Introduction to Phonetics

CCC 316
Hearing what is said vs. listening to how it's said. (we
are very good at decoding meaning; bad at listening!)
Learning new (complex) articulation patterns (new
gestures are (mostly) easy; but NOT when
communicating)

 Pronunciation is a difficult thing to get into, because

- you have to make conscious something that you use subconsciously, - something you learned to use sub-consciously
many years ago
Pronunciation is difficult to change because
- ANY established motor pattern is difficult to change
- ~ (have you tried to change how you walk?)
Pronunciation is difficult to learn,
- it has to be overlearned so that the new patterns can be used
in communication just as the old ones are.

1.1 Some myths about language

Language is only a means of communication.
Language has a form-meaning

correspondence.
The function of language is to exchange
information.
English is more difficult to learn than
Chinese.
Black English is not standard and should be
reformed.

1.2 Some fundamental views

about L
Children learn their native language swiftly,

efficiently and without instruction.

Language operates by rules.
All languages have three major components:
a sound system, a system of lexicogrammar
and a system of semantics.
Everyone speaks a dialect.
Language slowly changes.

 Speakers of all languages employ a range of

styles and a set of jargons.

Languages are intimately related to the
societies and individuals who use them.
Writing is derivative of speech.

2. What is Language?
Language is not to be confused with
human speech, of which it is only a
definite part, though certainly an essential
one. It is both a social product of the
faculty of speech and a collection of
necessary conventions that have been
adopted by a social body to permit
individuals to exercise that faculty.
--Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913):
Course in General Linguistics (1916)

Language is a purely human and

non-instinctive method of
communicating ideas, emotions and
desires by means of voluntarily
produced symbols.
--Edward Sapir (1884-1939):
Language: An Introduction to the
Study of Speech (1921)

From now on I will

consider language to be a
set (finite or infinite) of
sentences, each finite in
length and constructed out
of a finite set of elements.
--Noam Chomsky (1928- ):
Syntactic Structures (1957)

Getting started:

Phonetics,the study ofspeechsounds and their physiological

production and acoustic qualities.

The study of configurations of the vocal tract employed to
- produce speech sounds (articulatory phonetics),
- the acoustic properties of speech sounds (acoustic phonetics), and
-the manner of combining sounds so as to make syllables, words,
and sentences (linguistic phonetics)

Phonetics
Phonetics is often defined with respect to phonology. Both

disciplines are concerned with the sound medium of language, and

it is not useful to draw a hard and fast line between them.
The area of focus is, however, different.
In general, phonology is concerned with the pattering of sounds in
a language (and in language in general), and is thus comparable
to areas of linguistics such as syntax and morphology which deal
with structural elements of language at other levels.
Phonetics is more centered on the way those structural elements
are "realized" in the world, through movements of the speech
organs which create the acoustic signal.
Phonetics therefore has important links not only to linguistics but
to natural sciences such as physics and anatomy.

Let us watch a video:

The video is a part of I Love Lucy series which was an

American television sitcom starring Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz,

Vivian Vance, and William Frawley.
Originally this black-and-white series ran from 1951 to 1957
on CBS.

THE ORGANS OF
SPEECH AND
THEIR FUNCTIONS

Besides a brain (and the knowledge

of the language), what do you need
to use the spoken language?

These are the speech

organs

Speech organs that belong to the

articulatory system:

Lips
- they serve for creating different sounds - mainly
the labial, bilabial (e.g. /p/, /b/, /m/, /hw/, and /w/)
and labio-dental consonant sounds (e. g. /f/ and
/v/ - and thus create an important part of the
speech apparatus.

Upper Lip

Lower Lip

teeth
- small whitish structures found in
jaws
- responsible for creating sounds
mainly the labio-dental (e.g. /f/
and /v/and lingua-dental (e.g. //and
//)

Teeth

tongue
- with its wide variety of possible movements, it assists in
forming the sounds of speech.

TONGUE

Back
Middle(Dorsu
m)

Front(Blad
e)
Tip(Apex
)

Alveolar ridge
- hard ridge behind the upper front
teeth. It is between the roof of the
mouth and the upper teeth.

 For the sound /s/, air from the lungs

passes continuously through the mouth,

but the tongue is raised sufficiently close
to the alveolar ridge (the section of the
upper jaw containing the tooth sockets)
to cause friction as it partially blocks the
air that passes.

Alveolar
Ridge

Hard palate

a thin horizontal bony plate of the skull, located in the roof of the

mouth.
the interaction between the tongue and the hard palate is
essential in the formation of certain speech sounds, notably
/t/, /d/, and /j/.

Hard
Palate

Velum (soft palate)

- it should have holes forming that function during
speech to separate the oral cavity (mouth) from
the nose, in order to produce the oral speech
sounds. If this separation is incomplete, air
escapes through the nose during speech and the
speech is perceived as hyper nasal.

Velum or Soft
Palate

Uvula
-

it functions in tandem with the back of the throat,

the palate, and air coming up from the lungs to
create a number of guttural and other sounds.
In many languages, it closes to prevent air
escaping through the nose when making some
sounds.

Uvula

Glottis

combination of vocal folds and space in between

the folds
as the vocal folds vibrate, the resulting vibration
produces a buzzing quality to the speech called
voice or voicing or pronunciation.
sound production involving only the glottis is
called glottal. Example is the sound /h/.

Glottis

SPEECH ORGANS
Alveolar ridge

Hard Palate

Soft Palate
Upper lip
Lower lip
Teeth

Uvula
Back
Middle(Dorsum)
Front(Blade)
Tip (Apex)
Glottis