Short Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology

MARA VAN SCHAIK RDULESCU

A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY

Ediia a II-a

Universitatea SPIRU HARET

Descrierea CIP a Bibliotecii Naionale a Romniei VAN SCHAIK RDULESCU, MARA

A short Introduction to phonetics and phonology / Van Schaik Rdulescu, Mara. - Bucureti, Editura Fundaiei Romnia de Mine, 2005

152 p.; 20,5 cm Bibliogr.

ISBN 973-725-437-6 811.111.342344(075.8)

Editura Fundaiei Romnia de Mine, 2005

Redactor: Andreea DINU Tehnoredactor: Alexandru OAN

Coperta: Stan BARON

Bun de tipar: 26.01.2006; Coli tipar: 9,5 Format: 16/6186

Editura i Tipografia Fundaiei Romnia de Mine Splaiul Independenei nr.313, Bucureti, s. 6, O P. 83

Tel./ Fax 3169790; www. SpiruHaret.ro e-mail: contact@edituraromaniademaine


UNIVERSITATEA SPIRU HARET FACULTATEA DE LIMBI I LITERATURI STRINE

MARA VAN SCHAIK RDULESCU

A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY

Ediia a II-a

EDITURA FUNDAIEI ROMNIA DE MINE Bucureti, 2006


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CONTENTS

FOREWORD . 9I. INTRODUCTION . 11

1. Phonetics and phonology as branches of linguistics . 11

1.1. Disciplines of linguistics .. 122. Speech sounds .. 143. The International Phonetic Alphabet . 154. On varieties of English 205. Questions . 21

II. BRANCHES OF PHONETICS . 22

1. Acoustic phonetics .. 232. Auditory phonetics .. 283. Questions . 30

III. ARTICULATORY PHONETICS ... 32

1. Airstream mechanisms . 322. The vocal cords ... 343. Resonance 354. Oral and nasal sounds .. 365. Active and passive articulators . 366. Manners of articulation 377. Fortis and lenis . 388. Places of articulation 389. Questions .. 40


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IV. CONSONANTS . 42

1. Obstruents 42 1.1. Plosives ... 42

1.1.1. Aspiration 43 1.2. Fricatives . 44

1.2.1. On the distribution of fricatives .. 45 1.3. Affricates . 46

2. Sonorant consonants . 46 2.1. Nasals . 46 2.2. Liquids 46

2.2.1. Laterals 46 2.2.2. Rhotics 47

3. Glides ... 48 3.1. Distribution and variation of glides . 49

4. Summary . 50 5. Questions and exercises 53

V. VOWELS . 55

1. Criteria for classifying vowels 552. The Cardinal Vowels 563. Other criteria for classifying vowels 574. English vowel sounds .. 61

4.1. RP front vowels ... 614.2. RP back vowels ... 624.3. RP central vowels ... 624.4. RP centring diphthongs ... 624.5. RP diphthongs falling to [I] and to [U] .. 63

5. Questions and exercises 63

VI. PHONOLOGY .. 66

1. Phonetics vs. phonology ... 662. Segmental vs. suprasegmental phonology 663. Segmental phonology . 67


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3.1 Phonemes and their variants . 673.2 Distribution ... 70

4. Questions .. 71

VII. PHONOLOGICAL FEATURES ... 72 1. Major class features . 752. Consonantal features 76

2.1. Voice .. 772.2. Manner features . 772.3. Place features 78

3. Vowel features . 794. Summing up . 825. Questions and exercises 84

VIII. PHONOLOGICAL RULES .. 86

1. Rule writing .. 862. Selecting the underlying form .. 883. Phonological alternations . 90

3.1 Phonetically conditioned alternations .. 903.2 Phonetically and morphologically conditioned alternations 913.3 Phonetically, morphologically and lexically conditioned alternations 92

4. More on rule writing 935. Derivations ... 98

5.1. Rule ordering .. 996. Questions and exercises 101

IX. PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSES 103

1. Feature changing rules . 103

1.1. Assimilation . 1031.2. Dissimilation 1051.3. Lenition 1051.4. Flapping 1061.5. Glottalisation 106


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2. Other types of changes . 1062.1. Deletion 1062.2. Insertion .. 1072.3. Metathesis 1082.4. Reduplication ... 1082.5. Haplology 109


X. SUPRASEGMENTAL PHONOLOGY: THE SYLLABLE 110 1. Syllable structure .. 111

1.1. Sonority and the syllable .. 1111.2. The onset-rhyme theory ... 1141.3. The timing tier . 117

2. Syllabification .. 1192.1. Principles of syllabification 119

3. Syllable weight . 1203.1. Latin stress assignment rule 121


XI. SUPRASYLLABIC STRUCTURE 126 1. Stress and accent .. 1262. The metrical foot . 1293. Intonation and tone .. 1334. Questions and exercises .. 136 SAMPLE TESTS ... 139 APPENDIX 1: English consonantal clusters .. 141APPENDIX 2: English weak forms ... 146

SUGGESTED ANSWERS TO SAMPLE TEST A . 148RECOMMENDED FURTHER READING 150BIBLIOGRAPHY 151


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FOREWORD

The general purpose of this course of lectures is to introduce the first year students in English to the study of sounds. The emphasis falls of course on the English sound system, but some examples from other languages are also brought up, so as to increase the explanatory power of the presentation.

Preparing for this course will first of all enable the students to recognize, transcribe and describe the English sounds in general phonetic terms and to master the basic phonetic characteristics of the English language. At the same time, they will have the possibility to improve their knowledge of English pronunciation in relationship with the English spelling, thus increasing their speaking and writing proficiency.

In the second part of the course, the students will become familiar with the object of phonology, its basic concepts, and the phonological description and classification of sounds. They will be introduced as well to the main phonological processes and their representation, with practical application on English specific phenomena.

The third aim of the course is to present the main features of English suprasegmental phonology, starting with English phonotactics (phonological restrictions), and continuing with syllable structure and syllabification rules of English. Other categories that will fall under scrutiny are: stress, rhythm, intonation, the relationship between English weak and strong syllables, etc.


10Universitatea SPIRU HARET

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I. INTRODUCTION

1. Phonetics and phonology as branches of linguistics

Phonetics and phonology are two closely related branches of linguistics, the science which studies human language in all its aspects.

The study of language is one of the oldest and dearest preoccupations of philosophers and scientists. Ever since ancient times, linguists and other scholars have understood that the phenomena of language are much too complex to be studied globally. There are, in fact, different levels at which the linguistic analysis can apply, including, for instance, the level of sounds, that of words and that of sentences. Of course, sounds, words and sentences cannot be separated in practice, as they are simultaneously included in the utterances that we use to communicate. However, a close examination will reveal that both the substance and the rules by which these elements of language are organized are quite specific and different from one another. This is the reason why each level of linguistic analysis has come to be studied by a different branch of linguistics, with its own principles and methods. Especially in the past century, the study of language has become such a complex and diverse enterprise that it has split up into various relatively independent branches the linguistic disciplines of today.


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1.1. Disciplines of linguistics

In a philological approach, students are first to become familiar

with the theoretical bases of the most important branches of linguistics, depending on the various levels of linguistic analysis, and then learn how to apply their newly acquired knowledge on the languages they are studying. Consequently, the full (four-year) curriculum of a department of foreign languages has come to contain courses covering the disciplines of phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, as well as other areas of linguistics, such as discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, historical linguistics, etc. Below follows a short presentation of these branches.

Phonetics deals with the physical aspect of speech sounds (or phones): their production, transmission, and reception (hence the three corresponding branches of phonetics: articulatory, acoustic and auditory phonetics).

Phonology is the study of the distinctive sounds of a language, the so-called phonemes. Phonology examines the functions of sounds within a language, as well as the way they combine in syllables and other stretches of speech.

Morphology is the study of morphemes, the smallest meaningful elements of a language. Morphemes may be whole words (e.g., thin, cat, wait) or parts of words (e.g., the plural marker -s in cats, the past tense marker -ed in waited, the comparative marker -er in thinner, etc.).

Syntax is the study of sentence structure. There are several ways of defining and examining sentences, according to various grammars. Syntax may look at the inner structure of clauses or at the way clauses combine into complex sentences.


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Semantics examines the meaning of linguistic signs (words) and strings of signs. This meaning may result from the relationship of a sign with the concept it corresponds to in our minds, with the object it represents in the real world or with another sign in the same natural language.

Pragmatics studies the use of language and the relationship between language and its users. It is interested in what we do with utterances, the way we use them to a certain effect.

Discourse analysis studies the various linguistic features of different types of text: e.g., the detective story, the political discourse, the medical scientific reports, etc.

Sociolinguistics is the study of the interaction of language and social organization. Language has specific social functions, which make it change accordingly.

Psycholinguistics studies the processes of language acquisition, language comprehension, language production, language memorization, etc., which have to do with the cognitive aspect of language.

Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary area of research between linguistics and information science. Some computer linguists simulate language structures into computer programs. Some others use the computer as a tool for the analysis of language (e.g., by using text corpus analysis).

Historical linguistics studies the historical development of languages. Apart from the diachronic analysis (along time), it also deals with the synchronic analysis of certain states of language (e.g., Old English, the language of Shakespeare, that of the eighteenth century England, etc.). The evolution of the sound pattern in a language is studied by a subfield of historical linguistics: historical (or diachronic) phonetics and phonology.


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2. Speech sounds

As can be seen from their definitions, both phonetics and phonology deal with human speech sounds. Speech sounds are the sounds we produce when we want to communicate, that is, the sounds that build up our words and sentences. Unlike animals, which use sets of sounds at random to transmit brief uncomplicated messages (e.g., a honey-bee dancing in front of its hive), human beings can combine their sounds in a precise order so as to form larger units and to convey much ampler and more abstract meaning. This double structuring of natural languages both at the lower level of sounds and at the higher levels of grammar and meaning has been referred to by linguists as double articulation. Owing to this special ability, human languages are (as good as) infinitely creative. In other words, human speakers can produce an indefinite number of words and sentences, while using a limited number of sound units and a restricted set of rules according to which these sounds are organized.

Speaking a language we are intuitively aware that in order to pronounce it correctly (or accurately) we have to follow a certain pattern and pick those sounds that characterize it. This is because, as already stated, each language uses a closed set of sounds, and native speakers have the built-in ability to identify those sounds and associations of sounds, which normally occur in their language and distinguish them from alien ones. It is usually when we try to learn a foreign language that we start to realize what is typical of it (i.e., what rules are there to observe) and where it differs from our native language. For example, a Romanian will have difficulties when learning how to master the difference between the initial sound in the word there [D] and the corresponding sound in dare [d] because the former sound does not belong to the inventory of sounds of his own


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language. A similar lack of correspondence between the Romanian and the English sound systems stands behind the way the English vowel [] is rendered in Romanian in neologisms, e.g. in the way the name Lassie is pronounced Romanian [lesi]. Since there is no [] sound in Romanian, our language replaces it with the sound [e], which is the most similar to [] in our sound repertoire.

Although each language can only make use of a finite set of sounds, each set is different, so there is no natural language that employs, has employed or probably will ever employ the same sounds as another one. Moreover, the sound system of any language changes in time. This is due to the fact that the vocal tract of a human being is sophisticated enough to produce an amazingly large variety of speech sounds (see Figure 1.1), so that when the generations of speakers change, the sounds they use will also change, even if only imperceptibly, under various conditioning factors. Small changes turn over centuries into big shifts. This explains, for instance, why the sets of sounds of related languages, e.g., Romanian, Italian, French, etc. are not identical among themselves and with the sounds of the mother-language they all emerged from in our example: Latin.

3. The International Phonetic Alphabet

As a means of communication, language is fundamentally oral. However old writing might seem to be, as compared to speech it is a far younger development in the history of humanity. Writing is subordinate to speech and thinking, as its role is that of fixing ideas in a more or less durable material by means of symbols.

The oldest systems of writing placed great emphasis on the iconic representation of words; thus, for each word corresponding to a referent in the real world or to a concept, a suggestive image was carved or painted. This led to the creation of a long list of symbols


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(ideograms), which had little to do with the actual pronunciation of words. Later on, the sounds contained in words came to be individualized in writing, first grouped in syllables, then separately. Thus the first alphabet was invented, marking a major breakthrough in peoples conception about language.

An alphabet is a much more economical system of writing, as it starts from the idea that every sound should be represented by one symbol, a letter. Since, as already stated, there is only a small set of sounds employed in a language at a certain stage in its existence, the number of corresponding letters in an alphabet are also small, and thus easy to master and use. Nowadays, the most frequently employed alphabet is the Latin one, which has been adapted by many languages according to their phonetic system.

Natural languages tend to change in their historical evolution, which makes the relationship between their spelling and their sounds imperfect. In fact, the older the alphabet, the more irregular the correspondence between letters and sounds, owing to the phonetic transformations which have taken place in the history of the respective language. In the English spelling, for instance, the relationship between the pronunciation and the spelling of words has become apparently so lax that learners have to memorize strings of letters whose value is different in different contexts: think, e.g., of the English ghost, laugh and thought. In the first word, the graphic sequence gh is pronounced [g], and in the second, [f], but in the third it is not pronounced at all.

Faced with the imperfections and irregularities characterizing the alphabets of natural languages, in order to be able to refer unambiguously and rigorously to speech sounds, linguists have come to design special phonetic alphabets. Nowadays, the best known in the scientific world is the alphabet of the International Phonetic Association (in short: IPA see Figure 1.1), which can be used for the notation of speech sounds from all natural languages.


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The IPA was first devised at the end of the 19th century, and ever since it has been regularly revised and updated, so as to accommodate sounds features and from languages that are still being studied. Nevertheless, many American linguists prefer to use simpler symbols and diacritics available on typewriters. For instance, instead of IPA [S] and [Z], they use [] and [] to note the initial sounds in ship and genre, respectively.

Like any alphabet, IPA makes use of letters and other small symbols attached to them (diacritics), which can express the tiniest nuances of pronunciation. For instance, there are numerous shades of [t] listed in the IPA alphabet: aspirated [th] (as in top), labialised [tw] (as in twitter), palatalized [tj] (as in tune), etc. (see Figure 1.1). Such detailed notations are necessary in the narrow phonetic transcription, which tends to be exhaustive in its description, that is, to capture all the details in the articulation of the respective sound. The narrow transcription is useful when we wish to give an accurate and unitary rendering of the pronunciation of a sound in a certain language and/or in a specific phonetic environment. If, on the contrary, we need to be economical, we may only note the sound as a simple symbol, without any detail (i.e., in broad phonetic transcription) in our example as [t]. By convention, the symbols used in the phonetic transcription are places within square brackets, e.g., the cat is on the mat: [D@ "k&t Iz Qn D@ "m&t].

As can be seen in Figure 1.1, apart from various types of sounds, the International Phonetic Alphabet also contains symbols for suprasegmental phonological phenomena like stress, tone, intonation, etc.


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Figu

re 1

.1a

The

Inte

rnat

iona

l Pho

netic

Alp

habe

t


19

Figu

re 1

.1b

The

Inte

rnat

iona

l Pho

netic

Alp

habe

t


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4. On varieties of English

Being spoken on all continents, English is the most widely spread language on earth. It is used by hundreds of millions of people, as a mother tongue, but also as a second language (e.g., in India, where it is an official language), or as a language of international communication (a lingua franca).

The immense geographical spread of English makes it very different in various places. There are traditional dialectal differences, as those between standard British English and the English dialects spoken in the United Kingdom and Ireland (e.g., Scottish English, Irish English, etc.), but there are also differences due to the separate evolution of the language in various parts of the world (e.g., in the United States of America or Canada), or to the contact between English and the language of a colonized territory (e.g., in Hong Kong or South Africa).

The Standard British English pronunciation, also known as Received Pronunciation (in short, RP), is based on the southern dialects of England and it is the type of language used by the upper middle classes, in schools and in the media. In the United States a corresponding standard variety is called General American (abbreviated GenAm or GA).


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5. Questions 1. What characterizes linguistics? 2. Which linguistics branches do you know? 3. What do phonetics and phonology share? 4. What are speech sounds? 5. What is the double articulation of language? 6. Why is it difficult to learn the sounds of a foreign language? 7. Does writing depend on speech? 8. Is the English spelling phonetic? 9. What is IPA and what does it contain? 10. How many kinds of phonetic transcription do you know? 11. Which are the most important varieties of English? 12. What are RP and GenAm?


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II. BRANCHES OF PHONETICS

A phonetician may be interested in studying the speech sounds of the languages of the world in general (general phonetics) or he may apply himself to the study of the phonetic system of one given language. His approach may be synchronic (focusing on the state of a phonetic system at a certain moment in its historical development), or diachronic (following the historical evolution of the respective system). He may wish to compare or contrast two systems that are related or not (comparative phonetics). In his investigation, he can make use of various techniques and devices to probe the nature of speech sounds (experimental phonetics). If he makes use of instruments, which allow him to perform exact measurements, then he is an adept of instrumental phonetics.

Phonetics, as practiced today, is an independent science, with its own methods of investigation and experiment, but importing data from the fields of anatomy, physiology and physics. As already stated, phonetics deals with speech sounds, focusing on how they are produced and perceived and on their physical features.

Speech sounds can be described in three different ways: in terms of (a) the manner of their production; (b) the acoustic properties of the sound waves traveling between speaker and hearer; and (c) their physical effects upon the ear. Hence a threefold division of this science into: articulatory, acoustic and auditory phonetics. We will start with a short presentation of the last two branches.


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1. Acoustic phonetics Acoustic phonetics is the most technical branch of phonetics, as

the data and the methods it operates with are mostly borrowed from physics.

Analyzed from the physical point of view, speech sounds are waves, originated by the vibration of the source (the vocal cords in the human larynx) and transmitted through the air. Waves can be represented graphically in sinusoidal shape (see Figure 2.1). Apart from duration (= how long they last) they have two important characteristics. One of them is frequency, measured in Hertz (Hz). Frequency shows how close together the waves are and corresponds to the pitch (= the shrillness) of the sound. It is calculated by the number of sinusoidal cycles completed per second (cps). (A complete cycle is illustrated in Figure 2.1 as the movement between the rest points A and B.)

Frequency peak x x x A B x trough

Figure 2.1 Periodic wave

Am

plitude


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The second important aspect of sounds is amplitude (= intensity), measured in decibels (dB). Amplitude is the maximum distance between the highest point of the wave the peak and the lowest point the trough (often divided by 2) and corresponds to the loudness of the sound. This is related to the amount of energy that is transmitted through the air by means of the respective sound wave.

As to the measurement of amplitude, the reference point for the decibel scale is the standard intensity of a sound, which has a fixed value close to the audible limit of sound. The sound intensity at the threshold of human hearing (= 0 dB) is conventionally taken to be one picowatt per square meter (1 pW/m), roughly the sound of a mosquito flying 3 m away, or a sound pressure level (SPL) of 20 micropascal (20 Pa).

The reason for using the decibel is that the ear is capable of hearing a very large range of sound pressures. The ratio of the sound pressure that causes permanent damage from short exposure to the limit that (undamaged) ears can hear is more than a million. Psychologists have found that our perception of loudness is roughly logarithmic. In other words, you have to multiply the sound intensity by the same factor to have the same increase in loudness. This is why the numbers around the volume control dial on a typical audio amplifier are related not to the absolute power amplification, but to its logarithm.

Because the power in a sound wave is proportional to the square of the pressure, the ratio of the maximum power to the minimum power is more than one trillion. To deal with such a range, logarithmic units are useful: the log of a thousand is 3 (from 103), so this ratio represents a difference of 30 dB from the audible limit. Similarly, a sound of 60 dB is a million times more intense than the standard value, while one of 120 dB is a trillion times more intense.

The time it takes for a cycle to be completed is called the period of the vibration. Some sounds have constant regular periodic


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vibrations (= tones = musical sounds, including, of the speech sounds, vowels and sonorant), some others have irregular aperiodic vibrations (= noise sounds, including voiceless consonants), while still others have mixed vibrations (= tones and noises, including voiced consonants) (see also Chapter III).

Vowels consist of bunches of periodic waves with various frequencies. The wave with the lowest frequency is called the fundamental (frequency), whereas the others are called the harmonics of the respective sound. The higher harmonics are whole number multiples of the fundamental (= the lowest harmonic). For instance, if a sound has as its fundamental frequency 100 Hz and one of its higher harmonics is, for instance, of 400 Hz, then we may say that this is its fourth harmonic, since it is four times higher than the fundamental.

The fundamental frequency is produced by the vibration of the vocal cords in the larynx (hence the name laryngeal or glottal tone), whereas the harmonics are due to the resonating qualities of the vocal tract above the larynx (in the supraglottal cavities: the pharynx, the mouth and the nose), whose shapes can be modified during the articulation. Only some of the harmonics of a sound are emphasized by the shapes and materials of the resonating cavities, thus giving the sound a certain quality. That is why, when describing sounds, phoneticians speak of their characteristic energy bands (formants), namely the bands of strongly reinforced harmonics, corresponding to a specific shape of the resonating chamber. The complex range of formants of a sound make up its acoustic spectrum. For example, the spectrum of the vowel /A:/ has one band of strong components in the 800 Hz range and another one in the 1100 Hz range, while the formants of /i:/ are in the 280 and 2500 Hz range, respectively (see Figure 2.2).


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/i:/ /A:/ /aI/ Figure 2.2 Spectrograms of /i:/, /A:/, /aI/ (after Ladefoged 1971;

Chioran 1978: 49) The fundamental frequency of a sound corresponds to its pitch.

While the fundamental frequency involves acoustic measurement expressed in Hz, pitch is used as a perceptual term, relating to listeners judgements as to whether a sound is high or low, whether one sound is higher or lower than another and by how much, and whether the voice is going up or down. Such judgements are not linearly related to fundamental frequency. For listeners to judge that one tone is twice as high as another, the frequency difference between the two tones is much larger at higher absolute frequencies, e.g., 1000 Hz is judged to be double 400 Hz, but 4000 Hz is judged to be double 1000 Hz. However, fundamental frequency values in speech are all relatively low (i.e., usually less than 500 Hz), and for most practical purposes pitch can be equated with fundamental frequency.

Different persons have different pitches (women have shriller voices than men, though not as shrill as those of children; the average values for the fundamental frequency with men, women and children are 120 Hz, 225 Hz and 265 Hz, respectively). However, we can still recognize, e.g., an /i:/ or an /aI/ even if the type of voice which utters them is different from the point of view of pitch. What stays the same


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is the shape of the spectrum: e.g., in the /i:/ pronounced by a woman and the /i:/ of a man the harmonics with the greatest amplitude are of similar frequency (even if the lower pitch will involve a lower number of harmonics in the mans sound).

The graphic representation of the frequencies (the formants) of a sound is called spectrogram and it can be obtained by means of a device called acoustic spectrograph. Nowadays the functions of such devices have been taken over by specially programmed computers.

A recent field of activity, which involves knowledge of phonetics and much more, is speech processing, the study of speech signals and the processing methods of these signals. The signals are usually processed in a digital representation whereby speech processing can be seen as the intersection of digital signal processing and natural language processing.

Speech processing can be divided in the following categories: (a) speech recognition (analysis of the linguistic content of a

speech signal); (b) speaker recognition (where the aim is to recognize the

identity of the speaker); (c) speech signal enhancement (e.g., noise reduction); (d) speech coding for compression and transmission of speech

(in telecommunications); (e) voice analysis for medical purposes (e.g., analysis of vocal

loading and dysfunction of the vocal cords); (f) artificial speech synthesis (by means of a speech

synthesizer, a software or hardware device capable of rendering text into speech).


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2. Auditory phonetics Auditory phonetics focuses on the perception of sounds (the

way in which sounds are heard and interpreted). It is a field of study where the scientist has to rely heavily on notions of anatomy and physiology, involving the functions of the ear, but also of the brain, where the acoustic message is decoded.

The ear receives auditory stimuli and transmits them further to the brain. The outer ear is made up of the pinna (auricle), which collects and focuses sound waves. From the pinna, the sound moves into the ear canal, a simple tube running to the middle ear. This includes the eardrum (tympanum or tympanic membrane) and the ossicles, three tiny bones (called hammer, anvil, and stirrup) which form the linkage between the tympanic membrane and the oval window that leads to the inner ear. The tympanum turns vibrations of air in the ear canal into vibrations of the ossicles.

The inner ear contains the organ of hearing (the cochlea) and the labyrinth (vestibular apparatus), the organ of balance. The cochlea is a hollow organ filled with a fluid (endolymph) and lined on the inside with hair cells (sensory cells topped with hair-like structures), the stereocilia. All vibrations passing through the middle ear enter the endolymph. Hair cells are varied in length, so that they resonate with sounds of various frequencies. Whenever a hair cell resonates, it sends a nerve impulse to the brain, which is perceived as a sound of whatever pitch the hair cell is associated with. A very strong movement of the endolymph due to very loud noise may cause hair cells to die. This is a common cause of partial hearing loss, and the reason why anyone near guns or heavy machinery should wear earmuffs or earplugs.


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Our hearing mechanism is limited to an auditory field ranging from the frequency of roughly 20 Hz to that of 20000 or 22000 Hz. With age, the range decreases, especially at the upper limit. Above and below this range are ultrasound and infrasound, respectively. Lower frequencies cannot be heard but loud sounds can be felt on the skin. The optimum range of sensitivity is between 600 Hz and 4200 Hz.

Frequency resolution of the ear is, in the middle range, about 2 Hz. That is, changes in pitch larger than 2 Hz can be perceived. However, even smaller pitch differences can be perceived through other means. For example, the interference of two pitches can often be heard as a (low-)frequency difference pitch. This effect is called beating.

The intensity range of audible sounds is enormous. The lower limit of audibility is defined to 0 dB (we cannot hear sounds lower than this), but the upper limit is not as clearly defined. The upper limit is more a question of the limit where the sensation of pain occurs (because of too much pressure on the eardrums) and the ear will be physically harmed. This limit depends also on the time exposed to the sound. Sometimes, the ear can be exposed to short periods of sounds of 120 dB without harm, but long periods of exposure to 80 dB sounds will harm the ear. 150 dB sounds will cause physical damage to the human body.

The human hearing is basically a spectral analyzer, that is, the ear resolves the spectral content of the pressure wave without respect to the phase or the waveform of the signal. In practice, though, some phase information can be perceived. Inter-aural (i.e., between ears) phase difference is a notable exception by providing a significant part of the directional sensation of sound.

In some situations an otherwise clearly audible sound can be masked by another sound. For example, conversation at a bus stop can be completely impossible if a loud bus is driving past. This


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phenomenon is called intensity masking. A loud sound will mask a weaker sound so that the weaker sound is inaudible in the presence of the louder sound.

Actually, the masking depends on two more parameters: frequency and temporal separation of the sounds. A sound close in frequency to the louder sound is more easily masked than two sounds far apart in frequency. This effect is called pitch masking. Similarly, a weak sound emitted soon after the end of a louder sound is masked by the louder sound. In fact, even a weak sound just before a louder sound can be masked by the louder sound. These two effects are called forward and backward temporal masking, respectively.

The act of audition has objective as well as subjective characteristics when it comes to language. Most often we give a subjective interpretation to what we hear, selecting only those sound features that are relevant for the language we communicate in. For example, when listening to spoken standard English, untrained Romanians may have difficulty in recognizing (and reproducing) the difference between the aspirated and non-aspirated variants of voiceless stops (e.g., the difference between [ph] in top and [p] in stop), because they do not use aspiration in their own language. So in order to become able to perceive sounds correctly, speakers must also learn how to pronounce them and how to use them in the system of the respective language, and thus develop an awareness of auditory sensations corresponding to various sound qualities.

3. Questions 1. Which branches of phonetics do you know? 2. What do articulatory, acoustic and auditory phonetics study? 3. Which are the physical characteristics of sounds? 4. What is frequency and what is its unit of measure?


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5. What is amplitude and how is it measured? 6. What is the difference between periodic, aperiodic and mixed

vibrations? 7. What is the fundamental frequency and how is it produced? 8. What is the relationship between pitch and fundamental

frequency? 9. What are the harmonics and where are they produced? 10. What is an acoustic spectrum and what does it consist in? 11. What is a spectrograph and what is it used for? 12. What is speech processing? 13. How is sound transmitted to the brain? 14. Which are the limits of the human auditory field? 15. Which is the intensity range of audible sounds? 16. How can a sound be masked? 17. Can an untrained ear easily discern the sounds of a foreign

language?


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III. ARTICULATORY PHONETICS

The physical processes involved in the production of speech sounds are the domains of articulatory phonetics, which uses a lot of data from human anatomy and physiology in its descriptions. This is so because the same organs, which are involved in breathing processes, also participate in the production of speech. Speech sounds result from the modification of the volume and direction of the airflow originating in the lungs, which are carried out through the vocal tract (see Figure 3.1 for a schematic illustration of the anatomic parts involved in the process).

1. Airstream mechanisms

The airflow initiated in the lungs follows the direction of the

trachea (windpipe), larynx (in the Adams apple) and vocal tract (mouth and nose). This type of airstream mechanism, known as pulmonic egressive (from the lungs outwards) is involved in all human languages and for many languages it is the only mechanism employed to produce speech sounds (e.g., English, Romanian, etc.).

For a small number of articulations, the airstream does not originate in the lungs, but rather from outside. The ingressive airstream mechanism produces sound through inhalation, as when uttering a gasp of astonishment by breathing in air: aa! A speech sound can also be generated from a difference in pressure of the air inside and outside a resonator. In the case of the oral cavity, this


33

pressure difference can be created without using the lungs at all (producing clicks, for example).

In the following discussion it will be assumed that the airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive.

Figure 3.1 The vocal tract and articulatory organs

Alveolar ridge (Hard) Palate Upper lip Velum (=soft palate) Nasal cavity Uvula Oral cavity Teeth Tongue Pharynx Lower lip Epiglottis Larynx (with vocal cords) Trachea Lungs


34

2. The vocal cords In the larynx box, the air pushed out from the lungs meets the

vocal cords. These are two flaps of muscle placed across the windpipe and bound to the arytenoids cartilages (which cause the protrusion called the Adams apple in males throats). The vocal cords can modify their position and thus allow the air to flow upwards in certain ways.

When they are wide apart, the air passes through without any obstacle. This results in a so-called voiceless sound, such as the initial and final sounds in the word case [keIs]. If, on the contrary, the vocal cords are close together, with a narrow gap in between, then the pressure of the air moving through will cause them to vibrate, which will result in a voiced sound (as in all the sounds in the word gaze [geIz]). The vibration of the vocal cords can be heard when we cover our ears during the articulation, as well as felt by placing a finger on the larynx during the pronunciation of voiced sounds. To practice, try to articulate the voiced fricative consonants [z] or [v] in a prolonged manner, contrasting them with their voiceless counterparts [s] and [f].

Apart from these two most common positions of the vocal cords (open and narrowed), languages can also exploit a number of other configurations, such as complete closure. If the glottis (= the opening inside the larynx box, in between the vocal cords) is completely closed (glottal stop), the air accumulates below the vocal cords; when they are opened, the pressure is released with a cough-like puff of air. The glottal stop is important in the study of many kinds of British English, as it can be found in the dialects spoken in London (Cockney), Glasgow, Manchester and in some varieties of North American English (in New England). Take for instance the regional


35

pronunciation of the final sounds in wha[?] (e.g., in what rain), shu[?] (e.g., in shut up), the dropped t or k pronunciation of, e.g., butter and crackle, etc., the vowel reinforcement in a hiatus, etc. (see also Section III.3).

If the vocal cords are wide apart, as if for the pronunciation of voiceless consonants, but the air still causes some vibrations while passing through the glottis, we are dealing with the so-called murmured sounds or breathy voice. These are sounds we may produce every day when we whisper so as not to disturb the people around us.

3. Resonance As the air moves out of the larynx, owing to the movement of

the articulators (the tongue, lips, etc.) the shapes of the vocal tract above it are modified, so that the vibrations of the air inside the oral and nasal cavities will also change, by a phenomenon called resonance, similar to the resonance inside a guitar box or a flute.

Some sounds (the sonorants = vowels, glides, liquids and nasals) involve a relatively high degree of resonance (= sonorance or sonority). Other sounds (the obstruents) involve much less sonorance. Obstruents are noisy consonants produced by air disturbances: a sudden burst of air or air friction, whereas sonorants are more like pure, musical sounds. The most sonorous sounds are the vowels. In English all sonorants are voiced, while obstruents can be either voiced or voiceless.


36

4. Oral and nasal sounds The choice between the oral and nasal articulations depends on

the position of the soft palate (or velum), a muscular flap placed at the back end of the palate (= the roof of the mouth) (see Figure 3.1). If the velum is raised and the nasal port closed, the air flows only into the oral tract (the mouth), so that oral sounds are produced (most speech sounds are oral). If the velum is lowered, the air can flow both through the oral and the nasal cavities, which leads to the articulation of nasal sounds. Nasals are sonorant consonants (see Section III.3).

5. Active and passive articulators In the oral tract, the tongue and the lips, which move during the

articulation of sounds, are considered to be active articulators, whereas the upper non-mobile surfaces of the mouth are usually referred to as passive articulators. Of the active articulators, the tongue is usually described in very precise details: the tip, blade, front, body, back and root. That is because the smallest alteration in its position can determine a perceptible change in the pronunciation of the sound. Passive articulators can be the lower lip, the teeth, the palate and the pharynx wall. By convention, the roof of the mouth is further subdivided into the alveolar ridge (= the gum ridge), the hard palate, the soft palate (often called velum) and the uvula (= the fleshy tip of the soft palate, used, e.g., in the articulation of French uvular r [K]) (see Section III.8).


37

6. Manners of articulation The manner in which a sound is articulated depends on the

channel opening (the distance between the active and passive articulators). This distance can vary from complete closure (or stricture) (a blockage in the mouth which prevents the air from escaping) to complete aperture (through which the air flows out unhindered).

In the case of complete stricture, the air which has built up behind the blockage (the closure phase) is released with a small outburst when the blockage is removed (the release phase). This is the way in which stops are produced. Oral stops (also known as plosives if they are pulmonic egressive) are obstruent sounds articulated with a raised velum (e.g., the consonants in the word bide: [b] and [d]). Nasal stops involve a lowered velum (e.g., the initial and final consonantal sounds of mine [m] and [n]); they are sonorant sounds (in their production the nasal cavity acts as a resonator for the airflow vibrations).

When the articulators are close together, but the stricture rests incomplete, the air escapes through a very narrow passageway with some friction (turbulence noise). This is the manner of articulation specific to fricatives (e.g., the first and last sounds in fuss: [f] and [s]). Since in the articulation of fricatives the air can pass continuously through the vocal tract, they are described as continuant sounds.

The articulation of another type of obstruents involves complete closure, followed by a release phase which is prolonged. The air is slowly released through a narrow gap between the articulators, in a way that resembles the articulation of fricatives. The sounds produced in this manner are called affricates (e.g., the initial sounds [] and [] in cheat and gesture). Affricates do not behave however like a sequence made up of two sounds, but rather as one single segment. Examine, e.g., the following pairs of words: catch it


38

(containing the sound []) and cat shit (containing the sequence [t+S], noticeably longer than the previous one).

Apart from fricatives, there are some other sounds which can be characterized as continuant: the frictionless continuants or approximants, which are divided into two groups: glides and liquids. The glides are closely related to the corresponding high vowels (e.g., the glide [j] in yet resembles the short vowel [I] in sing). The liquids are laterals and rhotics (i.e., l and r sounds, respectively), which often are articulated with approximation, but not always.

In the articulation of vowels (e.g., the middle sounds in fish [I], bad [] or boot [u:]), the air flows out unhindered because the articulators are more or less wide apart. Just like glides and liquids, vowels are continuant sounds.

7. Fortis and lenis Fortis consonants are produced with greater articulatory effort

and more air pressure required by stronger resistance at the place of articulation. Lenis consonants are more lax: they require less intensity and tension. The duration of articulation is also longer in the case of fortis consonants than in the case of lenis ones. In a voiced/voiceless pair (e.g., [d]/[t]), the voiced consonant is lenis and the voiceless consonant fortis.

8. Places of articulation The production of a sound involves the movement of an active

articulator towards a passive one. The articulators give the name of the place of articulation of the respective sound (see Table 3.1).


39

Table 3.1 Places of articulation

Bilabial sound produced with both lips (e.g., [p], [b], [m], etc.). Labiodental the lower lip and the upper teeth (e.g., [f], [v], etc.). Interdental the teeth and the tongue tip/blade (e.g., [], [], etc.). Alveolar the alveolar ridge and the tongue tip/blade (e.g., [t], [d],

[s], [z], [n], [r], [l], etc.). Alveo-palatal the alveolar ridge/hard palate and the tongue blade

(e.g., [S], [Z], [], []). Retroflex the hard palate and the tongue tip curled backwards

(e.g., [], etc.). Palatal the hard palate and the tongue blade (e.g., [j], etc.). Velar the soft palate (velum) and the tongue body (dorsum) (e.g.,

[k], [g], etc.). Uvular the uvula and the tongue body (dorsum) (e.g., [K] in Fr.

raison root, reason, etc.). Pharyngeal the pharynx wall and the tongue root (e.g., [] in

Arabic [amm] uncle, etc.). Glottal the vocal cords in the larynx (e.g., [h], [?] (the glottal

stop), etc.). Bilabial and labiodental sounds are included in the general

class of labials, since both sets involve at least one of the lips. The class of coronals (sounds produced by raising the front part of the tongue the tongue tip or blade, but not the body of the tongue) comprises the dentals, alveolars, alveo-palatals (= palato-alveolars or postalveolars), retroflex and palatal sounds. Velars and the uvulars have as an active articulator the body or dorsum of the tongue, so they are both referred to as dorsals. The class of gutturals contains pharyngeal and glottal sounds, which tend to behave as one group (see Table 3.2).


40

Some consonants have two simultaneous places of articulation. Secondary articulation occurs when an additional vowel-like articulation is overlaid on the basic sound. In this case the consonant is articulated with a simultaneous glide, i.e., palatalized (e.g., [tj] in Romanian peti fish (pl.)), labialized (e.g., [kw] in English quick), etc. In the production of sounds with double articulation both places of articulation are equally important (e.g., the labio-velar glide [w] in wife).

Table 3.2 Groups of place of articulation

LABIAL CORONAL DORSAL GUTTURAL Bilabial Labio-dental

Dental Alveolar Alveo-palatal Retroflex Palatal

Velar Uvular

Pharyngeal Glottal

9. Questions and exercises 1. What do you know about the pulmonic egressive airstream

mechanism? 2. Are there any other types of airstream mechanisms? 3. Which positions of the vocal cords do you know? 4. What is the difference between voiced and voiceless sounds? 5. How is a glottal stop articulated? 6. What is resonance? 7. Which sonorant sounds do you know? 8. What is the difference between oral and nasal sounds? 9. Which active and passive articulators do you know? 10. Which types of manner of articulation do you know?


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11. How are plosives / fricatives / affricates articulated? 12. How are nasals articulated? 13. How are liquids / glides / vowels articulated? 14. What is the difference between fortis and lenis consonants? 15. Which places of articulation do you know and how can they

be grouped? 16. Which sounds correspond to each place of articulation? 17. What is the difference between secondary articulation and

double articulation? 18. In each of the following words one sound is underlined.

Describe it in terms of voicing, nasality (if necessary), place of articulation and manner of articulation:

a) more b) bar c) assist d) lazy e) joy f) peach g) thin h) fast i) season j) north 19. Which are the active and passive articulators in the

production of the following underlined sounds? a) choke b) very c) yet d) happy e) singing f) then g) cherry h) dear i) bridge j) shoe 20. For each of the pairs of words below identify the difference

between the underlined sounds. Example: The difference between the [t] in pat and the [d] in

pad is a matter of voicing ([d] is voiced, while [t] is voiceless). a) pit/bit b) sent/tent c) vest/zest d) mob/bob e) core/gore f) deck/neck g) soap/soak h) force/source i) lag/lad j) measure/mesher


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IV. CONSONANTS

1. Obstruents

1.1. Plosives (= oral stops)

Table 4.1 English plosives

Plosive (IPA)

Place of articulation Voice Examples

[p] bilabial - pear, drop [b] bilabial + bit, sob [t] alveolar - tooth, pat [d] alveolar + dash, cod [k] velar - kitchen, thick [g] velar + gong, lag [?] glottal - rat, buckle (in some varieties

of Br. Engl. and Am. Engl.)

Some languages may have other oral stops, produced in other places of articulation. For instance, in the pronunciation of Romanian [t] and [d] the passive articulators are the upper teeth rather than the alveolar ridge, as in English (dental stops are usually symbolised by [t ] and [d5], with a little tooth-like diacritic under the main symbol).


43

The glottal stop [?] has been compared with a slight cough. It has no voiced counterpart because the vocal cords cannot vibrate when they are in contact (see also Section III.2). Under some circumstances, voiceless stops may be reinforced or completely replaced by glottal stops: e.g., in bu[?] (button) (where the diacritic [ ] under [n] marks the syllabic nasal); li[?]or (liquor); si[? g]uy (sick guy); cu[? ]lice (cut slice), etc. If vowels occur (emphatically) at the beginning of a word or in a hiatus (two vowels juxtaposed in consecutive syllables), they may also suffer glottal reinforcement, as, e.g., in its [?]eight!; re[?]act.

1.1.1. Aspiration

In most English varieties, when a voiceless stop is placed at the beginning of a stressed syllable, its release is followed by a perceptible puff of air, called aspiration and marked by a [h] diacritic, e.g. in [ph]ot, [th]op, [kh]an. On the other hand, when the stop follows the fricative [s] in the same initial position, its release stage is devoid of such an audible outrush of air (it is non-aspirated), e.g. in spot, stop, scan.

In connected speech, aspiration may help us distinguish between otherwise ambiguous sentences, such as in the pair peace talks [pi:sthO:ks] and pea stalks [pi:stO:ks]. A weaker sort of aspiration may also be present in the articulation of stops at the beginning of unstressed English syllables, as well as in word-final position.


44

1.2 Fricatives

In many varieties of English, there is no voiced glottal fricative corresponding to the voiceless [h]. However, if the sound begins a stressed syllable, following a non-stressed syllable ending in a vowel, some English speakers make use of a breathy voice [], as in behead or rehearsal (see Section III.2). Some other English variants (e.g., Cockney) hardly make use of any [h] sound, which leads to ambiguities of pronunciation (e.g., in the pair hall all).

In the so-called Celtic varieties of English (Irish, Scottish and Welsh) another type of fricative occurs: the voiceless velar [x] (e.g., in Scottish loch / Irish lough lake, as well as in German acht eight or Dutch nog still, more). Other languages use different places of articulation for the pronunciation of their fricatives, e.g., the Japanese voiceless bilabial [P], as in Fuji, the Spanish voiced bilabial [B], as in deber owe, the German voiceless palatal [], as in sich self, the Greek voiced velar [], as in []ata cat (see also the IPA chart = Figure 1.1).

Table 4.2 English fricatives

Fricative (IPA)

Place of articulation Voice Examples

[f] labio-dental - fine, puff [v] labio-dental + vat, move [] (inter)dental - thick, path [] (inter)dental + that, bathe [s] alveolar - sink, kiss [z] alveolar + zero, buzz [S] alveo-palatal - shake, dash [Z] alveo-palatal + pleasure, beige [h] glottal - hat, inherit


45

1.2.1. On the distribution of fricatives

Most of the English fricatives occur in all positions (word-initial, word-medial and word-final). Words beginning with the voiced interdental [] belong to a small set of articles and adverbs, such as the, that, there, etc.

Other fricatives with only limited distribution in English are [Z], [h] and [x]. The voiced alveo-palatal [Z] never occurs word-initially (except in a couple of neologisms, e.g. gigolo and genre) and for the rest it can only be identified in relatively few words, e.g., pleasure, casual; beige, rouge. In word-final position [Z] may vary with the affricate [] (e.g., garage, etc.).

The voiceless glottal fricative [h] can never be found in final position; it is restricted to the word-initial or word-medial position, but even then it must belong to the onset of a stressed syllable, e.g., in horse or ahead. [h] is regularly dropped from the initial position of several function words unstressed pronouns and auxiliaries (e.g., his, her, has, etc.) and it is often absent in other words in many varieties of English characterised as sub-standard. In those cases where the first orthographic sequence of a word is hu, the initial sound is sometimes pronounced as the palatal fricative [] followed by the glide [j]. In some North American varieties, these words actually begin with the glide [j], without any [h] sound (e.g., in huge, humid, etc.).

The voiceless velar [x] never occurs word-initially in the Celtic English varieties.


46

1.3 Affricates

There are only two affricates commonly used in English, both alveo-palatal: voiceless [] (as in charity, teacher, catch) and voiced [] (as in generous, pledger, rage). Speakers of other languages make use of more affricates, such as the German voiceless labio-dental [pf], as in Pfeffer pepper, the Romanian voiceless dental [ts], as in ar country, or the Italian voiced dental [dz] in zio uncle.

2. Sonorant consonants

2.1 Nasals

English nasals are stops. They correspond to the English plosives in terms of their place of articulation: there is a bilabial [m], as in money, an alveolar [n], as in nutty, and a velar [N], as in sing. The English velar nasal [N] cannot occur at the beginning of a syllable. In other languages we find different types of nasals (e.g., dental [n5], as in Romanian numai only, palatal [J], as in French ga[J]er (gagner) to win, Spanish ni[J]o (nio) child, Italian o[J]i (ogni) every, etc.).

2.2 Liquids

2.2.1. Laterals

Laterals are those sonorants whose articulation involves a free flux of air over the lowered sides of the tongue. The central part of the tongue (the active articulator) touches the palate (the passive articulator) (in a so-called mid-saggital contact), but both (or at least


47

one of) its lateral parts are free in the process. Characteristic of many languages including English is the alveolar lateral [l], as in lamb (in this case, the tongue blade is in contact with the alveolar ridge). Another type of lateral is Spanish and Italian palatal [F] (as in Sp. caballo horse, It. figlio son), etc.

In English, a lateral liquid may occur in all positions in a word, but its articulation varies accordingly. An important distinction results from contrasting the articulation of (a) an [l] in initial position, or word-medially before a vowel, to (b) a lateral placed at the end of the word, before a consonant or in syllabic position. The lateral variant produced in the environments under (a) (e.g., in lake, ludicrous, follow, inland), which only has alveolar contact, is known as clear l and is symbolised as [l]. For the articulation of the other variant, in addition to the alveolar contact, the back of the tongue is simultaneously raised towards the soft palate (e.g., in pi[5], ki[5]t, ratt[5]). This secondary velar articulation has given the alveolar sound the description dark l.

2.2.2 Rhotics

Under the name rhotics a large variety of sounds are usually grouped, and a good ear will notice the differences in the articulation of the r sounds used, for instance, in RP English, Scottish English, North American English, or other languages, such as Spanish, French and High German (see Table 4.3). In fact, as we will see, the general heading of rhotic covers sounds that either involve contact between the active and passive articulators, or friction, or neither contact nor friction (in the case of continuants). What all these r sounds share is that they tend to function as sonorants, even if they are not so phonetically.


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In the articulation of the alveolar trill (or roll) [r], which also happens to be the r sound characteristic of Romanian, the tongue blade vibrates against the alveolar ridge, touching it repeatedly (in intermitent closure). For the alveolar tap (or flap) [] (a stop of very short duration), a single tap of the tongue blade against the alveolar ridge is enough. Both the trill and the tap are met in the Scottish varieties of English, especially the latter. The tap (or flap) [] is also the intervocalic sound in North American English pattern, etc.

Table 4.3 Various types of rhotics

Rhotic (IPA)

Place and manner of articulation

Examples

[] alveolar trill/roll Sp. perro dog, Rom. ra duck, Russ. roza rose

[] alveolar tap/flap Sp. pero but, Scott. Eng. red, North Am. Eng. cutter

[] (post-)alveolar approximant

Br. Eng. right

[] retroflex approximant North Am. Eng. rabbit [{] uvular trill/roll Somewhat older (e.g., Edith Piafs)

Fr. regrette regret [] uvular fricative French mari husband, High German

richtig

The characteristic RP rhotic is the (post-)alveolar continuant (approximant) []. It is produced by raising the tongue blade towards the alveolar ridge, but in this case the sides of the tongue come into contact with the molars, which creates a narrow channel for the air to flow down the middle of the tongue. The retroflex approximant [] is articulated in a similar way (characteristic, e.g., of many North American varieties of English), but this time the tongue blade is curled backwards, to the post-alveolar position.


49

The uvular roll (or trill) [{] and the voiced uvular fricative [] involve the vibration of the back of the tongue against the velum or in close approximation to it, respectively. The former reminds an English speaker of gargling and it occurs in some older dialects of French and in Lisbon Portuguese. The latter is the sound often heard in French and High German.

The distribution of the r sounds lies at the basis of one of the major English dialect divisions. Thus, varieties with pre- and post-vocalic r are called rhotic accents (i.e., accents where both the rhotics in e.g. rose or marry are pronounced, as well as in, e.g., fair and sort), whereas those with only pre-vocalic r are named non-rhotic accents. Most types of English are non-rhotic. The rhotic ones include the majority of North American English, Scottish and Irish English, etc.

This dialectal difference rests on a historical sound change, which led to the post-vocalic loss of the rhotic in some types of English. The evidence comes from the spelling of English words, as well as from the presence at the end of a word like fair in non-rhotic accents of an r sound if the word is followed by another word which starts with a vowel, e.g., in fair answer (this rhotic is called linking r). This phenomenon occurs also within morphologically complex words, as for instance in boring (cf. bore): the rhotic always precedes a vowel-initial ending.

Another phenomenon connected to the one illustrated above is intrusive r: the insertion of a word-final rhotic sound between two vowels in non-rhotic accents, e.g., in the idea [] of it. Intrusive r is most often heard word-finally after the vowel [@] and it is also sometimes heard word-internally for some speakers (e.g., compare soaring and saw[]ing (sawing)).

Some adult speakers use a so-called defective r [], a labio-dental approximant quite similar to the glide [w]. This type of pronunciation is often considered affected, and was typically a feature


50

of upper class English English, but nowadays it is characteristic of the language spoken, for instance, by the working-class and lower middle-class in South Eastern England.

3. Glides

In the articulation of glides, no contact is produced between the articulatory organs, which groups them together with the vowels. For this reason glides are also called semi-vowels. In fact, their articulation is slightly different from that of the corresponding vowels: when a glide is produced, the articulators are prepared for a vowel-like sound, but then they immediately change their position (get closer) to produce another sound. It is to this gliding that the sounds owe their name. Besides, glides are shorter and their articulation is more forceful than that of vowels.

Glides are also called semi-consonants because they behave like consonants: unlike vowels, they cannot occur at the end of a syllable or preceding a consonant and they are always followed by a vowel. Together with some of the liquids with similar characteristics they build the class of approximants (frictionless continuant sounds).

There are only two glides in English, as in the majority of languages: the palatal [j] (e.g., in yet) and the labio-velar [w] (e.g., in water). The articulation of the palatal [j] is similar to that of the vowel [i] (the front of the tongue is raised close to the palate). The labio-velar [w] shares the articulation features of [u] (the lips are rounded and the back of the tongue raised towards the soft palate). Apart from these most common two glides, there are also others, such as the French labio-palatal [H] (similar to French [y], the front round vowel) (e.g., in lui [H] him).


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3.1. Distribution and variation of glides

In many North American types of English, as well as in some

English English varieties, [j] cannot follow the alveolar consonants [t], [d], [s], [z], [n] and [l], or the dental fricative [], e.g., in tune, dupe, suit, presume, rebuke, lure, Lithuania, but it will follow [n] and [l] if they are placed in unaccented syllables, e.g., in ven[j]ue and val[j]ue.

In those varieties of English where [j] can follow an alveolar sound, the sequences [t] + [j] and [d] + [j] frequently coalesce to form the alveo-palatal affricates []and []. This happens inside words or across word boundaries, e.g. in [une, []uring, as well as in bet you [bE@], bid you [bI@], etc. Similarly, the sequences [s] + [j] and [z] + [j] often combine into the corresponding alveo-palatal fricatives [S] and [Z], e.g. in ti[S]ue (tissue), ca[Z]ual (casual), as well as in ki[S]you (kiss you), ama[Z]you (amaze you).

In Scottish, Irish and North American types of English, a sound which is very similar to the labio-velar glide, the voiceless labio-velar fricative [], spelled wh, functions as a distinct sound. Thus, in these types of English there is a clear contrast between the words: witch (with initial [w]) vs. which (with []), Wales vs. whales, weather vs. whether, etc. The other English varieties treat these words as pairs of homophones, both having the glide [w].


52

4. Summary

Table 4.4 resumes the typical English consonantal sounds introduced in this chapter.

Table 4.4 Consonants typically used in English

App

roxi

man

ts

[

]

[]

(l

iqui

ds)

[]

(glid

e)

(labi

o- v

elar

) [

] (g

lide)

Nas

als []

[]

[]

Aff

rica

tes

[]

[]

Fric

ativ

es

[] [

]

[] []

[] [

]

[]

[]

[]

(in

Cel

t. va

r.)

[]

Stop

s

[] []

[]

[]

[]

[]

[?]

(dia

l.)

CLA

SS

bila

bial

labi

o-de

ntal

(inte

r)

dent

al

alve

olar

alve

o-pa

lata

l

pala

tal

vela

r

glot

tal


53

5. Questions and exercises

1. Which English plosives do you know? 2. What characterizes the glottal stop? 3. What is aspiration and which sounds are affected by it? 4. Which English fricatives do you know? 5. What is particular in the distribution and variation of English

fricatives? 6. Which affricates do you know? 7. Which sonorant consonants do you know? 8. What is characteristic of the English nasals? 9. Which English liquids do you know? 10. What is the difference between clear l and dark l? 11. What is the difference between rhotic and non-rhotic

varieties of English? 12. What are linking / intrusive / defective r? 13. What are glides? 14. What characterizes the distribution and variation of English

glides? 15. Indicate the symbols representing the sounds described

below: a) voiceless dental fricative; b) voiceless bilabial stop; c) voiced

velar nasal; d) voiced palatal glide; e) voiceless alveolar fricative; f) voiced alveo-palatal fricative; g) voiced alveolar lateral; h) voiceless glottal stop; i) voiced alveo-palatal affricate; voiced labio-velar glide; j) voiced labio-dental fricative; k) voiced bilabial nasal.

16. For each of the following symbols, find an adequate description in words.

Example: [b] = voiced bilabial stop a) [] b) [z] c) [n] d) [p] e) [h] f) [] g) [/]


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h) [] i) [] j) [] k) [] l) [] m) [] n) [] o) [] p) [] q) [] r) [] s) [] t) [] u) [k] v) [] 17. Identify the difference in articulation between the following

sounds, grouped in two sets. Example: [ s v ] differ from [d p k] in point of manner of

articulation the sounds in the first set are all fricatives and the sounds in the second set are all stops.

a) [ ] vs. [t d s z n] b) [n r ] vs. [d s z] c) [b d Z] vs. [p t S] d) [ ] vs. [ ] e) [j w] vs. [ ] f) [ ] vs. [b d g] g) [pf ts ] vs. [f s ]

18. Identify which of the following sounds does not share all the

features of the rest of the sounds and specify what the difference consists in (sometimes there is more than one solution).

Example: in the set [p, n, s, ], [n] is nasal and the rest are oral

sounds.

a) [w j t] b) [k x s] c) [r l m n] d) [m p b ] e) [v z h]


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V. VOWELS

The description of vowels is quite different from that of consonants. First of all, voicing is irrelevant in this case, since vowels are usually voiced in the majority of languages, so this feature is rarely mentioned. Secondly, the manner of articulation as such is equally irrelevant, since all vowels are by definition produced with the articulators wide apart. Thirdly, vowels are restricted to the palatal and velar places of articulation.

1. Criteria for classifying vowels

Vowels are usually described according to their quality within a three-term system: vowel height, vowel backness, and vowel roundness.

Vowel height is a vertical parameter, corresponding more or less to the consonantal criterion of manner, based on the distance between the articulators. Vowels vary from high (that position in which the tongue body is as near the palate as it can be without causing audible friction) to high-mid, mid, low-mid and low (where the tongue body is as far from the palate as possible) (older texts may also use close and open instead of high and low, respectively).

Vowel backness is a horizontal criterion, parallel to consonantal place. It refers to the part of the tongue which is raised


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highest in the articulation of the vowel, varying from front (equivalent to palatal) (through central) to back (equivalent to velar).

Vowel roundness: a vowel may be either rounded articulated with the corners of the lips brought towards each other and the lips pushed forwards, e.g., [u] or unrounded. Some phoneticians make a further distinction within unrounded vowels, between spread vowels produced with the corners of the lips moved away from each other, as for a smile, e.g., [i], and neutral vowels where the lips are not noticeably rounded or spread, e.g., [@].

2. The Cardinal Vowels

Applying the three major criteria presented above, we can delimit the vowel articulation from the articulation of other sounds, calculating the so-called vowel space. This is the space within the oral cavity available for the production of vowels. For the sake of simplicity, the most common representation of the vowel space takes the stylized arbitrary shape of a quadrilateral (a trapezoid), as first proposed by Daniel Jones in the 1920s, under the name of Cardinal Vowel chart (see Figure 5.1).

In Figure 5.1, the upper left corner represents the tongue position for the (ideally) highest and furthest forward vowel ([i]), while the lower right corner shows the tongue position for the lowest and furthest back vowel [A]. Six other sounds, approximately placed equidistantly from each other, are also indicated, thus giving a series of eight cardinal vowels, of which 1 to 5 are unrounded, and 6 to 8 rounded. These are known as the primary cardinal vowels.

By reversing the rounding value, we obtain eight more secondary cardinal vowels, of which 9 to 13 are rounded, and 13 to 16 unrounded. Two more vowels are numbered in the chart: the high central unrounded 17 [] and the high central rounded 18 []. There are also other central vowels


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which do not belong to the inventory of cardinal vowels, but are included in the IPA chart: the central low unrounded vowel [6], the central low-mid unrounded vowel [3], the central mid unrounded vowel [@], etc. [@] is shaped like an inverted e and is usually called schwa (pronounced [SwA]), which is the old Hebrew term for a diacritic indicating a missing vowel (Hebrew writing usually only includes consonants). 1 i u 8 2 e o 7

3 E O 6 4 a A 5

Figure 5.1 The primary cardinal vowels

A few other IPA vowels are important in the description of the English vocalic system. One of them is [] (found in conservative RP and in most American English varieties). This vowel is somewhat higher and fronter than [a], but also a little lower than [E]. IPA [I] and [Y] are the lower, more central, short, and lax counterparts of [i] and [u], respectively, while [U] similarly corresponds to [u] (see Figure 5.2).

i y M u I Y U e { G o

@ E 9 3 V O 6 a Q A

Figure 5.2 IPA vowels (selective)

front central backhigh

high-mid

mid

low-mid

low


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The Cardinal Vowel chart is a schematic representation of the vowel space and its limits. It establishes reference points (hence the label cardinal) to which vowels in specific languages can be compared and described as, for instance, higher than the cardinal vowel X, further back than the cardinal vowel Y, or more rounded than the cardinal vowel Z. In this sense, the vowels in the words sea and shoe are said to illustrate the high cardinal vowels [i] and [u], respectively. But so is said about the French vowels in the words si yes and chou cabbage, and yet there is a perceptible difference between the two pronunciations. This is because the French vowels are closer to the corresponding cardinal vowels than are the English vowels.

A special mention needs to be made of the symbol [a] being commonly used to represent a low central vowel rather than a low front vowel (as specified in the Cardinal Vowel chart). This sound is typical, for instance, of Romanian (e.g., in are (he) has).

3. Other criteria for classifying vowels

Traditionally in describing English vowels we use the quantity distinction long vs. short. Long consonants are also known (e.g., fricatives take longer to be articulated than plosives; plosives can be long if they are doubled or geminated as, e.g., in Italian). Long vowels can be 50 to 100 percent longer than short vowels. For example, there is an obvious difference in length between the vowel in feet [i:] (the colon indicates a long vowel) and the one in fit [I]. At the same time, the two vowels also differ through quality factors: [I] is lower and more central than [i:]. That is because length in most English varieties is never the only feature which distinguishes two vowels. This is not the case in other languages (e.g., Danish) or even in a number of Scottish and Northern Irish English varieties, where


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length is sometimes the only criterion of distinction between pairs of words such as daze [dez] and days [de:z].

Long vowels are always associated with a higher degree of muscular tension in the articulatory organs. Consequently, they are described as tense. Short vowels are produced with less tension, in a more relaxed manner hence their description as lax.

The more advanced or retracted position of the tongue root can differentiate among vowels. Vowels articulated with the root of the tongue pushed forward of its normal position are described as advance tongue root (ATR) vowels. Non-ATR vowels are articulated with the tongue root in its resting position. The former type of vowels are also tenser and higher than the latter.

Another important way of distinguishing vowel sounds depends on whether the tongue stays in the same position or is shifted during the articulation. Some vowel sounds are relatively steady (monophthongs, also called pure vowels), e.g. in feet, some others involve tongue movement after the beginning of the articulation (diphthongs), e.g., in fight. Monophthongs are represented by a single vowel symbol, such as [i:] in feet, while diphthongs are represented by two symbols (indicating the starting and the finishing positions of the tongue, respectively), such as [aI] in fight. Both monophthongs and diphthongs belong to one single syllable. The duration of a diphthong is usually equal to the duration of a long vowel, but there are languages which make use of short diphthongs (e.g., Icelandic).

One of the members of the diphthong sequence dominates over the other. If the dominant member comes first in the sequence, we are dealing with a falling diphthong. English only has falling diphthongs, of two kinds: opening in fact, centering (ending in [@], e.g., [I@] in beard) and closing (ending in [I] or in [U], e.g., [OI] in voice and [aU] in loud). In other languages, e.g., Romanian, there are also rising diphthongs, where the dominant member comes second, e.g., in iarn (winter), iute spicy, quickly, ies I go out, coad tail, ceas


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clock, watch, hour, etc. However, some linguists (especially Americans) describe diphthongs (and even long monophthongs) as sequences of glide + vowel (e.g., [ja], [wa]) or vowel + glide (e.g., [aj], [aw]).

In some non-rhotic English varieties, closing diphthongs may be followed by [@] (in those environments where rhotic varieties have an r sound), e.g., in RP sour [saU@], sayer [seI@], fire [faI@], lawyer [lOI@], and slower [sl@U@]. Thus triphthongs result, which by nature are very unstable and subject to reduction. Their reduction usually implies the loss of the intermediary vowel, which automatically determines the compensatory lengthening of the initial vowel. The RP words enumerated above are now pronounced [sa:@] (sour), [se:@] (sayer), [fa:@] (fire), [lO:@] (lawyer), and [sl3:] (slower), with a further tendency towards monophthongisation of the resulting centring diphthong. Thus the pairs slower and slur [3:], fire and far [A:], and even layer and lair (if the [e:@] is further reduced to [E:]) tend to become homophonous.

The position of the velum can also be used as a criterion in distinguishing vowels. In most of the situations the soft palate is raised, so that oral vowels are produced, but if it is lowered, the change results in the articulation of nasal vowels. In some languages oral vowels contrast with nasal vowels as in French, e.g., in the pair lait [lE] milk vs. lin [lE)] flax (the nasal sound is marked by the tilde symbol [~]). In English, nasalised vowels are always positional variants: if a vowel precedes a nasal stop it will be produced with lowered velum so as to anticipate the following consonant, as in seen [ i):].


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4. English vowel sounds

Vowels have a tendency to move about in the articulatory space much more than consonants. This variation depends both on the regional origin of the speaker and on his social class and age group. The number of vowels and their positions on the vowel chart differs considerably from one English variety to another. Of the English varieties, the RP vowel system is particularly rich (see Figure 5.3), though the diphthongs have tended towards symplification. Conservative RP is thus said to have 21 vowel sounds (12 monophthongs and 9 diphthongs). In more recent RP, speakers tend to reduce the diphthongs [O@] and [U@] to [O:] and [e@] to [E:], so that the newer form of RP only has 19 vowels sounds. i: u: I U @ O: E 3: V & Q A:

Figure 5.3 RP pure vowels

4.1. RP front vowels

[i:] high, long, tense, unrounded (e.g., in see). [I] high, more central and lower than [i:]; short, lax,

unrounded (e.g., in bit). [E] low-mid, short, lax, unrounded (e.g., in check). [] low, short, lax, unrounded (e.g., in cat).


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4.2. RP back vowels

[u:] high, long, tense, rounded (e.g., in boot). [U] high, more central and lower than [u:]; short, lax, rounded

(e.g., in put). [O:] low-mid, long, tense, rounded (e.g., in taught). [Q] low, short, lax, rounded (e.g., in got). [A:] low, long, tense, unrounded (e.g., in father).

4.3. RP central vowels

[V] low-mid, short, lax, unrounded (e.g., in cut); it is closer to the IPA vowel [6] than to the cardinal [V].

[@] mid, short, lax, unrounded (e.g., in about, verandah always in unstressed syllables).

[3:] mid, long, tense, unrounded (e.g., in fur, bird, in non-rhotic varieties of English); in North American English (which a rhotic variety of English) a [@] is often used followed by an r sound, represented as [].

4.4. RP centring diphthongs

[I@] e.g., in fear. [e@] traditional RP (e.g., in fair); nowadays reduced to [E:]. [O@] traditional RP (e.g., in oar); nowadays reduced to [O:]. [U@] traditional RP (e.g., in poor or tour); nowadays reduced

to [O:].


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4.5. RP diphthongs falling to [I] and to [U]

[aI] e.g., in pie. [aU] e.g., in cow. [OI] e.g., in coin. [@U] e.g., in know. [eI] e.g., in play.

5. Questions and exercises

1. Which are the main criteria used to classify vowels? 2. What is the difference between high and low vowels? 3. What is the difference between front and back vowels? 4. What is the difference between rounded and unrounded

vowels? 5. What is the cardinal vowel chart? 6. Which cardinal vowels do you know? 7. Which are the other criteria used to classify vowels? 8. How can vowels be classified according to length? 9. How is a tense vowel articulated? 10. What is Adanced Tongue Root? 11. What is the difference between a monophthong and a

diphthong? 12. Are there any triphthongs in English? 13. What kind of diphthongs do you know? 14. How is a nasalised vowel articulated? 15. Are there nasalised vowels in English? 16. Which are the vowel sounds of RP English? 17. Indicate the symbols representing the vowel sounds

described below:


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a) low back round vowel; b) mid central unstressed short vowel; c) high back short vowel; d) high front long vowel; e) mid back round vowel; f) high central unround vowel; g) mid front unround vowel; h) low front unround vowel; i) low-mid central stressed vowel; j) central to high back diphthong; k) mid back to central diphthong; l) low front to high front diphthong.

18. For each of the following symbols, find an adequate description in words.

Example: [e] = high-mid front unround vowel a) [] b) [] c) [] d) [] e) [] f) [] g) [] h)

[] i) [] j) [] k) [] l) [] m) [] n) [] o) [] p)

[] q) [] r) [] s) []

19. Identify the difference in articulation between the following sounds, grouped in two sets.

Example: The vowels in the set [ ] are mid non-central,

while the vowels in [ ] are mid central.

a) [ ] vs. [ ] b) [ ] vs. [ ] c) [ ] vs. [ ]

20. Transform the following transcriptions into orthographic forms.

a) [], b) [], c) [], d) [], e) [],

f) [], g) [] h) [], i) [], j) [],


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k) [], l) [], m) [e], n) [], o) [fl].

21. Transcribe phonetically the following words in RP.

a) question b) threaten c) this d) yelling e) blurry f) congress g) generosity h) phantom i) shiver j) jester k) chopper l) casualties m) womb n) central o) thought p) social.


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VI. PHONOLOGY

1. Phonetics vs. phonology

Unlike phonetics, which deals with the more or less universal features of sounds, phonology studies the relationships and functions of sounds, the way they are organized into patterns and systems and the way they interact with each other. However, there is no clear-cut boundary between the two disciplines of linguistics: in fact, one could not separate the phonetic features of a sound from its phonological environment, nor could one analyze a phonological process without taking into account its phonetic characteristics.

2. Segmental vs. suprasegmental phonology Sounds are not always seen as independent segments, since they

are usually organized in higher, more complex structures. If a phonologist regards sounds as individual units (phonological segments), he places his approach within the framework of segmental phonology. If, on the contrary, he looks at sounds as parts of higher units of organization

Short Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology

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