English Learning - Phonology (A Course in Phonetics)

SECTION 1

ARTICULATION AND ACOUSTICS

In English, the word phonetics is usually consederated with describing speech. There are many kinds of phoneticians with various different reasons regarding speech describing.
Some are focused on the different sounds that happen in languages.
Some are more interested in pathological speech.
Others are trying to enggage people speak a specific form of English, and others are still looking for effective ways to make computers talk more obviously or to get computers to recognize speech.

For all these divers purposes, phoneticians have to find out what people are doing when they are talking and how the speech sounds can be depicted.

A. SPEECH PRODUCTION

In a small scale, speech production is  knowing how speech are made. Most of the speech sounds are the result of the tongue and the lips movement. The gestures of the tongue and lips are made audible so that they can clearly be heard and recognized.

To make speech gestures gestures audible involves pushing air out of the lungs while producing a noise in the throat or mouth. These basic noises are changed by the actions of the tongue and lips.

 

Here is the picture of speech sounds organs ↓

B. SOUND WAVES

We can give better descriptions of some sounds (such as vowels) by describing their acoustic structures rather than by describing the articulatory movements involved. We will simply notice the obvious difference between sounds in which the vocal folds are vibrating (which have comparatively large regular pulses of air pressure) and sounds without vocal fold vibration (which have a smaller amplitude and irregular variations in air pressure).
 

Speech sounds, like others sounds, can differ from one another in three ways :
1. pitch
2. loudness
3. quality

C. PLACES OF ARTICULATORY GESTURES

There are 8 parts of the vocal tract that can be used to form sounds. Those are called articulators.

1. Bilabial

Made by the two lips. Ex : pie, buy, my, etc.

2.  Labiodental

Made by lower lip and upper front teeth. Ex : fie and vie

3. Dental

Made by tongue tip or blade and upper front teeth. Ex : thigh and thy.

4. Alveolar

Made by tongue tip or blade and the alveolar ridge. Ex : tie, die, nigh, sigh, zeal, and lie .

5. Retroflex

Made by tongue tip and the back of the alveolar ridge. Ex : rye, row, and ray.

6. Palato-Alveolar

Made by tongue blade and the back of the alveolar ridge. Ex : shy,
she, and show. 

7. Palatal

Made by front of the tongue and hard palate. Ex : you .

8. Velar

Made by the back of the tongue and soft palate.Ex :  at the end of hack, hag, and hang.

D. THE ORO-NASAL PROCESS

In most speech, the soft palate is raised so that there is a velic closure. When it is lowered and there is an obstruction in the mouth, we say that there is a nasal consonant.

Raising or lowering the velum controls the oro-nasal process, the distinguishing factor between oral and nasal sounds.

E. MANNERS OF ARTICULATION

There are several basic ways in which articulatory gestures 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 :

> Stop

Complete closure of the articulators involved so that the airstream cannot escape through the mouth. There are two possible types of stop.

     - Oral stop

     - Nasal stop

 
> Fricative

Close approximation of two articulators so that the airstream is partially obstructed and turbulent airflow is produced.

> Approximant

A gesture in which one articulator is close to another, but without the vocal tract being narrowed to such an extent that a turbulent airstream is produced.

> Lateral (Approximant)

Obstruction of the airstream at a point along the center of the oral tract, with
incomplete closure between one or both sides of the tongue and the roof of
the mouth.

> Additional Consonantal Gestures.

    To summarize, the consonants may be described in terms of five factors :
          1. state of the vocal folds (voiced or voiceless)
          2. place of articulation
          3. central or lateral articulation
          4. soft palate raised to form a velic closure (oral sounds) or lowered (nasal sounds)
          5. manner of articulatory action

F. THE WAVEFORMS OF CONSONANTS

The places of articulation are not obvious in any waveforms, but the differences in some principal manners of articulation - stop, nasal, fricative, and approximant - are susually apparent. Furthermore, as already pointed outr, you can also see the differences between voiced and voiceless sounds.

* Example picture ↓

G. THE ARTICULATION OF VOWEL SOUNDS

In the production of vowel sounds, the acrticulators do not come very close togetherr, and the passage of the airstream is relatively unobstructed. We can described vowel sounds roughly in terms of position of the lips.
 

In summary, the targets for vowel gestures can be described in terms of three factors :
- the height of the body of the tongue
- the front-back position of the tongue
- the degree of lip rounding

H. THE SOUNDS OF VOWELS 

When studying about the sounds of vowels requires a greater knowledge of acoustics than we can handle.
 

Vowels, like all sounds except the pure tone of a tuning fork, have complex structures. We can think of them as containing a number of different pitches simultaneously. There is the pitch at which the vowel is actually spoken, which depends on the pulses being produced by the vibrating vocal folds; and, quite separate from this, there are overtone pitches that depend on the shape of the resonating cavities of the vocal tract.

 
I. SUPRASEGMENTALS

Vowels and consonants can be thought of as the segments of which speech is composed. Together they form the syllables that make up utterances. Superimposed on the syllables are other features known as suprasegmentals. You can stress one syllable as opposed to another irrespective of whether you are shouting or talking softly.

SECTION 2

PHONOLOGY AND PHONETIC

TRANSCRIPTION

Thinking of learning phonetics means simply thinking of learning to use phonetic transcription. But there is really much more to the subject than learning to use a set of symbols. A phonetician is a person who can describe speech, who understands the mechanisms of speech production and speech perception, and who knows how languages use these mechanisms. We will be concerned with the phonetic transcription of careful speech—the style of speech you use to show someone how to pronounce a word. This is called the citation style of speech.

*Phonology is the description of the system and patterns of sounds that occur in a language.

 
A. THE TRANSCRIPTION OF CONSONANTS

Searching for phonemes by considering the contrasting consonant sounds in English. A good way is to find sets bof words that rhyme, A set of words in which each differs from all the others by only a single consonant at the begginning.

*Examples : 

B. THE TRANSCRIPTION OF VOWELS

The transcription of the contrasting vowels (the vowel phonemes) in English is more difficult than the transcription of consonants for two reasons. First, accents of English differ more in their use of vowels than in their use of consonants. Second, authorities differ in their views of what constitutes an appropriate description of vowels.

*Examples :

 
C. CONSONANT AND VOWEL CHARTS
 
So far, we have been using the consonant and vowel symbols mainly as ways of reoresenting the contrast that ocur among words in English. But hey can also be thought of in a completely different way.
Thus, [ p ] is an abbreviation for voiceless bilabial stop and [ l ] is equivalent to voiced alveolar lateral approximant. The symbol [ w ] is shown in two places in the consonant chart. The affricate symbols [otSo] and [odZo] are not listed separately
in the table even though they are contrastive sounds in English. Thus, [ i ] is used for a high front vowel, [ u ] for a high back one, [oIo] for a midhigh
front vowel, [ e ] for a raised mid-front vowel, [o”o] for a mid-low, and so on. The sounds [op, b, mo] are all made with
the same lip gesture, and [ot, d, no] and [ok, g, No] with the same tongue gestures.

D. PHONOLOGY

The variants of the phonemes that occur in detailed phonetic transcriptions are known as allophones.
The term broad transcription is often used to designate a transcription that used the simplest possible set of symbols. Conversely, a narrow transcription is one that shows more phonetic detail, either using more specific symbols or by representing some allophonic differences.

On a few occasions, a transcription cannot be said to imply the existence of rules accounting for allophonnes. This is at least theoriticcally possible in the case of a narrow transcription so detailed that it shows all the rule-governed alternations among the sounds. A transcription that show the allophones in tthis way is called a completely systematic phonetic trancription. In practice, it is difficult to make a transcription so narrow that it shows  every detail of the sounds involved.

On some occasions, a transcription may not imply the existence of rules accounting for allophones because, in the circumtances when the transcription was made, nothing was known about the rules. When writing down and unknown language or when transcribing the speech of a child or a patient not seen previously, one does now know what rules will apply. In these circumtances, the symbols indicate only the phonetic value of the sounds. This ind of transcription is called an impressionistic transcription.

SECTION 3

THE CONSONANTS OF
ENGLISH

A. STOP CONSONANTS

B. FRICATIVES

There are 9 fricative sounds in English :

C. AFFRICATES

Affricates can be defined as a plosive followed by a fricative produced at the same place of articulation.
There are 2 affricate sounds in English :

 












D. NASALS

Nasal sounds are pronounced or uttered by escaping the air (partially or completely) through nasal cavity.
There are 3 nasal sounds in English :
 
*Examples :

E. APPROXIMANTS

Approximants is also called semi-vowels. It is phonetically vowels and phonologically consonats. Phonetically means their mechanism of producing sound is the smae as vowels because there is no obstruction in flow of air. But phonologically, they give sounds like consonants. 
There are 3 semi-vowels in English :
1. /w/ Example : wine
2. /r/ Example : read
3.. /j/ Example : young


F. NON-PULMONIC CONSONATS

Wondering about what Non-Pulmonic Consonants are?

At a glance, there are sounds in English produced by starting action of the air from lungs going toward the outside. In the contrary, there are many other languages have sounds which are using added airstream mechanisms. That is called by non-pulmonic sounds.

3 types of non-pulmonic sounds :

       .     Clicks

       .     Implosives

       .     Ejectives

Those three are all the types of consonants, but the have differences in their airstreams source and direction.

Table of basic non-pulmonic consonants :

Clicks	Implosives	Ejectives
Bilabial	Bilabial	Bilabial
Dental	Dental/Alveolar	Dental/Alveolar
Post Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Palato Alveolar	Velar	Alveolar fricative
Alveolar Lateral	Uvular	-

   A.    Clicks

·         Bilabial

Instructions :

Articulator                  : Lower lip

Point of Articulation   : Upper lip

Voice                          : Voiceless

·         Dental

Instructions :

Articulator                  : Tongue tip

Point of Articulation   : Back of the front teeth

Voice                          : Voiceless

·         Post Alveolar

Instructions :

Articulator                  : Tip/Blade of the tongue

Point of Articulation   : Alveolar ridge

Voice                          : Voiceless

·         Palato Alveolar

Instructions :

Articulator                  : Front of the teeth

Point of articulation   : Hard palate

Voice                          : Voiceless

·         Alveolar Lateral

Instructions :

Articulator                  : Tip and side of the tongue

Point of Articulation   : Alveolar ridge and insides of the side teeth

Voice                          : Voiceless

   B.     Implosives

·         Voiced Bilabial

Instructions :

Articulator                  : Lower lip

Point of Articulation   : Upper lip

Voice                          : Voiced

·         Voiced Dental/Alveolar

Instructions :

Articulator                  : Tip of the tongue

Point of Articulation   : Back of the upper front teeth or alveolar ridge

Voice                          : Voiced

·         Voiced Palatal

Instructions :

Articulator                  : Front or middle of the tongue

Point of Articulation   : Hard palate

Voice                          : Voiced

·         Voiced Velar

Instructions :

Articulator                  : Back of the tongue (tongue dorsum)

Point of Articulation   : Velum

Voice                          : Voiced

·         Voiced Uvular

Instructions :

Articulator                  : Back of the tongue (tongue dorsum)

Point of Articulation   : Uvula

Voice                          : Voiced

   C.     Ejectives

·         Bilabial ejective

Instructions :

Articulator                  : Lower lip

Point of Articulation   : Upper lip

Voice                          : Voiceless

·         Dental alveolar ejective

Instructions :

Articulator                  : Tip of the tongue

Point of Articulation   : Back of the upper front teeth or alveolar ridge

Voice                          : Voiceless

·         Velar ejective

Instructions :

Articulator                  : Back of the tongue (tongue dorsum)

Point of Articulation   : Velum

Voice                          : Voiceless

·         Alveolar Fricative ejective

Instructions :

Articulator                  : Tip of the tongue

Point of Articulator    : Alveolar ridge

Voice                          : Voiceless

G. RULES FOR ENGLISH CONSONANT ALLOPHONES

1. Voiceless stops (/ p, t, k /) are aspirated when they are syllable initial.
*Example : pip, test, kick
 
2. Voiced obstruents ( / b, d, g, v, ð, z, ʒ /) are devoiced at the end of an utterance or before a voiceless sound.
*Example : add, improve, etc.
 
3. Voiced stops and fricatives (/ b, d, g, dʒ /) are voiceless when syllable initial or preceded by a voiceless sound.
*Example : a day
 
4. Voiceless stops (/ p, t, k /) are unaspirated after /s/.
*Example : spew, stew, skew
 
5. Voiceless obstruents (/ p, t, k, tʃ, f, θ, s, ʃ /) are longer than the corresponding voiced ones ( / b, d, g, v, ð, z, ʒ /) when at the end of a syllable.
*Example : cap as opposed to cab, and back as opposed to bag.

6. Approximants (/ w, r, j, l /) are partially voiceless when preceded by initial (/ p, t, k /)
*Example : play, twin, cue.
 
7. Stops are unexploded when they occur before another stop.
*Example : apt and rubbed.
 
8. Syllable final (/ p, t, k /) are often accompanied by an overlapping glottal stop gesture.
*Example : Tip (/tɪʔp/)

9. (/ t /) is replaced by a glottal stop when it occurs before an alveolar nasal in the same word.
*Example : Beaten /biʔn/

10. Nasals are syllabic at the end of a word when immediately after an obsturent.
*Example : chasm ['kæzm]

11.(/ l, r /) are syllabic at the end of a word when immediately after a consonant.
*Example : paddle ['pædl]

12.(/ t, d, n /) become voiced alveolar tap when in the middle of two vowels.

13. Alveolar consonants become dentals before dental consonants.

14. Alveolar stops are reduced or omitted when between two consonants e.g. goo(d) night.

15. A homorganic voiceless stop may occur aftera nasal before a voiceless fricative followed by an unstressed vowel in the same word. Insert epenthesis, e.g. stops /p,t,k/, in the middle of words between nasal and fricative （e.g. /sʌm p θɪŋ/, /jʌŋ k stɚ/, /pɹɪn t s/)

16. A consonant is shortened when it is before an identical consonant e.g. goo(d) day

17. Velar stops become more front before more front vowels.

18. (/ l /) is velarized when after a vowel or before a consonant at the end of a word.


H. DIACRITICS 

In phonetic, a diacritic is a symbol added to a letter that alters its sense, function, or pronunciation. It also called a diacritical mark and an accent mark.
Diacritics in English include the following:

Reference:
Ladefoged, P., & Johnson, K. (2014). A course in phonetics.