Phonetics

The scientific study of speech sounds

Chapter 2
 Phonetics is the branch of linguistics that is concerned with the
scientific study of speech sounds.

• Become familiar with the different sounds across the world’s

languages

• Get to know the IPA

The Speech Organs
Subglottal System
Supraglottal System
• Provides the air that the other speech organs
use to make sounds.
Larynx
Larynx
• Contains the vocal folds and glottis. Subglottal system
• voicing, pitch
• some consonants are also articulated here

Supralglottal/ Supralaryngeal system

• Articulators such as the tongue, lips and teeth

can manipulated air in the oral cavity
• Majority of speech sounds articulated here
 Consonants and Vowels
The distinctive sounds that humans use to communicate can be divided into 2 categories:

Consonants Vowels

Sounds that are Sounds produced

produced with some where the airstream
degree of air passes through the
restriction. vocal tract without
noticeable obstruction
 International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

• Linguists use the IPA to represent all the possible consonant

and vowels of human language.
• The IPA has universal one to one correspondence between
symbols and pronunciation. One symbol = one sound
• Eliminates uncertainty about the pronunciation of a
transcription
• Allows quick comparison of the sounds of different
languages
• Remember letters or symbols are only representations of
real human sounds
 Consonants

Consonants can be organized according to 3 parameters:

Voicing Place of articulation Manner of Articulation

The presence or
The place in the oral The way we move our
absence of vocal fold cavity where airflow is
lips, tongue and teeth
vibration when speech modified to make to make speech sounds
sounds are being made speech sounds
 Voicing
• All consonants are either voiced or unvoiced
• Vocal chords vibration = voiced
• On IPA chart right-sided consonants are voiced, left sided are voiceless

Check for voicing

• You can feel vocal fold vibration (voicing) when you place your hand on the throat.
• Also, if you put yout fingers in your ears, you can here voiced consonants much more clearly

The sound pairs below differ only in voicing- they are produced in the exact same place and manner. See if you can feel
and hear the difference.

[s] vs [z]
[p] vs [b]
[f] vs [v]
 Place of Articulation

Bilabial

These sounds are made with both lips.

Labiodental

Contact between lower lip and upper teeth

 Place of Articulation
Dental: Tongue and the teeth

English ‘th’
/θ/ think , thought, thank
/ð/ they them, there them

Alveolar: Tongue and alveolar ridge

Post alveolar: Tongue and area just after alveolar ridge

English:

/ʃ/ she, ash /ʒ/ treasure, genre

 Place of Articulation

Retroflex: tongue tip and the area between

alveolar ridge and palate

Mandarin Chinese, Tamil, Hindi

Palatal: tongue and the palate

English /j/
You, yacht
 Place of Articulation

Velar: tongue and velum (soft palate)

English ‘ng’
/ŋ/ single, sang

Uvular: tongue and uvular

Native American languages

French ‘r’
 Place of Articulation

pharyngeal: tongue root pharyngeal wall

Hebrew and Arabic have pharyngeal

fricatives
https://youtu.be/2Al1JaAfr88?t=678

Glottal: larynx

[ʔ]
uh-oh,
butter bu ’ er (cockney),
cat (some speakers)
 Manner of articulation

Stop/ Plosive: Airflow in the oral cavity is stopped

Nasal: velum is lowered, air through the nasal cavity

Trill: air flow over vibrating tongue

Spanish: perro

Tap/flap: the tongue quickly taps/or flaps against another articulator

American English: butter = alveolar tap

 Manner of articulation

Fricative: near complete stoppage of air flow resulting in turbulence or friction.

Lateral fricative: same as above but airstream is directed over the sides of the tongue rather than through the
middle. (Taishanese 3 begins with ɬ www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAW0ldZ4lv0&ab_channel=KariHuang)
Approximant: slight narrowing of vocal tract, without turbulence
Lateral approximant: same as above but airflow is directed over the sides of the tongue
/j/ you, yacht
 Additional Consonant sounds
These are sounds that do not use air from the lungs. Non of these are
contrastive or frequent sounds in English.

Clicks
xhosa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZlp-croVYw&ab_channel=Silvio
Marchini

Implosives
• Basically, gulping and doing a stop at the same time
• Vietnamese, Sindhi
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR0MpZ1vH_s&ab_channel=L
earnVietnameseWithAnnie

• Ejectives
In Mayan languages such as Tzeltal these are contrastive.
Some English speakers also use them occasionally at the end of words
https://youtu.be/rP0-MfE4zbA?t=58
Consonant review
Practice
Describe the following sounds in terms of voicing, place of articulation,
and manner of articulation. Example: /p/ is a voiceless bilabial stop.

/f/    /ŋ/ /h/   /b/ /g/  

/θ/ /n/ /t/ /r/ /m/

 VOWELS

• Vowels are created with the vocal tract open and a continuous unobstructed airflow
from the lungs.

• Distinguishable sounds are achieved by how wide the mouth is opened coupled with
subtle manipulation of air flow the tongue and lips.

• Unlike consonants vowels can’t be categorized into easy to separate categories. The
difference between vowel sounds is gradient, so the way we think about and describe
vowels differs from consonants.
 VOWELS
To represent vowels, we use a modified ‘diagram’ of the vowels space. In the IPA, each vowel symbol is a representation
of the features of height, backness and roundness. Their positions can be seen as anchor points that map out the
vowel space into idealized divisions.
All 28 vowels can be described using the following features:

Height (high/close, mid, low/open)

How open your mouth is and close the tongue is to the roof
of the mouth.

Backness (Front, Central, back)

how far back the tongue is positioned

Rounding (rounded, unrounded)

whether there is lip rounding or not.

 Vowel combinations
Monophthong

A single vowel sound (those on the ipa vowel diagram)

Diphthong
2 vowel sounds quickly glided together. Begins in one area of the mouth and moves to another distinct area.

• English fly /aɪ/

Triphthong

3 vowel sounds quickly glided together

• Mandarin
/iau/ /çiau/
/uai/ /ʂuai/
/iou/ /çiou/
/uei/ /xuei/
 Additional features of vowels may be important in the analysis of individual
languages or comparing languages:

• Tenseness
• English /i/ vs /ɪ/ vs Spanish only tense, Yiddish only lax

• Vowel length
• Japanese [oʑisan] vs [oʑiːsan]
• Spanish vs English [si]
• Nasalization
• French
Beau [bo] vs bon [bõ]
practice
• Describe the following vowels in terms of height, backness, roundness
and tenseness:

/e/ /i/ /ə/ /æ/

/ɔ/ /ʊ/ /ɛ/ /ʌ/
 English Consonants
Affricates- a co-articulation of a stop and a fricative that functions as one unit of sound.

Interdental- the tip of the tongue between the upper and lower front teeth
 General American English Vowels
• Most languages have between 3-7 vowel sounds.
• Including diphthongs, English has from 14 to 20 vowel sounds depending on the dialect.
• It is quite possible that you have additional vowels or do not use some of these vowels in your native
dialect.

Monophthongs Diphthongs
/aɪ/ as in wide and sky

/aʊ/as in loud and cow

/ɔɪ/ as in toy and foil

 
Optional(?):
/eɪ/ as in lay and hey
/oʊ/ as in show, though
American English Vowels: common dialectal differences

Caught/ Cot merger

In many dialects of American English (e.g. California) [ɔ] has merged
with [a].
Caught [a] cot [ɔ]

[a] [ɔ]

Caught Cot
Dawn Don
American English vowels: common dialectal
differences
Vowels and ‘r’
R- dropping – r is dropped when preceded by a vowel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85iRQdjCzj0&ab_channel=HyundaiUSA

Vowel merging after intervocalic -r-

[e, ɛ, æ] Mary, merry, marry

Full merger= 57%

No merging =17%
Mary- marry merge = 16%
Mary –merry merge = 9%
Merry- marry merge = 1%
Practice
Yellow jɛlo
Lamb læm
Wreath ɹiθ
Beige beʒ / beɪʒ
Mission mɪʃən
Sixth sɪksθ/ sɪkθ
Xylophone zaɪləfon/ zaɪləfoʊn
judge dʒʌdʒ
 Suprasegmentals

Phonetic properties above the level of segments (vowels and

consonants)

• Syllables

• Stress, pitch accent

• Tone, Intonation
 (Almost) Universal Syllable Structure

(Onset) nucleus/peak (Coda)

• Consonant(s) • Core of a syllable • Consonant(s)

• For many languages, the
• All languages allow syllables with onsets • Vowels consonants allowed in coda
• Languages favor onsets over codas • Sonorant consonants position are often quite
(nasals, liquids, restrained
glides) • Some languages do not allow
codas
 Stress

Stress is the relative prominence of different syllables in a word.

Stressed syllables typically have some combination of greater duration,
intensity, or fundamental frequency relative to unstressed syllables.
 Different types of Stress Systems
Non-Phonemic Stress Phonemic Stress
Stress is not (fully) predictable
Stress is predictable

• Stress placement must be memorized

Weight-insensitive Stress
• There is often a vowel/consonant change
• Stress always falls on the same syllable
when a syllable is stressed vs unstressed

Weight-sensitive Stress
British English: Laboratory
• Syllables are stressed based on ‘weight’
/ləˈbɒr.ə.tər.i/
(i.e. number of segments)

American English: Laboratory

/ˈlæb.rə.ˌtɔr.i/ /ˈlæb.rə.tri/
 Different Ways of producing Stress
• Stress is produced by one or a combination of the following
properties:

• Volume
• Pitch
• Length

English uses a combination of all these

 Pitch Accent
Pitch is the primary factor for stressing syllables. Stress placement can change the meaning of an identical set of

segments.

Japanese: hi vs low pitch

Swedish: pitch contours

https://youtu.be/lXp7_Sjgm34?t=267