File 4

Phonetics (1/4)

[1] In the previous three files, I provided a detailed introduction to the study of
language. That should facilitate your understanding of the rest of this course.
Now, we are ready to learn more about the core disciplines of linguistics, which
study the four components of I-language.
To start with, we are going to investigate the phonological component. The latter
is the center of interest of two branches of linguistics, namely Phonetics and
Phonology. The former studies how speech sounds are produced, transmitted and
perceived, while the latter examines the way particular sounds are used and
combined in the sound system of a given language. This file is partly a recap of
what you studied in Spoken English S1.
[2] To begin with, it is important to make it clear that in linguistics we do not
deal with letters. We deal with sounds. Taking what we studied so far into
account, you should understand that ‘writing systems’ or letters in general are
not part of I-language. In addition, such spelling systems or orthography as that
of English is historical, not phonological (i.e. not based on pronunciation, and
hence, not based on the rules of the grammar). Writing consists of marks on
paper which make no noise and are taken in by the eye, while speaking is
organized sound, taken in by the ear.
[3] If we think of language as a system for communication, then speech and
writing are the two main channels through which communication can pass.
Speech is the original channel for which human language evolved and all written
languages have (or once had) a spoken form. Writing, which is the preservation
of language messages with visible marks, is a much later development (from
about the Bronze Age) and many languages today still have no written form. This
explains the absence of correspondence between letters and sounds. The spelling
of words often diverges considerably from how they are spoken, and English
spelling is often considered to be one of the most difficult to learn of any language
that uses alphabet (reasons were covered in Spoken English S1).
Examples:
- The same letter or letter combination can refer to different sounds.
o Low vs. cow vs. bow, row, sow
- The same sound can be written with different letters or letter combinations
o Sound, cow, plough
 - Different dialects pronounce the same word differently
o Often, horizon, obligatory (Amr. vs. Br.)
[4] In writing, words are made of letters. In speech, they are made of sounds.
Letters do not always correspond to sounds. For instance, the words ‘key’ and ‘car’
begin with the same sound, but the letters are different. We can see this clearly if
we read the two words in phonetic symbols: /ki:/ and /kɑ:/. Also, in ‘duck’, there
are three sounds, consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC). The number of sounds in a
word is not usually the same as the number of letters. Below we find more examples
of word pairs that have the same pronunciation but different spelling:

buy Buy one won

weak Week weigh way
two Too write right
sun Sun knight Night

All the consonant sounds in these examples show that there is no one-to-one
correspondence between sounds and letters. While orthographic symbols vary, are
sound symbols don’t.

[5] Writing systems used by languages of the world are many and various and they
are beyond the scope of this lesson. Ways of writing fall into three basic categories:
(1) alphabetic systems (e.g. English), (2) syllabaries (e.g. Greek), and (3)
logographic systems (e.g. Chinese). Chapters 12 in both Fassold (2006) and
Fromkin et.al. (2007) give a detailed insight about the development of writing
system throughout history.

[6] Despite the divergence between orthography and speaking, the pronunciation
of languages is constrained by a set of rules. This is why before we go any further
in the study of sounds, we must agree on the following:
a- We must ignore the writing conventions since they can be misleading
and they are uninformative about grammar.
b- We agree on using the symbols specific to pronunciation:
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). This is crucial in order to be precise
about the sound in question.
[7] Specialized Alphabet
Several proposals for new alphabets have been made over the centuries.
Awareness of spelling shortcomings spurred on the birth of systems of phonetic
transcription in Britain and other European countries from at least the sixteenth
century. At the end of the nineteenth century, a group of language teachers and
phoneticians let by the Frenchman Paul Passy set up the International Phonetic
Association and devised one such transcription system. Soon to join was Henry
Sweet, traditionally thought to have inspired the character of Professor Higgins in
‘Pygmalion’/ ‘My fair lady’ by the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, the
author of ‘Pygmalion’, who proposed the Shavian alphabet (also known as the
Shaw alphabet). It is an alphabet conceived as a way to provide simple, phonetic
orthography for the English language to replace the difficulties of conventional
spelling. Shaw is famous for his witticism when he said that the word ‘fish’ could
equally well have been written as ‘ghoti:’ gh as in laugh, o as woman, and ti as in
nation – in a way to highlight the inadequacy of English orthography to be used for
transcription and teaching pronunciation. The transcription system was gradually
enriched to make it applicable to all languages, and it has by now been adopted by
most academics working on/with language around the world.

[8] International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

The initials IPA are used to refer to both ‘the International Phonetic Alphabet’
and to ‘the International Phonetic Association’ which created it. It is the only
proposed alphabet which has achieved widespread use. It is used by
phoneticians, linguists, speech pathologists, and increasingly by dictionary
makers and second language teachers.
The guiding principles of IPA are as follows:
o One sound = one symbol.
o A different symbol for each distinctive sound.
o The same symbol should be used for the same sound in every
language which uses it.
o Simple sounds for major sounds (from the Roman alphabet where
possible).
o Diacritics for more minor modifications.
This is why linguists use International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols to
teach the precise and correct pronunciation of words. You were introduced to IPA
 in Spoken English S1. The latter was only concerned with the sounds of English,
whereas this course deals with sounds that exist in all languages.

[9 ] The estimated number of world languages is 5000 to 8000 languages spoken

in the world. It is true that each one has its own sound system, but the total number
of symbols needed to represent all the sounds is limited. This is because many
sounds are found again and again in languages. The human speech apparatus,
which produces sounds, and the hearing mechanism which perceives them is
exactly the same all over the world. Languages make their selection from the stock
of humanly possible sounds. Some sounds are so common and basic that they are
found in almost all languages. For example, the sounds /p/, /t/, and /k/ are found in
almost all languages.

[10] What is a speech sound?

The sounds that we produce when we speak are powered by air from the lungs. The air
comes out of the lungs through the windpipe linking the lungs to the mouth, technically
known as ‘trachea’. The larynx is the voice box at the top of the trachea which is known
as the Adam’s apple in the throat of males. After this point, the organs of speech transform
the air coming out of the lungs into sounds which are the subject of study of phonetics
(you should be familiar with what has been said up to here since you saw all the above in
Spoken English S1).

[11] Phonetics constitutes the study of the smallest unit of speech and it provides the raw
materials for phonology to build on. It is the physical study of sounds. The approach to
phonetics is scientific in the sense that its analysis of the subject matter is accurate and
verifiable.

Phonetics seeks to identify sounds that constitute speech units which are distinct from all
other possible human sounds. There are three major branches in the study of phonetics,
namely articulatory Phonetics, acoustic Phonetics, and auditory Phonetics that study
the articulation, transmission and perception of sound, respectively. This is visually
demonstrated in the speech chain below.
Denes and Pinson (1993) The Speech Chain

[12] Articulatory phonetics studies sounds at the production level. It seeks to classify
speech sounds in terms of the variations in their production. It is probably the most highly
developed and longest established branch of phonetics. It sees speech as an activity of the
speaker and concentrates attention on the human speech organs and on the way they
function singly and in combination with each other to modify exhaled air from the lungs
into speech sounds.

In articulatory phonetics speech sounds are described in terms of the organs which
produce them and how these organs behave during their production. For instance, a
description of the sound [p] will include the fact that the two lips come together and
momentarily completely block the passage of air from the lungs; then a sudden parting of
the lips occurs resulting in some kind of explosion. So, the phonetic description of sounds
is to a large extent independent from the language studied. Sounds are generally
articulated in the same way in all languages simply because the human physiology is the
same. In this course, we are concerned with this aspect of phonetics only.

[13] Acoustic Phonetics studies speech sounds at the acoustic level. In other words, it
studies (i) the physical properties of the sound waves generated when the speech organs
go into activity as well as (ii) the way speech sounds are transmitted through the air (sound
waves) in their trip from the speaker to the hearer. Acoustic phonetics has proven the fact
that speech is a continuous flow speech sounds. It utilizes machines such as the
spectograph and the oscillomink to measure sound waves particularly the frequency and
the amplitude of sound wave.

[14] Auditory Phonetics investigates how the hearer perceives and interprets speech
sounds, i.e. how the human hearing organ perceives sounds. This branch of phonetics is
said to be perceptual. In addition to being concerned with the basic sounds of natural
languages, it deals with nonsegmental issues, which affect sound perception. Generally,
the hearer does not listen to a sound for its own sake; s/he listens in order to get meaning.
This means s/he listens for sounds in association with other sounds.

Out of these three branches of phonetics, the focus in this course is on articulatory
phonetics. Reference to the other two branches will be made in Phonetics & Phonology
S5 and Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics S6.

[15] Sounds are divided into consonants and vowels. The former are produced
with obstruction of the air by two articulators (two speech organs). For example,
the upper lips and the lower lip together create an obstruction of the air to produce
/b/, /p/ and /m/. Vowels, on the other hand, do not involve any obstruction of the
air whatsoever. Vowels are determined mainly by the position of tongue inside the
vocal tract as well as the shape of the lips. For example, /i/ is produced with a
tongue positioned high in the front part of the vocal tract with lips unrounded;
whereas /u/ is produced with the tongue in high back part of the mouth with the
lips rounded. This is the case in all languages. The next two files will investigate
the articulatory aspects of consonants and vowels.

Practice

These are exercises from Spoken English S1. They air to prepare you for the study of sounds.

1- In this story, there are 12 incorrect words. The correct word is pronounced the same as
the incorrect one, but the spelling is different. Correct them using words from the box.

Son – some – meat – way – threw – pears – sent – week – buy – piece – road – two

Last week, I cent my sun Jamie to the shops to bye sum food. He got a peace of meet and too
pairs. On the weigh home, the bag broke. The food feel onto the rode and got dirty. In the
end, Jamie through the food in the bin.

2- How many sounds are there in each word? Write the order of consonant sounds (C ) and
vowel sounds (V).
Night : CVC (three sounds: first a consonant, then a vowel and finally another consonant)

dog gorilla
rabbit snake
frog bee
sorry possess
knees rhyme
quickly climb
mushroom elephants
listen spaghetti
ghastliness columnist
knowledge talker
3- For each of the CV-skeletons you have found in exercise 2, find at least one other English
word that will fit it.

4- Pronounce the following words. Do you have a similar sound in your language as those
underlined?
Shoe – hat – girl – zoo – june – soap – thing – life
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