The sounds of language

Phonetics ~1.1m high, bipedal mya Genus: 3 Homo

Simple stone 1.7 tools based on chipped pebbles

0.7 ?

0.13 Position of the ‘ box’

From: Christel Stolz (2004) “Neandertalisch für Anfänger” Abenteuer Archäologie .2: 80-83.

How the sounds of language are made

articulators A. Stefanowitsch2004 •active • passive +

A

I air flow Individual sounds are defined by

• – lips (labial), teeth (dental), ridge behind the top teeth (alveolar), top of the mouth (palatal), top of the back of the mouth (velar), pharyngeal, glottal • – : stops (), , – sonorents: , nasals, • Voicing • Nasality Segmental phonetics “Voicing” (stimmhaft / stimmlos)

GeoWissen 40 (2007: p114) Suprasegmental phonetics (intonation / prosody)

•Pitch • Intensity

Are you going?

Are you going? Are you going? Describing segmental phonetics

• Voicing

• Nasality

•Place

• obstruents: plosives, fricatives, affricates • Manner • sonorents: vowels, nasals, approximants Classifying segments cat voicing? nasality? place? manner?

dune voicing? nasality? place? manner? Problem: lots and lots (and lots) of different sounds, how to represent them?

‘Orthography’ – spelling

Beware of heard, a dreadful word That looks like beard and sounds like bird. And dead; it’s said like bed, not bead; For goodness sake, don’t call it deed! Watch out for meat and great and threat (They rhyme with suite and straight and debt). A moth is not a moth in Mother, Nor both in bother, broth in brother. Richard Krogh cited in O’Grady et al. (1996) Contemporary Linguistics: an Introduction. • “English spelling is the most chaotic in the world. It is even worse than French.” • Secondly, by great good fortune English spelling has escaped those tiresome diacritical marks placed above, beneath, before or after the letter, or inserted within it, which in a greater or less degree disfigure French, German, Italian, Spanish, Czech, Polish, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and even Turkish. • Thirdly, English spelling conserves the rich and far-reaching international characteristics of speech so that men of many nations are immediately aware of the meaning of thousands of words which would be unrecognizable if written phonetically. Problem:

writing systems based on sounds/pronunciations may depend on the phonological systems of their respective languages

Japanese orthography pushes all sounds to be syllables

マクドナルドハンバーガー ma ku do na ru do ha n ba-a ga-a

McDonald’s Hamburger And

Problem:

however a writing system works, its users will pronounce things consistently with their own language How to solve this problem?

how to obtain a written representation that does not depend on the phonological systems of some particular language? International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

with the tongue Sounds of English: IPA p papa s sierra m mike b bravo z zulu n november t tango S shamble N ring d delta Z measure t S church k kilo h hotel d Z judge g golf l lima f foxtrot ® romeo v victor j yankee T theatre w whisky D that Classifying segments IPA cat voicing? nasality? place? manner? ?

voicing? nasality? place? manner? dune ?

An IPA symbol is also an instruction for how the sound is produced! Classifying segments IPA cat voicing? nasality? place? manner? ?

NO NO VELAR STOP International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) VELAR, , UNVOICED

PLOSIVE

VELAR UNVOICED Classifying segments IPA cat voicing? nasality? place? manner? ?k

NO NO VELAR STOP Classifying segments IPA dune voicing? nasality? place? manner? ? YES YES ALVE- CONT- OLAR INUANT International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) ALVEOLAR, NASAL, CONTINUANT

NASAL

ALVEOLAR

CONTINUANT Classifying segments IPA dune voicing? nasality? place? manner? ?n YES YES ALVE- CONT- OLAR INUANT

An IPA symbol is also an instruction for how the sound is produced Describing Sounds

IPA voicing? nasality? place? manner? NO NO VELAR STOP ?k +voiced a ‘bundle’ of +nasal phonetic features +velar [k] +stop Evidence for Phonetic Features: speech errors Example 1

Intended Actually produced big and fat pig and vat Example 1

Intended Actually produced big and fat pig and vat

+ voiced -voiced -voiced + voiced + labial + labiodental + labial + labiodental + stop + + stop + fricative

►voicing is known about separately to the other features Example 2

Intended Actually produced Is Pat a girl? Is bat a curl? Example 2

Intended Actually produced Is Pat a girl? Is bat a curl?

-voiced + voiced + voiced -voiced + labial + velar + labial + velar + stop + stop + stop + stop

►voicing is known about separately to the other features Example 3

Intended Actually produced Cedars of Cedars of Lebanon Lemmanon Example 3

Intended Actually produced Cedars of Cedars of Lebanon Lemmanon

+ voiced + voiced +voiced+ voiced + voiced + labial + alveolar + labial + alveolar + stop + nasal + nasal + nasal

►nasal is known about separately to the other features Moving from sounds to language ー from phonetics to phonology Phonetics and Phonology Grouping sounds together • light • leak • hell •close • milk • lick • leopard •luck • bold • tulip • late •film Phonetic representation Complementary distribution Ä

[l] […]

everywhere before : E, I, i else “let” “tell” [lEt] [tE…]

[… Et] [tEl] COMPLEMENTARY DISTRIBUTION Phonetics [lEt] [tE…]

[l] […] phones Phonetics [lEt] [tE…] Phonemics /lEt//tEl/

‘abstract’ sounds: the units that a language distinguishes in order to make up its words Phonetics [lEt] [tE…] Phonemics /lEt//tEl/ /l/ → [l] […] phoneme phones Complementary distribution Ä

[l] […] before : E, I, i elsewhere Complementary distribution

[l] […]

allophones

of the phoneme /l/ Phonological Rule

/l/ → [l] / _E, I, i […] / elsewhere Description vs. Prescription

• Description – describing how language is, systematising our observations in order to serve as a basis for proposing theories. – Empirical.

• Proscription / Prescription – saying how language should be, based on norms and social standards, sense(s) of aesthetics, ‘folk’-feelings about language. – Not linguistic! Paradigmatic vs. Syntagmatic

Ferdinand de Saussure (1916) choice is meaningful ... e “paradigmatic” c i o h c ...... c h a i n ... “syntagmatic” .

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e

c

i

o

h “bat”

c

. . ... c h a i n ... . [b t]

b a t [kat] [bIt] [bap] [pat] [bEt] [bad] Phonemes / Phonology: contrastive units

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e

c

i

o

h

c / /

. . ... c h a i n ... . b t b a t k I p p E d Phonemes / Phonology: contrastive units

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e

c

i

o

h

c / /

. . ... c h a i n ... . b t b • phonemesa are the minimalt units of phonology k I p • changing a phoneme p means Ethat you change dthe word! Phones, Phonemes, Language

Which phones are allophones of which phonemes depends on the language!!

For example: • English does not distinguish [p] and [pH], some other languages do! • Chinese / Japanese does not distinguish [l] and [®], some other languages do! Phones, Phonemes, Language

The phonological system of a language defines which ‘abstract sounds’ are available to distinguish meanings

It defines ‘abstract sounds’, or phonemes, as a collection of actual sounds (phones) that are not distinguished by speakers of the language. Phones, Phonemes, Language

English

[p][pH] /p/ /l/ [l] […] /r/ [®] Ø

phonology phonetics Phones, Phonemes, Language

Thai [pH] /ph/ /p/ [p] /l/

[l] [®]

phonology phonetics