Beteseb Academy Ayer Tena Campus

English Language Department Mr. Tesfamariam Ka.

English Regular Phonetics Class Academic Year: Feb, 20

Adopted from Introduction

to Linguistic Theory
 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
coat rough
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

© Cengage
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 spool [spul]
tale [t[phel]
pool hul] 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