Introduction to Phonetic Science

Introduction to Phonetic Science HESP 403 Spring 2007

Syllabus Course / Instructor info www.bsos.umd.edu/hesp/mwinn Office hours Book (yes, there’s a book) Syllabus/Grading Exams, quizzes, prep work, homework, (=attendance)

Purpose of the course ASHA guidelines Communication between clinicians Understanding of the speech mechanism Physical and theoretical properties of speech sounds

Goals of today’s class: Understand what the science of phonetics is. Understand linguistic terms like “phoneme” “allophone” and “syllable” Understand Stress Know why we use phonetic symbols

Phonetics Where does it fit in? What kinds of explanations does it offer? What comparisons and analogies can we make? To other fields of study, within the study of language

Kinds of Phonetics Articulatory / Transcription Phonetics What is being said? How do we classify sounds that we make in speech? Acoustic Phonetics What are the physical properties of speech sounds? Auditory Phonetics How do we organize speech sounds in our brains? Clinical Phonetics How can we use this knowledge to solve problems?

Articulatory / Transcription Phonetics What is being said? How do we classify sounds that we make in speech?

English Sounds in the IPA http://www.yorku.ca/earmstro/ipa/index.html

Acoustic phonetics What are the physical properties of speech sounds?

Auditory Phonetics How do we organize speech sounds in our ears and in our brains?

Clinical Phonetics The application of the knowledge of phonetics to solving practical problems Phonological disorders Understanding dialects Accent reduction Language acquisition

The most important slide EVER Orthography (how a word is written) Does not indicate Pronunciation (how a word is spoken) Don’t be fooled by spelling! Phonetics is concerned with sounds, not letters Digraphs “th” “sh” “ch” “-ti” etc. Represent one sound Vowels Are often not clearly reflected by spelling.

Spelling  Wood – would Fly – high Here – hear Cough – scoff Mission – ration – fishing Mission – fission

Helpful symbols to start off “ word ”  a normal, typewritten word in plain English / word /  the basic idea we have about how a word is pronounced [ word ]  an actual pronunciation of a word (usually from an audio recording)

Terms: Phoneme: A sound in a language Smallest unit of sound that distinguishes meaning in a word/language “ cat” has three sounds, each of which can distinguish its meaning from another word “ r at” “k i t” “ca b ” If you change any of the three sounds, the word no longer means the same thing. Each phoneme is represented by one symbol in the IPA alphabet

Understanding phonemes Every sound that is “important” to the word is a phoneme “ Phoneme” / m / / i / / n / / o / / f / me e n o Ph “ Boat” / t / / o / / b / t oa B

Activity How many phonemes do these words have? “Good” “Half” “Through” “Chips”

Minimal Pairs Words that differ by only one phoneme “ Shoe” / š u / “ Do” / d u / Min. Pair even though it is 4 letters vs 2 Not minimal pairs: “ Cough” “rough” differ by more than one sound, though only one letter. “ Pair” and “Pare” both the same – no change in sounds , though there is a change in orthography.

Are they Minimal pairs? Shoe – sue Shoe – stew Flew – stew Correct – collect Mice – nice Wail – sale Wail – where

Phoneme  categorization Each speaker sounds a bit different. Every time to say a word, it might sound a bit different. Still, we can learn to put these physically different sounds into categories . The categories are phonemes

Allophones Variant pronunciations of a phoneme So… they are different phones (sounds) but the same phoneme (category) Any speech sound Because they don’t change the meaning of the word

Allophone examples Keep and Keep (unreleased or released final sound) Light and Dark L sounds Little vs ball Keel and cool Front and back /k/

Allophone example / p h I t / “pit” Aspirated (puff of air escapes from the mouth) / s p I t / “spit” Unaspirated Both are still perceived as the same sound

Allophones Phonemes “ Allophone” is a language-specific designation. Japanese [ r ] [ l ] p h o n e p h o n e / r / English [ r ] [ l ] p h o n e p h o n e / r / / l /

Allophones Phonemes “ Allophone” is a language-specific designation. “See” “ Sika” “ Siika” English [ i: ] [ i ] p h o n e p h o n e / i / Finnish [ i: ] [ i ] p h o n e p h o n e / i: / / i /

Different phones can be the same or different phonemes Phonemes in Sindhi voiceless d aspirated t breathy d unaspirated t Allophones of the same phoneme / t / (in English)

Non-phonemic phones Clicks Velar click Palatal click Dental click Glottal click Other sounds Bbbbbb! Whistle Scream Not phonemes in English http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/course/chapter11/zulu/zulu.html

Phonemes from other languages Clicks – not phonemic in our language, but they are phonemes in !Xóõ ” be seated” “ to die” “ not to be” “ shoot you”

Analogy for Allophones: orthography Representation in the head “ b ” b B Normal use Proper names special words 2 realizations of the same letter

So far... Phonetics as a sound science Spelling is generally not useful for phonetics May not reflect sound contrasts May imply false contrasts Is not consistent Sounds can distinguish meaning This is language-specific

Kinds of transcription If we use Broad Transcription, we just use the intended phoneme and disregard the slight variation All k’s are k’s. All b’s are b’s If we use Narrow Transcription, we use the exact allophone being spoken Different sounds are written differently

The IPA The International Phonetic Alphabet Purpose Guiding principle: one sound = one symbol A different symbol for each distinctive sound The same symbol should be used for that sound in every language which uses it Simple symbols for major sounds (from the roman alphabet where possible) Diacritics are used for minor modifications

IPA symbols Familiarize yourself with the IPA chart (handout) It contains the characters used in broad transcription Extended IPA charts show markings (diacritics) to use for slight variations.

IPA symbols – introductory issues / j / = “y” “ th” “ sh” and “ch” “ ng” classification

Sound inventories English has roughly 42 sounds Different dialects may drop or add some This is above-average (~29) Small inventories: Rotokas, Mura – 11 sounds Hawaiian 13 sounds Largest inventory: !Xóõ - 141

Combining sounds Syllables – sound units of words Are “countable” Are “singable” Contain a vowel / a vowel quality

Syllables Definition? ve coda a h ø e B nucleus coda nucleus rhyme onset rhyme onset Syllable Syllable Word – “behave”

Kinds of Syllables Open syllables End in a vowel (no coda) The, he, she, play Closed syllables End with a consonant (have a coda) Bring, them, luck, speech

Syllables and phonotactics Not all sounds are permitted in any position / in any combination in a syllable. “ ng” “ts” “rf” at start of syllable? English consonant clusters 3 @initial 4 @coda Japanese lack of clusters

Stress = “lexical stress” = “accent” An increase in muscular force for one vowel in a word General tendencies: Longer duration Higher pitch Louder

Types of stress Trochaic (English) vs. Iambic (French) stress Photo Defense Strategy

Stress If you can sing it long... If you say it loud when you’re mad... Which syllable is stressed? Baker Enter Infer Police it is probably the stressed syllable” Accident Guitar Computer Plant

Stress as a semantic identifier in (phonetic) homographs con vict vs. con vict pro ject vs. pro ject con verse vs. con verse first syllable stressed: noun (Same sounds in the word) second syllable stressed: verb

Interchangeable stress Inside Hello Non-Interchangeable stress Gather Sleepy Computer

So far... We use IPA to transcribe sounds The IPA is governed by specific and simple principles Different languages vary greatly in their inventory of contrastive sounds Syllables Stress

Homework for next week ( Handout) QUIZ next week: Basic linguistic terms that we discussed today The nature of phonetic transcription Identifying phonemes and stress in words Think about prep question

Introduction to Phonetic Science

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