Phonetics: The Sounds of Language

The science of speech sounds is called phonetics. It aims

to provide the set of properties necessary to describe and
distinguish all the sounds in human languages
throughout the world. When we speak, the physical
sounds we produce are continuous stretches of sound,
which are the physical representations of strings of
discrete linguistic segments. Knowledge of a language permits one to separate continuous
speech into individual sounds and words. The discrepancy between spelling and sounds in
English and other languages motivated the development of phonetic alphabets in which
one letter corresponds to one sound. The major phonetic alphabet in use is the
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which includes modified Roman letters and
diacritics, by means of which the sounds of all human languages can be represented. To
distinguish between orthography (spelling) and phonetic transcriptions, we write the latter
between square brackets, as in [fə̃ nɛɾɪk] for phonetic. All English speech sounds come from
the movement of lung air through the vocal tract. The air moves through the glottis (i.e.,
between the vocal cords), up the pharynx, through the oral (and possibly the nasal) cavity,
and out the mouth or nose. Human speech sounds fall into classes according to their
phonetic properties. All speech sounds are either consonants or vowels, and all consonants
are either obstruents or sonorants. Consonants have some obstruction of the airstream in
the vocal tract, and the location of the obstruction defines their place of articulation, some
of which are bilabial, labiodental, alveolar, palatal, velar, uvular, and glottal. Consonants are
further classified according to their manner of articulation. They may be voiced or
voiceless, oral or nasal, long or short. They may be stops, fricatives, affricates, liquids, or
glides. During the production of voiced sounds, the vocal cords are together and vibrating,
whereas in voiceless sounds they are apart and not vibrating. Voiceless sounds may also be
aspirated or unaspirated. In the production of aspirated sounds, the vocal cords remain
apart for a brief time after the stop closure is released, resulting in a puff of air at the time
of the release. Consonants may be grouped according to certain features to form larger
classes such as labials, coronals, anteriors, and sibilants. Vowels form the nucleus of
syllables. They differ according to the position of the tongue and lips: high, mid, or low
tongue; front, central, or back of the tongue; rounded or unrounded lips. The vowels in
English may be tense or lax. Tense vowels are slightly longer in duration than lax vowels.
Vowels may also be stressed (longer, higher in pitch, and louder) or unstressed. Vowels,
like consonants, may be nasal or oral, although most vowels in all languages are oral.
Length, pitch, loudness, and stress are prosodic, or suprasegmental, features. They are
imposed over and above the segmental values of the sounds in a syllable. In many
languages, the pitch of the vowel in the syllable is linguistically significant. For example,
two words with identical segments may contrast in meaning if one has a high pitch and
another a low pitch. Such languages are tone languages. There are also intonation
languages in which the rise and fall of pitch may contrast meanings of sentences. In English
the statement Mary is a teacher will end with a fall in pitch, but in the question Mary is a
teacher? the pitch will rise. English and other languages use stress to distinguish different
words, such as có ntent and contént. In some languages, long vowels and long consonants
contrast with their shorter counterparts. Thus biru [biru] and biiru [biːru], saki [saki] and
sakki [sakːi] are different words in Japanese. Diacritics to specify such properties as
nasalization, length, stress, and tone may be combined with the phonetic symbols for more
detailed phonetic transcriptions. A phonetic transcription of men would use a tilde diacritic
to indicate the nasalization of the vowel: [mɛ̃n]. In sign languages there are “phonetic”
features analogous to those of spoken languages. In ASL these are handshape, movement,
and location. As in spoken languages, changes along one of these parameters can result in a
new word. In the following chapter, we discuss this meaning-changing property of features
in much greater detail.

 INDIVIDUAL SOUNDS OF ENGLISH

(Segmental Features)
 How speech sounds are made
 Speech sounds are made by air moving outward from the lungs through the mouth or
nose.
 The description of English consonants:
 Place of articulation- where in the mouth the airstream is obstructed
 Manner of articulation- the way in which the airstream is obstructed
 Voicing- whether there is vibration of the vocal cords

 PLACE OF ARTICULATION
 The places in the mouth where the airstream is obstructed in the formation of
consonants- the articulators involved and the place in the mouth where the
articulators cause an obstruction of the airstream.
 Articulators- tip of the tongue, blade of the tongue and back of the tongue
 Places of articulation-teeth, alveolar ridge, hard palate, soft palate(velum), glottis
 Sounds made with the lips
1. Bilabial (both lips): The sound is made with the two lips coming together and touching
momentarily. The obstruction of the airstream occurs at the lips. /p/, /b/, /m/ and /w/.

2. Labiodental (lower lip and upper teeth). The sound is made with the top teeth touching
the bottom lip. The obstruction of the airstream occurs because the top teeth and bottom
lip come together. /f/ and /v/
 Sounds made with the tip of the tongue
1. Interdental(tip of the tongue and teeth). The sound is referred to as interdental
sounds because the tongue is placed between(inter) the teeth(dental). The
obstruction of the airstream occurs because the tip of the tongue is between the
teeth or just behind the teeth. /θ/ and /ð/
Note: The two sounds are difficult for second language learners because they are not
common sounds in many of the world’s languages.
2. Alveolar(tip of the tongue and the tooth ridge). The tip of the tongue touches the
roof of the mouth just behind the upper teeth. The place of articulation is the tooth
ridge or the alveolar ridge./t/, /d/, /n/, / l /, /r/, /s/ and /z/.
 Sounds made with the blade of the tongue
1. Alveo-palatal or Palatal/Post-alveolar(blade of the tongue and the hard palate). The
sound is made with the blade of the tongue approaching the hard palate just behind
the tooth ridge.
/∫/ or /š/ or /sh/
/ʒ/ or /ž / or /zh/
/t∫/ or /č/ or /ch/ or /tš/
/dʒ/ or /ǰ/ or /dž/ or /ʤ/
/y/
 /∫/ final sound in wish; /ʒ/ final sound in beige. Note that the /ʒ/ sound very rarely
begins a word in English. Words of foreign origin include ‘genre’ or ‘Jacques’
 /t∫/ initial sound in chug and /dʒ/ in jug
 Sounds made with the back of the tongue
1. Velar (back of the tongue and soft palate). The back part of the tongue touches the
soft palate or velum. /k/, /g/ and /ŋ/ or /ng/
  Sounds made with the glottis
1. Glottal. The space between the vocal folds is the glottis. English has 2 sounds
made at the glottis: easy to hear /h/ and the glottal stop /?/ uh-oh which occurs
before each of the vowel sounds.

 MANNER OF ARTICULATION
 Refers to the way in which the obstruction of the airstream, which characterizes all
consonants is achieved.
1. Stops or Plosives (complete obstruction of the airstream). Consonants that involve
complete blockage of the airstream. /p/,/b/, /t/,/d/, /k/ and /g/
2. Fricatives/continuants (partial obstruction). Partial obstuction of the airstream
results from the lips or the tongue coming close to some part of the upper mouth.
These are called fricatives because the close approximation of the articulators
causes turbulence or friction in the airflow. /f/, /v/, /s/, /z/, /θ/, /ð/,
/∫/ and /ʒ/
3. Affricates(complex consonant sounds). A combination of stop followed immediately by a
fricative. The initial consonant of chug begins as a stop consonant /t/ and is released as the
fricative /ʒ/. Similarly, the initial consonant of jug begins as the stop consonant /d/ and is
released as the fricative /ʒ/.
Note: Fricatives with hissing sounds like /s/, /z/, /∫/ and /ʒ/ are called SIBILANTS.

4. Nasals/sonorants (sounds made with the air escaping through the nose). Air is blocked
in the mouth. However, the soft palate is lowered, allowing air to escape through the
nose. /m/,/n/ and /ŋ/
5. Liquids or Approximants. The air passes through the mouth in a somewhat fluid manner.
 The lateral /l/ is made with the tip pf the tongue touching the tooth ridge and air
passing through the mouth over the sides of the tongue.
 The retroflex /r/ is made with the tip of the tongue slightly curled back in the
mouth.
6. Glides (semi-vowels). The sound is made with a relatively wide opening in the mouth. In
the production of /w/, the lips are rounded and at the same time the back of the tongue
approaches the soft palate. In the pronunciation of /y/, the blade of the tongue approaches
the hard palate.
Note: Stops, fricative and affricative continuants all have in common that the air is not let
out through the nose; consonants produced in this way are called OBSTRUENTS.
 The description of English vowels
 Vowels exhibit a great deal of dialect variation. This variation can depend on factors
such as geographical region, social class, educational background, age and gender.
 Vowels are differentiated from consonants by the wide opening in the mouth as air
passes from the lungs out of the body.
 This means that there is little obstruction of the airstream in comparison to
consonants.
 Different vowel sounds result from different positions of the tongue and lips.
 Four characteristics of vowels:
1. Tongue height- whether the tongue is high or low in the mouth
2. Frontness/Backness of Tongue(Tongue Advancement)- whether the front or the
back of the tongue is involved.
3. Tenseness/Laxness-whether the muscles are tense or not
4. Lip Rounding- whether the lips are rounded.
  TONGUE HEIGHT
1. high- the tongue is raised almost touching the hard palate and the jaw is also raised.
2. Mid- the tongue is neither high nor low in the mouth
3. Low- the tongue is lowered and the jaw is dropped
 TONGUE ADVANCEMENT
1. front- front part of the tongue high or low in the mouth
2. central- tongue is neither high nor low in the mouth
3. Back-back part of the tongue high or low in the mouth
 TENSENESS/LAXNESS
1. tense- vowels are produced with extra muscle tension; sometimes causes a greater
spreading of the lips; vowels are pronounced with the tongue slightly higher in the
mouth than their lax counterparts.
2. lax- vowels without this tension

 LIP ROUNDING
1. rounded- lips are rounded
2. unrounded- lips are spread
 Diphthongs- the complex vowels
/ay/, /aw/, /oy/
 Rhoticization-vowels can be articulated with additional feature: r-coloured mid
central vowel-/әr/ or r-colouring or rhoticization.
Vowel plus /r/ has a characteristics of both the schwa and the /r/ sound. Phonetic
symbols: /ɝ/, /ɚ/, /ɹ/, /ɾ/, /ûr/, /ər/
Exercise 1
1. Write the phonetic symbol for the first sound in each of the following words according to
the way you pronounce it. Examples: ooze [u] psycho [s]
a. judge [ ] f. thought [ ]
b. Thomas [ ] g. contact [ ]
c. though [ ] h. phone [ ]
d. easy [ ] i. civic [ ]
e. pneumonia [ ] j. usual [ ]

2. Write the phonetic symbol for the last sound in each of the following
words.
Example: boy [ɔɪ] (Diphthongs should be treated as one sound.)
a. fleece [ ] f. cow [ ]
b. neigh [ ] g. rough [ ]
c. long [ ] h. cheese [ ]
d. health [ ] i. bleached [ ]
e. watch [ ] j. rags [ ]

3. The following are all English words written in a broad phonetic transcription (thus
omitting details such as nasalization and aspiration). Write the words using normal English
orthography.
a. [hit]
b. [strok]
c. [fez]
d. [ton]
e. [boni]
f. [skrim]
g. [frut]
h. [pritʃər]
i. [krak]
j. [baks]
k. [θæŋks]
l. [wɛnzde]
m. [krɔld]
n. [kantʃiɛntʃəs]
o. [parləmɛntæriən]
p. [kwəbɛk]
q. [pitsə]
r. [bərak obamə]
s. [dʒɔn məken]
t. [tu θaʊzənd ænd et]
4. In each of the following pairs of words, the bold italicized sounds differ by one or more
phonetic properties (features). Give the IPA symbol for each italicized sound, state their
differences and, in addition, state what properties they have in common.

Example: phone—phonic The o in phone is mid, tense, round. The o in phonic is low,
unround. Both are back vowels.
a. bath—bathe
b. reduce—reduction
c. cool—cold
d. wife—wives
e. cats—dogs
f. impolite—indecent
Phonology: The Sound Patterns of Language

Part of one’s knowledge of a language is knowledge of the

phonology or sound system of that language. It includes the
inventory of phones—which are the phonetic sounds that
occur in the language—and the ways in which they pattern.
This patterning determines the inventory of phonemes—the
abstract basic units that differentiate words. When similar
phones occur in complementary distribution, they are
allophones—predictable phonetic variants—of one phoneme. Thus the aspirated [pʰ] and
the unaspirated [p] are allophones of the phoneme /p/ because they occur in different
phonetic environments. Some phones may be allophones of more than one phoneme. There
is no one-to-one correspondence between the phonemes of a language and their
allophones. In English, for example, stressed vowels become unstressed according to
regular rules, and ultimately reduce to schwa [ə], which is an allophone of each English
vowel. Phonological segments—phonemes and phones—are composed of phonetic
features such as voiced, nasal, labial, and continuant, whose presence or absence is
indicated by + or – signs. Voiced, continuant, and many others are distinctive features—
they can contrast words. Other features like aspiration are nondistinctive and are
predictable from phonetic context. Some features like nasal may be distinctive for one class
of sounds (e.g., consonants) but nondistinctive for a different class of sounds (e.g., vowels).
Phonetic features that are nondistinctive in one language may be distinctive in another.
Aspiration is distinctive in Thai and nondistinctive in English. When two distinct words are
distinguished by a single phone occurring in the same position, they constitute a minimal
pair, e.g., fine [faɪn] and vine [vaɪn]. Minimal pairs also occur in sign languages. Signs may
contrast by handshape, location, and movement. Words in some languages may also be
phonemically distinguished by prosodic or suprasegmental features, such as pitch, stress,
and segment length. Languages in which syllables or words are contrasted by pitch are
called tone languages. Intonation languages may use pitch variations to distinguish
meanings of phrases and sentences. The relationship between phonemic representation
and phonetic representation (pronunciation) is determined by phonological rules.
Phonological rules apply to phonemic strings and alter them in various ways to derive their
phonetic pronunciation, or in the case of signed languages, their hand configuration. They
may be assimilation rules, dissimilation rules, rules that add nondistinctive features,
epenthetic rules that insert segments, deletion rules, and metathesis rules that reorder
segments.

Phonological rules generally refer to entire classes of sound. These are natural classes,
characterized by a small set of phonetic features shared by all the members of the class,
e.g., [–continuant], [–voiced], to designate the natural class of voiceless stops. Linguists may
use a mathematical-like formulation to express phonological rules in a concise way. For
example, the rule that nasalizes vowels when they occur before a nasal consonant may be
written V → [+nasal] / __ [+nasal]. Morphophonemic rules apply to specific morphemes,
e.g., the plural morpheme /z/ is phonetically [z], [s], or [əz], depending on the final
phoneme of the noun to which it is attached. The phonology of a language also includes
sequential constraints (phonotactics) that determine which sounds may be adjacent within
the syllable. These determine what words are possible in a language, and what phonetic
strings are impermissible. Possible but nonoccurring words constitute accidental gaps and
are nonsense words, e.g., blick [blɪk]. Phonological rules exist in part to enforce phonotactic
constraints. Optimality Theory hypothesizes a set of ranked constraints that govern the
phonological rules. To discover the phonemes of a language, linguists (or students of
linguistics) can use a methodology such as looking for minimal pairs of words, or for
sounds that are in complementary distribution. The phonological rules in a language show
that the phonemic shape of words is not identical with their phonetic form. The phonemes
are not the actual phonetic sounds, but are abstract mental constructs that are realized as
sounds by the operation of rules such as those described in this chapter. No one is taught
these rules, yet everyone knows them subconsciously.

Exercise 1.
1. The following sets of minimal pairs show that English /p/ and /b/ contrast
in initial, medial, and final positions.
Initial Medial Final
pit/bit rapid/rabid cap/cab

Find similar sets of minimal pairs for each pair of consonants given:
a. /k/—/g/ d. /b/—/v/ g. /s/—/ʃ/
b. /m/—/n/ e. /b/—/m/ h. /tʃ/—/dʒ/
c. /l/—/r/ f. /p/—/f/ i. /s/—/z/

In Southern Kongo, a Bantu language spoken in Angola, the nonpalatal segments [t,s,z] are
in complementary distribution with their palatal counterparts [tʃ,ʃ,ʒ], as shown in the
following words:

tobola “to bore a hole” tʃina “to cut”

tanu “five” tʃiba “banana”

kesoka “to be cut” ŋkoʃi “lion”

kasu “emaciation” nselele “termite”

kunezulu “heaven” aʒimola “alms”

nzwetu “our” lolonʒi “to wash house”

zevo “then” zeŋga “to cut”

ʒima “to stretch” tenisu “tennis”

a. State the distribution of each pair of segments. Example: [t]—[tʃ]: [t] occurs before [o],
[a], [e], and [u]; [tʃ] occurs before [i]. [s]—[ʃ]: [z]—[ʒ]:
b. Using considerations of simplicity, which phone should be used as the underlying
phoneme for each pair of nonpalatal and palatal segments in Southern Kongo?

c. State in your own words the one phonological rule that will derive all the phonetic
segments from the phonemes. Do not state a separate rule for each phoneme; a general rule
can be stated that will apply to all three phonemes you listed in (b). Try to give a formal
statement of your rule.

d. Which of the following are possible words in Southern Kongo, and which are not? i.
tenesi ii. lotʃunuta iii. zevoʒiʒi iv. ʃiʃi v. ŋkasa vi. iʒiloʒa

Here are some short sentences in a made-up language called Wakanti. (Long consonants
are written as doubled letters to make the analysis easier.)

A ba “I eat” amma “I don’t eat”

ideɪ “You sleep” inneɪ “You don’t sleep”

aguʊ “I go” aŋŋuʊ “I don’t go”

upi “We come” umpi “We don’t come”

atu “I walk” antu “I don’t walk”

ika “You see” iŋka “You don’t see”

ijama “You found out” injama “You didn’t find out”

aweli “I climbed up” amweli “I didn’t climb up”

ioa “You fell” inoa “You didn’t fall”

aie “I hunt” anie “I don’t hunt”

ulamaba “We put on top” unlamaba “We don’t put on top”

a. What is the phonemic form of the negative morpheme based on these data?

b. What are its allomorphs?

 c. State a rule that derives the phonetic form of the allomorphs from the underlying,
phonemic form.

d. Another phonological rule applies to these data. State explicitly what the rule does and to
what natural class of consonants it applies.

e. Give the phonemic forms for all the negative sentences.

Here are some Japanese verb forms given in broad phonetic transcription.

They represent two styles (informal and formal) of present-tense verbs.

Morphemes are separated by +.

Gloss Informal Formal

call yob + u yob + imasu

write kak + u kak + imasu

eat tabe + ru tabe + masu

see mi + ru mi + masu

leave de + ru de + masu

go out dekake + ru dekake + masu

die ʃin + u ʃin + imasu

close ʃime + ru ʃime + masu

swindle katar + u katar + imasu

wear ki + ru ki + masu

read yom + u yom + imasu

lend kas + u kaʃ + imasu

wait mats + u matʃ + imasu

press os + u oʃ + imasu

apply ate + ru ate + masu

drop otos + u otoʃ + imasu

have mots + u motʃ + imasu

win kats + u katʃ + imasu

steal a lover netor + u netor + imasu

a. List each of the Japanese verb roots in their phonemic representations.

b. Formulate the rule that accounts for the different phonetic forms of

these verb roots.

c. There is more than one allomorph for the suffix designating formality and more than one
for the suffix designating informality. List the allomorphs of each. Formulate the rule or
rules for their distribution.