Phonetics Notes
Phonetics Notes
PHONETICS
Phonetics studies speech sounds from different viewpoints and is broken
down into three categories that are studied in linguistics:
Articulatory phonetics
The study of how humans use their speech organs to produce specific
sounds.
Articulatory phonetics is concerned with the way sounds are created and
aims to explain how we move our speech organs (articulators) to
produce certain sounds. Generally speaking, articulatory phonetics looks
at how aerodynamic energy (airflow through the vocal tract) is transformed
into acoustic energy (sound).
Humans can produce sound simply by expelling air from the lungs;
however, we can produce (and pronounce) a large number of different
sounds by moving and manipulating our speech organs (articulators).
Lips
Teeth
Tongue
Palate
Uvula (the teardrop-shaped soft tissue that hangs at the back of
your throat)
Nasal and oral cavities
Vocal cords
Pronunciation in phonetics
Usually, two speech organs make contact with each other to affect the
airflow and create a sound. The point where the two speech organs make
the most contact is named the place of articulation. The way in which
the contact forms and then releases is named the manner of articulation.
To produce the [p] sound, we join our lips together tightly (place of
articulation). This causes a slight build-up of air, which is then released
when the lips part (manner of articulation), creating a burst of sound
associated with the letter P in English.
In English, there are two main sounds we
create: consonants and vowels.
Let's take a closer look at the production of consonant and vowel sounds
Consonants
“A consonant is a speech sound which is pronounced by stopping the air
from flowing easily through the mouth, especially by closing the lips or
touching the teeth with the tongue”.
Voice
In articulatory phonetics, voice refers to the presence or absence of
vibration of the vocal cords.
Bilabial - Sounds produced with both lips, such as [p], [b], [m].
Labiodentals - Sounds produced with the upper teeth and the lower
lip, such as [f] and [v].
Interdental - Sounds produced with the tongue in between the
upper and lower teeth, such as [θ] (the 'th' sound in think).
Alveolar - Sounds produced with the tongue at or near the ridge
right behind upper front teeth, such as [t], [d], [s].
Palatal - Sounds produced at the hard palate or the roof of the
mouth, such as [j], [ʒ] (measure), [ʃ] (should).
Velars - Sounds produced at the velum or soft palate, such as [k]
and [g].
Glottals - Sounds produced at the glottis or the space between the
vocal folds, such as [h] or the glottal stop sound [ʔ] (as in uh-oh).
Manner of Articulation
Manner of articulation examines the arrangement and interaction between
the articulators (speech organs) during the production of speech sounds..
In phonetics, speech sounds can be divided into five different types based
on the manner of articulation.
Nasal sounds - produced when the air passes through the nasal
cavity instead of out through the mouth, such as [m, n, ŋ].
Approximant - sounds made with partial obstruction of the airflow
from the mouth. This means some sounds are coming out of the
nose and some from the mouth, such as [l, ɹ, w, j].
Vowels
“A vowel is a speech sound produced when the breath flows out through
the mouth without being blocked by the teeth, tongue, or lips”.
Height
Height refers to how high or low the tongue is in the mouth when
producing a vowel. For example, consider the vowel sounds, [ɪ] (as in sit)
and [a] (as in cat). If you say both of these vowels in succession, you
should feel your tongue going up and down.
Roundedness
Roundedness refers to whether or not the lips
are rounded or unrounded when producing the vowel sound. When we
pronounce rounded vowels, our lips are open and extended to some
degree. An example of a rounded vowel is [ʊ] as in put.
When we pronounce unrounded vowels, our lips are spread and the
corners of the mouth are pulled back to some degree. An example of an
unrounded vowel is [ɪ] as in bit.
The IPA aims to represent all qualities of speech and sounds present in
language, including phones, phonemes, intonation, gaps between sounds,
and syllables. The IPA symbols consist of letter-like symbols, diacritics,
or both.
The IPA was created to help describe sounds (phones), not phonemes;
however, the chart is often used for phonemic transcription. The IPA itself
is big. Therefore, when studying the English language, we would most
likely use a phonemic chart (based on the IPA), which only represents the
44 English phonemes.
26 letters (A-Z)
✪ 5 vowels
✪ 21 consonants
44 pronunciation sounds
✪ 20 vowels sounds
✪ 24 consonant sounds
Syllables
Mouse (1 syllable)
Rabbit (2 syllables)
Kangaroo (3 syllables)
Barracuda (4 syllables)
Hippopotamus (5 syllables)
Say the word ‘funny’ out-loud. As you can hear, in ‘funny’ we have two
vowel sounds –
ʌ and i – divided into two syllables by the consonant sound n. So we can
say that ‘funny’ contains two monophthongs: ʌ and i.
Now say the word ‘guy’. Here we have the same two vowel sounds but
this time they are stuck together in one syllable, without any consonant
dividing them. So we can say that ‘guy’ contains one diphthong: ʌi. To put
it simply: a monophthong is a single vowel and a diphthong is a double
vowel.
All the 24 vowel sounds are derived from only ten basic sounds. Every
single word in English, regardless of its spelling, is pronounced using
some combination of these ten sounds.
CONSONANT CLUSTER
A consonant cluster is when two consonants are positioned together.
They can appear at the start of a word, for example:
st in stay
fr in friend
cr in croak
Or at the end of a word:
sk in task
st in fast
nt in went
nd in sound
WORD STRESS
Word stress, also called lexical stress, is an important suprasegmental feature
in English because it determines so many other aspects of pronunciation.
Definition
Word stress is the emphasis placed on certain syllables in a word. The
Syllables that are stressed tend to be louder and longer, while the
unstressed syllables are shorter and softer. Each word in English is not
pronounced with the same amount of force or vigor. We emphasize just
one syllable every word. We pronounce one syllable (large, strong,
important) quite loudly and all the other syllables very softly.
Type
There are three types of word stress: primary, secondary, and tertiary.
There are many factors that can influence where the stress falls in a
word. For example, the addition of suffixes or prefixes can change the
position of the stress.
Examples of Word Stress
Here are some examples of words with different stresses:
PRIMARY STRESS: RE-cord, con-TRACT, ob-JECT
SECONDARY STRESS: pre-SENT, com-MIT, per-MIT
TERTIARY STRESS: pho-TO-graph, bus-I-ness, in-FANT
INTONATION
In linguistics, intonation is the variation in pitch used to indicate the
speaker's attitudes and emotions, to highlight or focus an expression, to
signal the illocutionary act performed by a sentence, or to regulate the
flow of discourse. For example, the English question "Does Maria speak
Spanish or French?" is interpreted as a yes-or-no question when it is
uttered with a single rising intonation contour, but is interpreted as
an alternative question when uttered with a rising contour on "Spanish"
and a falling contour on "French". Although intonation is primarily a
matter of pitch variation, its effects almost always work hand-in-hand
with other prosodic features. Intonation is distinct from tone, the
phenomenon where pitch is used to distinguish words (as in Mandarin)
or to mark grammatical features (as in Kinyarwanda).
Transcription
Most transcription conventions have been devised for describing one
particular accent or language, and the specific conventions therefore
need to be explained in the context of what is being described. However,
for general purposes the International Phonetic Alphabet offers the two
intonation marks shown in the box at the head of this article. Global
rising and falling intonation are marked with a diagonal arrow rising left-
to-right [↗︎] and falling left-to-right [↘︎], respectively. These may be
written as part of a syllable, or separated with a space when they have a
broader scope:
By adding prefixes
By adding suffixes
Converting from one word class to another
Forming compound words
Adding Prefixes
The term ‘prefix’ refers to one or more alphabets added to the stem of a
word, mostly to make it negative. The most commonly used prefixes
include ‘in-’, ‘un-’, ‘dis-’, ‘im-’, ‘ir-’, etc. Look at the examples given below
for a clearer understanding of how prefixes are used to form new words.
Discipline – indiscipline
Just – unjust
Tidy – untidy
Respect – disrespect
Understand – misunderstand
Adding Suffixes
A suffix is a short syllable added at the end of a base word. The addition
of suffixes usually changes the word class of the particular word. The
most common suffixes include ‘-ment’, ‘-ness’, ‘-ity’, ‘-ous’, ‘-tion’, ‘-sion’,
‘-al’, ‘-able’, ‘-ible’, ‘-ive’, ‘-ly’, ‘-ate’, ‘-er’, ‘-or’, etc. Check out the
following examples to see how suffixes are added.
Conversion
The process of conversion focuses solely on changing the word class of
the particular word. If you have noticed, you would have seen how some
nouns are used to perform the role of a verb or an adjective acting like
a noun just by the addition of another word or slightly altering the
spelling of the actual word.
Examples of Word Formation by Conversion
Everyone is talented.
‘Talented’ – a past participle is used as an adjective in the above
sentence. The word is formed by adding the suffix ‘ed’ to the end of the
noun ‘talent’.