SDLC 105 Short Test #1 Articulatory Phonetics

Phone

any individual speech sound that is physically produced. 

Primary Manner

describes how much the airflow is obstructed when producing a consonant. There are four degrees of obstruction you should know:

Primary Manner	Airflow	Examples
Stop	Complete closure	[p], [b], [t], [d], [k], [g]
Fricative	Narrow opening → friction	[f], [v], [s], [z], [ʃ]
Approximant	Very little obstruction, no friction	[w], [ɹ], [j]
Nasal	Air blocked orally, escapes through nose	[m], [n], [ŋ]

Secondary Manner

an additional feature of how a sound is produced, especially whether it is voiced or voiceless.

(If vocal cords are moving=voiced)

Point of Articulation

where the obstruction happens in the vocal tract. The major ones you should know:

Point	Where?	Examples
Bilabial	Both lips	[p], [b], [m]
Labiodental	Lip + teeth	[f], [v]
Interdental	Between teeth	[θ], [ð]
Alveolar	Alveolar ridge	[t], [d], [s], [z], [n], [l]
Post-alveolar	Just behind alveolar ridge	[ʃ], [ʒ], [tʃ], [dʒ]
Velar	Back of tongue + soft palate	[k], [g], [ŋ]
Glottal	Vocal folds/glottis	[h]

Lips → Teeth → Alveolar ridge → Behind ridge → Velum → Glottis

Vowel

speech sound produced with relatively unobstructed airflow through the vocal tract. Classify them by:

Height → Front/Back

Consonant

a speech sound produced with some degree of obstruction of airflow. Classified using: Secondary Manner (Voiced or Voiceless) → Point of Articulation → Primary manner

Affricate

combines a stop and a fricative into one sound ~ stop that releases into a fricative. [tʃ] → church and [dʒ] → judge

Monophthong (One)

a vowel with one relatively stable vowel quality.

• [i] as in beet

• [ɪ] as in bit

• [æ] as in bat

• [u] as in boot

Diphthong (Two)

a vowel sound that moves from one vowel position toward another within the same syllable. 

• [aɪ] → buy

• [aʊ] → cow

• [ɔɪ] → boy

• [eɪ] → say

• [oʊ] → go

Phonetic Inventory

the set of speech sounds used by a particular language.

Explain at least one difference between the phonetic inventory of GAE and Korean. How would you qualify the dissimilarity vis-a-vis the concepts of primary manner, secondary manner, and point of articulation.

GAE contains the [f] sound, a voiceless labiodental fricative, while Korean does not have [f] as a native phoneme. Therefore, the two languages differ in their phonetic inventories in both point of articulation and the availability of this particular fricative.

[f] = voiceless + labiodental + fricative

English has [f], but Korean does not. The difference involves point of articulation (labiodental) and primary manner (fricative).