Introduction to Linguistic

Theory

Phonetics:
The Sounds of Language
 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

– Acoustic phonetics: focuses on the physical

properties of the sounds of language

– Auditory phonetics: focuses on how listeners

perceive the sounds of language

– Articulatory phonetics: focuses on how the vocal

tract produces 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
unambiguously:
 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 = nose and the passages connecting it to the throat

and sinuses
 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

© Cngage Learning
 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

*The textbook uses [r] to represent the central liquid as in the word ready rather than as
a trill
 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

© Cengage Learning
 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
• The configuration of the hand (handshape)
• The movement of the hand and arm
• The location of the hand in signing space