Phonetics
Phonetics (pronounced /fəˈnɛtɪks/, from the Greek: φωνή, phōnē, 'sound, voice') is a branch of linguistics
that comprises the study of the sounds
of human speech,
or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign.[1]
It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs (phones): their physiological production,
acoustic properties, auditory perception, and neuro physiological status. Phonology,
on the other hand, is concerned with the abstract, grammatical characterization
of systems of sounds or signs.
The field of phonetics is a multiple layered subject of linguistics
that focuses on speech. In the case of oral languages there are three basic
areas of study:
- Articulatory phonetics:
the study of the production of speech sounds by the articulatory and vocal
tract by the speaker
- Acoustic phonetics:
the study of the physical transmission of speech sounds from the speaker
to the listener
- Auditory phonetics:
the study of the reception and perception of speech sounds by the listener
These areas are inter-connected through the common mechanism
of sound, such as wavelength (pitch),
amplitude, and harmonics.
History
Phonetics was studied as early as 500
BC in ancient India, with Pāṇini's account of the place and manner of articulation of consonants in his 5th
century BC treatise on Sanskrit. The major Indic alphabets
today order their consonants according to Pāṇini's classification. The Ancient Greeks
are credited as the first to base a writing system on a phonetic alphabet.
Modern phonetics begins with attempts — such as those of
Joshua Steele (in Prosodia Rationalis, 1779) and Alexander Melville Bell (in Visible Speech,
1867) — to introduce systems of precise notation for speech sounds.[2][3]
Phonetic
transcription
The International Phonetic Alphabet
(IPA) is used as the basis for the phonetic transcription of speech. It is
based on the Latin alphabet and is able to transcribe most features of speech
such as consonants, vowels, and suprasegmental features. Every documented
phoneme available within the known languages in the world is assigned its own
corresponding symbol.
Difference between
phonetics and phonology
Phonology concerns itself with systems of phonemes,
abstract cognitive units of speech sound or sign which distinguish the words of
a language. Phonetics, on the other hand, concerns itself with the production,
transmission, and perception of the physical phenomena which are abstracted in
the mind to constitute these speech sounds or signs.
Using an Edison phonograph, Ludimar Hermann
investigated the spectral properties of vowels and consonants. It was in these
papers that the term formant was first introduced. Hermann also
played back vowel recordings made with the Edison phonograph at different
speeds in order to test Willis' and Wheatstone's theories of vowel production.
Relation to
phonology
In contrast to phonetics, phonology
is the study of how sounds and gestures pattern in and across languages,
relating such concerns with other levels and aspects of language. Phonetics
deals with the articulatory and acoustic properties of speech sounds, how they
are produced, and how they are perceived. As part of this investigation,
phoneticians may concern themselves with the physical properties of meaningful
sound contrasts or the social meaning encoded in the speech signal (socio-phonetics) (e.g. gender, sexuality,
ethnicity,
etc.). However, a substantial portion of research in phonetics is not concerned
with the meaningful elements in the speech signal.
While it is widely agreed that phonology is grounded in
phonetics, phonology is a distinct branch of linguistics, concerned with sounds
and gestures as abstract units (e.g., distinctive features, phonemes,
mora, syllables,
etc.) and their conditioned variation (via, e.g., allophonic rules,
constraints, or derivational rules).[4]
Phonology relates to phonetics via the set of distinctive features, which map the abstract
representations of speech units to articulatory gestures, acoustic signals,
and/or perceptual representations.[5][6][7]
Source:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonetics22.11.2012
The IPA is the major as well as the oldest representative
organization for phoneticians. It was established in 1886 in Paris. 2011 marked
the 125th anniversary of the founding of the IPA.
The aim of the IPA is to promote the scientific study of
phonetics and the various practical applications of that science.
In furtherance of this aim, the IPA provides the academic
community world-wide with a notational standard for the phonetic representation
of all languages - the International
Phonetic Alphabet (also IPA).
The latest version of the IPA Alphabet was published in 2005.
Phonetics
Pronunciations in
the American English and Essential American English dictionary do not use the
'long vowel' marker /ː/ and, in place of the
syllable division marker /./, they use a raised dot
/·/.
Vowels
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Long Vowels
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Short Vowels
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Consonants
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Voiced
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Voiceless
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Diphthongs
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eɪ
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day
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aɪ
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eye
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ɔɪ
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boy
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aʊ
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mouth
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əʊ
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nose (UK)
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oʊ
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nose (US)
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ɪə
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ear (UK)
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eə
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hair (UK)
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ʊə
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pure (UK)
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In
order to study the sounds of language, we first need to study the vocal
tract. Speech starts with the lungs, which push air out and
pull it in. The original purpose was, of course, to get oxygen and
eliminate carbon dioxide. But it is also essential for speech.
There are phonemes that are little more than breathing: the h for
example.
Next,
we have the larynx, or voice box. It sits at the juncture of the trachea
or windpipe coming up from the lungs and the esophagous coming up from
the stomach. In the larynx, we have an opening called the glottis,
an epiglottis which covers the glottis when we are swallowing, and the vocal
cords. The vocal cords consist of two flaps of mucous membrane
stretched across the glottis, as in this photograph:
The
vocal cords can be tightened and loosened and can vibrate when air is forced
past them, creating sound. Some phonemes use that sound, and are called voiced.
Examples include the vowels (a, e, i, o, and u, for example) and some of the
consonants (m, l, and r, for example). Other phonemes do not involve the
vocal cords, such as the consonants h, t, or s, and so are called unvoiced.
The
area above the glottis is called the pharynx, or upper throat. It
can be tightened to make phryngeal consonants. English doesn’t
have any of these, but they sound like when you try to get a piece of food back
up out of your throat.
At
the top of the throat is the opening to the nasal passages (called the nasopharynx,
in case you are interested). When we allow air to pass into the nose
while speaking, the sounds we make are called nasal. Examples
include m, n, and the ng sound of sing.
Much
of the action during speech occurs in the mouth, of course, especially
involving the interaction of the tongue with the roof of the mouth. The
roof of the mouth has several specific areas: At the very back, just
before the nasal passage, is that little bag called the uvula. Its
major function seems to be moisturizing the air and making certain sounds
called, obviously, uvular. The best known is the kind of r
pronounced in the back of the mouth by some French and German speakers.
Uvular, pharyngeal, and glottal sounds are often refered to as gutterals.
Next,
we have the soft palate, called the velum. If you turn your tongue
back as far as it will go and press up, you can feel how soft it is. When
you say k or g, you are using the velum, so they are called velar
consonants.
Further forward is the hard palate. Quite a few consonants are made using the hard palate, such as s, sh, n, and l, and are called palatals. Just behind the teeth is the dental ridge or alveolus. Here is where many of us make our t’s and d’s -- alveolar consonants.
Further forward is the hard palate. Quite a few consonants are made using the hard palate, such as s, sh, n, and l, and are called palatals. Just behind the teeth is the dental ridge or alveolus. Here is where many of us make our t’s and d’s -- alveolar consonants.
At
the very outer edge of the mouth we have the teeth and the lips. Dental
consonants are made by touching the tongue to the teeth. In English,
we make the two th sounds like this. Note that one of these is voiced
(the th in the) and one is unvoiced (the th in thin).
At
the lips we can make several sounds as well. The simplest, perhaps, are
the bilabial sounds, made by holding the lips together and then
releasing the sound, such as p and b, or by keeping them together and releasing
the air through the nose, making the bilabial nasal m. We can also use
the upper teeth with the lower lip, for labiodental sounds. This
is how we make an f, for example.
Incidentally,
we also have two names for the parts of the tongue used with these various
parts of the mouth: The front edge is called the corona, and the
back is called the dorsum. Sounds like t, th, and s are made with
the corona, while k, g, and ng are made with the dorsum.
Consonants
Consonants are sounds which involve full or partial blocking of airflow. In English, the consonants are p, b, t, d, ch, j, k, g, f, v, th, dh, s, z, sh, zh, m, n, ng, l, r, w, and y. They are classified in a number of different ways, depending on the vocal tract details we just discussed.
Consonants are sounds which involve full or partial blocking of airflow. In English, the consonants are p, b, t, d, ch, j, k, g, f, v, th, dh, s, z, sh, zh, m, n, ng, l, r, w, and y. They are classified in a number of different ways, depending on the vocal tract details we just discussed.
1.
Stops, also known as plosives. The air is blocked for a
moment, then released. In English, they are p, b, t, d, k, and g.
a. Bilabial
plosives: p (unvoiced) and b (voiced)
b. Alveolar plosives: t (unvoiced) and d (voiced)
c. Velar plosives: k (unvoiced) and g (voiced)
b. Alveolar plosives: t (unvoiced) and d (voiced)
c. Velar plosives: k (unvoiced) and g (voiced)
In other languages, we
find labiodental, palatal, uvular, pharyngeal, and glottal plosives as well,
and retroflex plosives, which involve reaching back to the palate with
the corona of the tongue.
In many languages, plosives may be followed by aspiration, that is, by a breathy sound like an h. In Chinese, for example, there is a distinction between a p pronounced crisply and an aspirated p. We use both in English (pit vs poo), but it isn’t a distinction that separates one meaning from another.
2. Fricatives involve a slightly resisted flow of air. In English, these include f, v, th, dh, s, z, sh, zh, and h.
In many languages, plosives may be followed by aspiration, that is, by a breathy sound like an h. In Chinese, for example, there is a distinction between a p pronounced crisply and an aspirated p. We use both in English (pit vs poo), but it isn’t a distinction that separates one meaning from another.
2. Fricatives involve a slightly resisted flow of air. In English, these include f, v, th, dh, s, z, sh, zh, and h.
a.
Labiodental fricatives: f (unvoiced) and v (voiced)
b. Dental fricatives: th (as in thin -- unvoiced) and dh (as in the -- voiced)
c. Alveolar fricatives: s (unvoiced) and z (voiced)
d. Palatal fricatives: sh (unvoiced) and zh (like the s in vision -- voiced)
e. Glottal fricative: h (unvoiced)
b. Dental fricatives: th (as in thin -- unvoiced) and dh (as in the -- voiced)
c. Alveolar fricatives: s (unvoiced) and z (voiced)
d. Palatal fricatives: sh (unvoiced) and zh (like the s in vision -- voiced)
e. Glottal fricative: h (unvoiced)
3. Affricates are sounds that involve a plosive followed immediately by a fricative at the same location. In English, we have ch (unvoiced) and j (voiced). Many consider these as blends: t-sh and d-zh.
4. Nasals are sounds made with air passing through the nose. In English, these are m, n, and ng.
a.
Bilabial nasal: m
b. Alveolar nasal: n
c. Velar nasal: ng
b. Alveolar nasal: n
c. Velar nasal: ng
5. Liquids are sounds with very little air resistance. In English, we have l and r, which are both alveolar, but differ in the shape of the tongue. For l, we touch the tip to the ridge of the teeth and let the air go around both sides. For the r, we almost block the air on both sides and let it through at the top. Note that there are many variations of l and r in other languages and even within English itself!
6. Semivowels are sounds that are, as the name implies, very nearly vowels. In English, we have w and y, which you can see are a lot like vowels such as oo and ee, but with the lips almost closed for w (a bilabial) and the tongue almost touching the palate for y (a palatal). They are also called glides, since they normally “glide” into or out of vowel positions (as in woo, yeah, ow, and oy).
In many languages, such as Russian, there is a whole set of palatalized consonants, which means they are followed by a y before the vowel. This is also called an on-glide.
Vowels
There are about 14 vowels in English. They are the ones found in these words: beet, bit, bait, bet, bat, car, pot (in British English), bought, boat, book, boot, bird, but, and the a in ago. There are also three diphthongs or double vowels: bite, cow, and boy. Diphthongs involve off-glides.: You can hear the y in bite and boy, and the w in cow. Actually, the sounds in bait and boat are also diphthongs (with y and w off-glides, respectively), but the first parts of the diphthongs are different from the nearby sounds in bet and bought.
Vowels are classified in three dimensions:
1.
The height of the tongue in the mouth -- low, mid, or high
high
are beet, bit, boot, and book
mid are bait, bet, but, boat, bought, bird and a in ago
low are bat, car, and british pot
mid are bait, bet, but, boat, bought, bird and a in ago
low are bat, car, and british pot
2. How far
forward or backward in the mouth the tongue rises -- front, center, or back
front
are beet, bit, bait, bet, and bat
center are but, bird, and a in ago
back are boot, book, boat, bought, and british pot
center are but, bird, and a in ago
back are boot, book, boat, bought, and british pot
3. How rounded or unrounded the lips are
the
front vowels are unrounded
the center and back vowels are rounded
the center and back vowels are rounded
The rounding idea may seem unnecessary until you realize that many languages have rounded front vowels -- such as the German ü and ö and the French u and eu -- and many have unrounded back vowels -- such as the Japanese u. If you took French in high school, you may remember the teacher telling you to say tea with your lips rounded for French tu. It isn’t the best way to teach the sound, but it shows you where it fits in the scheme.
There
is one more dimension that doesn’t have much to do with English, but is
essential in many languages, and that is vowel length. Vowels can
be short or long, and it is just a matter of how long you continue the
sound. The closest we get in English is that the vowel in beet is longer
(as well as higher) than the vowel in bit. The same goes for boot and
book, and for caught and the British pot.
In some languages, such as French, there is another quality to vowels, and that is nasality. Some vowels are pronounced with airflow through the nose as well as the mouth. Originally, these were simply vowels followed by nasal consonants. But over time, the French blended the vowels and the nasals into one unit.
In some languages, such as French, there is another quality to vowels, and that is nasality. Some vowels are pronounced with airflow through the nose as well as the mouth. Originally, these were simply vowels followed by nasal consonants. But over time, the French blended the vowels and the nasals into one unit.
IPA
Over the years, linguists have developed a complex chart of phonemes for transcribing the sounds of all languages around the world. It is called the International Phonetic Alphabet, and much of it is in the charts below. If you get question marks or little squares, that means your computer isn't equipt with unicode, in which case you will have to look elsewhere for charts like this.
Over the years, linguists have developed a complex chart of phonemes for transcribing the sounds of all languages around the world. It is called the International Phonetic Alphabet, and much of it is in the charts below. If you get question marks or little squares, that means your computer isn't equipt with unicode, in which case you will have to look elsewhere for charts like this.
Consonants
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bilabial
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labio-
dental |
dental
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alveolar
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retroflex
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palato-
alveolar |
palatal
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velar
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uvular
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glottal
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||
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plosives
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uv.
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p
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t
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ʈ
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c
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k
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q
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ʔ
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|||
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v.
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b
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d
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ɖ
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ɟ
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g
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ɢ
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|||||
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fricatives
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uv.
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Φ
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f
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θ
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s
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ʂ
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ʃ
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ç
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x
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χ
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h
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v.
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β
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v
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ð
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z
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ʐ
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ʒ
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ʝ
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γ
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ʁ
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ɦ
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nasals
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m
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ɱ
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n
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ɳ
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ɲ
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ŋ
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ɴ
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||||
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semivowels
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uv.
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ʍ
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v.
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w
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ʋ
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ɹ
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ɻ
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j
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||||||
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rolled/
trilled |
в
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r
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ʀ
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||||||||
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tapped/
flapped |
ɾ
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ɽ
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laterals
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l
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ɭ
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λ
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L
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|||||||
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lateral
-fricatives |
uv.
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ł
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|||||||||
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v.
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ɮ
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Vowels
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front
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central
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back
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high
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i
y
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ɨ
ʉ
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ɯ
u
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ɪ
ʏ
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ʊ
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||
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middle
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e
ø
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ɜ
ə ɵ
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ɤ
o
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ɛ
œ
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ɐ
ʌ
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ɔ
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low
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æ
a
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α
ɒ
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Vowel length is marked with a colon after the vowel, e.g. i:
Nasal
vowels are shown by placing a tilde over the vowel, e.g. ã
There
are dozens more phonemes beyond the ones in the preceding charts, but one set
is particularly interesting: clicks.
Clicks are sounds made by creating a vacuum with the tongue and then suddenly
snapping the tongue away. We use these ourselves, though not as parts of
words: When we “tsk tsk,” when we make clucking sounds, and when we make
a click in the side of our mouths when we tell a horse to get a move on.
Clicks are used in the Bushman languages and in the Bantu languages that had
prolonged contact with them. The best known is the Bantu language Khosa,
because of the famous South African singer Miriam Makeba.
Stress and Tones
In
many languages around the world, including English, words are differentiated by
means of stress. One syllable is usually given a higher pitch
("up" the musical scale) and sometimes a bit more force. This
is how we differentiate af-fect (as in influence) and af-fect (as
in emotion), for example. In longer words, there may even be a second
semi-stressed syllable, as in math-e-mat-ics: mat
has the primary stress, math has the secondary stress. In IPA,
primary stress is indicated by preceding the syllable with a high vertical
line, secondary with a low vertical line.
Note that even when we do not need to use stress to differentiate words, we use it anyway. Sometimes we can tell where a person is from by how they use stress: insurance is usually stressed on the sur; southerners stress it on the in. But many languages do not use stress at all. To our ears, they sound rather monotone.
Some other languages use dynamic stress or tones. Swedish is an example. This means that there is actual change of stress within syllables. In Swedish, there are two tones:
The
single tone starts high and goes down. If a single toneword has a
second syllable, that syllable is unstressed. Single tone words don’t
sound very unusual to English speakers.
The double tone is only found in two syllable words. The first pitch starts in the middle range of pitch and the second tone starts high and goes down. If there is a third syllable, it is unstressed. The double tone gives the word a sing-song quality to English speakers.
These tones differentiate many words in Swedish. In the single tone, anden, tomten, biten, and slaget mean the duck, the building, the bit, and the battle, respectively. In the double tone, they mean the spirit, the elf, bitten, and beaten, respectively! English uses dynamic stress or tones also, but only one whole phrases, such as the rising pitch at the end of questions.
But
many languages in Africa and Asia use far more complex tones, and in fact are
called tonal languages. Chinese is the best known example.
Although words are often more than one syllable in length, each syllable has a
particular meaning. And Chinese uses a very limitied number of
phonemes. It is the tones that prevent every syllable from having
hundreds of meanings. There are five of them:
Tone 1
-- high and level (as in hey!)
Tone 2 -- middle, then rising (as in was it you?)
Tone 3 -- middle, falling, then rising (as in mom!? spoken by a whining teenager)
Tone 4 -- high, then falling (as in Tom spoken by a disappointed mom)
Tone 2 -- middle, then rising (as in was it you?)
Tone 3 -- middle, falling, then rising (as in mom!? spoken by a whining teenager)
Tone 4 -- high, then falling (as in Tom spoken by a disappointed mom)
For example, the simple syllable yi can mean many different things. With tone 1 it means cloth, with tone 2 it means to suspect, with tone 3 it means chair, and with tone 4 it means meaning. The syllable wu means house, none, five, and fog, respectively. And ma means mother, hemp, horse, and scold. In the official transcription, the four tones are indicated by ¯, ´, ˇ, and `.
Thai
has five tones: high, middle, low, rising, and falling. The African
language Katamba has six, adding a falling, then rising tone. Cantonese
has nine tones: high long, high short, middle long, middle short, low long, low
short, high falling, middle falling, and low rising.
We
don't know how tonal languages arise. Many believe that it has to do with
phonemes or even whole syllables that have been lost, but influenced the
pronounciation anyway. But this makes it hard to explain that Cantonese,
which has kept many old consonant endings, has nine tones, while its relative
Mandarin Chinese, which has lost those endings, only has four. Of course
a linguist from China might ask how non-tonal languages lost their tones!
One
interesting tidbit is that tonality often crosses family lines. In Asia,
for example, tonality is found in Chinese, Thai, and Vietnamese -- which are
unrelated languages. On the other hand, Tibetan and Burmese are related
to Chinese, but are not tonal; neither is Khmer, a relative of
Vietnamese. Most African languages are tonal, but Swahili is not.
Hausa, spoken in Nigeria, is tonal, but relatives like Arabic are not. It
is possible that one or another language family influenced others around it, or
was original to an area before being invaded by speakers of another language.
Source:
webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/phonetics.html - United
States-22.11.2012
Phonology
Phonology
is a branch of linguistics
concerned with the systematic organization of sounds in languages. It has traditionally
focused largely on study of the systems
of phonemes
in particular languages,
but it may also cover any linguistic analysis
either at a level beneath the word including syllable, onset and rhyme,
articulatory gestures,
articulatory features etc. or at all levels of language where sound
is considered to be structured for conveying linguistic meaning.
Phonology also includes the study of equivalent organizational systems in sign
languages.
The word phonology can also refer to the phonological system
(sound system) of a given language. This is one of the fundamental systems,
which a language is considered to comprise, like its syntax and its vocabulary.
Phonology is often distinguished from phonetics.
While phonetics concerns the physical production, acoustic transmission and perception
of the sounds of speech, phonology describes the way sounds function within a
given language or across languages to encode meaning. In other words, phonetics
belongs to descriptive linguistics, and phonology to theoretical linguistics. Note that this
distinction was not always made, particularly before the development of the
modern concept of phoneme
in the mid 20th century. Some subfields of modern phonology have a crossover
with phonetics in descriptive disciplines such as psycholinguistics.
Source:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonology-29.10.2012
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Definition
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Phonology is the study of how sounds
are organized and used in natural languages.
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Discussion
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The phonological system of a language
includes
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Phonology is just one of several
aspects of language. It is related to other aspects such as phonetics,
morphology, syntax, and pragmatics.
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Here is an illustration that shows
the place of phonology in an interacting hierarchy of levels in linguistics:
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Comparison: Phonology and phonetics
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Source:
www.sil.org/linguistics/.../WhatIsPhonology.htm-29.10.2012
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