Week 3 Required Reading

183-202

  • When you are knowledgeable of a language you are aware of the sounds that are contained in that language and how to use them to form different structures in the form of words

  • The Study of speech sounds is PHONETICS

    In order to describe sounds we must know what the sound is and how it’s different from the rest

  • When you know the language you know how to break apart the different sounds in a word

  • We don’t really pause between words sometimes

    • When you know a language you can segment sentences into words and words into sounds

  • There are some misconceptions according to where there are boundaries to words which could led to misinterpretations to what we hear

  • There are some person differences (age, gender, pitch) that will ultimately not be linguistically significnat an not impede the ability for comprehension

Our linguistic knowledge allows us to ignore nonlinguistics differences

Languages are different in the inventory of speech sounds that words are built from

  • Acoustic Phonetics: Concerned with the physical properties of sounds

  • Auditory Phonetics: Concerned with how listeners perceive sounds

  • Articulatory Phonetics: Study of how the vocal tract produces sounds in a language

  • The phonetic alphabet created a one sound to correspond a symbol, which is the only way to scientifically study human languages

  • The IPA uses letters and invented symbols to represent ALL languages

The Vocal Tract:

  • Opening between vocal cords -> glottis which is in the larynx

  • The tubular part above the larynx is the pharynx

  • The mouth is referred to as the oral cavity

  • The lips and the tongue

Place of Articulation

Bilabials: p, b, and m sounds that we create when we put our lips together

Labiodentals: the usage of our lips to form f and v sounds through the connection of the bottom lip and the upper teeth

Interdentals: sounds “th” produced through the insertion of the tip of the tongue between the teeth

Alveolar: sounds t,d,n,s,z,l,r pronounded through having the tongue raised to the alveolar ridge (space behind the front teeth)

Palatals: raising the front part of the tongue to the palate

Velars: think of producing k,g, or n sounds through raising the back of the tongue to the soft palate

Uvulars: r,q,g sounds produced by raisign the back of the tongue to the uvula

glottals: think of producing the h sound with the flow of air through an open glottis

Glottal Stop: closed vocal cors