Session 1: Basics of English phonetics

English B level course: Phonetics spring 2015

Larisa O.-Gustafsson

Speech sounds and letters of the Present-day English language

43 (39) speech sounds (phonemes)

26 letters of the English alphabet

As a result: inconsistency in spelling, a special need for transcription

signs and pronunciation dictionaries for language learners

e.g. bough – cough – enough – though – through

The digraph ou represents 5 different speech sounds (phonemes)

Phonetics and phonologystudy the sound systems of languages … . While

phonetics studies ALL possible sounds that the

human vocal apparatus can make, phonology

studies only those contrasts in sound which

make differences in meaning within language.

Examples of phonemic contrasts:thin / tin /sin, think /sink = minimal pairs (word pairs that differ only in one phoneme)

Types of phonetic studies

Articulatory phonetics = the study of how speech sounds are made (articulated)

Acoustic phonetics = the study of the physical

properties of speech as sound waves

Auditory phonetics = the study of the perception of speech sounds

Phoneme – Phone – Allophone: the case of /l/

Let a million people have milk

/l/ is articulated in different ways in these

words, but all these versions belong

together in ONE English phoneme. They are

allophones (dark and clear, or light /l/) of

that phoneme.

Phoneme – Phone – Allophone

Phoneme = a basic unit of which words are composed. It functions contrastively and is an abstract unit, a sound-type ”in the mind”

Phones are all the different versions of a phoneme produced in actual speech

Allophones are a set of phones, all of which are versions of a single phoneme

Classification of phonemesThe articulatory classification

Consonants are articulated via obstruction in vocal tract. Tongue and

other parts of mouth constrict shape of oral cavity through which air is passing.

Vowels are produced by a relatively free flow of air. Tongue influances shape

through which air passes, which results in different vowel sounds. Vowels tend to

be more unstable and variable, and change more rapidly over time.

Classification of consonants: 1

Position of vocal cords cords drawn together: voiced (bill, that, van,

den, business) cords lie open: voiceless (pill, math, fan, ten,

business)

Place of articulation lips: bilabial (bill/pill) teeth: dental (that/math) lips & teeth: labio-dental (van/fan) teethridge: alveolar (den/ten, not, business)

Consonant classification: 2

Manner of articulation = describes how the tongue, jaw, and other organs of speech are involved in a sound make contact

stops or plosives: oral (pen) and nasal (pen)fricatives or sibilants (van, fan)affricates (nature, grudge)liguids (red /non-rotic/, led) glides or semi-vowels (wait, yellow)rotics (Am right)

Three parameters of consonant classification: VPM

V (voice) – P (place) – M (manner)

/p/ voiceless bilabial plosive/l/ voiced alveolar lateral/m/ voiced bilabial nasal/f/ voiceless labio-dental fricative

Grimm’s Law or the First Germanic Sound Shift

Aspirated voiced stops Voiced stops Voiceless stops Voiceless fricatives

bh b p fdh d t Ɵgh g k h

Lat. ped- Eng. footLat. tres Eng. threeLat. cord- Eng- heartLat. dec- Eng. tenLat. genus Eng. kin

Vowel classification

front vowels: key, bid, said, bad

central vowels: above, blood

back vowels: move, book, fall, swan

Diphthongs = a combination of two vowel sounds in which the vocal cords move form one position to another: e.g. tie, toy, town

Speech sounds are modified to simplify the articulation, usu in untressed syllables, rapid tempo, and informal style

Assimilation = adjustment to surrounding sounds won’t come, down by law, Great Britain

Elision = the use of schwa or reduction of sounds in unstressed syllables natural, differ, camera listen, answer (historical elision)

Speech sounds in connected speech: coarticulation effects

Front Mutation (i-umlaut)

Regressive distant assimilation = a

change of a back vowel to the associated front vowel or

or a front vowel becomes closer to /j/ when the following

syllable contains /i/, /iː/, or /j/

Proto-Germanic *fot- *fot-izGerman Fuss, FüsseSwedish fot, fötterEnglish foot, feet