A LITTLE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF PHONETICSPeter Roach

Professor of PhoneticsUniversity of Reading, UK.

email:

Website:

http://www.personal.reading.ac.uk/~llsroach/peter/

2002

This book is aimed at first-year students of Phonetics. It is based on a book I wrote which was published in 1992. The book, which had the title

Introducing Phonetics,

has now been deleted from the publisher's list. The title was misleading: this is not an introduction to Phonetics but a series of shortexplanations of technical terms used in the subject. I have, in fact, written what I hope is a trulyintroductory textbook on Phonetics for Oxford University Press in the series

Oxford Introductions toLanguage Study

, edited by Henry Widdowson, which was published in 2001. Its title is

Phonetics.

Many of the examples in this encyclopaedia are from English (as spoken in England). Although Iwould have liked to use a lot more examples from other languages, English is relevant and familiar for the majority of users of the book. For further detail of the phonetics of English, please see my

English Phonetics and Phonology

(Cambridge University Press: 3

Edition, 2000). At the end, I have added alist of recommended reading.Since I feel that this little encyclopaedia still has some use, I have updated and rewritten the materialfrom the earlier book, and hope that it will be useful to students in getting to grips with terminology inPhonetics. In keeping with the practice in the earlier book, I have printed

in bold type

words whichare defined elsewhere in the book.I would be grateful for suggestions on how to improve it. The nice thing about books in electronic formis that improvements and corrections can be made immediately.Peter Roach

Peter Roach

Symbols for English Transcription

(a) VowelsBritish English (BBC accent) is generally described as having short vowels, long vowels anddiphthongs. There are said to be seven short vowels, five long ones and eight diphthongs.

•

Short vowels: p

t p

tt p

t p

noth

•

Long vowels: b

n b

ɑː

ɔː

ɜː

•

Diphthongs: b

eer

air

oor

ɔɪ

ǝʊ

ɪǝ

ʊǝ

(b) ConsonantsPlosives:

umAffricates:

ain

aneFricatives:

ine

ink

eal

eep mea

ure

ow Nasals:

Approximants:

ight

Peter Roach

See also the IPA Chart at the end of the book.

accent

This word is used (rather confusingly) in two different senses: (1)

accent

may refer to

prominence

given to a syllable, usually by the use of pitch. For example, in the word 'potato' the middle syllable isthe most prominent; if you say the word on its own you will probably produce a fall in pitch on themiddle syllable, making that syllable accented. In this sense, accent is distinguished from the moregeneral term

stress

, which is more often used to refer to all sorts of prominence (including prominenceresulting from increased loudness, length or sound quality), or to refer to the effort made by the speaker in producing a stressed syllable. (2)

accent

also refers to a particular way of pronouncing: for example,you might find a number of English speakers who all share the same grammar and vocabulary, but pronounce what they say with different accents such as Scots, Cockney or

Received Pronunciation(BBC accent)

. The word

accent

in this sense is distinguished from

dialect

, which usually refers to avariety of a language that differs from other varieties in grammar and/or vocabulary.

acoustic phonetics

An important part of phonetics is the study of the physics of the speech signal: when sound travelsthrough the air from the speaker's mouth to the hearer's ear it does so in the form of vibrations in the air.It is possible to measure and analyse these vibrations by mathematical techniques, usually by usingspecially-developed computer software to produce

spectrograms

. Acoustic phonetics also studies therelationship between activity in the speaker's vocal tract and the resulting sounds. Analysis of speech byacoustic phonetics is claimed to be more objective and scientific than the traditional

auditory

methodwhich depends on the reliability of the trained human ear.

active articulator

see

articulationaffricate

An affricate is a type of consonant consisting of a plosive followed by a fricative with the same place of articulation: examples are the /

/ and /

/ sounds at the beginning and end of the English words'church' /

ʧɜːʧ

/, 'judge' /

ʤʌʤ

/ (the first of these is voiceless, the second voiced). It is often difficult todecide whether any particular combination of a plosive plus a fricative should be classed as a single