1. Chapter Two
Speech Sounds

2. As human beings we are capable of making all kinds of sounds, but only some of these sounds have become units in the language system.
We can analyze speech sounds from various perspectives and the two major areas of study are phonetics and phonology.

3. Phonetics studies how speech sounds are produced, transmitted, and perceived.

4. Articulatory Phonetics is the study of the production of speech sounds.
Acoustic Phonetics is the study of the physical properties of speech sounds.
Perceptual or Auditory Phonetics is concerned with the perception of speech sounds.

5. Phonology is the study of the sound patterns and sound systems of languages.
It aims to ‘discover the principles that govern the way sounds are organized in languages, and to explain the variations that occur’.
In phonology we normally begin by analyzing an individual language, say English, in order to determine its phonological structure, i.e. which sound units are used and how they are put together.
Then we compare the properties of sound systems in different languages in order to make hypotheses about the rules that underlie the use of sounds in them, and ultimately we aim to discover the rules that underlie the sound patterns of all languages.

6. 1. How speech sounds are made
1.1 Speech organs

9. Position of the vocal folds: voiceless

10. Position of the vocal folds: voicing (initial & the widest aperture)

11. Position of the vocal folds: glottal stop

12. 1.2 The IPA
In 1886, the Phonetic Teachers’ Association was inaugurated by a small group of language teachers in France who had found the practice of phonetics useful in their teaching and wished to popularize their methods.
It was changed to its present title of the International Phonetic Association (IPA) in 1897.

13. One of the first activities of the Association was to produce a journal in which the contents were printed entirely in phonetic transcription.
The idea of establishing a phonetic alphabet was first proposed by the Danish grammarian and phonetician Otto Jespersen ( ) in 1886, and
the first version of the International Phonetic Alphabet (the IPA chart) was published in August 1888.

14. Its main principles were that
there should be a separate letter for each distinctive sound, and
that the same symbol should be used for that sound in any language in which it appears.
The alphabet was to consist of as many Roman alphabet letters as possible, using new letters and diacritics only when absolutely necessary.
These principles continue to be followed today.

15. The International Phonetic Alphabet (Revised to 2005)

23. 2. Consonants and vowels
Consonants are produced ‘by a closure in the vocal tract, or by a narrowing which is so marked that air cannot escape without producing audible friction’.
By contrast, a vowel is produced without such ‘stricture’ so that ‘air escapes in a relatively unimpeded way through the mouth or nose’.

24. The distinction between vowels and consonants lies in the obstruction of airstream.
As there is no obstruction of air in the production of vowels, the description of the consonants and vowels cannot be done along the same lines.

25. 2.1 Consonants
In the production of consonants at least two articulators are involved.
For example, the initial sound in bad involves both lips and its final segment involves the blade (or the tip) of the tongue and the alveolar ridge.
The categories of consonant, therefore, are established on the basis of several factors.

26. The manner of articulation refers to ways in which articulation can be accomplished:
the articulators may close off the oral tract for an instant or a relatively long period;
they may narrow the space considerably; or
they may simply modify the shape of the tract by approaching each other.

27. Lateral (Approximant) Trill Tap or Flap Affricate
Stop (or Plosive)
Oral & Nasal
Fricative
(Median) Approximant
Lateral (Approximant)
Trill
Tap or Flap
Affricate

28. Eleven places of articulation are distinguished on the IPA chart:
The place of articulation refers to the point where a consonant is made.
Practically consonants may be produced at any place between the lips and the vocal folds.
Eleven places of articulation are distinguished on the IPA chart:

29. Bilabial
Labiodental
Dental
Alveolar
Postalveolar
Retroflex
Palatal
Velar
Uvular
Pharyngeal
Glottal

31. 2.2 Vowels
Cardinal Vowels, as exhibited by the vowel diagram in the IPA chart, are a set of vowel qualities arbitrarily defined, fixed and unchanging, intended to provide a frame of reference for the description of the actual vowels of existing languages.

34. Jones: An Outline of English Phonetics (1918)
Black: IPA
Red: English

37. The problematic area is that the initial sound in hot gives little turbulence, depending on how forcefully it is said, and in yet and wet the initial segments are obviously vowels.
To get out of this problem, the usual solution is to say that these segments are neither vowels nor consonants but midway between the two categories. For this purpose, the term ‘semi-vowel’ is often used.

38. Languages also frequently make use of a distinction between vowels where the quality remains constant throughout the articulation and those where there is an audible change of quality.
The former are known as pure or monophthong vowels and the latter, vowel glides.
If a single movement of the tongue is involved, the glides are called diphthongs.

39. A double movement produces a triphthong, which is ‘a glide from one vowel to another and then to a third, all produced rapidly and without interruption’.
They are really diphthongs followed by the schwa [ə], found in English words like wire [waɪə] and tower [taʊə].

40. 2.3 The sounds of English Received Pronunciation (RP)
General American (GA)
English consonants

42. The consonants of English can be described in the following manner:
[p] voiceless bilabial stop
[b] voiced bilabial stop
[s] voiceless alveolar fricative
[z] voiced alveolar fricative

43. English vowels

45. The description of English vowels needs to fulfill four basic requirements:
the height of tongue raising (high, mid, low);
the position of the highest part of the tongue (front, central, back);
the length or tenseness of the vowel (tense vs. lax or long vs. short), and
lip-rounding (rounded vs. unrounded).

46. We can now describe the English vowels in this way:
[] high front tense unrounded vowel
[] high back lax rounded vowel
[] mid central lax unrounded vowel
[] low back lax rounded vowel

47. 3. From phonetics to phonology
Speech is a continuous process, so the vocal organs do not move from one sound segment to the next in a series of separate steps. Rather, sounds continually show the influence of their neighbors.
For example, map, lamb.

48. 3.1 Coarticulation
When such simultaneous or overlapping articulations are involved, we call the process coarticulation.
If the sound becomes more like the following sound, as in the case of lamb, it is known as anticipatory coarticulation.
If the sound shows the influence of the preceding sound, it is perseverative coarticulation, as is the case of map.

49. The fact that the vowel [] in lamb has some quality of the following nasal is a phenomenon we call nasalization.
To indicate that a vowel has been nasalized, we add a diacritic to the top of the symbol [], as [].

50. [p] is aspirated in peak and unaspirated in speak.
This aspirated voiceless bilabial stop is thus indicated by the diacritic h, as [ph], whereas the unaspirated counterpart is transcribed as [p].

51. When we use a simple set of symbols in our transcription, it is called a broad transcription.
The use of more specific symbols to show more phonetic detail is referred to as a narrow transcription.
Both are phonetic transcriptions so we put both forms in square brackets [ ].

53. 3.2 Phonemes
Phonology is not specifically concerned with the physical properties of the speech production system.
Phoneticians are concerned with how sounds differ in the way they are pronounced while phonologists are interested in the patterning of such sounds and the rules that underlie such variations.

54. Crystal: ‘Phonological analysis relies on the principle that certain sounds cause changes in the meaning of a word or phrase, whereas other sounds do not’.
Minimal pairs test
Phonemes

57. The word ‘phoneme’ simply refers to a ‘unit of explicit sound contrast’: the existence of a minimal pair automatically grants phonemic status to the sounds responsible for the contrasts.
By selecting one type of sound instead of another we can distinguish one word from another.

58. Languages differ in the selection of contrastive sounds.
In English, the distinction between aspirated [ph] and unaspirated [p] is not phonemic.
In Chinese, however, the distinction between /p/ and /ph/ is phonemic.

59. By convention, phonemic transcriptions are placed between slant lines (/ /) while phonetic transcriptions are placed between square brackets ([ ]).
In phonetic terms, phonemic transcriptions represent the ‘broad’ transcriptions.

60. 3.3 Allophones
[p, ph] are two different phones and are variants of the phoneme /p/. Such variants of a phoneme are called allophones of the same phoneme.
In this case the allophones are said to be in complementary distribution because they never occur in the same context:
[p] occurs after [s] while [ph] occurs in other places.

61. /p/  [p] / [s] _____
[ph] elsewhere
This phenomenon of variation in the pronunciation of phonemes in different positions is called allophony or allophonic variation.

62. Velarization: clear l and dark l
Think about tell and telling!

63. Phonetic similarity: the allophones of a phoneme must bear some phonetic resemblance.
Free variants and free variation

64. 4. Phonological processes, phonological rules and distinctive features
4.1 Assimilation

65. Nasalization, dentalization, and velarization are all instances of assimilation, a process by which one sound takes on some or all the characteristics of a neighboring sound.
If a following sound is influencing a preceding sound, we call it regressive assimilation.
The converse process, in which a preceding sound is influencing a following sound, is known as progressive assimilation.

66. English Fricative Devoicing

67. /v/  [f] /z/  [s] etc.
voiced fricative  voiceless / ____ voiceless
Nasalization rule:
[-nasal]  [+nasal] / ____ [+nasal]
Dentalization rule:
[-dental]  [dental] / ____ [dental]
Velarization rule:
[-velar]  [+velar] / ____ [+velar]

68. 4.2 Epenthesis, rule ordering and the Elsewhere Condition
a hotel, a boy, a use, a wagon, a big man, a yellow rug, a white house
an apple, an honor, an orange curtain, an old lady
Epenthesis (Insertion) Rule:

69. Plurals in English

72. a. The [] appears after voiceless sounds.
b. The [] appears after voiced sounds.
c. The [] appears after sibilants.
//  [] / [–voice, C] _____ (Devoicing)
  [] / [+sibilant] _____ [] (Epenthesis)

73. Rule ordering

74. The Elsewhere Condition
The more specific rule applies first.

75. 4.3 Distinctive features
The idea of Distinctive Features was first developed by Roman Jacobson ( ) in the 1940s as a means of working out a set of phonological contrasts or oppositions to capture particular aspects of language sounds.
Since then several versions have been suggested.

76. Some of the major distinctions include [consonantal], [sonorant], [nasal] and [voiced].
The feature [consonantal] can distinguish between consonants and vowels, so all consonants are [+consonantal] and all vowels [–consonantal].
[sonorant] distinguishes between what we call obstruents (stops, fricatives and affricates) and sonorants (all other consonants and vowels), with obstruents being [–sonorant] and others [+sonorant].
[nasal] and [voiced] of course distinguish nasal (including nasalized) sounds and voiced sounds respectively.

77. These are known as binary features because we can group them into two categories: one with this feature and the other without.
Binary features have two values or specifications denoted by ‘ + ’ and ‘ – ’ so voiced obstruents are marked [+voiced] and voiceless obstruents are marked [–voiced].

78. They are often written in shorthand forms as
The place features are not binary features – they are divided up into four values:
[PLACE: Labial]
[PLACE: Coronal]
[PLACE: Dorsal]
[PLACE: Radical]
They are often written in shorthand forms as
[Labial]p
[Coronal]p
[Dorsal]p
[Radical]p

81. A useful feature for consonants not found here is [±spread] (for ‘spread glottis’), which distinguishes between ‘aspirated’ and ‘unaspirated’ voiceless obstruents.
Aspirated sounds are [+spread] and unaspirated sounds are [–spread].
Now we can represent the rule that governs the unaspiration of /p/ after [s] in terms of features:

82. -cont
-voice
 [–spread] / [s]_____
 [+spread] in other places
This is a more general rule, which also applies to /t/ and /k/. It means that /p, t, k/ ([–voiced, –cont]) are all unaspirated ([–spread]) after [s] and aspirated ([+spread]) in all other positions.

83. Past tense forms in English
stopped, walked, coughed, kissed, leashed, reached
stabbed, wagged, achieved, buzzed, soothed, bridged
steamed, stunned, pulled
played, flowed, studied
wanted, located, decided, guided

84. The regular past tense form in English is pronounced as [t] when the word ends with a voiceless consonant, [d] when it ends with a voiced sound, and [ɪd] when it ends with [t] or [d].

85. 5. Suprasegmentals
Suprasegmental features are those aspects of speech that involve more than single sound segments.
The principal suprasegmentals are:

86. 5.1 The syllable structureσ
Onset Rime
Nucleus Coda
k r æ k t

87. Closed syllable: bard, tied English Syllable: (((C)C)C)V((((C)C)C)C)
Open syllable: bar, tie
Closed syllable: bard, tied
English Syllable: (((C)C)C)V((((C)C)C)C)
Chinese syllable: (C)V(C)
Maximal Onset Principle (MOP)
When there is a choice as to where to place a consonant, it is put into the onset rather than the coda.

88. 5.2 Stress
Stress refers to the degree of force used in producing a syllable. In transcription, a raised vertical line [│] is often used just before the syllable it relates to.
A basic distinction is made between stressed and unstressed syllables, the former being more prominent than the latter, which means that stress is a relative notion.

89. At the word level, it only applies to words with at least two syllables.
At the sentence level, a monosyllabic word may be said to be stressed relative to other words in the sentence.

90. Changing English Stress Pattern
Becoming norm
inTEGral
coMMUNal
forMIDable
conTROVersy
Considered conservative
INtegral
COMMunal
FORmidable
CONtroversy

91. RP vs. GA GA
LABoratory
deBRIS
gaRAGE RP
laBORatory
DEBris
GARage

92. V vs. N Verb conVICT inSULT proDUCE reBEL Noun CONvict INsult PROduce

93. Compound vs. Phrase Compound Phrase black BOARD BLACKboard black BIRD

94. Primary vs. Secondary Stress
epiphenomenal
unsatisfactory
discrimination
standardization
communication
industrialization

95. Sentence Stress John bought a red car. JOHN bought a red car.

96. 5.3 Intonation
Intonation involves the occurrence of recurring fall-rise patterns, each of which is used with a set of relatively consistent meanings, either on single words or on groups of words of varying length.
For example, the fall-rise tone in English typically involves the meaning of a contrast within a limited set of items stated explicitly or implicitly.

97. (Isn’t her name Mary?) No /  Jenny
The old man didn’t come / whereas the  young man / did come and actually enjoyed himself
 I didn’t do it

98. 5.4 Tone Putonghua [pa] 八 bā 55 拔 bá 35 靶 bă 214 坝 bà 51
Chinese character
Pinyin
Tone symbol
Tone number
Tone description
Gloss 八 bā 55
High level
‘eight’ 拔 bá 35
High rising
‘pull out’ 靶 bă
214
Low falling rising
‘target’ 坝 bà 51
High falling
‘dam’