Introduction to Phonetic Science

Introduction toPhonetic Science

HESP 403

Spring 2007

Our backgrounds

...

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 PhoneticsWhat is being said?

How do we classify sounds that we make in speech?

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

Acoustic phoneticsWhat are the physical properties

of speech sounds?

Auditory PhoneticsHow 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 slideEVER

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

• “rat” “kit” “cab”

• 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”

Ph o n e me

/ f / / o / / n / / i / / m /

“Boat”

B oa t

/ b / / o / / t /

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, thoughonly 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

/ ph 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

Japanese

/ r /p

h

o

n

e

p

h

o

n

e

[ l ] [ r ]

English

/ l / / r /p

h

o

n

e

phone

[ l ] [ r ]

“Allophone” is a language-specific designation.

Allophones Phonemes

English / i /

p

h

o

n

e

p

h

o

n

e

[ i ] [ i: ]

Finnish/ i / / i: /

p

h

o

n

e

phone

[ i ] [ i: ]

“Allophone” is a language-specific designation.

“See”“Sika”

“Siika”

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 Not phonemes in in EnglishEnglishhttp://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?

Word – “behave”

Syllable Syllable

onset rhyme onset rhyme

nucleus coda nucleus coda

B e ø h a ve

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 identifierin (phonetic) homographs

• convict vs. convict

• project vs. project

• converse vs. converse

• first syllable stressed: noun

(Same sounds in the word)

• second syllable stressed: verb

Interchangeable stress

Inside Hello

Non-Interchangeable stress

Gather Sleepy Computer

Transcription of stress

Transcr|ibe• Insert | before the stressed syllable (or vowel)

Pr|emon|ition

• Insert | before a syllable (vowel) of secondary stress

(this one is not as important)

Examples of stress transcriptionin orthography

M|emphis Sevent|een Revol|ution Inv|est B|ubble

|Invoice Inst|ead Ind|eed |Insect |Index Insp|ire

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