IPA & Phonology: Consonants, Perception, and Dialect Variations

Why IPA?

Universal, consistent sound representation

Consonant features

Place, manner, voicing

Phoneme

Meaning‑distinguishing category

Allophone

Predictable variant, no meaning change

Aspiration rule

Only in stressed word‑initial position; not after /s/

Manner Groups

Stops → [t d p g k], Nasals → [n m], Fricatives → [f s z]

Sinewave speech

Top‑down processing

Word segmentation

Uses phonotactics, stress, statistics

VOT

Delay between release & voicing

What does it mean to perceive categories?

Even though VOT changes gradually, listeners hear a sharp boundary between /b/ and /p/ rather than a continuum

Phoneme restoration

Brain fills in missing sounds

McGurk effect

Visual cues alter perception

Cot-caught merger

/ɑ/ = /ɔ/

Pin-pen merger

/ɪ/ = /ɛ/ before nasals

Postvocalic r‑deletion

/r/ dropped after vowels

Perceptual dialectology

How people think dialects vary

Preston study

Dialect perception is socially biased