Phonetics and Phonology

ENGLISH PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY

WEEK 1: ARTICULATORS AND SOME BASIC CONCEPTS

1. What are speech sounds?

The sounds of speech, or speech sounds, are vocal sounds which are organized to communicate
information. In other words, a speech sound is any of the set of distinctive sounds of a given
language.

2. Articulation
The formation of individual speech sounds is called articulation.

3. Airstream mechanism

“The production of any speech sound (or any sound at all) involves the movement of an airstream
(airflow).
Most speech sounds are produced by pushing lung air out of the body through the mouth and
sometimes through the nose.
Since lung air is used, these sounds are called pulmonic sounds;
Since the air is pushed out, they are call egressive.
The majority of sounds used in languages of the world are thus produced by pulmonic egressive
airstream mechanisms. All the sounds in English are produced in this manner.”
[Fromklin and Rodman, 1993:186-187]
4. What is phonetics?
The study of speech sounds is called phonetics. In phonetics, we study how speech sounds are
produced. Phonetics can have some subfields, yet we only deal with articulatory phonetics in
this course. According to Peter Roach (200), articulatory phonetics is the term used to call the
study of articulators and how they produced speech sounds in the human body.

5. The vocal tract

The vocal tract is the air passages which are involved in the
production of speech sounds. The vocal tract can be divided
into:

- The nasal cavity, which is the air passage within and behind
the nose.

- The oral cavity, which is the air passage within the mouth.

- The pharynx, which is the air passage extending from the

larynx up to the back of the mouth.

The shape of the vocal tract can be changed by changing the

position of the tongue and the lips. Changes in the shape of the
vocal tract cause differences in speech sounds.

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6. Articulators and places of articulation

According to Avery & Ehrlich (1995), the movable parts of the mouth, including the bottom
lip, the bottom teeth, the tongue, and the jaw – are referred to as articulators. In the production
of speech sounds, when the articulators approach the upper unmovable parts of the mouth, they
will produce different sounds.

The unmovable parts of the mouth involved in the

articulation of speech sounds are referred to as
places of articulation.” The figure shows the
articulators and places of articulation in the human
body.

6.1. The upper lip and the lower lip

6.2. The upper teeth and the lower teeth

6.3. The tongue (see the figure) is a very important articulator because it can be moved to
different places and have different shapes. The tongue is theoretically divided into
different parts: the tongue tip, the tongue blade, the tongue front, the tongue back and the
root

6.4. The alveolar ridge is between the top front

teeth and the hard palate.
6.5. The palate:
- The hard palate: is the front part of the
roof of the mouth.
- The soft palate (velum) is the muscular flap
at the back of the mouth that can be raised to
press against the back wall of the pharynx and
shut off the nasal cavity, preventing air from
going out through the nose.
- The point at the end of the soft palate is
called uvula.
The tip and the blade lie under the alveolar ridge, the front lies under the hard palate
and the back lies under the soft palate.

6.6. The Larynx (The voice-box) (see the figures)

The larynx’s main structure is made of cartilage, including two large ones: thyroid
cartilage (above, larger) and cricoid cartilage (below, smaller). These are hollow and are
attached to the top of the trachea (the wind-pipe).

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6.7. The vocal cords (vocal folds/vocal bands) (see the figure)
The vocal cords are two small bands of elastic tissue inside the larynx. They look like two
flat strips of rubber, lying opposite each other across the air passage. At the front, the vocal
cords are joined together and fixed to the inside of the thyroid cartilage. At the back, they
are attached to a pair of small cartilages called the arytenoids cartilages so that if the
arytenoids cartilages move, the vocal cords move too. The figures below show the cross
section of the larynx.

6.8. The glottis is the space/opening between the vocal cords.

The glottis is easily recognized in four

states:

- Open: for normal breathing and during the

production of voiceless consonants. When
the glottis is open, the vocal cords are wide
apart.

- Narrowed: the result is the voiceless glottal

fricative /h/, which is produced by the
friction right at the narrowed glottis when
airflow passes through it.

- Closed or nearly closed: when the edges of

the vocal folds are touching or nearly
touching together, air passing through the
glottis will usually cause vibration, resulting
in voiced sounds.

- Tightly closed: the result is the glottal stop

/ , which is produced by the rapid closing of the glottis which straps the airflow from
the lungs behind it, followed by a sudden release of the air as the glottis is opened.

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6.9. The jaws are sometimes called articulators because we certainly move the lower jaw a lot
in speaking. But the jaws are not articulators in the same ways as the others, because they
cannot themselves make contact with other articulators.

The figure below shows all the articulators and places of articulation introduced in this paper.

7. Vowels vs. Consonants

Vowels and consonants can be distinguished thanks to the two following criteria.

7.1.The way they are produced (phonetically):

+ In the production of vowels, the air flows continuously from the larynx to the lips; there is
no obstruction and no narrowing that could cause audible friction.

+ In the production of consonants, the airflow from the lungs is obstructed or interfered at
some place in the vocal tract.

7.2.Their distribution in English (phonologically):

Consonants usually occupy the initial position in English words and are frequently followed
by vowels.

Unfortunately, there are many cases where the decision is not easy to make. For example,
the /j/ in “yet”, the /w/ in “wet” and the /h/ in “hay” do not obstruct the airflow more than
some vowels do.

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However, they are typically consonantal in English – they usually occur in the initial position
and are always followed by vowels.

Phonetically, they are like vowels; phonologically, they function as consonants.

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