Linguistics Chapter 2 - Phonetics

Phonetics

The scientific study of speech sounds.

Phonetics three sub-fields

1. Articulatory Phonetics

2. Acoustic Phonetics

3. Perceptual/Auditory Phonetics

Articulatory Phonetics

How speech sounds are produced (by the tongue, lips, vocal folds, etc.)

Acoustic Phonetics

How speech sounds are transmitted from producer to perceived

Perceptual/Auditory Phonetics

How listeners understand which speech sounds are being produced

Phonetic Transcription

The primary tool of phonetic science. The basic idea:

• Represent speech as a sequence of segments

• i.e. with an alphabet

• Segments = individual consonants and vowels

What did George Bernard Shaw think about the English language?

It is hard to pronounce

IPA

• Stands for International Phonetic Alphabet

• Presided over by the International Phonetic Association

• Created in 1886

• Still active and evolving today

IPA Principles

1. As many Roman symbols as possible

2. International usage

3. One symbol = one sound

Minimal Pairs

A minimal pair consists of:

• Two words that have different meanings

• Which differ from each other in only one sound.

Some minimal pairs in English:

• pit vs. bit • beet vs. bead • boat vs. boot • carburetor vs. garburator

Minimal Set

A series of minimal pairs is called a minimal set (e.g. tea, bee, key, sea, fee)

Phone

Any sound that is used in speech (may or may not be contrastive)

Phoneme

A contrastive sound in a language that may be used to distinguish between words in minimal pairs.

Allophone

• A phonetic variant of a phoneme

• Different allophonic often occur in specific contexts

• How we say it

Aspirated allophone

[t^h]

Unaspirated allophone

[t]

Flap allophone

[r]

Glottal stop allophone

[ʔ]

Unreleased allophone

[t ̚]

Broad Transcription

• Represents only contrastive sounds (phonemes)

• Enclosed in slashes / /

• Generally uses only alphabetic symbols

Narrow Transcription

• Represents phones

• Captures as much phonetic detail as possible

• Enclosed in brackets: [ ]

• Can require a use of diacritics ( h ̚ )

[p]

‘Pot’

[b]

‘Bought’

[t]

‘Take’

[d]

‘Dot’

[k]

‘Kit’

[g]

‘Got’

[f]

‘Fought’

[v]

‘Vote’

[s]

‘Sot’

[z]

‘Zap’

[m]

‘Man’

[n]

‘Not’

[l]

‘Lot’

[w]

‘Walk’

[h]

‘Hot’

[j]

‘You’

[ θ ]

‘thank’

[ð]

‘The’

[ ʃ ]

‘Shot’

[ʒ]

‘Vision’

[ ŋ]

‘Ring’

[ɹ]

‘Rot’

[tʃ]

‘Chop’

[dʒ]

‘Jot’

[i]

‘Heed’

[a]

‘Father’

[u]

‘Who’

[ej]

‘Hayed’

[ow]

‘bode’

[aj]

‘Bide’

[aw]

‘Bowed’

[oj]

‘Boy’

[ɪ]

‘Bid’

[ɛ]

‘Bed’

[æ]

‘Bad’

[ʌ]

‘Bud’

[ʊ]

‘Hood’

[ə]

‘About’

Which alphabetic symbols do not represent any English sound in the IPA phonetic alphabet?

c, q, r, x, y