Active and passive articulators
Active and passive articulators are crucial in speech production as they determine how sounds are formed. Active articulators (like the tongue and lips) move to create constrictions in the vocal tract, while passive articulators (like the teeth and palate) remain relatively stationary, providing surfaces for the active articulators to interact with. Understanding these roles helps in analyzing and producing speech sounds accurately.
Active and passive articulators modify the air stream
into speech sounds. They help to articulate the sounds of a language.
Let’s take the role of active and passive articulators during
the articulation of English speech sounds.
We use the lung air that we breathe out during the articulation
of all English speech sounds. The organs of speech modify the lung air into
speech sounds. These organs that help to modify the air into speech sounds are
called articulators.
These organs of speech are divided into two parts, active
articulators and passive articulators.
The organ of speech is called active articulator because it
moves towards the passive organ of speech during the articulation of a sound.
The organ of speech that is not movable during the articulation of a sound is
called passive articulator.
All the parts of the roof of the mouth are labelled as passive
organs of speech. The roof of the mouth has three parts (1) teeth or alveolar
ridge (2) hard palate (3) soft palate. Though soft-palate is movable and it
determines whether the sound is oral or nasal, but it is termed as passive
articulator because it is the back of the tongue that is raised toward it.
The lower part of the mouth is movable. Lower lip and tongue are
movable. Tongue is highly flexible; all its parts are called active
articulators. The first part of the tongue is called tip, the part
opposite the teeth-ridge is called blade, the part opposite the
hard palate is called front, and the part opposite the soft-palate
is called back of the tongue.
The classification of all consonant sounds is done on the basis
of (1) Place of articulation (we have to know the active organ of speech and
passive organ of speech) (2) Manner of Articulation (we have to know how the
active articulator comes against the passive articulator to articulate the
sound).
Let’s take the consonant sound /t/. It is classified
as alveolar because blade is the active
articulator that moves toward the alveolar-ridge which is a
passive articulator. That’s why it is called alveolar sound.
All vowel sounds are classified according to the part of the
tongue (active articulator) raised toward its opposite part (passive
articulator). This is how vowels are classified as front, back and central vowels.
Let’s take the vowel sound /i:/. It is classified
as front vowel because front of the tongue (active
articulator) comes against the hard-palate (passive articulator).
Active and passive articulators play a
very important role to articulate speech sounds of a language.
Articulatory Phonetics
The production of
speech involves 3 processes:
Initiation: Setting air
in motion through the vocal tract.
Phonation: The modification
of airflow as it passes through the larynx (related to voicing).
Articulation: The shaping
of airflow to generate particular sound types (related to manner)
Articulatory
phonetics refers to the “aspects of phonetics which looks at how the sounds of
speech are made with the organs of the vocal tract” Ogden (2009:173).
Articulatory
phonetics can be seen as divided up into three areas to describe consonants.
These are voice, place and manner respectively. Each of these will now be
discussed separately, although all three areas combine together in the
production of speech.
1) Voice
In English we have
both voiced and voiceless sounds. A sound
fits into one of these categories according to how the vocal folds behave when
a speech sound is produced.
Voiced: Voiced sounds are
sounds that involve vocal fold vibrations when they are produced. Examples of
voiced sounds are /b,d,v,m/.
If you place two
fingers on either side of the front of your neck, just below your jawbone, and
produce a sound, you should be able to feel a vibrating sensation. This tells
you that a sound is voiced.
Voiceless: Voiceless
sounds are sounds that are produced with no vocal fold vibration. Examples of
voiceless sounds in English are /s,t,p,f/.
2) Place
The vocal tract is
made up of different sections, which play a pivotal role in the production of
speech. These sections are called articulators and are what
make speech sounds possible. They can be divided into two types.
The active
articulator is the articulator that moves towards another articulator
in the production of a speech sound. This articulator moves towards another
articulator to form a closure of some type in the vocal tract (i.e., open
approximation, close, etc – define)
The passive
articulator is the articulator that remains stationary in the
production of a speech sound. Often, this is the destination that the active
articulator moves towards (i.e., the hard palate).
I will now talk
about the different places of articulation in the vocal tract
- Bilabial: Bilabial sounds involve the upper and
lower lips. In the production of a bilabial sound, the lips come into
contact with each other to form an effective constriction. In English,
/p,b,m/ are bilabial sounds.
- Labiodental: Labiodental sounds involve the lower
lip (labial) and upper teeth (dental) coming into contact with each other
to form an effective constriction in the vocal tract. Examples of
labiodental sounds in English are /f,v/. Labiodental sounds can be divided
into two types.
a) Endolabial:
sounds produced where the upper teeth are pressed against the inside of the
lower lip.
b) Exolabial:
sounds produced where the upper teeth are pressed against the outer side of the
lower lip.
- Dental: Dental sounds involve the tongue tip
(active articulator) making contact with the upper teeth to form a
constriction. Examples of Dental sounds in English are / θ, ð/.
If a sound is produced where the tongue is between the upper
and lower teeth, it is attributed the term ‘interdental’.
- Alveolar: First of all, before I explain what an
alveolar sound is, it’s useful to locate the alveolar ridge itself. If you
place your tongue just behind your teeth and move it around, you’ll feel a
bony sort of ridge. This is known as the alveolar ridge. Alveolar sounds
involve the front portion of the tongue making contact with the alveolar
ridge to form an effective constriction in the vocal tract. Examples of
alveolar sounds in English are /t,d,n,l,s/.
- Postalveolar: Postalveolar sounds are made a little
further back (‘post’) from the alveolar ridge. A postalveolar sound is
produced when the blade of the tongue comes into contact with the
post-alveolar region of your mouth. Examples of post-alveolar sounds in
English are / ʃ, ʒ /.
- Palatal: Palatal sounds are made with the tongue
body (the big, fleshy part of your tongue). The tongue body raises up
towards the hard-palate in your mouth (the dome shaped roof of your mouth)
to form an effective constriction. An example of a palatal sounds in
English is /j/, usually spelt as <y>.
- Velar: Velar sounds are made when the back of
the tongue (tongue dorsum) raises towards the soft palate, which is
located at the back of the roof of the mouth. This soft palate is known as
the velum. An effective constriction is then formed when these two
articulators come into contact with each other. Examples of velar sounds
in English are /k,g ŋ /.
3) Manner
In simple terms,
the manner of articulation refers to the way a sound is made, as
opposed to where it’s made. Sounds differ in the way they are
produced. When the articulators are brought towards each other, the flow of air
differs according to the specific sound type. For instance, the airflow can be
completely blocked off or made turbulent.
1) Stop
articulations:
Stop articulations
are sounds that involve a complete closure in the vocal tract. The closure is
formed when two articulators come together to prevent air escaping between
them. Stop articulations can be categorized according to the kind of airflow
involved. The type of airflow can be oral (plosives) or nasal (nasals). I will
now talk about both plosives and nasals separately.
1a) Plosives are
sounds that are made with a complete closure in the oral (vocal) tract.
The velum is raised during a plosive sound, which prevents air from
escaping via the nasal cavity. English plosives are the sounds /p,b,t,d,k,g/.
Plosives can be held for quite a long time and are thus also called
‘maintainable stops’.
1b) Nasals are
similar to plosives in regard to being sounds that are made with a complete
closure in the oral (vocal) tract. However, the velum is lowered during nasal
sounds, which allows airflow to escape through the nasal cavity. There are 3
nasal sounds that occur in English /m,n, ŋ/
2) Fricatives:
Fricative sounds are
produced by narrowing the distance between the active and passive articulators
causing them to be in close approximation. This causes the airflow to become
turbulent when it passes between the two articulators involved in producing a
fricative sound. English fricatives are sounds such as / f,v, θ,ð, s,z,
ʃ,ʒ /
3) Approximants:
Approximant sounds are
created by narrowing the distance between the two articulators. Although,
unlike fricatives, the distance isn’t wide enough to create turbulent airflow.
English has 4 approximant sounds which are /w,j,r,l/.
Vowels
When it comes to
vowels, we use a different specification to describe them. We look at the
vertical position of the tongue, the horizontal position of the tongue and lip
position.
Vowels are made
with a free passage of airflow down the mid-line of the vocal tract. They are
usually voiced and are produced without friction.
1) Vertical tongue
position (close-open): vertical tongue position refers to how close
the tongue is to the roof of the mouth in the production of a vowel. If the
tongue is close, it is given the label close. However, if the
tongue is low in the mouth when a vowel is produced, it’s given the label open.
+ close-mid/open mid (see below).
Some examples of
open vowels: ɪ, ʊ
Some examples of
close vowels: æ, ɒ,
2) Horizontal
tongue position (front, mid, back): Horizontal tongue refers to
where the tongue is positioned in the vocal tract in terms of ‘at the front’ or
‘at the back’ when a vowel is produced. If the tongue is at the front of the
mouth, it’s given the label front, if the tongue is in the
middle of the mouth, it’s given the label mid and if the
tongue is at the back of the mouth, it’s given the label back.
Some examples of
front vowels: ɪ , e, æ
Some examples of
mid vowels: ə
Some examples of
back vowels: ʌ,ɒ
3) Lip position: As is
inferred, lip position concerns the position of the lips when a vowel is
produced. The lips can either be round, spread or neutral.
Examples of round
vowels: u, o
Examples of spread
vowels: ɪ, ɛ
There are also
different categories of vowels, for example: monophthongs and diphthongs.
Monophthongs: Monophthongs
are vowels that are produced by a relatively stable tongue position.
Monophthongs can be
divided into two categories according to their duration. These are long and
short vowels, and their duration is mirrored in their names.
Examples of short
vowels: e, æ, ɪ, ʊ
Examples of long
vowels: ɔ: ɜ:, i:, u:
Diphthongs: Diphthongs are
vowels where the tongue moves from one part of the mouth to another. They can
be seen as starting of as one vowel and ending as a different vowel.
