Phonetics and

phonology
phonetics
 The definition of phonetics and its three major re
search fields;
 The location, characteristic and function of the s
peech organs;
 The definitions and classifications of consonants
and vowels the places of articulation and manne
r of articulation ； cardinal vowels ； broad and
narrow transcriptions and the lip positions in the
pronunciation of the cardinal vowels;
 IPA
What is phonetics?
 Phonetics studies how speech sounds are
produced, transmitted, and perceived. It is
the science which studies the
characteristics of human sound-making,
especially those sounds used in speech,
and provide methods for their description,
classification and transcription.
 Three branches of phonetics
 Articulatory Phonetics is the study of the produc
tion of speech sounds. It examines the way in w
hich a speech sound is produced to discover w
hich vocal organs are involved and how they co
ordinate in the process.
 Acoustic Phonetics is the study of the physical
properties of speech sounds when they are tran
smitted in the air from one person to another.
 Perceptual or Auditory Phonetics is concerned
with the hearer’s perception of speech sounds.
Articulatory Phonetics
speech organs/ vocal organs
IPA

segments

Coarticulation
speech organs
 Also known as vocal organs, are those
parts of human body involved in the
production of speech.
 Including: lungs, the trachea (the
windpipe), the throat, the nose and the
mouth.
 Three cavities of the vocal tract: pharynx,
mouth and nose.
 oral cavity: tongue (the tip, blade, front, blac
k and root.), lips, teeth, alveolar ridge, hard p
alate, soft palate, uvula. (A nasal sound is pr
oduced when the soft palate is lowered to all
ow air to pass through the nasal cavity when
the oral cavity is meanwhile blocked.)
 At the top of the trachea is the larynx, which
contains the vocal folds, also known as vocal
cords. The vocal folds can be apart (the air
can pass through easily and produce
voiceless sounds), close together (the
airstream causes them to vibrate against
each other and produce voiced sounds), or
totally closed (no air pass between them and
the glottal stop is produced).
Position of the vocal folds:
voiceless
Position of the vocal folds: voicing
(initial & the widest aperture)
Position of the vocal folds:
glottal stop

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IPA
 In 1886, the Phonetic Teachers’ Association was ina
ugurated by a small group of language teachers in Fr
ance who had found the practice of phonetics useful
in their teaching and wished to popularize their meth
ods.
 It was changed to its present title of the Internatio
nal Phonetic Association (IPA) in 1897.
 One of the first activities of the Association was to p
roduce a journal in which the contents were printed
entirely in phonetic transcription.
 The idea of establishing a phonetic alphabet was first propo
sed by the Danish grammarian and phonetician Otto Jesper
sen (1860-1943) in 1886, and
 the first version of the International Phonetic Alphabet (the I
PA chart) was published in August 1888.
 A phonetic transcription is an economical
means for capturing sounds on paper. The
International Phonetic Alphabet is the bes
t-known system to represent each sound
with a single symbol.
Its main principles
1. there should be a separate letter for each
distinctive sound, and
2. that the same symbol should be used for that
sound in any language in which it appears.
3. The alphabet was to consist of as many
Roman alphabet letters as possible, using
new letters and diacritics only when
absolutely necessary.
Broad/ Narrow transcription
 The diacritics are to indicate nuances of change
in the production of vowels and consonants. In
phonetic transcription, broad transcription is the
way to use a simple set of letter-symbols to
transcribe speech sounds. In contrast, narrow
transcription is the use of more specific symbols
(letter-symbols with diacritics) to show more
phonetic details of speech sounds.
 both forms in square brackets [ ].
back
Segments vs divergences
segments ： a phonetic alphabet represent
s speech in form of segments, or individual
speech sounds like /p/ /s/ /m/
e.g.: above four segments – a b o v
divergences:
e.g. the sound of ‘a’ can be diverged into /
ei/ /a:/ //
Segments
 Consonants

 vowels
Consonants
 Consonants are produced ‘by a closure in
the vocal tract, or by a narrowing which is
so marked that air cannot escape without
producing audible friction’.
 The categories of consonant, therefore, are
established on the basis of several factors. (a)
the actual relationship between the articulators
and thus the way in which the air passes through
certain parts of vocal tract (manner of
articulation), and (b) where in the vocal tract
there is approximation, narrowing or the
obstruction of air (place of articulation).
manner of articulation
 The manner of articulation refers to ways
in which articulation can be accomplished:
 the articulators may close off the oral tract for
an instant or a relatively long period;
 they may narrow the space considerably; or
 they may simply modify the shape of the tract
by approaching each other.
 Plosive
 Nasal
 Fricative
 Affricate
 Approximant: [j, w, r ]. But [j, w] are also called
glides by some linguists.
 Lateral: [l] is also called Liquid together with [r].
place of articulation
 The place of articulation refers to the point
where a consonant is made.
 Practically
consonants may be produced at
any place between the lips and the vocal
folds.
 Bilabial: by bringing the two lips together.
 Labiodental: by the lower lip against the upper teeth. [f
, v]
 Dental: by placing the tip of the tongue against the upp
er teeth.
 Alveolar: by placing the tip or blade of the tongue agai
nst the alveolar ridge. [t, d, n, s, z, r, l]
 Palatal: by the front of the tongue against the hard pal
ate. [j]
 Velar: with the back of the tongue and the soft palate.
We have two velar stops and one velar nasal in Englis
h.
 Glottal: two pieces of vocal folds pushed towards each
other. [h], and the glottal stop.
 Manner of Place of articulation
articulation bilabial Labio-dental dental alveolar palatal velar glottal

Stops/plosive VL p t k

VD b d g
Fricatives VL f  s  h

VD v  z 

Affricates VL 

VD 

Nasals VD m n 

Laterals VD l,r

approximants VD w j

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Vowels
 Vowels are a major type of speech in terms of th
eir articulatory characteristics. They are sound s
egments produced when the airstreams that co
me from the lungs meet with no obstruction of an
y kind in the throat, the nose, or the mouth, so n
o turbulence of a total stopping of the air can be
perceived.
 Vowels function as the main sounds of syllables
, either alone or combined with consonants. The
y are the nucleus of the syllable.
 Pure or monophthong vowels, semi-vowels, diph
thongs.
Diphthongs
 Also are called gliding vowels, as in contra
st to pure vowels or monophthongs.
 They are produced by moving from one vo
wel position to another through intervening
positions.
 The diphthongs in English include:[ei, ai oi,
i, e,u]
Vowels
The criteria of vowel description
 The position of the tongue:
⑴the part of the tongue that is raised — front, ce
nter, or back
⑵the height of the tongue — high, mid, low
 The opening of the mouth — close, semi-close,
semi-open, open
 The shape of the lips — rounded, unrounded
 The length of the sound — tense, lax
English vowels
cardinal vowels
 They are a set of vowel qualities arbitrarily
defined, fixed and unchanging, intended to
provide a frame of reference for the descri
ption of the actual vowels of existing langu
ages.
 First suggested by A.J.Ellis (1844); was ta
ken up by A.M.Bell in Visible Speech (186
7); Daniel Jones in Outline of English Pho
netics (1962).
Tongue positions of the cardinal vowels
Front Central Back

i:
close i u:
Semi-close u
Semi-open e :
 :
open   o
a a
:

back
 Coarticulation
 Coarticulation: Speech is a continuous process, so
the vocal organs do not move from one sound
segment to the next in a series of separate steps.
Rather, sounds continually show the influence of
their neighbors.
When such simultaneous or overlapping articulations
are involved, we call the process coarticulation (or
assimilation).
 If the sound becomes more like the following sound, as in
the case of lamb, it is known as anticipatory coarticulation.
 If the sound shows the influence of the preceding sound, it
is perseverative coarticulation, as is the case of map. back
Liaison
 All English words would be separate units
put in sequence, but liaison does happen
frequently in connected speech when
speakers link two words especially when
the second word begins with a vowel. E.g.
here are, an egg.

elision
 Elision is a phonetic phenomenon in which
a consonant or vowel may disappear unde
r certain circumstances especially in rapid
informal speech. E.g. suppose, factory, mo
stly.
phonology
 The definition of phonology;
 The comparison and contrast between phon
etics and phonology;
 The definitions of phone, phoneme, allopho
ne, minimal pair and free variation;
 Theories on phoneme, phonemic contrast a
nd complementary distribution, features on
phonetic similarity and distinction;
 Suprasegmental features (syllables, stress,
tone, etc.);
What is phonology?
 Phonology is the study of the sound patterns and sound
systems of languages.
 It aims to ‘discover the principles that govern the way soun
ds are organized in languages, and to explain the variations
that occur’.
 In phonology we normally begin by analyzing an individual l
anguage, say English, in order to determine its phonological
structure, i.e. which sound units are used and how they are
put together.
Then we compare the properties of sound systems in differen
t languages in order to make hypotheses about the rules tha
t underlie the use of sounds in them, and ultimately we aim t
o discover the rules that underlie the sound patterns of all l
anguages.
 Phonology is not specifically concerned wit
h the physical properties of the speech pro
duction system.
 Phoneticians are concerned with how sounds
differ in the way they are pronounced while ph
onologists are interested in the patterning of s
uch sounds and the rules that underlie such v
ariations.
Phonetics vs. phonology
 Both related to the study of sounds
 Phonetics studies the production,
transmission and reception of sounds;
 Phonology focus on the linguistic patterns
of speech sounds and how they are used
to convey meaning in linguistic
communication.
Phonology
 Phoneme
 A minimal pair
 Allophones
 Free variation
 Assimilation
 Phonological rules
 Distinctive features
 Suprasegmentals
Phoneme
 Phoneme is a unit of explicit sound contrast. If
two sounds in a language make a contrast
between two different words, they are said to be
different phonemes.
 phoneme is the minimum phonemic unit that is
not further analyzable into smaller units.
 A phoneme is the abstract set of units as the
basis of our speech. phonemes are distinctive
sounds although they can be represented by
sounds in slightly different ways.
Phoneme VS.phone
 Phones are the minimal sound segments that hu
man speech organs can produce. They are basi
c units of phonetic study and transcribed within s
quare brackets ([ ]).
 Phonemes are the abstract collection of phonetic
features which can distinguish meaning, and are
transcribed with the IPA symbols, but within slan
t lines (/ /) . In phonetic terms, phonemic transcri
ptions represent the ‘broad’ transcriptions.
a minimal pair
 When two different phonetic forms are
identical in every way except for one
sound segment which occurs in the same
place in the string, the two forms (i.e.
words) are supposed to form a minimal
pair. E.g. pig, big, dig, fig, rig and wig; feat,
fit, fat, fat, fought and foot.
 a minimal pair consists of two different
forms which are identical in every way
except for one sound segment in the same
place in the strings. When two phonemes
in a minimal pair occur in the same place
and can distinguish meaning, they are said
to be in phonemic contrast.
Allophones
 Clear [l] and dark [l] are two different
phones and are variants of the phoneme
/l/. Such variants of a phoneme are called
allophones of the same phoneme.
 In this case the allophones are said to be
in complementary distribution because
they never occur in the same context:
 Clear [l] occurs before a vowel, while dark [l]
occurs between a vowel and a consonant or
at the end of a word.
[p, ph] are two different phones and are variants of the phonem
e /p/. [p] occurs after [s] while [ph] occurs in other places.
/p/  [p] / [s] _____
[ph] elsewhere
Note: the arrow here represents the process, the slash specifie
s the environment in which the change occurs and the bar
“_____” is the position in which /p/ appears.
 Phonetic similarity: the allophones of a phoneme must bear
some phonetic resemblance.
 This phenomenon of variation in the pronunciation of phone
mes in different positions is called allophony or allophonic va
riation.
 /l/ in “let, play, tell”
 The first /l/ is made by raising the front of the
tongue to the hard palate, while the vocal cords
are vibrating; the second /l/ is made with the
same tongue position as the first, but the vocal
cords are not vibrating; the third /l/ is made by
raising not only the front but also the back of the
tongue while the vocal cords are vibrating.
Allophones
 Allophones are the different members of a
phoneme, sounds which are phonetically
different but do not make one word
different from another in meaning.
 Free variants and free variation: if two
sounds occurring in the same environment
do not contrast meaning, that is, the
substitution of one for the other does not
produce a different word from, but merely
a different pronunciation of the same word,
then the two sounds are in free variation,
and they are variants of the same
phoneme. The same word produced in two
different ways due to individual or regional
differences rather than distribution rule.
phonological rules
 Sequential rule ( 序列规则 )

• Assimilation （同化）

• Epenthesis rule

• Deletion rule
 Sequential rule
the rules that govern the combination of sounds in a particul
ar language.

 For instance, in English, lbki cannot be a word because a

word begins with [l ]should have a vowel as its second soun
d segment.

 A fricative or a sibilant cannot be followed by a sibilant such

as [s], so we have boxes, teaches etc.

 When three consonants appear at the beginning of the word

, the first sound must be [s], the second one must be [p, t, k]
and the third one must be [l, r, w, j]. So we have spring, strin
g, squeal, rather than bdling﹡ or wbtendlid ﹡.
 Sonority scale can explain some combination
s of consonants. It refers to the different degr
ees of sonority of speech sounds. Vowels (5)
>lateral [l](4)>nasals (3) >fricatives (2) >stop
s (1). The sonority scales of speech sounds
contained in a word should be roughly accor
dant with normal distribution and can be dra
wn in to a figure similar to an inverted “V”, wh
ich explains why splash is a correct word wh
ereas lsapsh is not accepted.
Assimilation
 Nasalization, dentalization, and velarization are all
instances of assimilation, a process by which one
sound takes on some or all the characteristics of a
neighboring sound. (e.g. P42)
 If a following sound is influencing a preceding s
ound, we call it regressive assimilation ( 逆同
化 ).
 The converse process, in which a preceding so
und is influencing a following sound, is known a
s progressive assimilation （顺同化 )
 Assimilation is a phonological term used synony
mously with coarticulation which is more of a ph
onetic term.
 In sum, assimilation refers to the phonological
process in which a target or affected segment
undergoes a structural change in certain
environments or contexts. In each process the
change is conditioned or triggered by a
following or preceding sound.
 three aspects: (1) a set of sounds to undergo
the process; (2) a set of sounds produced by
the process; (3) a set of situations in which the
process applies.
 Assimilation can occur across syllable or word
boundaries: pancake, you can keep them.
 English Fricative Devoicing:
 /v/  [f] /z/  [s] etc.
 voiced fricative  voiceless / ____ voiceless
Notes ： the arrow is to represent the process o
f change, the slash is to specify the environment
in which the change takes place, and the bar indi
cates the position of the target segment. The rul
e reads as: a voiced fricative is transformed into
the corresponding voiceless sound when it appe
ars before a voiceless sound.
 Nasalization rule:
[-nasal]  [+nasal] / ____ [+nasal]
 Dentalization rule:
[-dental]  [dental] / ____ [dental]
 Velarization rule:
[-velar]  [+velar] / ____ [+velar]
a hotel, a wagon, a big man;
an apple, an egg, an orange
Epenthesis rule
Epenthesis (Insertion) Rule: The nasal [n] is added
to the article a due to the lack of a consonant
between two vowels.

Deletion rule
A sound is deleted in specific conditions. The sound
[g] is deleted when it happens before a nasal
which is at the end of a word.
Sign, design, paradigm; Signature, designation, paradigmatic
Rule ordering and the Elsewhere condition:
Plurals in English
 a. The [] appears after voiceless sounds.
 b. The [] appears after voiced sounds.
 c. The [] appears after sibilants.

 //  [] / [–voice, C] _____ (Devoicing)

   [] / [+sibilant] _____ []
(Epenthesis)
 [z] is the basic form (underlying
form/representation) and the other two
(surface form/ representation) are derived
from it. Incorrect derivation will result when
the order of rules is disturbed. The solution
is to apply epenthesis before devoicing.
Distinctive features
 The idea of Distinctive Features was first developed
by Roman Jacobson (1896-1982) in the 1940s as a
means of working out a set of phonological
contrasts or oppositions to capture particular
aspects of language sounds.
 To put it simply, distinctive features are those
phonologically relevant properties, that is, the
features which can distinguish meaning, for
example, voicing, place and manner of articulation
are all principal distinctive features of consonants.
 Some of the major distinctions include [consonanta
l], [sonorant], [nasal] and [voiced].
 The feature [consonantal] can distinguish between conso
nants and vowels, so all consonants are [+consonantal]
and all vowels [–consonantal].

 [sonorant] distinguishes between what we call obstruents

(stops, fricatives and affricates) and sonorants (all other
consonants and vowels), with obstruents being [–sonora
nt] and others [+sonorant].

 [nasal]and [voiced] of course distinguish nasal (including

nasalized) sounds and voiced sounds respectively.
 These are known as binary features ( 二分
特征 )because we can group them into two
categories: one with this feature and the ot
her without.
 Binary features have two values or specificati
ons denoted by ‘ + ’ and ‘ – ’ so voiced obstru
ents are marked [+voiced] and voiceless obstr
uents are marked [–voiced].
 The place features are not binary features – they
are divided up into four values:
 [PLACE: Labial]
 [PLACE: Coronal]
 [PLACE: Dorsal]
 [PLACE: Radical]

 They are often written in shorthand forms as

 [Labial]L
 [Coronal] C 舌冠音
 [Dorsal] D 舌背音
 [Radical] R 舌根音
Suprasegmentals
 Suprasegmental features are those
aspects of speech that involve more than
single sound segments.
 The principal suprasegmentals are:

syllables stress intonation tone

The syllable structure
word

Onset Rime

Nucleus Coda

k r æ k t
 Open syllable: bar, tie
 Closed syllable: bard, tied

 English Syllable: (((C)C)C)V((((C)C)C)C)

 Chinese syllable: (C)V(C)

 Maximal Onset Principle (MOP)

 When there is a choice as to where to place
a consonant, it is put into the onset rather
than the coda.

BACK
Stress
 Stress refers to the degree of force (intensity or
prominence) used in producing a syllable. In
transcription, a raised vertical line [│] is often
used just before the syllable it relates to.
A basic distinction is made between stressed and
unstressed syllables, the former being more prominent
than the latter, which means that stress is a relative
notion.
 In words with more than two syllables, we may have
primary or main stress and secondary stress.
 At the word level, it only applies to words with
at least two syllables.
 At the sentence level, a monosyllabic word may
be said to be stressed relative to other words in
the sentence.
 onset restrictions: in English, three-consonant
onsets are highly restricted in their composition.
 Weak and strong syllable: a weak syllable
contains a short vowel as its core followed by
no more than one short consonant (method,
study); strong syllable contains a long vowel
without a coda of any length, or a short vowel
followed by two or more consonant or at least
one long consonant. E.g. mean, incident, arrest.
Sentence Stress

 John bought a red car.

 JOHN bought a red car.
 John BOUGHT a red car.
 John bought a RED car.
 John bought a red CAR.

BACK
 Intonation
 Pitch is the auditory sensation of the height of a sou
nd. There are two ways in which languages make us
e of pitch variations in speech.
 In languages like English, regular sequences of diffe
rent pitches characterize stretches of speech betwee
n pauses and are known collectively as intonation. In
language such as Chinese, pitch differences (tones)
help to distinguish one word from another and may b
e the only differentiating feature between two or mor
e words whose composition is the same in terms of
consonants and vowels.
 Intonation refers to the pitch differences that
extend over phonetic units larger than the
syllable. By means of intonation ,syllables
are grouped into phrases, and phrases into
sentences.
 Actually, we can understand intonation as
all prosodic characteristics of a linguistic
utterance that are not tied to a single sound
and its main aspects include stress, pitch
and pause.
 (Isn’t her name Mary?) No /  Jenny
 The old man didn’t come / whereas the 
young man / did come and actually
enjoyed himself
  I didn’t do it.

Notes: “/” indicates an intonation-group

boundary and the “v “mark indicates a fall-
rise tone spread over all syllables before
the next boundary.
Functions of intonation
 grouping of words: intonation contours may in
dicate the possible grouping of words in phras
es, resulting in different meanings of these phr
ases. “small boy’s school”.
 emphasizing words: “John kissed Mary”.
 differentiating meanings: the same sentence
may mean quite different things when spoken
with different intonations. “John is coming to th
e party tonight”.

BACK
Tone
 pitch differences that help to
distinguish one word from another and
may be the only differentiating feature
between two or more words whose
composition is the same in terms of
consonants and vowels.
Putonghua [pa]
Chinese Tone Tone Tone English
character Pinyin symbol number description Gloss

八 bā 55 High level ‘eight’

‘pull
拔 bá 35 High rising
out’

Low falling
靶 bă 214 ‘target’
rising

坝 bà 51 High falling ‘dam’