The Sounds of Language

Discriptors of sounds

• Physical properties

  • acoustic details

  • Phonetics

• How sounds are articulated

  • Describes sounds in terms of how they are physiologically produced

  • Phonology

Phoneme

• Smallest unit of language

• all languages have a limited set (not classified simply by singular letters)

• Discovered through minimal pairs

Minimal Pairs

technique to determine/decipher phonemes of a language

• take two words and if you can change the meaning with just one unit it is a phoneme

• ie: kit vs kid /t/ and /d/ are phonemes

Phones

expressions of sounds that varies across dialects but does NOT distinguish meaning

Consonants

produced with some obstruction of the airflow in vocal tracts

• phones are produced w/airflow restriction

• Place of articulation

• Manner of articulation

Place of articulation

• Bilabial

• Dental

• Alveolar

• Palatal

• Velar

• Glottal

Labial

made with lips

• ‘p’ , ‘b’

Dental

consonances produced with the tongue touching the teeth

• th, the

Alveolar

Tongue tip or blade comes in contact with alveolar ridge (bump immediately behind upper incisors)

• te, de, se , ne

Palatal

front of tongue comes in contact with hard palate

• “post-aveolar”

• che

Velar

back of tongue comes in contact with soft palate/velum

• k, gur, me

Glottal

articulation with glottis (less common)

Manner of Articulation

• Stop/Plosive

• Fricative

• Nasal

• Approximant

• Affricate

• semivowels

• liquids

Stops/Plosive

complete closure of oral tract

• simplest way to control airflow

Nasals

complete closure of oral tract, however airflow escapes through mouth and nose similar to soft breathing

Fricatives

do NOT stop the airflow completely, rather creates a friction of escaping air (a sort of airflow disruption)

Affricates

Begins with a complete stop of the airflow but finishes with a fricative airflow control

Liquids

no stops or fricatives

• very common

semivowels

consonances that do not form the core of the syllable however they are pronounced/produced in the same/similar manner as vowels

• type of approximate

Approximate

sounds produced by bringing articulators close together in the vocal tract without causing audible friction

Voicing

• creates a distinction between sounds that use identical physiological mechanisms

• determined through wether or not the vocal cords vibrate when the phoneme is produced

Voiced consonance

vocal cords DO vibrate

voiceless consonance

vocal cords do NOT vibrate

• there is a time delay present between release of stop and onset of voicing

  • “voice onset time” (VOT)

Voiceless unaspirated

have a VOT of almost zero, there is a very minute time delay between

• produces a minimal puff of air is released upon stop

Voiceless aspirated

have longer VOTs,

• puff of air is released as the consonance is being articulated

• ‘h’

Vowels

Phonemes that are produced without any obstruction of airflow/articulatory tract

• defined by their height, backness and roundness

Syllable

Smallest unit of articulation

• must have a peak/nucleus (usually a vowel) and has optional onsets and codas

Onsets

consonants that come before the nucleus/peak

• can consist of elements : pre-marginal, core, satellite

• greedy, will take the most amount of consonances and not leave any for the coda in some situations

• Onsets can only consist of max 3 letters

Codas

Consonants that come after the nucleus/peak

• elements = core, satellite

• can consist of max 4 letters

Rime

= nucleus + coda

Rules of building syllables

1. place nucleus above vowel

2. maximum onset principle

3. all remaining segments go into the coda

Maximum onset principle (MOP)

onsets should get as many consonants as are legally allowed in the language

Poetry/articulated Speech

portrayed through syllables, the choice of stressing syllables can change the meaning of the word

• pattern of syllables make up a poem

Isochrony

• stressed-timed

• syllable-timed

• mora-timed

Stressed-timed

articulated speech

• prioritize timing of stressed syllables

• english

Syllable timed

prioritize a equal amount of time between each syllable

• hindi

mora-timed

syllables have a specific "weight" or duration that influences the language's rhythm, rather than being solely based on a stressed syllable

• length of each syllable is approximately the same

Resyllabification

movement of syllables/elements of syllables to maintain meaning

• a phonological process where consonants are shifted to a different syllable than their original one, often across word boundaries

Phonological rules

established when acquiring language

• english speakers will aspirate some phonemes

  • only with /p/, /t/, and /k/ when they appear at the beginning of a syllable

• discovered patterns can be written as a phonological rule

• phonological rules map between phonemes and phones

• define how the abstract representation of phonemes in our mind translates into articulation of phones (observable)

• Begin with string of phonemes (underlying representation) and produce observable material (what is actually said

• varies in each language

Formalizing rules (general structure of phonological rules)

Under some condition in particular a phoneme is changed into something else

A → B/ X_Y

A becomes B (in the environment) between X and Y

Phonological rule for aspiration in english

• all unvoiced stops will be aspirated when they appear as the onset of a syllable

Intrusive-R

an extra R sound inserted between two words when the first word ends in a vowel and the second word begins with a vowel. This happens in some dialects of English, especially non-rhotic accents where R sounds are not always pronounced