Today What is Phonetics? Decoding the speech stream Principles of phonetic

transcription IPA

Readings: 3.1-3.2

Phonetics The scientific study of human speech

sounds How they are produced (articulatory) How they are perceived (auditory) Their physical properties (acoustic)

X-ray movie “Why did Ken set the soggy net

…on top of his deck?”

http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/course/chapter1.1/chapter1.1.htm

Decoding the speech stream The speech signal is a continuous stream

of sound No ‘spaces’ between words in speech

Decoding the speech stream

How many words in the following sentence?

Chicken Little parsed as

saying:

“The sky is falling”

(untrue)...

...rather than his actual warning:

“This guy is falling.” (true)

Decoding the speech stream

How many sounds in the following words?

‘leaf’ ‘feel’

Decoding the speech stream‘leaf’ [lif] vs. ‘feel’ [fil] forwards

‘feel’ [fil] vs. ‘leaf’ [lif] backwards

‘lull’ vs. ‘llul’ backwards

Decoding the speech stream Sounds in a string are continuous, yet we

perceive them as discrete, separate sounds

Goals for Phonetics section: Be able to identify human speech sounds Learn symbols used for transcribing

speech sounds Describe and classify sounds according

to articulatory properties

Phonetic transcription The most widely used tool in phonetics is transcription

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

A standardized set of symbols for transcribing all possible human speech sounds

One-to-one correspondence between symbol and sound

We will use “symbol” = IPA

“letter” = spelling (orthography)

Interactive IPA chart can be found at: http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/course/chapter1/chapter1.html

Why use the IPA? Some languages have no writing system There is no one-to-one correspondence

between letters and sounds: Same letter — different sounds

dad, father, about, many Same sound — different letters

believe, people, amoeba, tree Several letters used for one sound

shoot, nation, chord, chip

Why use the IPA? One letter used for several sounds

box, use Some letters have no sound

gnaw, sword, debt, damn, bomb

[baks] [juz]

[nç]...[bam]

IPA preview Some symbols will look and sound familiar:

[b n w] Some will look familiar, but sound strange:

[x q] Some will sound familiar, but look strange:

[S T N] Some will look and sound unfamiliar:

[/ µ ß]

IPA consonants[p] spit, tip, appear[b] ball, globe, amble[t] stack, pat, stuffed, pterodactyl[d] dip, card, drop, loved[k] skit, joker, attic, exceed[g] guard, bag, longer[/] uh-oh (the “catch” in your throat preceding both syllables), mitten[f] foot, laugh, philosophy, coffee[v] vest, dove, gravel[T] through, bath, thistle, ether, teeth[D] the, their, mother, either, teethe

Hints:

-Pay attention to how you SAY it; not how it’s spelled.

-check your pronunciation against a native speaker’s.

[s] soap, psychology, nice[z] zip, roads, kisses, xerox, design[S] shy, mission, nation, glacial, sure[Z] measure, vision, azure, casualty[h] who, hat, reheat[tS] choke, match, church[dZ] judge, george, jelly, region, residual[m] moose, lamb, smack[n] nap, snow, can, know[N] lung, thing, think, finger, singer, ankle

[l] leaf, feel, mild, sleep[r]* reef, fear, prune, carry[R] writer, rider, latter, ladder,

pretty[w] with, swim, mowing, queen, twin[j] you, beautiful, feud, use, yell

* In the IPA, [r] is actually a trill like in Spanish * In the IPA, [r] is actually a trill like in Spanish “pe“perrrro”. The IPA symbol for American ‘r’ is o”. The IPA symbol for American ‘r’ is [[®®]], , but you can use either symbol since the text but you can use either symbol since the text uses [r] for American ‘r’.uses [r] for American ‘r’.