Phonetics

October 10, 2012

Housekeeping• Morphology homeworks are due!

Allomorphy• What’s going on here?

/in-/ + probable = improbable

/in-/ + mobile = immobile

/in-/ + possible = impossible

• /in-/ changes to /im-/ before both /p/ and /m/.

• /p/ and /m/ are both produced with the lips.

To explain patterns like this, we’re going to need to know something about how we actually produce the sounds of English.

We have to study Phonetics!

What is phonetics?

Phonetics is the scientific study of speech sounds. It consists of three main sub-fields:

Articulatory phonetics

= how speech sounds are produced

Acoustic phonetics

= how speech sounds are transmitted from producer to perceiver

Perceptual phonetics

= how speech sounds are perceived

Phonetic Transcription The primary tool of phonetic science is phonetic

transcription.

The basic idea:

represent speech as a sequence of segments.

i.e., with an alphabet.

Segments = individual consonants and vowels.

Deep thought questions:

What kind of alphabet should we use?

How about the English alphabet?

The Trouble with English• Some letters represent more than one different sound

c: recall vs. receive g: gear vs. siege

• Some letters represent no sounds at all

receive use high knee

• Sometimes two letters represent just one sound

recall phonetics

• Some letters represent two or more sounds at once

tax use

• The same sound can be represented by many different letters (or letter combinations).

sh: shy, mission, machine, special, caution

Phonetic Alphabet• Solution: use a phonetic alphabet

• In a phonetic alphabet, sounds and symbols have a one-to-one relationship to each other

• Each symbol represents one sound

• Each sound is represented by one symbol

• The use of a phonetic alphabet to represent speech is called phonetic transcription.

• Our phonetic alphabet of choice:

• The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

The IPA Presided over by the International Phonetic Association

Created in 1886

Still active and evolving today.

Some IPA Principles1. The alphabet should consist as much as possible of

the ordinary letters of the Roman alphabet.

2. In assigning values to the Roman letters, international usage should decide.

• ex: vowel in English “bee” is transcribed with [i]

3. “There should be a separate letter for each distinctive sound; that is, for each sound which, being used instead of another, in the same language, can change the meaning of the word.”

• one letter one sound

• Sound contrasts can be shown to exist in a language by finding minimal pairs.

Minimal Pairs• A minimal pair consists of:

• two words that have different meanings

• which differ from each other in only one sound.

• Some minimal pairs in English:

pit vs. bit ~ /p/ vs. /b/

beet vs. bead ~ /t/ vs. /d/

boat vs. boot ~ /o/ vs. /u/

• A series of minimal pairs is called a minimal set.

• tee ~ bee ~ key ~ sea ~ fee …

Problem: Language Specific Phonetics

The IPA must be able to represent all the contrasts between sounds that are found in all languages of the world.

• …including some which we cannot easily hear.

• An English example:

Contrast: bit vs. pit

Non-contrast: vs.

• Check out Thai: [ba] [pa] [pha]

‘crazy’ ‘aunt’ ‘cloth’

• Closer to home: how about “Don” and “Dawn”?

Technical Terms• A phone is any sound that is used in speech.

• (may or may not be contrastive)

• A phoneme is a contrastive sound in a language

• It may be used to distinguish between words in minimal pairs.

• An allophone is a phonetic variant of a phoneme

• Different allophones often occur in specific contexts.

• Note: analogy with allomorphs.

Phonemic Analysis• Phoneme: /t/

Allophone 5: ‘bit’

(aspirated)

(unaspirated)

“flap”

“glottal stop”

(unreleased)

• In our native language, we tend to hear the phonemes that the allophones belong to…

• Rather than the allophones themselves.

Broad and Narrow Broad transcriptions

• Represent only contrastive sounds (phonemes)

• Enclosed in slashes: / /

• Generally use only alphabetic symbols

• Narrow transcriptions

• Represent phones

• Capture as much phonetic detail as possible

• Enclosed in brackets: [ ]

• Can require use of diacritics