Languages & Linguistics
Phonetics
Phonetics is the study of the physical sounds of human speech. It focuses on the production, transmission, and reception of these sounds, including their articulation and acoustic properties. Phonetics also examines how these sounds are used in different languages and dialects, and it plays a crucial role in understanding and analyzing speech patterns and communication.
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eBook - PDFLanguage Files
Materials for an Introduction to Language and Linguistics, 13th Edition
- Department of Linguistics(Author)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Ohio State University Press(Publisher)
C H A P T E R 2 Phonetics © 2015 by Julia Porter Papke 38 F I L E 2.0 What Is Phonetics? Phonetics is the study of the minimal units that make up language. 1 For spoken language, these are the sounds of speech—the consonants, vowels, melodies, and rhythms. As de- scribed in File 1.2, the process of communicating has several steps. Within this chain, there are three aspects to the study of speech sounds: articulatory Phonetics, the study of the production of speech sounds; acoustic Phonetics, the study of the transmission and the physical properties of speech sounds; and auditory Phonetics, the study of the percep- tion of speech sounds. In this chapter, we will discuss the articulation and acoustics of speech sounds, as these branches are better understood than auditory Phonetics at this point. One of the most basic aspects of Phonetics is figuring out which sounds are possible in speech. You can make a plethora of different noises with your mouth, but only a subset of these noises are used in human language. In this chapter, we will describe some of the features that characterize the speech sounds of the world’s languages. We’ll see that break- ing speech sounds into their component parts reveals similarities among even the most exotic-seeming sounds. Contents 2.1 Representing Speech Sounds Discusses phonetic transcription systems and introduces phonetic symbols for English. 2.2 Articulation: English Consonants Outlines the anatomy used for speech and describes the articulation of English consonants. 2.3 Articulation: English Vowels Describes the articulation of English vowels. 2.4 Beyond English: Speech Sounds of the World’s Languages Describes some of the consonants and vowels found in languages other than English. 2.5 Suprasegmental Features Describes phonetic characteristics of sounds that apply above the level of the segment. 2.6 Acoustic Phonetics Outlines basic acoustics and describes segments in acoustic terms.
eBook - PDF- Rose-Marie Dechaine, Strang Burton, Eric Vatikiotis-Bateson(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- For Dummies(Publisher)
We indicate the phonetic transcription of a sound with square brackets around the letters. So the phonetic transcription for the first sound in big is [b]. Defining Phonetics Phonetics is the study of making and hearing speech sounds, and the linguists who work on Phonetics are called phoneticians . The word Phonetics is from the ancient Greek word pho ˉne ˉ, which means ‘sound’ or ‘to speak’. Individual speech sounds, like [b] or [k], are called phones . The linguistic term phone is only distantly related to telephones, so please don’t ask a phonetician to fix your cell phone! 36 Part II: The Building Blocks of Language Phoneticians study speech sounds by looking at ✓ Speech production: Articulatory Phonetics looks at how you make (articulate) speech sounds using your mouth, tongue, lips, and throat. ✓ Sound waves: Acoustic Phonetics looks at the acoustic structure of the sound waves that travel between a speaker and a hearer. ✓ Speech perception: Perceptual acoustics looks at what you do to speech sounds when they reach your ears. Whichever side of the problem phoneticians study, they have their work cut out for them. The production and perception of spoken language are perhaps the most complex skills humans have. The problems phoneticians encounter include the following: ✓ Speech sounds don’t come neatly packaged. Acoustic analysis of speech is tricky. When you speak, you produce sound in a continuous Why Phonetics matters Researchers from many disciplines use the tools of phonetic analysis: ✓ Engineers use basic research in Phonetics to develop natural-sounding speech synthesis, reliable automatic speech recognition, and automated translation systems. For example, those automated question-and-answer systems you run into on the telephone may be irritating when all you want to do is talk to a human. But, thanks to phonetic coding, their recognition and synthesis systems work pretty well.
eBook - PDF- Bruce Hayes, Bruce P. Hayes(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
1 Phonetics 1.1 Phonetics and Phonology There are two branches of linguistic science that deal with speech sounds: Phonetics and phonology. Phonetics is primarily an experimental science, which studies speech sounds from three viewpoints: • Production: how sounds are made in the human vocal tract • Acoustics: the study of the waveforms by which speech is transmitted through the atmosphere • Perception: how the incoming acoustic signal is processed to detect the sound sequence originally intended by the speaker Phonology is also, sometimes, an experimental science, though it also involves a fair degree of formal analysis and abstract theorizing. The primary data on which phonological theory rests are phonetic data, that is, observations of the phonetic form of utterances. The goal of phonology is to understand the tacit system of rules that the speaker uses in apprehending and manipulating the sounds of her language (more on this in chapter 2). Since phonological data are phonetic, and since (as we will see) the very nature of phonological rules depends on Phonetics, it is appropriate for beginning students to study Phonetics first. In particular, a phonologist who tries to elicit data from native speakers without prior training in the production and perception of speech sounds will be likely to have a hard time. The material that follows can be taken to be a quick review of Phonetics, or else a very quick introduction that can be amplified with reading and practical training from materials such as those listed at the end of the chapter. In principle, a phonologist should understand all three of the areas of Phonetics listed above: production, acoustics, and perception. Of these, production prob- ably has the greatest practical importance for the study of phonology. Since it is also the simplest to describe, it is what will be covered here.
- Victoria Fromkin, Robert Rodman, Nina Hyams, , Victoria Fromkin, Robert Rodman, Nina Hyams(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
Summary The science of speech sounds is called Phonetics. It aims to provide the set of properties necessary to describe and distinguish all the sounds in human languages throughout the world. Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Summary 209 When we speak we produce continuous stretches of sound, which are the physical manifestations of strings of discrete linguistic segments. Knowledge of a language permits one to separate continuous speech into individual sounds and words. The discrepancy between spelling and sounds motivated the development of phonetic alphabets in which one letter corresponds to one sound. The major phonetic alphabet in use is the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), by means of which the sounds of all human languages can be repre- sented. To distinguish between orthography (spelling) and phonetic tran- scriptions, we write the latter between square brackets, as in [fǝnɛɾɪk] for phonetic. All English speech sounds come from the movement of lung air through the vocal tract. The air moves through the glottis (i.e., between the vocal cords), up the pharynx, through the oral (and possibly the nasal) cavity, and out the mouth or nose. Human speech sounds fall into classes according to their phonetic proper- ties. All speech sounds are either consonants or vowels, and all consonants are either obstruents or sonorants.
- Keith Allan, Julie Bradshaw, Geoffrey Finch(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Red Globe Press(Publisher)
2.1 Phonetics – the science of speech sounds 2.2 phonology – sound systems in languages 2.3 morphology – word structures 2.4 syntax 2.5 fundamentals of semantics and pragmatics 2.6 meaning, maxims, and speech acts 2.7 sociolinguistics 2.8 psycholinguistics 2.9 applied linguistics 2.10 historical linguistics 2.11 stylistics 2.12 discourse and conversation 2.13 corpus linguistics 2.14 digital tools in linguistics 2.15 forensic linguistics 2.16 from pictures to writing 2 2 studying language: core topics 29 Part 2 surveys the core topics and concepts of linguistics and the study of language. These include the study of the sounds used in human languages (Phonetics and phonology); analysis of the structure of words (morphology), phrases and sentences (syntax); exploration of the ways in which meaning is expressed in language (semantics and pragmatics); the social and psychological aspects of language (sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics); applications of linguistics in various fields (applied linguistics); the study of language change over time (historical linguistics); the study of style and texts (stylistics, discourse analysis, conversation analysis); using corpora in linguistics; the use of digital tools (computers and other electronic devices) in the study of language; the use of linguistics within the legal process (forensic linguistics); and, finally, the development of writing systems. 30 1 2 Phonetics – the science of speech sounds 31 2.1 Phonetics – the science of speech sounds chapter contents i Phones and the organs of speech 31 i The International Phonetic Alphabet 34 i Articulation 35 i Vowels 35 i Consonants 37 i Key points 39 i References 39 Most of the phones on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) chart (see Figure 2.2 on the next page) can be listened to (in 2009) using an interactive IPA chart online at http://web.uvic.ca/ ling/resources/ipa/charts/IPAlab/IPAlab.htm.
eBook - PDF- Ralph W. Fasold, Jeff Connor-Linton(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
1 The sounds of language KEY TERMS • acoustic Phonetics • active and passive articulators • allophone • alternation • articulatory Phonetics • complementary distribution • derivation • distinctive features • fundamental frequency • formant • intonation • manner of articulation • minimal pair • natural class • obstruent • phoneme • phonology • phonotactic constraint • pitch track • place of articulation • sonorant • sonority • source-fi lter theory • spectrogram • stress • suprasegmentals • syllable structure • tone • vocal tract • voicing • waveform CHAPTER PREVIEW This chapter is about the sounds of speech. Without sound, communication can still take place – with a nod or a wave, a photograph, or a drawing. There can even be language without sound: those who cannot hear use languages based on manual signs instead. Yet for most of us most of the time, getting our message across involves encoding it in sounds. Even when we write, we use symbols that are based on speech (though sometimes not very directly). The study of the sounds of speech can be divided into the disciplines of Phonetics and phonology . Phonetics studies speech sounds as physical objects. Phoneticians ask questions such as: • How are speech sounds made? • How do physical characteristics make people sound different? • How many different sounds do languages use? • How are different languages and dialects distinguished by the sounds they use? • How does sound travel through the air? • How is it registered by the ears? • How can we measure speech? Phonology studies how languages organize sounds into different patterns.
eBook - PDF- Mark Tatham, Katherine Morton(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
speech is a linear string of sound objects, called ‘phonetic segments’; 2. these segments can be described and classified in terms of their surface physical properties at the articulatory and acoustic levels, as perceived by the trained phonetician; 3. they function linguistically in particular languages – this defines the ‘phonology’ of a language; 4. there are some phenomena which span groupings of these segments – these are called ‘prosodic features’; they collectively form the prosody of a language, and are usually described acoustically. For the Classical Phonetician speech is a phenomenon which can be characterised in terms of the movement of the organs of speech – articulatory Phonetics, or by listening to the actual sounds – auditory Phonetics. Phoneticians were concerned with describing what they could see and hear. There was no emphasis on how such articulations or sounds had been decided (their underlying phonological structure) or controlled (their rendering by the motor control processes). For Classical Phonetics the focus was strictly on the surface phenomena of people’s actual utterances. However, despite careful training they maintained a subjective colouration in their observations and descriptions – that is, their science lacked an acceptable level of objectivity. One of the consequences of subjectivity in Phonetics was that researchers felt that speech could be segmented into a sequence of discrete phonetic segments. Such descriptions involved isolating the individual sounds and treating them ‘out of context’. The descriptions were always ‘static’, paying little attention to the dynamics of speech, and were often prescriptive – This is how the sound should be pronounced. An important contribution of Classical Phonetics was that the descrip- tion of individual speech sounds was formalised within a universal framework. A methodology was set up which could handle the sounds 6 Speech Production Theory
eBook - PDFThe Anthropology of Language
An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology
- Harriet Ottenheimer, Judith Pine(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
It is useful in areas like machine recognition of natural language. It can also be useful in making “voiceprints” that can be used to identify specific individuals. Auditory Phonetics studies how sounds are perceived. It uses labora-tory experiments in which speech sounds are played under various con-ditions and in various configurations (sounds interrupted by coughs, for example) to determine how individuals receive and interpret the sounds of speech. Articulatory Phonetics studies how speech sounds are produced. It uses fieldwork to develop an understanding of how sounds in various languages are articulated, and it attempts to collect and catalog all of the sounds that humans can (and do) make and use in language. Articulatory Phonetics is the kind of Phonetics we introduced in the beginning of this chapter. It is sometimes also called descriptive Phonetics because it describes language sounds in detail. Although all three kinds of Phonetics are of interest to linguistic anthropologists, it is articulatory Phonetics that is the most useful for field research and for research concerning the world’s languages. It is also the most useful for learning and teaching new languages. Articulatory Phonetics is what you need to learn if you want to know how to pronounce sounds in other languages or to explain the sounds of your own language to others. Learning the basics of articulatory Phonetics is a little bit like learning the basics of cooking or carpentry, except that articulatory Phonetics helps you to pronounce (or articulate) speech sounds, while cooking and carpentry help you to produce meals and furniture. In each case, you need to learn how to understand and follow specific kinds of directions. The directions for how to identify and produce speech sounds assume that you know something about human anatomy. Figure 3.1 is a diagram showing the main areas involved in speech production.
- Anita K. Barry(Author)
- 2002(Publication Date)
- Praeger(Publisher)
14 Linguistic Perspectives on Language and Education 1. How many distinct consonant sounds are there in each of the following words? brought, laughed, screeched, generation, chasm, expect 2. What is the first sound of each of these words? pneumonia, gnome, knight, keep, cough, cyst, think, this 3. What it the final sound of each of the following words? love, jumped, arrange, garage, huge, hugged In drawing clear distinctions between oral and written language, linguistics can be very useful to the teacher. One of the basic tenets of linguistics is that language is primarily an oral system. Many languages, in fact, do not have accompanying writing systems. Written language is secondary and is developed as civilizations advance to the point that the information they need to retain becomes too cumbersome to commit to memory. It is also important to note that there are many different kinds of writing systems, a topic that will be explored in detail in Chapter 6. There you will learn, for example, that our alphabet is only one of many different ways of committing a language to paper. One important contribution of linguistics is the system that linguists have de- veloped for describing the sounds of language, independent of any individual language and independent of the writing system of any one language. This description of speech sounds is called "Phonetics." In Phonetics, human speech is described as a set of activities in the human body, which, when combined in a particular way, result in the utterance of a particular sound. Essentially, speech is produced when we fill our lungs with air and then expel it. Along the way, we obstruct the air by various means, which gives rise to a wide array of speech sounds. We classify sounds according to how much obstruction is required to produce them. "Consonants" require the most obstruction, "vowels" the least. In between, there is a class of sounds called "approximants." Let's begin by exploring how the body produces consonants.
eBook - PDF- Victor Yngve, Zdzislaw Wasik(Authors)
- 2006(Publication Date)
- Continuum(Publisher)
PART II RECONSTITUTING Phonetics PHONOLOGY This page intentionally left blank Chapter 5 Towards a Physical Definition of the Vowel Systems of Languages Laura L. Koenig My purpose in this chapter is to discuss a set of observations suggesting that what are sometimes superficially described as ’the same’ vowels may differ when produced by speakers of different languages. The studies reviewed here straddle the traditional boundary between Phonetics and phonology in that they investigate how specifics of production (Phonetics) vary depending on the speaker’s language, in particular the set of sound contrasts relevant in that language (phonology). Although I find some of the results of this work compelling, I believe that the conceptual framework underlying many of the research questions is misguided. Ultimately, I will argue that cross-linguistic speech research questions can only be formulated in physical terms, based on speakers’ articulatory behavior and its acoustic consequences, and on the associated behavior of listeners. Phonological descriptions that assume sound categories as abstract entities selected by languages and utilized by speakers lend themselves to misunderstanding and inappropriate descriptions of human linguistic behavior. Yngve’s (1996) frame-work, which begins with a physical description of actions or sounds, and from this proposes speaker and listener properties defined within the context of communicative interaction, offers a promising alternative perspective. 1. Physical description of vowels The following is a brief tutorial on the typical ways in which vowels have been described in articulatory and acoustic terms to aid those without phonetic training in understanding the work outlined below. 50 ¥ LAURA L. KOENIG As in any review, this description is simplified, and omits many details not critical for present purposes.
eBook - PDFSign Language
An International Handbook
- Roland Pfau, Markus Steinbach, Bencie Woll, Roland Pfau, Markus Steinbach, Bencie Woll(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
3 . Phonetics vs. phonology The phonetic study of sign languages includes the low-level production and perception of manual and non-manual signals. It is much less evident how such phonetic analysis of language relates to the phonological structure. As chapter 3 on phonology makes clear, we have a good understanding of the phonological characteristics of several sign languages and of sign languages in general. However, one cannot directly observe the categorical properties and structures in sign language phonology: they have to be in-ferred from the gradient phonetic form. Perhaps the impression that we can see the articulators in sign languages has made it self-evident what the phonological form looks like, and in that way reduced the need for an accurate phonetic description. The first description of the manual form of signs that was introduced by Stokoe (1960) in his groundbreaking work was clearly targeted at the lexical phonological level. It used explicit articulatory terms in the description of the orientation of the I. Phonetics, phonology, and prosody 8 hand, even though it aimed to characterise the distinctions within this ‘minor’ param-eter at a phonological level. Orientation was characterised in terms of ‘prone’ and ‘supine’, referring to the rotation of the forearm around its length axis. There has never been a phonetic variant of Stokoe’s system that has been commonly used as a phonetic notation system. Phonetic notation systems such as HamNoSys (http://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/projects/hamnosys.html) are sometimes used in lexicography. HamNoSys itself is based on the linguistic analyses initiated by Stokoe, describing the handshape, location, and movement for a manual sign, but it allows for the transcrip-tion of finer phonetic detail than a phonological characterisation would require, and like the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) for spoken languages it is not designed for one specific language (see chapter 43 for details).
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