1. Chapter 2
Speech Sounds
1. Phonetics
2. Phonology

2. 1. Phonetics 1.1 Speech production and perception
1.2 Speech organs (vocal organs)
1.3 Phonetic transcription
1.4 English speech sounds

3. 1.1 Speech production and perception
Speech Speech
Production Perception
(speaker A) (speaker B)
A three-step process of speech sounds

4. Articulatory phonetics----the study
of the production of speech sounds
From the speaker’s point of view: how a speaker uses his speech organs to articulate the sounds, which results in articulatory phonetics.

5. From the hearer’s point of view: how the sounds are perceived by
Auditory phonetics----the study of the perception of speech sounds
From the hearer’s point of view:
how the sounds are perceived by
the hearer, which results in
auditory phonetics.

6. Acoustic phonetics----the study of the physical properties of the sounds produced in speech
From the way sounds travel: how sounds travel by looking at the sound saves, the physical means by which sounds are transmitted through the air from one person to another, which results in acoustic phonetics.

7. 1.2 Speech organs (vocal organs)
The parts of the human body involved in the production of speech.
The three cavities of the vocal tract:
the pharynx (pharyngeal cavity),
the mouth (oral cavity),
the nose (nasal cavity).
The air- stream coming from the lungs is modified in various ways in these cavities, resulting in the production of various sounds.

8. The respiratory tract

9. Organs of speech A. The pharyngeal cavity:
13 windpipe, 12 glottis/vocal cords, 11 pharyngeal cavity
B. The oral cavity:
1/2 lips, 3/4 teeth, 5 teeth ridge(alveolus), 6 hard palate,7 soft palate (velum), 14 uvula, 8 tip of tongue, 9 blade of tongue, 10 back of tongue
C. Nasal cavity: 15

10. 1.3 phonetic transcription
A method of writing down speech sounds in a systematic and consistent way.
1.3.1 IPA (International phonetic Alphabet)
1.3.2 Two ways to transcribe speech sounds

11. 1.3.1 IPA (International phonetic Alphabet)
IPA: the abbreviation of International Phonetic Alphabet, which is devised by the International Phonetic Association in 1888 on the basis of the phonetic alphabet proposed at the time. It is a standardized and internationally accepted system of phonetic transcription.
The Danish grammarian Jespersen first proposed the idea in 1886.
The first version of IPA was published in August 1888.
The latest version was devised in 1993 and corrected in 1996.
The basic principle: using a separate letter selected from major European languages for each distinctive sound and the same symbol should be used for that sound in any language in which it appears.

12. 1.3.2 Two ways to transcribe speech sounds
Broad transcription: transcription with letter-symbols only. This is the transcription normally used in dictionaries and teaching textbooks.
Narrow transcription: transcription with letter-symbols together with the diacritics. This is the transcription required and used by the phoneticians in their study of speech sounds.
Diacritics: A set of symbols added to the letter-symbols to show that it has a sound value different from that of the same letter without the mark.

13. 1.4 English speech sounds 1.4.1 Classification
Description of English consonants
Description of English vowels

14. 1.4.1 Classification of English Speech sounds
A dichotomy of English speech sounds:
Vowels: Speech sounds which are produced with no obstruction whatsoever of the vocal tract, so no turbulence or a total stopping of the air can be perceived.
2. Consonants: Speech sounds which are produced by constricting or obstructing the vocal tract at some place to divert, impede, or completely shut off the flow of air in the oral cavity.

15. 1.4.2 Description of English Consonants
Consonants (P39-44)
Three parameters to identify a consonant:
①place of articulation: place in the mouth where obstruction occurs
②manners of articulation: ways in which articulation can be accomplished
③state of vocal cords: voiced VS. voiceless

16. English consonants

17. 1.4.3 Description of English vowels
Vowels (P45-52)
the quality of vowels depend on position of tongue and the shape of lips.
Four criteria (parameters) of vowel description:
①the height of tongue raising:
high, middle, low
②the position of highest part of the tongue :
front, central, back
③the shape of the lips (the degree of liprounding ) :
rounded, unrounded
④the length or tenseness of the vowel :
tense vs. lax or long vs. short

18. English vowels

19. 2. Phonology 2.1 Phonology and phonetics
2.2 Phone, phoneme and allophone
2.3 Minimal pairs and complementary distribution
2.4 Distinctive features
2.5 Suprasegmental features

20. 2.1 Phonology and phonetics
Phonetics and phonology are the two disciplines dealing with speech sounds. While both are related to the study of sounds, they differ in their approach and focus. Phonetics studies how speech sounds are made, transmitted and received. Phonology, on the other hand, is essentially the description of the systems and patterns of speech sounds. It aims to discover how speech sounds in a language form patterns and how these sounds are used to convey meaning in linguistic communication.
Phonology is concerned with the abstract and mental aspect of the sounds in language rather than with the actual physical articulation of speech sounds.
Phonological knowledge permits a speaker to produce sounds which form meaningful utterance, to recognize a foreign accent, to make up new words.

21. 2.2 Phone, phoneme and allophone

22. Phone
Phone: the speech sounds we hear and produce during linguistic communication are all phones. It’s a phonetic unit or segment. (in the mouth)
Conventionally, phones are placed within square brackets “[ ]”(phonetic transcription)
Phones do not necessarily distinguish meaning. Usually phones of different phonemes distinguish meaning.

23. Phoneme
Phoneme: A sound which is capable of distinguishing one word or one shape of a word from another in a given language is a phoneme. It’s a basic unit in phonological analysis. It is not any particular sound, but an abstract segment. In actual speech, a phoneme is realized phonetically as a certain phone. (the sound type in the mind)
The phoneme is the smallest meaning-distinguishing unit.
Phonemes are placed in slashes “/ / ” (phonemic transcription)
e.g. Neither the sound [p] in pit or the sound [b] in bit is a phoneme. They are phones; they are the phonetic realization of the phoneme /p/ and /b/.

24. Allophone
Allophone: when we have a set of phones, all of which are versions of one phoneme, we refer to them as the allophones of that phoneme.
One phoneme may have several allophones, but the choice of an allophone is rule-governed.

25. 2.3 Minimal pairs and complementary distribution
Free variation
I’m a pear, not a pair, go to next page to see what is a minimal pair.

26. Minimal pairs
When two different forms are identical in every way except for one sound segment, which occurs in the same place in the strings, the two sound combinations are said to form a minimal pair.
When two words such as pat and bat are identical in form except for a contrast in one phoneme, occurring in the same position, the two words are described as a minimal pair.
Minimal pairs are established on the basis of sound and not spelling.
Note: Three requirements for a minimal pair

27. Three requirements for a minimal pair
Same number of segment
One phonetic difference in the same place
Different meaning
a minimal pair : lit-lip; phone-tone; pill-bill
a minimal set: beat, bit, bet, boot, but, bite
The minimal pair test helps establish which sounds contrast in a language.

28. 2.3.2 Complementary distribution
Not all speech sounds occur in the same environment, when the two sounds never occur in the same environment they are said to be in complementary distribution.
Not all phones in complementary distribution are considered to be allophones of the same phoneme. They must be phonetically similar and in complementary distribution.

29. 2.3.3 Free variation A phone may sometimes has free variants.
If two sounds occurring in the same environment do not contrast, that is, the substitution of one for the other does not produce a different word form, but merely a different pronunciation of the same word, then the two sounds are in free variation.

30. 2.4 Distinctive features
The features that a phoneme possesses, making it different from other phonemes, are its distinctive features.
Distinctive features are language-specific.
e.g. “ba” (爸) “pa”(怕)
In Chinese, these two sounds are distinguished by aspiration , while in English they are distinguished by “voicing”

31. 2.5 Suprasegmental features
The phonemic features that occur above the level of the segments
Stress: word stress & sentence stress
Tone
Intonation