Sounds of English Class 2

Sounds of English Consonants: first, the stops: b as in bat, sob, cubby d as in date, hid, ado g as in gas, lag, ragged p as in pet, tap, repeat t as in tap, pet, attack k as in king, pick, picking When we need to emphasize that we are using a phonetic transcription, we put square brackets [b] around the symbols.

More consonants: fricatives f as in fail, life v as in veil, live Ɵ as in thin, wrath ð as in this, bathe s as in soft, miss z as in zoo, as š (American) or ʃ (IPA) as in shame, mash ž (American) or ǯ (IPA)as in triage, garage, azure, h as in help, vehicular

affricates č (American) or tʃ (IPA) as in cheap, hatch ǰ (American) or ʤ (IPA) as in jump, hedge

nasal consonants m as in map, him n as in knot, tin (alveolar POA) ñ as in canyon ŋ as in sing, gingham, dinghy

Liquids l as in large, gull r as in red, jar

glides and semi-consonants j (IPA) as in boy, yellow w as in wall, cow

6 stops 2 affricates 9 fricatives 4 nasals 2 liquids 2 glides

Short vowels Front vowels: Ɛ as in bet æ as in bat Back vowels: I as in bit Ɛ as in bet æ as in bat Back vowels: U as in put ʌ as in putt ɔ as in bought a or ɑ as in Mott, ma, spot ǝ “schwa” as in about

Long vowels ij or i as in beet ej as in bait aj as in bite oj as in boy uw or u as in boot ow as in boat aw as in how

Not all Americans talk the same way Some people do not have a contrast between [ɔ] and [a]: cot versus caught Sean versus Connery. There are (interesting) details we are ignoring, like the difference between the vowel in cat and that in sand, for most Americans. There are far more differences than that, of course!

Review where we’ve been We’ve listened to the sounds of “our” English, and assigned a set of symbols to them. We abstracted away from pitch, loudness, and duration. We hope to better understanding our language’s sounds by analyzing them as being composed of a sequence of identifiable sounds, each of which occurs frequently in words of the language.

Consonants Consonants = obstruents + sonorants Obstruents: (oral) stops, affricates, and fricatives Sonorants: nasals and liquids (l,r)

Consonants Consonants can be defined by: Point of articulation (or “place”): Specification of the active and passive articulators. Manner of articulation: Oral stop; nasal stop; fricative; affricate; lateral; flap; approximant; and some others.

Consonants have a point of articulation The crucial points of articulation for English consonants are: Labial Labio-dental Dental Alveolar: at the alveolar ridge, behind the teeth Post-alveolar/palato-alveolar/alveopalatal: multiple names for the same thing Retroflex (r only) Palatal (y, ñ) Velar Laryngeal

Places of articulation: labial Bilabial: made with two lips (pie, buy, my) Labiodental: lower tip and Upper front teeth (fie, vie). Slide from Liberman and Yuan

Places of articulation: coronal Dental: tongue tip or blade and upper front teeth (thigh, thy). (interdental: the tip of the tongue protrudes between the upper and the lower front teeth). Alveolar: tongue tip or blade and the alveolar ridge (tie, die, nigh, sigh, zeal, lie). Retroflex: tongue tip and back of the alveolar ridge (rye, row, ray). Palato-Alveolar (post-alveolar): tongue blade and the back of the alveolar ridge (shy, she, show). Slide from Liberman and Yuan

Places of articulation: dorsal Palatal: front of the tongue and hard palate (you). Palatal sounds are sometimes classified as coronal. Velar: back of the tongue and the soft palate (hack, hag, hang). Slide from Liberman and Yuan

[From: Dan Jurafsky slide] Oro-nasal process [From: Dan Jurafsky slide] Oral sounds: soft palate is raised (closing the passage). Nasal sound: soft palate is lowered, so air passes through the nose.

Manners of articulation Stop Fricative: near closure, creating frication (heavy air turbulence) Affricate (combined stop and fricative) Approximant (no turbulence) (y,w,r) Lateral approximant (l) obstruction in the middle, air passage around the side of the tongue. Tap or flap: American symbol [D], IPA [ɾ]

Obstruents: 6 stops 9 fricatives 2 affricates Nasals (4) 2 other sonorants (what are they?) 2 glides

Vowels Vowels are harder to characterize articulatorily, but we try! The fact that it’s harder is reflected in the fact that there is more than one way in which it’s done. IPA is one way; American is another.

Vowels are displayed in a two-dimensional chart, corresponding only roughly to the position of the tongue, and the first two formants of the vowel. Plus: whether the lips are rounded Monophthong or diphthong (no movement, or movement)

From: Jennifer Venditti slide

IPA

Two systems side by side

the end

A phonetic chart based on the first two formants

From: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/music/vocres.html

/i/ green /ae/ hat /u/ boot graphics thanks to Kevin Russell, Univ of Manitoba

“Hi” /haj/ FORMANTS we were away a year ago