UNIT 5 The IPA chart and mid-sagittal sections for consonants

c) other languages that you speak

d) languages that you have heard spoken around you.

Comment At this point it is impossible to say which sounds you might have identified.
However, some of the sounds that are often identified when people are
asked this question are the trills and taps found in Italian and Spanish, and
the ‘guttural’ sounds found in languages like German and Dutch. The
important thing about these sounds, and consonant sounds in any language,
is that they can be described in technical terms using the same VPM features
that we have been working with for English in the last three units.

5.4 The International Phonetic Alphabet

You may have heard of the phonetic alphabet before you started studying
phonetics. It is important, however, not to confuse the NATO phonetic
alphabet with the International Phonetic Alphabet. The NATO alphabet
provides a standard set of words for letter names, such as Alpha, Bravo and
Charlie, for <a>, <b> and <c>, respectively. This alphabet is particularly
useful for talking over the telephone or radio, when speech is distorted
and certain letter names can sound very similar. In this book, we are not
concerned with the NATO alphabet, but rather with the International
Phonetic Alphabet, which, as we have seen, is often abbreviated to its
initials, IPA.
Like the NATO phonetic alphabet, the International Phonetic
Alphabet also provides a type of standardisation, but this time it provides
a standard description of all the sounds that can be found in the world’s
languages. It also provides symbols for these sounds, as we have seen for
SSBE, and some sounds in other languages. The IPA thus provides sym-
bols to represent all the sound possibilities found in the languages of the
world. However, when it does so, it labels them strictly on the basis of
their articulation, and not on their usage in any particular language.
Therefore, it is appropriate to use square, rather than slash, brackets when
referring to symbols from the IPA chart, as we will do throughout this
unit.
The IPA uses the features of voice, place and manner to describe and define
consonant sounds, and provides a chart for viewing and organising them easily.
The full chart is shown in Appendix 1 (page 281). In this unit we will look at the
top of the full chart, which shows all the consonants produced using air from the
lungs (pulmonic). A version of this part of the chart is shown below, with [p]
and [b] in place for illustration purposes.

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 SECTION ONE Sounds and symbols

Exercise 5.2 Look at the chart below and at the example sounds [p] and [b]. How are the
features of

a) place
b) manner
c) voice

represented in the chart?

Bilabial Labiodental Dental Alveolar Postalveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal

Plosive p b

Nasal

Trill

Tap

Fricative

Lateral

Fricative

Approximant

Lateral

Approximant

Comment Symbols are placed in the chart according to the voice, place and manner of the
sound they represent. The chart is designed as follows:

a) The place of articulation is shown in the columns, which are ordered

from POAs at the front (bilabial) to the back (glottal) of the vocal
tract.
b) The manner of articulation is shown in the rows, and is ordered roughly by
degree of stricture in the vocal tract, from greatest to least.
c) Voicing is shown by the position of a symbol in the individual cell.
Symbols for voiceless sounds are on the left of a cell, and voiced sounds
are to the right. For example, both [p] and [b] are shown in the cell
representing bilabial plosives, but voiceless [p] is on the left, and voiced [b] is
on the right.

Exercise 5.3 From the previous units, you know everything you need to fill in the chart with
the symbols for SSBE consonants. Try this now, remembering the voice, place
and manner label of each, and the layout of the chart.

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