Chapter 2

File 2.0 - What is phonetics?

Articulatory phonetics: The study of the production of speech sounds

Acoustic phonetics: The study of the transmission and the physical properties of speech sounds
Auditory phonetics: The study of the perception of speech sounds

File 2.1 - Representing speech sounds

X-ray photography was once used to track the articulation of speech sounds, however, the amount of
radiation involved was dangerous for the subjects
More recent methods include the electromagnetic articulograph to track the locations of small
receptors on the lips, tongue, and jaw

Palatography: Observing contact between the tongue and the roof of the mouth (the hard palate)
Articulatory phonetics also uses instruments to measure airflow and air pressure during speech

Acoustic phonetics focuses on the sounds produced by articulations

Sound spectograph: Captures speech sounds in a visual format
Advanced study of auditory phonetics depends on MRI and CT scans

Impressionistic phonetic transmission: Transcribing what you've heard, the way it sounded - rather than
the way the words used are spelled
A good phonetic transcription system aims to unambiguously convey the important aspects of the
pronunciation of a given set of sounds:
- First, each symbol shall represent only one sound (a phone)
- Second, if two sounds distinguish two words from each other, they should be represented by
different symbols
- Third, if two sounds are very similar and only differ based on context, they are written with the
same symbols (the change is predictable based on the context the sound is found in)

Segment: The discrete units of the speech stream - consonants and vowels
Suprasegmentals: Ride on top of segments and apply to entire strings of consonants and vowels properties such as stress, tone, and intonaton
Consonants are produced with a constriction somewhere in the vocal tract that impedes airflow - much
quieter than vowels and usually cannot function as the heart of a syllable

Vowels are produced with (at most) only a slight narrowing and allow air to flow freely through the oral
cavity - louder than consonants, and function as the heart of a syllable, carrying suprasegmental
information such as stress, loudness, and pitch
Nucleus (of a syllable): The heart of a syllable, carrying suprasegmental information such as stress,
loudness, and pitch
Monophthongs: Simple vowels, composed of a single configuration of the vocal tract
Diphthongs: Complex vowels, composed of a sequence of two different configurations - but the
sequence acts as the nucleus to a single syllable

Running speech (continuous speech): Phrases and sentences, with the words all run together - the
pronunciations of words may be affected by the surround words
File 2.2 - Articulation: English consonants

Articulatory description: The voicing, place of articulation, and manner of articulation of a consonant
Articulation: The motion or positioning of some part of the vocal tract with respect to another vocal
tract surface in the production of a speech sound

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tract surface in the production of a speech sound

Pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism: The airstream mechanism used to create sounds by exhaling
Airstream mechanism: The configuration of the vocal tract used in a particular manner of the production
of speech sounds
Segmental features: The voicing, place, and manner of articulation of a speech sound

Larynx: Sometimes called the voice box - contains the vocal folds and the glottis
Vocal tract: Above the larynx, composed of the oral and nasal cavities
Subglottal system: Part of the respiratory system, located below the larynx

Trachea: The windpipe

Vocal folds: The muscles involved in speech production, move back and forth to allow air to pass
through freely or create vibration as it passes through

Glottis: The opening between the vocal folds

Voiced sounds: Sounds produced by vibration of the vocal folds
Voiceless sounds: Sounds produced without vibration of the vocal folds

Spectrogram: A picture of the acoustic signal of a sound - can indicate whether vocal fold vibrations are
present in a sound
Another option is to insert a thing fiberoptic line through the nostril of the subject and capture the vocal
folds in action with a high-speed camera - however, this procedure is invasive and requires the presence
of well-trained medical personnel, despite its clear picture of the adjustments and movements of the
vocal folds

Places of articulation: Where in the vocal tract a consonant is made

Bilabial: Bringing the two lips together

Labiodental: The lower lip going towards the upper teeth
Interdental: The tongue tip touching the upper teeth
Alveolar: The tongue tip touching the alveolar ridge - behind the front teeth
Retroflex: The tongue tip at the back of the alveolar ridge
Palatal: The tongue at the front of the hard palate
Velar: The tongue towards the back, at the soft palate behind the hard palate
Uvular: The tongue towards the back, near the uvula
Pharyngeal: Made at the root of the tongue, at the back wall of the pharynx
Glottal: Made with the vocal folds in the larynx

Manners of articulation: How the airstream is modified by the vocal tract to produce the sound
- Stop: Made by obstructing the airstream completely in the oral cavity
- Glottal stop: Made by momentarily closing the vocal folds
- Fricative: Made by forming a nearly complete obstruction of the vocal tract, creating a turbulent
noise called frication
- Affricate: Made by briefly stopping the airstream completely and then releasing the articulators
slightly so that frication noise is produced - a sequence of a stop followed by a fricative
- Nasal: Produced by lowering the velum and opening the nasal passage to the vocal tract - can also
be called nasal stops, because the vocal tract is completely obstructed
- Liquid: Involve a substantial constriction of the vocal tract, but not narrow enough to block the
vocal tract or cause turbulence - for example, in a lateral liquid, there's a side passage around the
tongue
- Glide: Made with only a slight closure of the articulators, so that if the vocal tract were any more
open, the result would be a vowel sound
- Flap: Similar to a stop, with a complete obstruction of the oral cavity, but much faster than a stop the articulators strike each other very quickly
In palatography, a picture is made that shows where the tongue touches the roof of the mouth during a
particular articulation.

Static palatography: A form of palatography that involves painting the tongue black with a tasteless
mixture of olive oil and charcoal powder. The speaker rinses in between articulation. Works only if the
speaker produces a single isolated sound and the contact pattern is photographed immediately.

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Dynamic palatography: How one consonant's place of articulation affects another's - also called EPG, for
electropalatography. Allows computer recording of a sequence of contacts as the tongue makes contact
with an artificial hard palate (custom made for each subject) with small embedded electrodes to record
contact as soon as the tongue moves against them. Can track where, how much, and how long contact
between the tongue and roof of the mouth lasted at any given time in an utterance.
Co-articulation of segments: When the articulation of one sound is affected by the sounds around it,
which can't be captured by standard transcriptions

File 2.3 - Articulation: English vowels

Vowels are the most intense and audible speech sounds - consonants that surround them often depend
on the vowel for their audibility
Vowels are almost always voiced, and have no point of articulation or manner of articulation
Factors affecting vowel pronunciation:

- Tongue height: Low vowels are made with the front of the mouth open so the tongue body can be
lowered away from the roof of the mouth, while high vowels are made with the tongue body close
to the roof of the mouth
- Tongue advancement: Front vowels are made with the body of the tongue pushed forward, while
back vowels are made with the body of the tongue in the back of the mouth
- Lip rounding: Vowels can be made either with the lips rounded or unrounded - English uses only a
few rounded vowels
- Tenseness: Tense vowels have more extreme positions of the tongue and lips than vowels that are
lax - they have greater changes from the mid-central position in the mouth - high vowels are
higher, front vowels are further forward
Vowel space: The space used in the mouth to pronounce vowels - tense vowels reach the periphery of
this
Diphthongs: Complex vowels composed of two vowel sounds, transitioning from one vowel to the other
in the same syllable

Previous methods for researching vowel articulation included x -ray films of people talking, but this
method is no longer used as it was harmful for the speakers
More recent technologies include MRI or Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA) - MRI uses invisble rays
to create a visual image of the vocal tract, while EMA involves placing small sensors on the subject's
articulators that transmit information to a computer

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File 2.4 - Beyond English: Speech sounds of the world's languages

German and French both have front rounded vowels , which are not present in English

All languages have oral vowels, and many only have oral vowels - however, there are also nasalized
vowels made with the nasal passage opened, much like a nasal stop compared to an oral stop - these are
written with a tilde over the corresponding oral vowel symbol
The fricatives not used in English are actually used by various other languages - voiceless bilabial, voiced
bilabial, voiceless velar, voiced velar, and voiced glottal

Non-English affricates are similar to combinations of other sounds

Places of articulation used outside of English:
- Uvular stops: Produced by making a stop closure between the back of the tongue and the uvula
- Pharyngeal fricatives: Made by opening the jaw wider to pull the tongue back in the mouth

Manners of articulation used outside of English:

- Trills: Different from the English /r/ sound, these are trilled with the tip of the tongue
- Palatalized nasal: A simultaneous tongue body position for the glide [j] alongside another tongue
tip position, indicated by a super script small [j]
- Velarized alveolar lateral liquid: Like the English [l], but with the tongue body up rather than
down, and the tongue-tip down rather than up - referred to as a dark [l] compared to the tongue
body down, tongue-tip up clear [l]
- Glottalized stops (ejectives): Using a different airstream mechanic involving air pressure in the
mouth cavity, indicated by a superscript of the glottal stop symbol
File 2.5 - Suprasegmental features
It is often difficult or impossible to identify the quality of a suprasegmental feature without comparing
different segments and different utterances

Length: Some speech sounds are longer than others by comparison, and long vowels and consonants are
indicated by a pair of arrows following the long segments - these speech sounds are long only by
comparison to their regular "short" pronunciation
Intonation: The pattern of pitch movements across a stretch of speech, to change its meaning - a rising
intonation at the end of an utterance makes it sound like a question, while a falling intonation makes it
sound like a statement

Pitch accents: A change in fundamental frequency in the middle of an utterance - words with a
higher/lower pitch than the surrounding words are perceived as very prominent and can change
the same string of words to fit different situations
Edge tones: A change in fundamental frequency at the end of a phrase, before a perceived break a falling pitch is usually a for a statement (sentence-final intonation), a rising pitch indicates a

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question (question intonation), and a fall with a slight rise indicates that the speaker is not yet
done speaking (continuation rise)
Tone: The pitch at which syllables are pronounced can sometimes change a word's meaning in a tone
language such as Mandarin - there are two types, level (steady tone throughout a syllable) and contour
(a single syllable with a tone gliding from one level to another - a rising tone or a falling tone)
Tones in a tone language are at least somewhat relative, so a given syllable would be high in comparison
to other syllables spoken by the same speaker - knowledge of the speaker's physical characteristics
(gender, height, size) can help to predict this
Stress: A stressed syllable is more prominent (longer, louder, and usually contain full vowels) than an
unstressed one - primary stress is indicated with ['] after a syllable, secondary stress is marked with [,]
after a symbol, and tertiary stress is not marked

Full vowels are produced with more extreme positions of the tongue, while reduced vowels are
pronounced closer to the mid-central position
In some languages, stress placement is predictable, but in languages such as Russian and English, stress
must be learned for each individual word and can often cause a difference in meaning (bla'ckboard vs
black bo'ard - a historical feature in schools vs a simple black piece of wood)

These suprasegmental features have no meaning or function in isolation, and can only be discovered by
comparison of different syllables - while the [a] symbol always has a specific meaning, the ['] symbol
does not
File 2.6 - Acoustic phonetics
Compression: Air molecules being more crowded than usual
Rarefaction: Air molecules being spread farther apart than usual

Air molecules have a tendency to stay equidistant from each other, so they move away from/towards
each other to return to the equilibrium
Periodic wave: A sound wave that repeats at regular intervals, alternately rarefied and compressed at a
certain frequency - the number of times it repeats per second

Sound is produced by air molecule vibration from 20-20,000 times per second, yet most of that range is
not used in speech - telephones stop at 3,500 Hz, but little essential information about the speech signal
is lost
Complex waves are composed of a number of simple waves interacting with each other - this is how
speech is formed

Fundamental wave: The frequency of the opening and closing of the vocal folds when producing a
speech sound
Harmonics: Repetitions of the fundamental wave of a speech sound, which have a multiple of the
fundamental wave's frequency

Fundamental frequency: The first harmonic of a speech sound

As a sound wave passes through the vocal tract, the articulators shape or filter the sound, either
boosting or damping the harmonic frequencies

A speech sound, then, is composed of two things: the source wave (from the vocal folds) and the filter
(from the articulators)
Acoustic phonetics of vowels:
- The filtering effect of the vocal tract produces amplitude peaks at certain frequencies by
enhancing or damping the harmonics at certain frequencies - these peaks are called formants
(resonant frequencies of the vocal tract, determined by the length and configuration of the vocal
tract)
- Vowels have several formants, the first three of which are the most important for speech
perception - these are different from vowel to vowel
- Plotting the frequencies by their first two formants creates something similar to the vowel chart high vowels have a low F1, while low vowels have a high F1 - front vowels have a high F2, and back
vowels have a low F2
Spectrogram: Graphs that encode three acoustic dimensions: the vertical axis represents frequency, the

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Spectrogram: Graphs that encode three acoustic dimensions: the vertical axis represents frequency, the
horizontal axis represents time, and the degree of darkness indicates the amount of acoustic energy
present at a certain time and at a certain frequency - dark horizontal bands usually represent formants

Acoustic phonetics of consonants:

- Stop consonants are characterized by a lack of energy - a gap - in the display on a spectrogram,
reflecting their manner of articulation
During a voiced stop, some low-frequency noise is produced by vibration of the vocal folds,
which can be seen on a spectrogram as a dark band at the very bottom during the "silence"
of a stop - this is called the voice bar
Voiceless stops are characterized by a period of aspiration, where air rushes out of the
mouth after the release of the stop closure - this is transcribed with a superscript [h]
The acoustic information about a stop is usually found in the vowels around it, while the
tongue glides from one position to the next - the formants are in transition towards their
usual values
The place of articulation of a stop affects the frequency of the F2 at the juncture of the
vowel and the consonant - around 1700-1800 Hz for alveolar stops, low for bilabial stops
and higher in the vowel itself, and for velar stops it depends on the vowels preceding and
following the consonant

- Fricatives are created by the aperiodic (random) turbulence of air rushing through a small
opening, rather than periodic (repeating) vibration of the vocal folds
In English, the relative frequency of fricatives distinguishes them ([s] has a higher frequency
than /sh/, is louder than [f], and longer than [z])
Formant transitions can be used to indicate the place of articulation
Voiced fricatives combine periodic noise and aperiodic noise, while affricates begin with a
gap (for a stop) then the aperiodicity of a fricative
- For nasals, because the nasal passage serves as the filter for all nasal consonants, their formants
are quite similar
F1 is usually around 250 Hz, F2 is usually around 2500 Hz, and F3 is usually around 3250 Hz
Their place of articulation is still cued by the transition from the nasal into the vowel

File 2.7 - The phonetics of signed languages

Phonetic parameters of signed languages are determined in the same way as those for speech sounds which parameters distinguish one segment from another?
Prime: The fundamental element of a signed language, comparable to a phone in a spoken language
- Unlike phones (which occur sequentially), primes must co-occur with the primes from other
parameters to complete the sign - this is a function of our visual processing perceiving multiple
things at once, which human auditory processing is less suited for

Location: Signs can be distinguished by where the sign is produced - in the upper half of the face, the
lower half of the face, etc.
- Every sign language has a particular signing space in which signs may be produced, but these
places of articulation of relative - to whisper, signs are brought in closer towards the signer's
center, while yelling is indicated by increasing the signing space and the amount of movement in
signs
Movement: Two pairs of signs can be distinguished by the amount of movement involved

- Some signs have movements intended to bring a hand from one place of articulation to another,
while others have to do with movement of the wrist or fingers
- Similar to vowels in spoken languages, a sign could be understood without the movement
attached, but it is still a critical part of the articulation of sign languages
Handshape: Which fingers are extended, whether the fingers are bent or straight, the position of the
thumb, which fingers are touching, etc.
- One sign can contain more than one handshape
Orientation: The direction that the palm of the hands are facing
- Towards each other, to the left and right, palms downward, etc.
Other elements can be incorporated into signing, such as head movement or tilt, and facial expression these may be a part of the sign itself, and leaving them out would be performing the sign incorrectly,

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these may be a part of the sign itself, and leaving them out would be performing the sign incorrectly,
like leaving a segment out of a spoken word
In other cases, face and head movement might act as a suprasegmental feature, a type of "intonation"
or emphasis (such as distinguishing HOT and VERY HOT)
Where spoken languages have a certain set of consonants and vowels used, signed languages each have
their own set of handshapes, movements, and places of articulation - not all of which are used in every
sign language

Some differences are more profound, such as using the elbow as an active articulator in Taiwan Sign
Language (in the mouth, the tongue is an active articulator, while the hard palate is a passive articulator
because it is used only when your tongue touches it)
Much like there are vocal sounds that are never speech sounds, there are many possible arm and hand
motions that are simply non-linguistic or not used in any given language
For studying the phonetics of signed languages, video recording is one option, while other sophisticated
technologies involve attaching sensors to parts of the signer's hands, arms, face, and so on - these
sensors record and transfer information to a computer about their position and movement, precisely
measuring things such as amount of movement, tilt, orientation, and exact distance between hands and
the body
Textbook exercises

p. 87
1. What are three different areas of phonetics, and how do they fit into the communication chain?
The three different areas of phonetics are articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics, and auditory
phonetics.

Each represents a portion of the communication chain: articulatory phonetics is the encoding of
the message, acoustic phonetics is the transmission of the message, and auditory phonetics is the
decoding of the message.
p. 88

7. Write the phonetic symbol representing each of the following sounds (don't forget to use square
brackets). The first one is given as an example.
Example: voiced palatal glide: [j]

a. Voiceless palatal affricate: []

b. Voiced velar nasal: []
c. Voiceless glottal fricative: [h]

d. Voiced labiodental fricative: [v]

e. Voiced interdental fricative: []
f. Voiced palatal fricative: []

g. Voiced alveolar lateral liquid: [l]

8. Write the three-part articulatory descriptions for the consonant sounds represented by the following
symbols. The first one is given as an example.

Example: [j]: Voiced palatal glide

a. [f]: Voiceless labiodental fricative
b. [z]: Voiced alveolar fricative

c. [n]: Voiced alveolar nasal

d. []: Voiced velar nasal
e. []: Voiceless palatal fricative

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e. []: Voiceless palatal fricative

f. []: Voiced alveolar retroflex liquid

g. []: Voiced palatal fricative

h. []: Voiceless palatal affricate
i. []: Voiced velar stop

j. []: Voiceless glottal stop

10. Given the articulatory descriptions of consonants in this file, what would you expect the difference
between a [t] and an [s] to look like in static palatography pictures? Of the two pictures below, which do
you think could be an instance of [t] and which an instance of [s]? How do you know? What other sounds
would make the pattern on the roof of the mouth seen in (a) and (b)?

The consonant sound [t] is a voiceless alveolar stop, while the consonant sound [s] is a voiceless
alveolar fricative. In a stop like [t], there's a complete obstruction of the vocal tract, so the tongue
would make a lot of contact with the roof of the mouth. In a fricative like [s], there's a nearly
complete obstruction of the vocal tract to produce turbulence, so there'd be just a bit less contact
with the roof of the mouth than for a stop.
The picture (a) could be an instance of [s], while the picture (b) could be an instance of [t].
The second picture (b) has a lot of contact with the roof of the mouth, so it is probably a stop,
which would be [t]. The first picture (a) still has contact with the roof of the mouth, but less than
in (b), so it could be a fricative rather than a stop.

Another sound that would make the pattern on the roof of the mouth in (a) would be [z], a voiced
alveolar fricative, and for (b) it would be [d], a voiced alveolar stop.
p. 91
14. Write the phonetic symbol representing each of the following sounds (don't forget to use square
brackets). The first one is given as an example:
Example: High back lax rounded vowel: []

a. High front tense unrounded vowel: [i]

b. Mid back lax unrounded vowel: []

c. Mid front lax unrounded vowel: []

d. Low back lax unrounded vowel: []
p. 93

24. Write the IPA symbol for each of the following sounds (don't forget to use square brackets). The first
one is given as an example.
Example: Voiced alveolar trill: [r]
a. Voiced bilabial fricative: []

b. Mid front rounded vowel: []

c. Voiceless palatal stop: [c]

d. Voiceless uvular stop: []

e. Velarized alveolar lateral liquid: []
f. Voiceless glottalized alveolar stop: [t]

p. 97
36. Match each of the following words to the appropriate spectrogram.
a. Shoe
b. Hippo
c. Ow!

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b. Hippo
c. Ow!
I) Ow!
II) Shoe
III) Hippo

38. The following two ASL signs differ in one parameter. Which parameter distinguishes them?
THINK vs WONDER
When signing for THINK, the location, handshape, and orientation are all the same as when signing
for WONDER. But when signing for WONDER, there is also a circular movement with the index
finger.

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