech the sound may be lsot altogether, e.g. in “piece of cake”
–> This loss of segment is known as ELISION
- dental fricatives also subject to elision when precede [s] or [z]
(e. g. “clothes” or “months” - may be replaced by [f] and [v] in some varieties of English (S E English; Southern US)
- in some Scottish varieties word-initial “th” is replaced by [s]
- Irish english often has dental stop [t] in place of “th”
- in English in general assimilation to preceding alveolar sound; e.g. “i[n n]e pub” = in the pub
- alveolars [s] and [z] often assmilated to a following palatal glide [j] or palato-alveolar friatve “sh” by retracting the active articulator to a palato-alveolar position, being realised as “sh” and “ge” respectivey, as in “mish jou”
How are speech sounds created?
What is the difference between vowels and consonants?
Speech sounds are created by modifying the volume and direction of a flow of air using various parts of the human respirator system.
the distinction between vowels and consonants:
- not as simple as it may seem
- at first glance: has to do with the stricture, i.e. distance between articulators
- -> stops (oral and nasal), fricatives and liquids all involve stricture of at lease close approcimation
- -> however the class of glides makes this distinction difficult –> stricture of open approximation
- -> here distinction not so much phonetics but phonology:
- has to do with how sounds function in language
True vowels like ‘i’ in ‘pig’ are syllabic (comprise essential part of syllable), Glides behave like consonants and do not form the nuclei of syllables
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Vowels:
- unhindered airflow = open approximation
- vowels produced in smaller area of vocal tract (palatal and velar regions)
- no voiced/voiceless distinction (bc vowels are sonorants), except for some lgs like Japanese
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Consonants:
- some sort of stricture, even if close approximation
How are vowels classified?
Why can it be helpful to classify them?
Three-term classification:
- vowel height (height of tongue)
sometimes ‘close’ and ‘open’ used
- “backness” of the tongue or ‘which part of the tongue is highest?’
front, central, back - rounded/unrounded lips
Also important:
- vowel length
- nasality
- Monophthong/diphthong
How can distinctions be judged?
–> x-ray photography
