Chapter 2: Phonetics: The Sounds of Language

• Phonetics is the branch of linguistics that is examining the inventory and structure of speech sounds
(also called phones)
• Humans spoke long before they began to write. Speech is the primary way for us to express ourselves.
• The class of possible speech sounds is finite, and every language has only a portion of the total set.
• Humans can make a variety of sounds that do not occur in speech.
• There are two approaches of studying phonetics.
o Articulatory Phonetics is the study of the physiological mechanism of speech production.
o Acoustic Phonetics is studying and measuring the physical properties of the sound waves we
produce.

2.1 Phonetic Transcription

• The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA): is a universal system for transcribing speech sounds using
symbols. This system represents each sound in human speech with a single symbol enclosed in brackets
[ ]. IPA does not necessarily represent how sounds are spelled in a particular language.
• These symbols are used in all languages. There is one-to-one correspondence between sound and
symbol.
• IPA represents speech in the form of segments (individual phones). Each segment is produced by many
articulatory gestures.
• Why do we analyze our speech in terms of sound segments?
o There is evidence suggesting that segments are individual units of linguistic structure (like
slips of the tongue).
o Also, speech sounds are the same in all languages (ex. [p] is pronounced in a similar way in
the world’s languages).

2.2 The Sound-Producing System

• The production of speech sounds consists of…
1. Air supply (which is provided by the lungs. We
expel air during speech in most languages)
2. A sound source (which are provided by the vocal
folds in the larynx, also known as Adam’s apple
3. A set of filters that modify sounds in various
ways.
• The filters are the passages above the larynx
(collectively called vocal tract), and they consist of:
1. The pharynx: the tube of throat between the
larynx and oral cavity)
2. The oral cavity: in the mouth
3. The nasal cavity: it opens when the velum
lowers.
To Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R17yH0GSDvA
• The space between vocal folds is called glottis, and different glottal states are produced depending on
the positioning of the vocal folds.

• There are two main positions for vocal folds.

o When they are pulled apart, air passes without interference produces voiceless sound (s, f, h)
o When the vocal folds are brought together but not tightly closed, air passes causing vibration
and produces voiced sounds (v, z).

2.3 Sound Classes

• Speech sounds are divided into three classes: consonants, vowels and glides.
• Glides show properties of vowels and consonants. The division is based on the phonetic properties
they share.
• These classes are distinguished based on:
o The differences in articulation
o Acoustic properties
o Functioning as syllabic or non-syllabic elements.
Consonants Vowels Glides
Articulatory - can be voiced or voiceless - always voiced
Vowel-like
difference - are produced with closure - produced with little obstruction in
articulation
or narrowing of vocal tract vocal tract
Acoustic
They sound more
difference less sonorous than vowels more sonorous (louder and longer)
rapid than vowels
Syllabic or form nucleus of syllables (we use
can never be
non-syllabic only some are syllabic vowels to count the number of
syllabic
syllables)

2.4 Consonant Articulation

• The air flow is modified by the placement of the tongue and positioning of the lips.
• The tongue is the primary articulating organ, and it is divided into tip, blade, body and back.
• Places of articulation are where modifications of air flow occur. They are found at the lips, within
the oral cavity, in the pharynx and at the glottis.
• The main places of articulation are:
o Labial (closure at lips): [p] span, [b]ban, [m] man
o Dental (tongue against teeth): [f] fan - [v] van
o interdental (tongue between teeth): [θ] thin - [ð] then
o Alveolar (tip of tongue against the alveolar ridge: [t] stun - [d] dot - [s] sun -
[z] zip - [n] not - [l] lift - [r] car.
o Alveopalatal and palatal (tongue against roof of mouth): [ʃ] ship - [Ʒ] rouge -
[tʃ] church - [dƷ] jump - [j] yes
o Velar (tongue against velum): [k] scar - [g] gap - [Ƞ] wing - [w] when
o Uvular: (French r)
o Pharyngeal: sounds in Arabic [ʕajn] ‘eye’ - [ħar] ‘heat’
o Glottal: [ʔ] like in uh-oh - [h] hat.
2.5 Manner of Articulation
• It is the different ways of positioning the articulators. So, it is not “where” articulators are
positioned but rather “how” they are positioned to produce different sound types.

• Manner of articulation is divided to ...

Oral vs. Nasal: Oral sounds are produced by raising the velum. Nasals are produced by lowering
the velum.

Stops are made with a complete closure at the oral cavity or the glottis.

Fricatives are produced with a continuous airflow through the mouth.

Affricates are produced with a stop followed by a fricative

Stridents are the loud and noisy fricatives and affricates.

It is an acoustic criterion that describes fricatives and affricates which divides them into two
types based on their relative loudness. The stridents are [s], [z], [ʃ], [Ʒ], [tʃ], [dƷ].

Aspiration
It is a puff of air that comes after voiceless stops [p], [t], [k]. So there is a brief delay before the
voicing of the following vowel. It is transcribed with a small raised [ʰ] after the aspirated
consonant. An examples of aspirated voiceless stops is [kʰowp] cope but [skowp] scope is
unaspirated.

Unreleased Stops
• Usually, stops are produced with a complete closure followed by a release. When voiceless stops
occur at the end of words, there is no release.
• Unreleased stops are transcribed with a raised [˺]. For example, in the word stop [stæp˺], we end the
word with our lips closed.

Liquids
Liquids are the sounds [l] and [r] including their numerous variants. We will concentrate on the ones we
have in English. Liquids are oral sonorous consonants.
[l]: all the variants of [l] are called laterals, and they are pronounced in English by the tip of the tongue
on the alveolar ridge and air coming from the sides. Laterals are generally voiced, but there are examples
of voiceless laterals in English which is transcribed with an additional symbol [˳] as in please and clear.
[r]: it is produced in English by curling the tip of the tongue to the back and it is called retroflex.
[ſ]: it is called a flap, and produced with the tip of the tongue strikes quickly the alveolar ridge.
Examples: butter, bitter.
Syllabic Liquids and Nasals:

• Because liquids [l], [r] and nasals [n],[m],[Ƞ] are more sonorous than the other consonants, they
can function as the nuclei of the syllables, just like vowels.
• Syllabic consonants are transcribed with a small line underneath [ˌ] Examples: bird, funnel

Glides

• There are two glides, and they are both voiced.

• [j] is a palatal glide as in yes and boy
• [w] is a rounded velar glide as in was and now. Sometimes, the glide [w] is voiceless as in when,
where, which and is transcribed by the symbol [ʍ].

Labial Dental Alveolar Alveopalatal Velar Glottal

Bilabial Labiodental Interdental

Voiceless [p] span [t] stun [k] scar [ʔ]

Stops
Voiced [b]ban [d] dot [g] gap

Voiceless [f] fan [θ] thin [s] sun [ʃ] ship [h] hat
Fricatives
Voiced [v] van [ð] then [z] zip [Ʒ] rouge

Voiceless [tʃ] church

Affricates
Voiced [dƷ] jump

Nasal Voiced [m] man [n] not [Ƞ] wing

Lateral [l] lift

Liquids
Retroflex [r] car

Glides Voiced [j] yes [w] when

2.6 Vowels

• They are sonorous, voiced and syllabic sounds.

• Vowels are produced with little obstruction in the vocal tract.
• There are four qualities that describe vowel articulations:
o height of the tongue (high, mid, low)
o blackness of the tongue (front, central, back)
o tenseness (degree of vocal tract constriction)
o roundness of the lips (usually with back vowels in English).
Simple Vowels vs. Diphthongs

• Diphthongs are vowels that change quality at the end, so they start with a vowel and end with a glide,
but they are still a single vowel.
• There are three diphthongs in English:
o [aj] as in my.
o [aw] as in cow my cowboy!
o [oj] as in boy
Tense vs. Lax: tense vowels are produced with greater vocal tract constriction and are longer in duration
than lax vowels. [ǝ]: it is called schwa and referred to as a reduced vowel. Its duration is shorter than any
other vowel.
Front Central Back

Tense [i] see [u] two

High
Lax [I] it [U] book

[ej] say [ow] no

Tense
[oj]boy
Mid
[ɛ] yes [ǝ] roses
Lax
[ʌ] bus

[aj]my [ɑ] caught

Tense
Low [aw] cow

Lax [æ] cat

2.8 Suprasegmentals
All sounds have suprasegmental properties regardless of place or manner of articulation. These properties
are pitch, length and stress.

• Pitch
It is the auditory property of a sound that enables us to place it in a scale from low to high. It refers to the
tension of the vocal folds and the amount of air that passes which make the pitch of a sound higher. Pitch
is divided into tone and intonation.
Tone: tone languages use pitch to signal differences in meaning as Mandarin Chinese. For example, [ma֙]
with a falling pitch means ‘scold’ while [ma֜ ] with a raising pitch means ‘hemp’.
Intonation: it refers to pitch movement without signaling any differences in meaning. Intonation convey
information about the utterances. Falling intonation, called terminal intonational contour, show that the
utterance is complete. Raising intonation, called non-terminal intonational contour, occurs in questions
and lists and it shows incompleteness.
 • Length
Long consonants and vowels are longer in articulation compared to other vowels and consonants. Length
is represented in transcription as [:]. In many languages, there is a distinction between long and short
sounds (it makes difference in meaning).

• Stress
Stress is associated with vowels, and it refers to pitch, loudness and length all together to make the vowel
more prominent. For example, the second syllable in banana is more prominent, so it gets the primary
stress which is transcribed with [ˊ] or [1] above the syllable. The second most prominent vowel is marked
with a secondary stress [ˋ] or [2] above the syllable.
Examples in English: pre֜sent (noun), prese֜nt (verb).

2.9 Speech Production

When we speak, we do not produce isolated phonetic segments. Because of this, many changes
happen to the sounds in rapid speech. Usually, sounds affect each other.

Co-articulation
In rapid speech, we plan a complex series of segments. We do not expect that we pronounce one
segment completely before we move on to the next one. Thus, co-articulation refers to the
movement of more than one articulator at the same time. For example, to pronounce [pl], the
tongue touches the alveolar ridge (to pronounce [l]) before the lips separate (to pronounce the
[p]).

Processes
The adjustments (as mentioned above) that happen to sounds during production of connected
speech are called process. These processes take place either to make the production easier for
the articulators or to make the perception easier for the listeners.

• Assimilation
This process results from the influence of one segment to another, so one sound becomes
more like a sound nearby in one or more features.
There are two types of assimilation. Regressive assimilation is where one sound is
influenced by the following sound. For example, vowels in English becomes nasalized nasal
consonants as in [kæ̃nt] can’t. The other type is progressive assimilation where the sound
influences the following sound as in [nĨ] in a language called Scots Gaelic.
Another example is voicing assimilation like when voiced liquids and glides become
voiceless after voiceless stops as in ‘please’ and ‘try’ (it is called devoicing).
 An example of assimilation for place of articulation is like negative prefixes in English as in
‘impossible’ and ‘intolerable’. Flapping is also an example of assimilation where the stops
[t] and [d] change to the flap [ſ] (flaps are less stop-like) when occur between vowels.

• Dissimilation
In this process, two sounds become less alike in articulation or perception, so the resulting
sound is easier to pronounce or distinguish. For example, in fifths we have three fricatives
[fθs], so many speakers pronounce the end like [fts] to break the sequence with a stop.

• Deletion
It is a process of removing a segment in rapid speech. For example, the schwa is deleted
sometimes as in suppose [sǝpowz] → [spowz].

• Epenthesis
It is a process of inserting a segment into a string of segments. For example, in pronouncing
‘something’ [sʌmθIŋ], speakers add [p], which share properties of the two surrounding
segments (place of articulation and voicing), to make it [sʌmpθIŋ].

• Metathesis
It is a process that reorders a sequence of segments to one that is easier to pronounce. This
process is common in children’s speech. For example, some English-speaking children
pronounce spaghetti as pesghetti making [spa] into [pǝs] because they cannot pronounce two
successive consonants.

• Vowel Reduction
In this process, the articulation of unstressed vowels moves to a more central position, usually a
schwa. For example, there is the difference between Canada [kænǝdǝ] where first vowel is
stressed and Canadian [kǝnejdiǝn] where the first vowel is unstressed.