Linguistics 201
Feldman

The Sounds of Language

The study of speech sounds, utilized by all human languages to represent meanings, is called phonetics.

How do we go about describing the sounds of a language like English?

One solution is to produce a separate alphabet with symbols which represent sounds.

The English spelling system is not a good phonetic alphabet because:

  • sea, see, scene, receive, thief, amoeba, machine, and Caesar
  • sign, pleasure and resign
  • sometimes a single sound is spelled by a combination of letters, as in lock, that, book, boast, shop etc.
  • sometimes a single letter represents more than one sound, as in exit  or use.
  • sometimes letters stand for no sound at all, as in knight ,doubt, though, island  etc.

    • The general study of the characteristics of speech sounds is called phonetics.  Our primary interest will be an articulatory phonetics, which is the study of how speech sounds are made (or "articulated"). Other areas of study within phonetics are acoustic phonetics, which deals with the physical properties of speech as sound waves "in the air", and auditory (or perceptual) phonetics, which deals with the perception, via the ear, of speech sounds.

    We are going to use a version of the International Phonetic Alphabet (the IPA for short). Phonetic transcription is consistent and unambiguous because there is always a 1-to1 correspondence between sounds and symbols. (pp.37-38)

    Articulatory Phonetics

    Airstream Mechanisms

     The production of any speech sound (or any sound at all) involves the movement of an aistream. Most speech sounds are produced by pushing lung air out of the body through the mouth and sometimes also through the nose. Since lung air is used, these sounds are called pulmonic sounds; since the air is pushed OUT, they are called egressive.  The majority of sounds used in languages of the world are thus produced by a pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. All the sounds in English are produced in this manner.

    Other airstream mechanism are used in other languages to produce sounds called ejectives, implosives and clicks. Instead of lung air, the body of air in the mouth maybe moved. When this air is sucked in instead of flowing out, ingressive sounds, like implosives and clicks, are produced. When the air in the mouth is pushed out, ejectives are produced; they are thus also egressive sounds. Implosives and ejectives are produced by a glottalic airstream, while clicks a produced by a velaric airstream mechanism. Ejectives are found in many American Indian languages as well as African and Caucasian language. Implosives also occur in the languages of the American Indians and throughout Africa, India, and Pakistan. Clicks occur in the Southern Bantu languages such as Xhosa and Zulu, and in the languages spoken by the Bushmen and Hottentos.

    Voiced and Voiceless Sounds

    We start with the air pushed our by the lungs up through the trachea (the "windpipe") to the larynx. Inside the larynx are your local cords, which take two basic positions:

    When the vocal cords are spread apart, the air from the lungs passes between them unimpeded. Sounds produced in this way are described as voiceless.

    When the vocal cords are drawn together, the air from the lungs repeatedly pushes them apart as it passes through, creating a vibration. Sounds produced in this way are described as voiced.

    The distinction can also be felt physically if you place a fingertip gently on the top of your "Adam's apple" (i.e. part of your larynx) and produce sounds like Z-Z-Z-Z or V-V-V-V. Since these are voiced sounds, you should be able to feel some vibration. Keeping your fingertip in the same position, make the sounds S-S-S-S or F-F-F-F. Since these are voiceless sounds, there should be no vibration.

    Another trick is to put a finger in each ear, not too far, and produce the voiced sounds to hear some vibration, whereas no vibration will be heard if the voiceless sounds are produced in the same manner.

    Nasal vs. Oral Sounds

    Nasal -- Sound produced by making a complete obstruction of the airflow in the oral cavity and by lowering the velum to allow air to pass through the nasal cavity. Also known as nasal stop.

    Oral Stop --Sound produced by completely obstructing the airstream in the oral cavity and then quickly releasing the constriction to allow the air to escape.

    English Consonants

    In the production of the consonants the flow of air is obstructed as it travels through the mouth. When describing a consonant it is necessary to provide information about three aspects of the articulation" :

    1)      Voicing (voiced/voiceless)

    2)      The place of articulation, i.e. where the airstream is constricted

    3)      The manner of articulation, i.e. how the airstream is constricted

    We've discussed the voiced/voiceless distinction.

    What is 'articulation'?

    It is the motion or positioning of some part of the vocal tract (often, but not always, a muscular part like the tongue, and/or lips) with respect to some other surface vocal tract in the production of a speech sound.

    English speech sounds are produced while exhaling, as a stream of air is moved out of the lungs and through the larynx and the vocal tract. Sounds created by exhaling are said to be made by using a pulmonic egressive  ("blowing out") air-stream mechanism.

    Place of Articulation:

    Manner of Articulation

    English Vowels

    Vowels are sounds produced with a relatively open tract, so they do not have a consonant-like point of articulation or manner of articulation, and they are almost always voiced. Vocal fold vibration is the sound source for vowels.

    We can describe vowels in the following terms:

    Diphthongs are two-part vowel sounds consisting of a vowel and a glide in the same syllable.