Week 7 phonetics and phonology Flashcards
Describe the key anatomical structures involved in speech production (know diagram)
-Speech = the movement of air.
-Air flows from lungs, through vocal folds in larynx, up the throat (pharynx) into mouth and/or nose and finally out of the body
Describe the vocal folds. How do they aid speech production?
-Paired ‘shelves’ made of muscle, ligament and membrane
-Located in larynx, which sits on the top of the trachea. Opening bwn vocal folds is the glottis.
-Vibration triggered by build up of air pressure
-Pitch (frequency) – how fast vocal folds vibrate (faster = higher).
e.g. A small larynx (e.g. women, child) has shorter vocal folds – which vibrate faster.
Go through IPA for consonants and vowels (look, cover, write, check)
:)
What is place of articulation? What are its types
Where the articulators are constricted to produce the sound
-Bilabial/labial
-Labiodental
-Interdental/lingua-dental
-Alveolar or lingua-alveolar
-Palatal or lingua-palatal
-Velar
-Glottal
Where are bilabial/labial articulators? What are it’s consonants?
produced with closed lips (p, b, m, w)
Where are labiodental articulators? What are it’s consonants?
lower lip resting against upper teeth (f, v)
Where are interdental/lingua-dental articulators? What are it’s consonants?
tongue between teeth (ɵ,ð=th)
Where are alveolar or lingua-alveolar articulators? What are it’s consonants?
tongue in contact with alveolar ridge (t, d, s, z, n, l)
Where are palatal or lingua-palatal articulators? What are it’s consonants?
tongue near or contacting hard plate (r, j, ʃ, ʒ, dʒ, ʧ)
Where are glottal articulators? What are it’s consonants?
produced around the glottis (h)
Where are velar articulators? What are it’s consonants?
tongue touches velum or soft palate (g, k, weird n)
Define manner. What are it’s types?
How airflow manipulated to make sound
Stop/plosive
Fricative
Affricate
Nasal
Approximants: Liquid and Glide
What is stop/plosive manner. What are it’s consonants?
articulators pressed together tightly then air is released quickly (p, b, t, d, k, g)-air can’t escape through nose
What is fricative manner. What are it’s consonants?
slow turbulence of air within vocal tract caused by friction of articulators close together and air forced through it (F, v, θ, ð, s, z, ʃ, ʒ, h)
What is affricative manner. What are it’s consonants?
begin with stop , ends with fricative (ʧ,ʤ = ch and j)
What is nasal manner. What are it’s consonants?
open velum, air flows through nasal cavity (m, n, ng)
What is approximants manner. What are it’s consonants? What is meant by liquid and glide?
articulators only approximate one another-don’t make complete closure. Two types-liquids and glides
Liquid: no friction, more like vowel but curled tongue, side passage around tongue (L, r)-tip of tongue
Glide: no friction, more like vowel. Air escapes via mouth, but direction of flow altered by gliding over tongue before exiting lips (w, j= w and y)-body of tongue raised
Define length and how it works
(duration)
-can change word meaning in some languages
-In English, only vowels—not consonants—are lengthened.
Define pitch and how it creates intonation and tone
-Tone Languages: Pitch changes differentiate word meanings
It’s the relative pitch, not absolute frequency, that matters.
-Intonation Languages: may effect meaning of whole sentences (rising pitch question falling pitch statement)
Non-tone languages like English use pitch changes for sentence-level meanings
Describe stress
making syllables longer, louder, and slightly higher or lower in pitch, affecting meaning (e.g., defect as a noun vs. defect as a verb). This feature is not present in syllable-timed languages like French
Differ between phoneme and allophone
-Phoneme: the basic form of a sound
-Allophone: predictable phonetic realisation of phoneme
e.g. The phoneme /t/
□ allophone [th] as in tick
□ allophone [t] in stick
Define and provide examples of coarticulation
phonetic features overlap to make speech smoother/ more efficient. Features can be anticipated (brought forward) or retained (carried over) between sounds.
Common forms include:
-Assimilation: When sound’s feature spreads to neighbouring sounds
-Epenthesis: Inserting sound
-Segment Deletion: Omitting unstressed vowels
Define phonotactic rules
-Relate to the permissible sequences of sounds and the permissible locations of sounds in syllables.
-E.g. In English if a syllable begins with /l/ or /r/, the next segment must be a vowel. E.g. Lbick is not permissible.
