PHONETICS

SOUND SEGMENTS
 Knowing a language includes knowing the sounds of that
language
 Phonetics is the study of speech sounds
 We are able to segment a continuous stream of speech
into distinct parts and recognize the parts in other words
 Everyone who knows a language knows how to segment
sentences into words and words into sounds
IDENTITY OF SPEECH SOUNDS
 Our linguistic knowledge allows us to ignore nonlinguistic
differences in speech (such as individual pitch levels, rates of
speed, coughs)
 We are capable of making sounds that are not speech sounds in
English but are in other languages
– The click tsk that signals disapproval in English is a speech
sound in languages such as Xhosa and Zulu where it is combined
with other sounds just like t or k is in English
IDENTITY OF SPEECH SOUNDS
 The science of phonetics aims to describe all the sounds of
all the world’s languages
– Articulatory phonetics: focuses on how the vocal tract
produces the sounds of language
– Acoustic phonetics: focuses on the physical properties
of the sounds of language
– Auditory phonetics: focuses on how listeners perceive
the sounds of language
THE PHONETIC ALPHABET
 Spelling, or orthography, does not consistently represent the sounds of language
 Some problems with ordinary spelling:
– 1. The same sound may be represented by many letters or combination of letters:
he people key
believe seize machine
Caesar seas
see amoeba
– 2. The same letter may represent a variety of sounds:
father village
badly made
many
THE PHONETIC ALPHABET
– 3. A combination of letters may represent a
single sound
shoot character Thomas
either physics rough
coat deal
– 4. A single letter may represent a combination
of sounds
xerox
THE PHONETIC ALPHABET
– 4. Some letters in a word may not be pronounced at all
autumn sword resign
pterodactyl lamb corps
psychology write knot
– 5. There may be no letter to represent a sound that occurs in
a word
cute
use
THE PHONETIC ALPHABET

• In 1888 the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

was invented in order to have a system in which there
was a one to-one correspondence between each sound
in language and each phonetic symbol
• Someone who knows the IPA knows how to
pronounce any word in any language
THE PHONETIC ALPHABET
• Dialectal and individual differences affect pronunciation, but the sounds of English are:
THE PHONETIC ALPHABET
• Using IPA symbols, we can now represent the pronunciation of words unambi
ARTICULATORY PHONETICS
Most speech sounds are produced by pushing air through the
vocal cords
– Glottis = the opening between the vocal cords
– Larynx = ‘voice box’
– Pharynx = tubular part of the throat above the larynx
– Oral cavity = mouth
– Nasal cavity =
CONSONANTS: PLACE OF ARTICULATION

 Consonants are sounds produced with some restriction or

closure in the vocal tract
 Consonants are classified based in part on where in the
vocal tract the airflow is being restricted (the place of
articulation)
 The major places of articulation are: bilabial, labiodental,
interdental, alveolar, palatal, velar, uvular, and glottal
CONSONANTS:
PLACE OF
ARTICULATION
CONSONANTS: PLACE OF ARTICULATION
 Bilabials: [p] [b] [m]
– Produced by bringing both lips together

 Labiodentals: [f] [v]

– Produced by touching the bottom lip to the upper teeth

 Interdentals [θ] [ð]

– Produced by putting the tip of the tongue between the teeth
CONSONANTS: PLACE OF ARTICULATION
• Alveolars: [t] [d] [n] [s] [z] [l] [r]
– All of these are produced by raising the tongue to the alveolar ridge in some way

 [t, d, n]: produced by the tip of the tongue touching the alveolar ridge (or just in front of it)

 [s, z]: produced with the sides of the front of the tongue raised but the tip lowered to allow air
to escape

 [l]: the tongue tip is raised while the rest of the tongue remains down so air can escape over the
sides of the tongue (thus [l] is a lateral sound)

 [r]: air escapes through the central part of the mouth; either the tip of the tongue is curled back
behind the alveolar ridge or the top of the tongue is bunched up behind the alveolar ridge
CONSONANTS: PLACE OF ARTICULATION
 Palatals: [ʃ] [ʒ] [ʧ] [ʤ][ʝ]
– Produced by raising the front part of the tongue to the palate

 Velars: [k] [g] [ŋ]

– Produced by raising the back of the tongue to the soft palate or velum

 Uvulars: [ʀ] [q] [ɢ]

– Produced by raising the back of the tongue to the uvula

 Glottals: [h] [Ɂ]

– Produced by restricting the airflow through the open glottis ([h]) or by stopping the air completely at
the glottis (a glottal stop: [Ɂ])
CONSONANTS: MANNER OF ARTICULATION

 The manner of articulation is the way the airstream is affected as it

flows from the lungs and out of the mouth and nose

 Voiceless sounds are those produced with the vocal cords apart so the air
flows freely through the glottis

 Voiced sounds are those produced when the vocal cords are together
and vibrate as air passes through
CONSONANTS: MANNER OF ARTICULATION
 The voiced/voiceless distinction is important in English because it
helps us distinguish words like:
rope/robe fine/vine seal/zeal
[rop]/[rob] [faɪn]/[vaɪn] [sil]/[zil]

 But some voiceless sounds can be further distinguished as aspirated

or unaspirated aspirated unaspirated
pool [phul] spool [spul]
tale [thel] stale [stel]
kale [khel] scale [skel]
CONSONANTS: MANNER OF ARTICULATION
 Oral sounds are those produced with the velum raised to prevent air from
escaping out the nose
 Nasal sounds are those produced with the velum lowered to allow air
to escape out the nose
 So far we have three ways of classifying sounds based on phonetic
features: by voicing, by place of articulation, and by nasalization
– [p] is a voiceless, bilabial, oral sound
– [n] is a voiced, alveolar, nasal sound
CONSONANTS: MANNER OF ARTICULATION
 Stops: [p] [b] [m] [t] [d] [n] [k] [g] [ŋ] [ʧ][ʤ] [Ɂ]
– Produced by completely stopping the air flow in the oral
cavity for a fraction of a second
• All other sounds are continuants, meaning that the airflow is
continuous through the oral cavity

 Fricatives: [f] [v] [θ] [ð] [s] [z] [ʃ] [ʒ] [x] [ɣ] [h]
– Produced by severely obstructing the airflow so as to cause
friction
CONSONANTS: MANNER OF ARTICULATION

 Affricates: [ʧ] [ʤ]

– Produced by a stop closure that is released with a lot of friction
 Liquids: [l] [r]
– Produced by causing some obstruction of the airstream in the mouth,
but not enough to cause any real friction
 Glides: [j] [w]
– Produced with very little obstruction of the airstream and are always
followed by a vowel
CONSONANTS: MANNER OF ARTICULATION
 Approximants: [w] [j] [r] [l]
– Sometimes liquids and glides are put together into one category because the articulators approximate a
frictional closeness but do not actually cause friction

 Trills and flaps: [r]* [ɾ]

– Trills are produced by rapidly vibrating an articulator
– Flaps are produced by a flick of the tongue against the alveolar ridge

 Clicks:
– Produced by moving air in the mouth between various articulators
– The disapproving sound tsk in English is a consonant in Zulu and some other southern African
languages
– The lateral click used to encourage a horse in English is a consonant in Xhosa
VOWELS
 Vowels are classified by how high or low the tongue is, if the tongue is in the front
or back of the mouth, and whether or not the lips are rounded

 High vowels: [i] [ɪ] [u] [ʊ]

 Mid vowels: [e] [ɛ] [o] [ə] [ʌ] [ɔ]
 Low vowels: [æ] [a]

 Front vowels: [i] [ɪ] [e] [ɛ] [æ]

 Central vowels: [ə] [ʌ]
 Back vowels: [u] [ɔ] [o] [æ] [a]
VOWELS
VOWELS
 Round vowels: [u] [ʊ] [o] [ɔ]
– Produced by rounding the lips
– English has only back round vowels, but other languages such as French and Swedish have front
round vowels

 Diphthongs: [aɪ] [aʊ] [ɔɪ]

– A sequence of two vowel sounds (as opposed to the monophthongs we have looked at so far)

 Nasalization:
– Vowels can also be pronounced with a lowered velum, allowing air to pass through the nose
– In English, speakers nasalize vowels before a nasal sound, such as in the words
beam, bean, and bingo
– The nasalization is represented by a diacritic, an extra mark placed with the symbol:
VOWELS

• Tense vowels:
– Are produced with greater tension
in the tongue
– May occur at the end of words

• Lax vowels:
– Are produced with less tongue
tension
– May not occur at the end of words
VOWELS
MAJOR PHONETIC CLASSES
 Noncontinuants: the airstream is totally obstructed in the oral cavity
– Stops and affricates

 Continuants: the airstream flows continuously out of the mouth

– All other consonants and vowels

 Obstruents: the airstream has partial or full obstruction

– Non-nasal stops, fricatives, and affricates

 Sonorants: air resonates in the nasal or oral cavities

– Vowels, nasal stops, liquids, and glides
MAJOR PHONETIC CLASSES: CONSONANTAL
 Consonantal: there is some restriction of the airflow during
articulation
– All consonants except glides
 Consonantal sounds can be further subdivided:
– Labials: [p] [b] [m] [f] [v] [w] [ʍ]
• Articulated with the lips

– Coronals: [θ] [ð] [t] [d] [n] [s] [z] [ʃ] [ʒ] [ʧ][ʤ] [l] [r]
• Articulated by raising the tongue blade
MAJOR PHONETIC CLASSES
• Consonantal categories cont.:
– Anteriors: [p] [b] [m] [f] [v] [θ] [ð] [t] [d] [n] [s] [z]
• Produced in the front part of the mouth (from the alveolar area forward)

– Sibilants: [s] [z] ] [ʃ] [ʒ] [ʧ][ʤ]

• Produced with a lot of friction that causes a hissing sound, which is a mixture of high-­‐
frequency sounds

• Syllabic Sounds: sounds that can function as the core of a syllable

– Vowels, liquids, and nasals
PROSODIC FEATURES
• Prosodic, or suprasegmental features of sounds, such
as length, stress and pitch, are features above the
segmental values such as place and manner of
articulation
• Length: in some languages, such as Japanese, the
length of a consonant or a vowel can change the
meaning of a word:
– biru [biru] “building” biiru [biːru] “beer”
– saki [saki] “ahead” sakki [sakːi] “before”
PROSODIC FEATURES
• Stress: stressed syllables are louder, slightly higher in pitch, and
somewhat longer than unstressed syllables

– The noun digest has the stress on the first syllable

– The verb digest has the stress on the second syllable

– English is a stress-timed language, meaning that at least one syllable is stressed

in an English word
• French functions differently, so when English speakers learn French they put stress on certain
syllables which contributes to their foreign accent
TONE AND INTONATION
 Tone languages are languages that use pitch to contrast the
meaning of words
• For example, in Thai, the string of sounds [naː] can be said with 5
different pitches and can thus have 5 different meanings:
TONE AND INTONATION
 Intonation languages (like English) have varied pitch
contour across an utterance, but pitch is not used to
distinguish words
– However, intonation may affect the meaning of a whole
sentence:
• John is here said with falling intonation is a statement
• John is here said with rising intonation is a question
PHONETICS OF SIGNED LANGUAGES
 Signs can be broken down into segmental features similar to
the phonetic features of speech sounds (such as place and
manner of articulation)
– And just like spoken languages, signed languages of the world vary in
these features

– Signs are formed by three major features:

• 1. The configuration of the hand (handshape)
• 2. The movement of the hand and arm towards or away from the body
• 3. The location of the hand in signing space
PHONETICS OF SIGNED LANGUAGES
1. The configuration of the hand (handshape)
PHONETICS OF SIGNED LANGUAGES
2. The movement of the hand and arm
PHONETICS OF SIGNED LANGUAGES
3. The location of the hand in signing space
ACOUSTIC AND AUDITORY PHONETICS
ACOUSTIC PHONETICS
 is the study of the physical properties of speech sounds and how they are
transmitted
 Air particles move in the form of a wave: they are characterized by oscillation,
frequency (hertz), amplitude and intensity (decides)
 The very first stage of a comprehension process is the perception of speech
signals, that is the acoustic signals produces by a speaker
- sounds produced by a speaker can be the same of different in pitch (frequency)
and loudness (intensity).
Sound waves
 The result of the passage of air through the glottis is the issuance of a series of
successive puffs of air at the rate of opening and closure of the vocal cords.
 For the production of the sound wave of air molecules must enter vibration, which is
achieved by passing through the creases vowels.
"Sound wave: spread of a disturbance on a material medium such as air, in the form of a
series of compressions and alternate rarefactions affecting each particle components of this
medium.“
The cycle of a vibrating movement
 Force to move the molecule
 Departure from the initial position of rest
 Back to start due to elasticity
 Shift towards the opposite side by inertia
 Back to initial position
AMPLITUDE OF THE VIBRATORY MOVEMENT
 Distance between resting position and the point of maximum displacement.
It depends on the force applied initially and resistance to provide the environment that produces vibration.
The amplitude is quantified pressure from physical view units or units of  decibels (dB) intensity perceptive perspective.

LENGTH OF THE VIBRATING MOVEMENT

It depends on the force applied initially and resistance to provide the environment that produces vibration.
The duration of the sounds of speech is quantified in thousandths of a second, or milliseconds (ms).
Frequency of the vibration movement
Swing movement is repeated several times in the time, giving rise to a periodic sound characterized by repetition in a
series of cycles

Vibrating motion of a molecule of air Number of times it goes idle

position (A) to the point of maximum separation this position (B),
is again resting point (C), it comes back to the point of maximum
separation (D) and returns to the idle position (E), i.e. number of
cycles per unit time.
 Frequency: number of cycles performed in the unit of time, conventionally the second.
 Periodic wave: wave which repeats the profile of a cycle at regular intervals of time.
The sound wave is the result of the vibration of air molecules, and can be defined on the
basis of:
 its breadth
 its frequency
 the time during which the movement takes place.

 Complex wave: wave resulting from the addition of a number of simple waves.

 Resonance: phenomenon by which a body called the resonator and it has a natural
tendency to vibrate at certain frequency will experience greater amplitude vibrations
when post is another vibrant body at a similar frequency movement."
Characteristics of the source
Sounds with a periodic source:
- Produced with the vocal cords vibration
- Sound sounds – produced with a periodic source
- Unvoiced sounds – produced without the intervention of a periodic source
Acoustic classification of speech depending on the source and filter sounds
Source Filter Kind of sounds
Periodic Fixed, oral oral vowels
Periodic Fixed, oral + nose nasal vowels
Periodic Variable, oral diphthongs
Aperiodic continuous Fixed, oral voiceless fricatives
Aperiodic impulse Variable, oral plosives oral deaf
Aperiodic continuous + regular Fixed, oral fricatives sound
Aperiodic impulse + regular Variable, oral plosives sound oral
Aperiodic impulse + regular Variable, oral + nose plosives sound nasal
Aperiodic continuous + regular Variable, oral semi-vowels
lateral and vibrant
AUDITORY PHONETICS

  It is concerned with speech perception, principally how the brain forms perceptual
representations of the input it receives. Basically, it focus on listener´s ear and listener´s
brain.

The ear
The ear is divided into three different parts:
1.- THE OUTER EAR.
2.- THE MIDDLE EAR.
3.- THE INNER EAR.
1.- THE OUTER EAR:
The only visible part of the ear is the pinna (the
auricle) which - with its special helical shape - is the
first part of the ear that reacts with sound. The pinna
acts as a kind of funnel which assists in directing the
sound further into the ear. Without this funnel the
sound waves would take a more direct route into the
auditory canal. This would be both difficult and
wasteful as much of the sound would be lost making
it harder to hear and understand the sounds.
2.- The middle ear:

The main function of the middle

ear is to carry sound waves from
the outer ear to the inner ear,
which contains the cochlea and
where sound input can be
communicated to the brain. Sound
waves are funneled into the outer
ear and strike the tympanic
membrane, causing it to vibrate
The Eustachian tube
The Eustachian tube is also found in the middle
ear, and connects the ear with the rearmost part of the
palate. The Eustachian tube equalises the air pressure
on both sides of the eardrum, ensuring that pressure
does not build up in the ear. The tube opens when you
swallow, thus equalising the air pressure inside and
outside the ear.

In most cases the pressure is equalised

automatically, but if this does not occur, it can be
brought about by making an energetic swallowing
action. The swallowing action will force the tube
connecting the palate with the ear to open, thus
equalising the pressure.
The eardrum is very thin, measures approximately 8-10
mm in diameter and is stretched by means of small
muscles.

The pressure from sound waves makes the eardrum

vibrate. The vibrations are transmitted further into the ear
via three bones: the hammer (malleus), the anvil (incus)
and the stirrup (stapes). These three bones form a kind of
bridge, and the stirrup, which is the last bone that sounds
reach, is connected to the oval window.
3.- THE INNER EAR:

Once the vibrations of the eardrum have been

transmitted to the oval window, the sound waves
continue their journey into the inner ear.
The inner ear is the innermost part of the ear that
plays an important role in hearing and balance. The inner
ear consists of tiny bony structures filled with fluid. As
sound waves travel from the outer to the inner ear, they
create waves in the fluid of the inner ear, which in turn
moves the tiny hairs in the ear that send sound or
movement signals to the brain.
The cochlea
In the cochlea, sound waves are transformed into electrical impulses which are sent on to
the brain. The brain then translates the impulses into sounds that we know and understand.
The cochlea resembles a snail shell or a wound-up hose. The cochlea is filled with a fluid
called perilymph and contains two closely positioned membranes. These membranes form a
type of partition wall in the cochlea. However, in order for the fluid to move freely in the
cochlea from one side of the partition wall to the other, the wall has a little hole in it (the
helicotrema). This hole is necessary, in ensuring that the vibrations from the oval window are
transmitted to all the fluid in the cochlea.

When the fluid moves inside the cochlea, thousands of microscopic hair fibres inside the
partition wall are put into motion. There are approximately 24,000 of these hair fibres, arranged
in four long rows.

The hair fibres are all connected to the auditory nerve and, depending on the nature of
the movements in the cochlear fluid, different hair fibres are put into motion.

When the hair fibres move they send electrical signals to the auditory nerve which is
connected to the auditory centre of the brain. In the brain the electrical impulses are translated
into sounds which we recognise and understand. As a consequence, these hair fibres are
essential to our hearing ability. Should these hair fibres become damaged, then our hearing
ability will deteriorate.
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