Li1 phonetics

How can you describe a vowel?

Height, backness, rounding

Describe /t/

Voiceless alveolar plosive

Describe /d/

Voiced alveolar plosive

Describe /k/

Voiceless velar plosive

Describe /g/

Voiced velar plosive

Describe /ŋ/

Voiced velar nasal

Describe /n/

Voiced alveolar nasal

Describe /m/

Voiced bilabial nasal

Describe /f/

Voiceless labiodental fricative

Describe /v/

Voiced labiodental fricative

Describe /ð/

Voiced dental fricative

Describe /θ/

Voiceless dental fricative

Describe /s/

Voiceless alveolar fricative

Describe /z/

Voiced alveolar fricative

Describe /ʃ/

Voiceless post-alveolar fricative

Describe /ʒ/

Voiced post-alveolar fricative

Describe /h/

Voiceless glottal fricative

Describe /ʤ/

Voiced post-alveolar affricate

Describe /ʧ/

Voiceless post-alveolar affricate

Describe /l/

Voiced alveolar lateral approximant

Describe /r/

Voiced alveolar approximant

What does F1 represent?

Vowel height. The lower the vowel, the higher the frequency

What does F2 represent?

Vowel backness. The fronter the vowel, the higher the frequency

What does this diacritic represent: x̥?

Voiceless

What does this diacritic represent: x̬?

Voiced

What does this diacritic represent: x^h ?

Aspirated

What does this diacritic represent: x^w?

Labaliased

What does this diacritic represent: x̰?

Creaky voiced

What does this diacritic represent: x̤?

Breathy voiced

What does this diacritic represent: x^j?

Palatalised

What does this diacritic represent: x̃?

Nasalised

What does this diacritic represent: t̪?

Dental

What does this diacritic represent: tˠ?

Velarised

What does this diacritic represent: d̚?

No audible release

What does this diacritic represent: ɫ?

Velarised/pharyngealised (dark l)

What does this diacritic represent: e̝?

Raised

What does this diacritic represent: tˤ?

Pharyngealised

What does this diacritic represent: dⁿ?

Nasal release

What does this diacritic represent: dˡ?

Lateral release

What does this diacritic represent: e̞?

Lowered

What does this diacritic represent: u̟?

Advanced

What does this diacritic represent: e̠?

Retracted

What does this diacritic represent: ɔ̹"?

More rounded

What does this diacritic represent: ɔ̜?

Less rounded

What does this diacritic represent: ë?

Centralised

What does this diacritic represent: n̩?

Syllabic

What does this diacritic represent: e̯?

Non-syllabic

Speech signal

1) Speaker wants to transfer information to listener, so decides what to say, puts it in linguistic form.
2) Brain activity —> instructions, nerve impulses to muscles activating vocal organs.
3) Movement of vocal organs —> pressure changes to form sound wave, sound wave travel through air to listener.
4) Pressure changes at listener’s ear activates hearing mechanism —> produce nerve impulses along acoustic nerve to listener’s brain, brain activity leads to recognition of speaker’s message

Communicative Intent

Cognitive, affective, self presentational, social, regulatory

Linguisitc Mechanism

Lexicon and morphology, syntax, phonology and prosody, tone of voice

Indexical Factors

Social Background, age, sex, psychological state, health, physique

How do size and proportions of speech organs determine indexical info?

Vocal tract - length, particularly proportions of mouth and pharynx, determines range of resonant frequencies
Vocal folds - length and mass determines a speaker’s pitch range

Pulmonic airstream mechanism

Movement of air from the lungs, producing nearly all speech sounds

Glottalic airstream mechanism

Movement of body of air in pharynx by the action of the glottis. 2 closures, 1 at glottis, 1 higher up. If air squeezed out, ejectives. If air drawn in, implosives

Velaric airstream mechanism

Movement of body of air in the mouth in front of a velaric closure, ingressive direction. Used for producing clicks

Voiced sounds

Vocal forms held close together and made to vibrate due to pressure of airflow from the lungs

Voiceless sounds

Vocal folds pulled apart, with little to no airflow

Cardinal Vowels

Reflect maximal values of high and frontness-backness found in languages (primary CVs = back+rounded tendency, secondary CVs = reverse lip position)

Secondary articulations for vowels

Nasalisation, rhoticisation, Advanced/retracted tongue root

What does the syllable split up into?

Onset, Rhyme (nucleus and coda)

Intonation

Prosodic patterns with a domain larger than the syllable or word, interplay with pitch, loudness, length and voice quality

Chunking

Part of intonation, in which an utterance is divided into intonational phrases

Accenting

Part of intonation, in which some words are highlighted as important

Tone

Part of intonation, in which there is a specific selected pattern of pitch targets, aligned with a accented syllable or boundary

Intonational Phrase (IP)

A chunk with a complete intonation pattern, with at least one accent

Nucleur accent

The last accent in an IP

Word accent

The degree of relative prominence of a syllable in relation to surrounding syllables

Stress-accent languages

Languages which use all prosodic parameters simultaneously (English, Dutch, Russian etc.)

Pitch-accent languages

Languages which use a limited set of pitch patterns to convey lexical distinctions (Japanese, Norwegian, Swedish etc.). Words are distinguished by fixed pitch patterns

Distinction between stress and accent

Stress is the phonological, abstract potential of a syllable to carry accent, whilst accent is the actual realisation

Fixed stress languages

Languages where there is a predictable location of stress

Free stress languages

Languages where patterns are not predictable, and often contrastive

Accent/stress shift

Accent clash resolution, reflecting the preference of languages to avoid adjacent accents

Minimal pair

A pair of words that differ y one sound and mean different things

What determines allophones?

Structural position (in the syllable/word boundary), environment, sociolinguistic effects

How can you describe a consonant?

Place of articulation, manner of articulation, voicing

Intrusion

When a sound is inserted between two words, often to make pronunciation easier: can be /r/ (‘law and’), /w/ (‘go on’), /j/ (‘I am)

Elission

When a phoneme is not articulated in a word, often due to speed of speech (‘frienship’)

Assimilation

When a neighbouring sound influences the way that a phoneme is pronounced. Can be:
1) Progressive - previous sound influences the next
2) Regressive - following sound influences the previous one
3) Reciprocal - sounds mutually influence each other

Glottalisation

/t/ sound is replaced with a glottal stop, [ʔ]

Replacement with weak form

When a sound is replaced with an unstressed schwa (to, the, for, a)

Syncope

The loss of an unstressed vowel from the middle of a word (‘different’)