Speech Science and Clinical Phonetics: Consonants, Suprasegmentals, and Transcription

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering consonant classification (manner, place, voicing), voice onset time, prosody, suprasegmentals, narrow transcription diacritics, and clinical speech sampling techniques.

Manner of Articulation

The dimension of consonant production describing how a sound is formed, specifically referring to the degree and type of constriction or closure within the vocal tract.

Stops

Consonants formed by a complete closure of the vocal tract and a closed velopharynx, causing airflow to cease temporarily and air pressure to build up behind the closure before releasing with a burst of noise.

Fricatives

Consonants produced by forming a narrow channel between articulators through which air escapes with a continuous friction noise, produced with a closed velopharynx.

Nasals

Consonants produced with a closed oral cavity and an open velopharyngeal (VP) port, directing vocal fold sound energy to radiate through the nasal cavity.

Liquids

Consonants in which voicing energy passes through an oral passage that is constricted only somewhat more than for vowels but wider than for stops, fricatives, and nasals; categorized into lateral (/l/) and rhotic (/r/).

Glides

Consonants characterized by a vocal tract constriction narrower than for vowels but wider than for stops and fricatives, marked by a gradual gliding motion toward a more open configuration for the following vowel.

Affricates

Consonant sounds produced as a combination of a complete stop closure followed immediately by a fricative segment, made with complete closure of the velopharynx.

Bilabials

Consonants produced using both lips; sounds like /w/ and /ʍ/ are produced with two places of articulation: bilabial and a high-back tongue position.

Lingua-dentals (Interdentals)

Consonants produced by protruding the tongue tip slightly between the front teeth so that a narrow constriction is formed between the tongue and the cutting edge of the teeth.

Lingua-velars

Consonants formed when the tongue is elevated until it touches the velum (soft palate).

Cognate Pairs

Pairs of consonant sounds that share the identical place and manner of articulation but differ in their voicing feature (e.g., /p/ and /b/, /s/ and /z/).

Obstruents

Speech sounds produced by restricting or blocking airflow in the vocal tract, encompassing stops, fricatives, and affricates.

Sonorants

Speech sounds produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract, encompassing nasals, liquids, and glides.

Lingua-alveolar Flap (Tap)

A modified stop sound and frequent allophone of /t/ and /d/ in intervocalic position ([ɾ]), produced by a rapid stroking or flapping motion of the tongue tip contacting the alveolar ridge very briefly.

Voice Onset Time (VOT)

The time difference between the release of a stop consonant closure and the onset of vocal fold vibration for the following vowel.

Voiced Stop Perception (VOT Criteria)

The acoustic timing condition where an initial stop is heard as voiced because voicing precedes articulatory release, begins simultaneously, or begins within $25\,\text{milliseconds}$ of release.

Voiceless Stop Perception (VOT Criteria)

The acoustic timing condition where an initial stop is heard as voiceless because voicing begins significantly later—usually more than $50\,\text{milliseconds}$—after articulatory release.

Aspiration

A friction noise similar to /h/ generated as air passes through partly adducted vocal folds and upper cavities following the release of voiceless stops (unless preceded by /s/ in the same syllable).

Suprasegmentals

Characteristics and variations in pitch, loudness, and timing that extend beyond individual consonant and vowel segments, comprising prosody and paralinguistics.

Prosody

The linguistic, potentially grammar-governed suprasegmental features of speech, including intonation, stress, and timing (tempo).

Intonation

The pattern or melody of pitch changes across an utterance, including pitch declination and sentence declination.

Lexical Stress

The degree of prominence or emphasis associated with a particular syllable or word, characterized acoustically by greater intensity, longer duration, and elevated pitch.

Paralinguistics

Non-grammatical, nonverbal characteristics of speech—including vocal cues (loudness, voice quality) and non-auditory cues (facial expressions, body language)—that communicate emotion and speaking style.

Motherese (Infant Directed Speech)

A style of speech used by adults when addressing infants, characterized by higher pitch, exaggerated intonation, and increased repetition of words or units.

Clear Speech

A speaking style utilized in difficult communication environments (such as a loud restaurant), marked by greater pitch variation, a slowed rate, and expanded articulatory movements for vowels and consonants.

Coarticulation

The overlapping and mutual articulatory influence of neighboring speech sounds in connected speech, adapting sounds to their phonetic environments to make production faster and easier.

Narrow Transcription

A detailed transcription system that documents allophonic variations and misarticulations by applying diacritic marks to phonetic symbols enclosed in brackets ([ ]).

Onglide Symbols

Diacritic marks positioned at the upper left of the main phonetic symbol to represent a brief, fragmentary sound preceding the primary segment.

Offglide Symbols

Diacritic marks positioned at the upper right of the main phonetic symbol to indicate a brief, fragmentary sound occurring immediately after the primary segment.

Juncture Symbols

Diacritic marks placed to the right of the main symbol that record variations in temporal pattern and intonation, functioning as 'oral punctuation' (such as falling or rising terminal junctures).

Stress Marking by Number

A numerical system proposed by Shriberg & Kent where numbers are placed directly above the syllable nucleus: 1 for primary stress, 2 for secondary stress, and 3 for tertiary stress.

Spondee

A two-syllable word produced with equal primary stress on both syllables (e.g., baseball, hillside, sunshine).

Syllabic Consonant

A special kind of reduced syllable formed when a consonant—typically /m/, /n/, or /l/—serves the nucleus function ordinarily provided by a vowel or diphthong.

Two-way Scoring

A clinical scoring method that categorizes a speaker's speech sound production dichotomously as either correct or incorrect.

Five-way Scoring (SODA)

A clinical speech evaluation system that classifies productions into correct or four specific error categories: substitution, omission, distortion, and addition.

Response Complexity

A clinical task factor defined by the number of transcription responses scored or required per linguistic unit.