Velar

10 Key excerpts on "Velar"

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  Hard-Science Linguistics

  • Victor Yngve, Zdzislaw Wasik(Authors)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Continuum

    (Publisher)

  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. More extensive discussions of vowel description can be found in introductory phonetics texts (e.g. Ladefoged 1993; MacKay 1987). The relationships between vowel articulation and acoustics have been explored by many researchers over the years, including Chiba and Kajiyama (1941), Fant (1960), Gay, Boe, and Perrier (1992), Lindblom and Sundberg (1971), and Stevens and House (1961). Vowels can be defined simply as linguistic sounds produced with a relatively open vocal tract and little impedance to airflow. Three articulatory parameters that differentiate vowels in many languages of the world are (a) the degree of opening of the jaw-tongue complex; (b) the relative position of the tongue mass in the supralaryngeal vocal tract; and (c) the configuration of the lips. The first dimension is usually referred to as vowel height: high vowels have relatively high jaw-tongue positions, whereas low vowels are more open. Raising the tongue from the floor of the mouth also tends to draw the root of the tongue forward and expand the pharyngeal cavity, so some authors speak in terms of tongue root position or pharyngeal width (e.g. Lindau 1979). The second dimension has to do with whether the bulk of the tongue is shifted towards the alveopalatal region (front vowels) or the Velar/uvular region (back vowels). Lip configurations usually include rounded or unrounded/spread. Much of the variation in these three articulatory parameters is reflected acoustically in the first and second resonant (or formant) frequencies of the vocal tract (Fl and F2, respectively).

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  Phonetics

  Transcription, Production, Acoustics, and Perception

  • Henning Reetz, Allard Jongman(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  palatal sounds.

  5 Velum. This is the soft muscular rear part of the roof of the mouth, also known as the soft palate. Sounds produced here are known as Velar sounds. The velum also serves another purpose in the production of speech sounds. It can be raised to close off the nasal cavity from the rest of the vocal tract, for example during oral breathing. In this case, air can only escape through the mouth. This closing of the nasal cavity is known as the velic or velopharyngeal closure. Sounds produced with a raised velum are called oral sounds. When the velum is lowered, the passage between the nasal and oral cavities is open, as in nasal breathing. Air can now go out through the nose and the mouth, producing in this way nasal or nasalized sounds (see Section 3.4.2.2 for a discussion of the difference between nasal and nasalized sounds). If, in addition to lowering the velum, the airstream is blocked from flowing out of the oral cavity, the air can only escape through the nasal cavity. In this case a nasal stop is produced.

  6 Uvula. This is a small wedge-shaped object hanging down from the end of the velum. It can be seen when looking in the mirror with the mouth wide open and keeping the tongue low and flat or holding it down with a tongue depressor, as when saying “aaa” at the doctor’s office. Sounds produced here are known as uvular sounds.

  7 Pharynx. This is the cavity between the uvula and the larynx, in everyday language referred to as the throat. The back wall of the pharynx can be considered an articulator on the upper surface of the vocal tract. Sounds produced here are known as pharyngeal sounds.

  After reviewing these parts of the upper surface of the vocal tract and before going over the lower surface of the vocal tract, we should discuss what in common terms is known as the “voice box.”

  8 Larynx. Usually this is the source of all voiced sounds. But the vocal folds in the larynx can also be the narrowest constriction in the production of a speech sound and hence the larynx can also serve as an articulator. Sounds produced in this way are called glottal sounds

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  Forensic Speaker Identification

  • Phil Rose(Author)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  alveolar for post-alveolar affricates and fricatives.

  Figure 6.9 Mid-sagittal section of vocal tract showing some common active (capitals) and passive (italics) articulators

  English consonants

  Almost enough of the architecture of basic articulatory description has now been covered to present, in Table 6.2, a table of the commonly occurring consonantal sounds in English. It is possible to do this because there is not very much variation in consonants across the main varieties of English (Ladefoged 2001: 47).

  In Table 6.2, the sounds are arranged in a Place–Manner matrix (Place horizontally, Manner vertically). For each sound, a word is given that typically contains it. Some cells in the matrix contain symbols for more than one sound. These sounds differ along other phonetic parameters, the most common of which is voicing. Thus of

  Table 6.2 Major consonantal sounds of English

  the two sounds in the labio-dental fricative cell [f] is voiceless and [v] voiced, and of the two sounds in the bilabial plosive cell [p] is voiceless and [b] voiced. As far as the English plosives go, it is somewhat of an oversimplification to say there are only two phonetic variants, and that they differ in voicing. This will be taken up later.

  Table 6.2 shows that phonetically English has plosives at three places: bilabial, alveolar and Velar, plus affricates at the post-alveolar place (these are commonly referred to as palato-alveolar, or even palatal, affricates).

  Phonetically, there are fricatives at five different places; nasals at four places; one lateral; one rhotic (‘r’ sound); and two semivowels. Except for the higher number of fricatives at the front of the mouth (labio-dental, dental and alveolar), this is a fairly typical phonetic consonantal inventory.

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  Phonetics

  A Coursebook

  • Rachael-Anne Knight(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  In fact, the features that you identified in Exercise 6.4 are the very features that we use to describe the articulation of vowels. As just explained, the tongue is always involved in producing vowels. In terms of our classification system, we are interested in the location of the highest part of the tongue. This part may be SECTION ONE Sounds and symbols 66 towards the front of the tongue (roughly in line with the hard palate), as for /i/, the middle of the tongue, as for /ɜ/, or the back of the tongue (roughly in line with the velum), as for /ɑ/. This is the tongue frontness (or backness, in some contexts) dimension, and we can describe vowels as being front vowels, back vowels or central vowels. We are also interested in the height of that highest part of the tongue. For /i/, the highest part of the tongue is very high, in that it is very close to the roof of the mouth. For /ɑ/, not only is the highest part of the tongue further back than for /i/, it is also lower down in the mouth. For /ɜ/, it is between these two extremes. We refer to this as the tongue height dimension, and we can refer to vowels as being high, mid or low (you may also see the terms ‘close’ and ‘open’ used for high and low, respectively). Finally, we have the lip-rounding dimension. Lips may be rounded, as for /u/, spread, as for /i/, or neutral, as for /ɜ/. Therefore, we can summarise the features of articulation of vowels as shown in Figure 6.1. Of course, all of these dimensions are really continua, so vowels can be produced with tongue height between that of /i/ and /ɜ/, and where the lips are less spread than for /i/ but more so than for /ɜ/, for example. While the dimensions we use to describe vowels may suggest that there are discrete categories of tongue position and lip-rounding, we should try to remember that actually these are continuous dimensions. These three features of articulation serve to affect the shape of the vocal tract while the vowel is produced.

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  German Pronunciation and Phonology

  • Jethro Bithell(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  r (das Zungen-r). This is formed by vibration of the tip of the tongue (it is therefore coronal) behind the upper teeth (postdental position) or the upper teeth-ridge (postalveolar position); the essential is that the tip should vibrate freely in the current of air as it passes through the mouth.

  (e) The alveolar sounds [∫] and [Ʒ] are articulated by the tip and blade of the tongue raised to the teeth-ridge.

  2. Region of the Palate (Gaumengebiet). Sounds formed by contact with the hard palate are palatals (Vordergaumenlaute, Hart-gaumenlaute, Palatale), sounds formed against the soft palate are Velars (Hintergaumenlaute, Weichgaumenlaute, Velare, ‘Gutturale’). The corresponding adjectives are: palatal =palatal, mittelgaumig; Velar = Velar, hintergaumig.

  There are no normal German sounds formed against the front part of the hard palate. If we remember this, we may freely use the term Hochgaumenlaute (p. 54, n. 2) for palatals. Sounds formed in other languages against the front part of the hard palate are called cerebrals (Zerebrale, Zerebrallaute), so called because to Indian grammarians (see p. 12) the sounds seemed to come from the brain; the other common term2 for them, ‘cacuminals’ (Kakuminale, Kakuminallaute), ‘roof-of-the-mouth sounds’, is nearer the truth. A more suitable term is vorderste Hartgaumenlaute; in English simply ‘inverted sounds’. Cerebrals were common in Sanscrit, and are still common in the modern Indian dialects. In forming cerebrals the tip of the tongue is turned upwards and bent backwards (‘reverted’), with its under side to the hard palate. In Swedish, cerebral (or ‘retroflex’) t, d, n, l and s occur after r (in such words as fart, bord, Karl, korn, kors). Cerebral r—called ‘inverted’ or ‘reverted’ r—occurs dialectically in the South of England. In Central Germany the ich sound [ç] is often formed in the cerebral position; it then sounds like sch

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  A Concise Introduction to Linguistics

  • Bruce M. Rowe, Diane P. Levine(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  There are no uvular speech sounds in English. A uvular sound is produced when the back of the tongue is raised to the uvula, the small fleshy projection hanging from the soft palate in the midline of the throat. The [q] sound, like [x], is a common sound in Inezeño Chumash. It is found in such words as [qsi], sun or day, [qap], leaf or feather, and [itaq], to hear or listen. The sound [q] is also found in Quechua (an indigenous language of the Andean region of South America) and in Inuktitut (a language of the Inuit people living in the far northern areas of North America). There are many other consonants and classes of consonants not produced in English, including the pharyngeal (throat) sounds found in Arabic, various northwest Native American languages, and some of the languages of Eastern Europe and western Asia (Caucasus region). Trills are sounds that involve the vibration of the lips, the tip of the tongue, or the uvula. Trills are found in Spanish, Kele (an African language spoken in Gabon and Congo), Swedish, and other languages. In some languages, such as Spanish, French, and Korean (and in some dialects of English), an articulator (usually the tongue) makes a single flap against another articulator (such as the alveolar ridge) and then returns to its resting position. Conveniently, such sounds are called flaps or taps. Perhaps the most foreign speech sounds to an English speaker are clicks. Clicks are ingressive sounds produced by the sucking action of the tongue. Air is sucked into the mouth and altered by the position of the tongue and how the air is released. Clicks can be labial, dental, alveolar, palatal, or glottal. They can be nasal or oral, voiced or voiceless, and can be distinguished in other ways. English speakers do not use clicks as a regular part of English, but might pronounce one interjection as a click, represented in spelling as tsktsk

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  Phonetics, Phonology & Pronunciation for the Language Classroom

  • Charles Hall, Christopher Hastings(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  Notice that you can say that sound without stopping and that it is voiceless. It is a voiceless fricative. Since the body of the tongue makes the narrowest constriction for the air to be pushed through at the top of the mouth, the hard palate, it is a voiceless palatal fricative . The IPA symbol is a letter you may recognize from French or Portu-guese, where it is used for the simple [s] sound. It is called the cedilla and is written ç, a c with a comma beneath it; be careful to understand that in the IPA [ç] represents the initial hissing sound of human only. Since it’s only used in these few words by some speakers, we won’t spend any more time on it right now. We introduced it mainly to remind you that the spelling of a word ( huge ) does not predict its pronunciation in many cases and that pronunciation rules can vary from variety to variety. PHONETICS 37 Soft Palate: Velar Sounds Let’s go further back to the last place of articulation in the English mouth. As you move the tip of your tongue further back, the hard palate changes into the soft palate. You will feel the difference. The scientific name for the soft palate is the velum and anything connected with it is Velar . Let’s explore the three Velar sounds of Modern English. In a way, they mirror the three bilabial sounds. There is a pair of stops and a nasal. Velar Stops Say cool, kitten and chaos . English orthography hides the fact that the initial sound of those words is basically the same as the one we can represent with [k]. Now you can determine that this a Velar stop by saying No kidding! You can feel that you must stop the airflow completely to say the [k] that you make by lifting the back of your tongue to the velum. Try to say the [k] sound slowly to feel the movement. By now you can quickly determine that it is also voiceless. That means that the [k] is a voiceless Velar stop, and it must have a voiced partner.

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  For the Love of Language

  An Introduction to Linguistics

  • Kate Burridge, Tonya N. Stebbins(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Finally, the lateral approximant /l/ involves air escaping over the sides of the tongue while the tongue tip is making contact with the alveolar ridge. Australian and New Zealand 185 CHAPTER 7: Phonetics English are two of several varieties that have both clear [l] and dark (or ‘Velarised’) [ ɫ ] in their sound inventory, depending on where the lateral occurs within a word. We will be exploring this more in Chapter 8, but basically clear [l] is produced as just described when /l/ begins a word like late, whereas dark [ ɫ ] is characteristic of word-final /l/ in tale, but also in words where /l/ becomes, a stand-alone syllable in words like table. Dark [ ɫ ] is said to be Velarised because, although the tongue tip still contacts the alveolar ridge, the tongue body position is more retracted and raised towards the velum. Try saying ladle a few times and you should feel this difference. In sum, we can describe the consonants of English in terms of the following three parameters: 1 place of articulation 2 state of the vocal folds (voiced or voiceless) 3 manner of articulation. It is not necessary to state specifically whether consonants are oral or nasal, given that the velum is raised for all the manners of articulation, except nasals (and nasality is already encoded in the name of this term). Likewise, voicing is only mentioned for those places and manners of articulation where a voicing contrast occurs, such as with alveolar stops. Consider the descriptions for the consonants at the start of the words in the following Mark Twain quotation: ‘Drawing on my f ine command of language, I said nothing. (7.1) [d] voiced alveolar stop [m] bilabial nasal [f ] voiceless labiodental fricative [k] voiceless Velar stop [l] lateral approximate [s] voiceless alveolar fricative [n] alveolar nasal Ugh! Blah! Eek! Uh-oh! Phwoaaarr! From a phonetic point of view, the class of words known as interjections is very interest- ing.

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  Introducing Linguistics

  Theoretical and Applied Approaches

  • Joyce Bruhn de Garavito, John W. Schwieter(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  For example, when English speakers produce the sound ‘g’, the back of the tongue is the active articulator and the velum (see Figure 2.1) is the passive articulator. When we name sounds, we typically refer to the passive articulator. In Table 2.1 you can see some examples of speech sounds produced by different com- binations of passive and active articulators. TABLE 2.1 Passive and Active Articulators Active Articulator Passive Articulator Speech Sounds lower lip upper lip upper teeth ban, pan fine, vine tongue tip/tongue blade alveolar ridge alveolar ridge/hard palate tie, Sue, night ring, arrow front of the tongue alveolar ridge+hard palate hard palate sheet, measure, judge you, yellow back of the tongue soft palate cat, go, ring root of the tongue uvula no corresponding word in English Arabic word for ‘story’ qisa vocal folds glottis hen, hat PAUSE AND REFLECT 2.1 Though the vocal tract is responsible for all speech sounds, it is not responsible for all language production. What other forms of language production do you think exist that do not rely on the vocal tract? Do these forms of language production also rely on a small set of “articulators”? 2.2.2 The Lungs and Airstream The vast majority of speech sounds are produced by air flowing from the lungs up through the vocal tract, or an egressive pulmonic airstream. Egressive refers to the action of pushing air out and pulmonic refers to the use of the lungs. A certain level of 28 Phonetics air pressure is needed to keep the air flowing. The pressure is maintained by the action of muscles in the abdomen, known as intercostals (the muscles between the ribs) and the diaphragm (the large sheet of muscle separating the chest cavity from the abdomen). The intercostals raise the ribcage to allow air to flow into the lungs during inhalation, while the diaphragm helps to control the release of air so that we can speak for a reasonable period of time between breaths.

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  An Introduction to Language and Linguistics

  • Ralph W. Fasold, Jeff Connor-Linton(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  One English consonant remains to be discussed: the glide [w], as in wear . This sound combines a narrowing of the vocal tract at the Velar place of articulation with rounding of the lips. It is thus a double articulation , a labioVelar glide. While double articulations at various places of articulation are not hard to make (given the independence of the active articulators), they can be hard for the ear to distinguish, so double articulations other than labioVelars are rare. In summary, there are eleven common places of articulation – bilabial, labiodental, dental, alveolar, postalveolar, retro fl ex, palatal, Velar, uvular, pharyngeal, and laryngeal – though no single language makes consonants using all of the places of articulation. Vowels Vowels are harder to describe than consonants. By de fi nition, vowels have an open vocal tract, so the tongue doesn ’ t actually touch the upper surface of the vocal tract at any particular place and the term place of articulation isn ’ t really appropriate. Instead, different vowels are described in terms of the ways in which the tongue body and lips move. Linguists classify vowels by the height of the tongue body, whether it is bunched toward the front or back of the mouth, and whether the lips are rounded. If describing vowel systems in general is a dif fi cult task, describing the vowels of English is even more so. One reason is because there are a lot of them. The most common number of vowels for a language to have is fi ve. Though English writers use just fi ve letters to encode their vowels (relics of an older system), the English language uses more than a dozen different vowel sounds. Another reason is because the exact number of vowels and exact vowel quality differ from dialect to dialect, much more so than for the consonants. For example, the word mate as pronounced by a speaker from Perth sounds a lot (though not exactly) like the word might as pronounced by a speaker from Baltimore.

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