Lesson 2: Phonetics and Phonology
Articulatory Phonetics Consonants Vowels Syllables
Articulatory phonetics is a more widespread approach to the study of speech sounds probably because the sophisticated equipment needed to analyse speech acoustically was not available until the 1940’s. Unlike auditory and acoustic phonetics, the only "machine" necessary to study the sounds is the human machine as Articulatory phonetics studies how the human vocal tract or speech mechanism produces the sounds.
The sounds are classified by voicing, place of articulation, and manner of articulation. In studying articulation, the phonetician is attempting to document how we produce speech sounds. That is, articulatory phoneticians are interested in how the different structures of the vocal tract, called the articulators (tongue, lips, jaw, palate, teeth etc), interact to create the specific sounds. In order to understand how sounds are made, experimental procedures are often followed. They can measure how the tongue makes contact with the roof of the mouth in normal speech production by using a technique called Electropalatography an instrumental technique for determining tongue/palate contact during speech. The technique utilises an artificial palate with 62 silver electrodes embedded in its tongue-facing surface.
Each palate is made to fit the subject and normally requires a simple dental impression and subsequent fitting. Oral communication is based on sound waves produced by the human body. The initial moment of this rather complex process is the expelling of the air from our lungs. The lungs can therefore be considered the very place where speech production originates. The air stream follows a road that is called the vocal tract. The lungs are a pair of organs, situated inside the thoracic cavity called the chest. Variations are due to different positions of the body, to the quality, quantity and intensity (loudness) of the sounds we articulate Larynx.
The larynx (or voice box) is made mostly of cartilage and sits at the top of the trachea. The larynx provides a rigid framework within which two bands of muscle, the vocal folds (in Italian these are called ‘corde vocali’) are stretched across the top of the airway to the lungs. Tongue: The tongue plays a decisive role in forming the constrictions for many consonants and in distinguishing vowels.
The tongue is the most mobile and flexible structure in the vocal tract, and differences in vowel quality are determined largely by shapes the tongue assumes without significantly constricting the vocal tract. Pharynx: The pharynx is the open space at the back of the throat that runs from the back of the nasal cavity down to the larynx. Velum: The velum is the back part of the soft palate and is a moveable structure, when pressed up and back it closes the airway from the mouth into the nasal cavity. Epiglottis: The epiglottis is the small structure that projects backward into the airway just above the larynx and vocal folds.
A consonant, in terms of sound production, is a sound which is obstructed in some way by a tongue or lip contact as in /k/ keep or /b/ beep, as opposed to the unobstructed sound of a vowel. In terms of the sound system, the consonant is a sound that typically occurs at the beginning or the end of the syllable rather than in the middle of it, thus contrasting with vowels. The consonant sounds are classified by voicing, place of articulation, and manner of articulation. Voicing: As the airstream comes to or from the lungs, it passes through the opening between the glottis. If the vocal cords are open, the air passes through without obstruction and the sounds that are made in this way, are described as voiceless. If the vocal cords are closed, then the air passing through the glottis causes them to vibrate producing voiced sounds. Place of Articulation: here we have to do with the position of the tongue and the lips.
The classifications are: labials, where ‘sounds are made by using the lips’ include bi-labials where the two are pressed together (for instance with /m/, /b/) and labio-dentals where the two lips are in the top teeth touching the bottom lip (/v/, /f/); dentals where ‘the tongue touches the teeth’, include interdentals where the tip of the tongue is inserted between the upper and the lower teeth (see the example ‘teeth’); coronals, where ‘the tongue touches the roof of the mouth’ include alveolars in which the tip of the tongue touches the ridge behind the top teeth. (/d/, /s/) and palatals where the tongue presses up against the hard part of the roof of the mouth as in ‘people’; or alveopalatals in which the tongue is pressed against both the alveolar ridge and the hard palate, such as in ‘chair'; velars where the tongue is pressed against the soft part of the roof of the mouth (for example /g/, /k/); glottals in which sounds are made in the opening between the vocal cords as in ‘button’.
Another descriptor for the classification of the consonant sounds is the ‘Manner of Articulation’, or to be more precise the way the airstream is affected as it travels through the vocal tract: stops are formed the moment in which a total obstruction of the airflow exists for a brief moment, that is, the mouth is closed completely; fricatives in which the mouth is nearly closed in such a way that the air flows turbulently through the channel (/f/ /v/); affricates a stop is followed immediately by a fricative (in ‘chair’ and ‘judge’ begin with fricatives). Approximants: the mouth is fairly open and they include: liquid /r/ /l/ in which there exists some obstructions but the air flows more freely than in fricatives. The different liquids are: ‘lateral /l/)’, ‘retroflex’, ‘trill [x] o [R] found, for instance, in the Italian word rosa’, flap or tap as in the word 'butter'; glides or semivowels with little or no obstruction but the air is present in the production of these sound which include the initial sounds of words such as you /j/ and wait; nasals are sounds that are made by forcing the air through the nasal cavity instead of the oral cavity /m/, /n/.
In terms of sound production, a vowel is a single speech sound produced by vibrating the vocal cords and not obstructing the mouth in any way, as in the /æ/ of ‘bank’, shaped by the position of the lips into rounded and unrounded sounds in English /i:/ bee and /u:/ boo. In terms of sound structure, a vowel occurs typically as the core of the syllable rather than at the beginning or the end, thus contrasting with consonant. The sound vowels cannot be described in the same way as consonants. We can talk about voicing as all vowels are voiced, but it is not possible to refer to the manner of articulation: the air flow without obstruction during the vowel production. Vowels are determined by changes in position of lips, tongue and palate, and these changes can be very difficult to detect. The vowel chart attempts to map the position of the tongue and jaw in articulating vowels. In English vowels can also glide into one another to form diphthongs and even triphthongs. Moreover, they are far more difficult to transcribe than consonants and are also an extremely important area of English, phonology as they make up the greatest difference between English varieties.
A diphthong is a type of vowel produced by moving the tongue as it is produced from one position towards another, for example in English /iə/fear and /ləv/law. It may correspond to one or two written letters. The syllable is a structural unit and within this structure we are able to identify a sequence of consonants C and vowels V. Not only in Grammar we can parse a grammatical structure but also in phonology we can parse syllabic structure.Closed syllables have at least one consonant following the vowel: the most common closed syllable is the CVC syllable. Open syllables are syllables that end in a vowel: the most common open syllable is the CV syllable. There are a large number of monosyllabic words in English: this means that they have a single vowel. Even in Italian there are some monosyllabic words. English: V: “I” /æ/; CV: “me” /mi:/; CCCV: “spray”/spræe/; CVCCCC: “sixths”/sikss/; CCCVC: “spring”/sprinŋ/. Italian: CV: “tu”/tu*/; CV: “no”/n/; CVC: “con”/kon/. In Italian there are, however, very few monosyllabic words that end with a consonant. On the other hand by examining the legal consonant+vowel sequences in English monosyllabic words we can get a good idea of what types of syllable structure are legal in English language.
