What is phonetics?

Phonetics is the scientific study of speech sounds. It consists of three main sub-fields:

Articulatory phonetics

= how speech sounds are produced

Acoustic phonetics

= how speech sounds are transmitted from producer to perceiver

Perceptual phonetics

= how speech sounds are perceived

The Organs of speech

Features of Consonants

Voicing (state of the glottis)Place of articulationManner of articulation

Place of Articulation

Place of articulation identifies the location of articulators

Place of ArticulationBilabial [p] [b] [m] [w]Labiodental [f] [v]Interdental [θ] [ð]Alveolar [t] [d] [n] [s] [z] [l] [ɹ]Palatal [ʃ] [ʒ] [ʧ] [ʤ] [j]Velar [k] [g] [ŋ]

Manners of articulation

Stops [p] [b] [t] [d] [k] [g]Fricatives [f] [v] [θ] [ð] [s] [z] [ʃ] [ʒ]Affricates [ʧ] [ʤ] Liquids [l] [ɹ]Glides [w] [j]

Voicing

Consonant Chart for English

Phonetic features of consonants

• To describe phonetic features of consonants, list (a) voicing (b) place of articulation and (c) manner of articulation for consonants (3 features)

e.g. [p] = Voiceless bilabial stop

[z] = Voiced alveolar fricative

Features of vowels

• All vowels in English are voiced and involve a continuous flow of air through the oral cavity. English vowels can be categorized by 4 distinctive features:

(1) Height of the tongue (high / low_

(2) The part of the tongue (Frontness/ backness )

(3) Tenseness (long) / laxness (short) (4) Round/unrounded lips

Vowels vs. Consonants

review / preview • consonants are identified by:

– location of obstruction (place)– nature of obstruction (manner)– state of vocal cords (±voice)

• vowels are identified by:– vertical position of articulation (high, mid, low)– horizontal position of articulation

(front, central, back)– also the state of the lips and velum

(rounding) (nasalized)

Comparison: American / British

The Trouble with English• Some letters represent more than one different sound

c: recall vs. receive g: gear vs. siege

• Some letters represent no sounds at all

receive use high knee

• Sometimes two letters represent just one sound

recall phonetics

• Some letters represent two or more sounds at once

tax use

• The same sound can be represented by many different letters (or letter combinations).

sh: shy, mission, machine, special, caution

Phonetic Alphabet• Solution: use a phonetic alphabet

• In a phonetic alphabet, sounds and symbols have a one-to-one relationship to each other

• Each symbol represents one sound

• Each sound is represented by one symbol

• The use of a phonetic alphabet to represent speech is called phonetic transcription.

• Our phonetic alphabet of choice:

• The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

The IPA Presided over by the International Phonetic Association

Created in 1886

Still active and evolving today.

Write in letters

The answerMore than three hundred and thirty thousand of Britain’s poorest

children will lose their right to free school meals when social security

changes come into effect tomorrow.

Minimal Pairs• A minimal pair consists of:

• two words that have different meanings

• which differ from each other in only one sound.

• Some minimal pairs in English:

pit vs. bit ~ /p/ vs. /b/

beet vs. bead ~ /t/ vs. /d/

boat vs. boot ~ /o/ vs. /u/

• A series of minimal pairs is called a minimal set.

• tee ~ bee ~ key ~ sea ~ fee …

Phonetic Reality Here is an acoustic waveform of a sample of speech:

Where were you a year ago?

In the physical world, speech lacks the discreteness and strict sequentiality of alphabetic representations.

Phonetic transcriptions of speech are always abstract

Technical Terms• A phone is any sound that is used in speech.

• (may or may not be contrastive)

• A phoneme is a contrastive sound in a language

• It may be used to distinguish between words in minimal pairs.

• An allophone is a phonetic variant of a phoneme

• Different allophones often occur in specific contexts.

• Note: analogy with allomorphs.

Phonemic Analysis• Phoneme: /t/

Allophone 5: ‘bit’

(aspirated)

(unaspirated)

“flap”

“glottal stop”

(unreleased)

• In our native language, we tend to hear the phonemes that the allophones belong to…

• Rather than the allophones themselves.

Broad and Narrow Broad transcriptions

• Represent only contrastive sounds (phonemes)

• Enclosed in slashes: / /

• Generally use only alphabetic symbols

• Narrow transcriptions

• Represent phones

• Capture as much phonetic detail as possible

• Enclosed in brackets: [ ]

• Can require use of diacritics

English Phonemes

1. [p] ‘pot’ 7. [r] ‘rot’ 12. [m] ‘ma’

2. [b] ‘bought’ 8. [f] ‘fought’ 13. [n] ‘not’

3. [t] ‘tot’ 9. [v] ‘vote’ 14. [l] ‘lot’

4. [d] ‘dot’ 10. [s] ‘sot’ 15. [w] ‘walk’

5. [k] ‘kit’ 11. [z] ‘zit’ 16. [h] ‘hot’

6. [g] ‘got’

Familiar IPA symbols, same sound:

English PhonemesUnfamiliar IPA symbols, for consonants:

23. ‘thought’ “theta” 28. ‘chop’

24. ‘though’ “edh” 29. ‘jot’

25. ‘shot’ “esh”

26. ‘vision’ “ezh”

27. ‘ring’ “engma”

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Mahmoud Al-AskandraniMahmoud Al-Askandrani