DOCSLIB.ORG

Articulation of Vowel Sounds in Phonetics, a Vowel Is a Sound In

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Articulation of Vowel Sounds in Phonetics, a Vowel Is a Sound In Articulation of Vowel sounds In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by an open configuration of the vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure above the glottis. This contrasts withconsonants, which are characterized by a constriction or closure at one or more points along the vocal tract. A vowel is also understood to be syllabic: an equivalent open but non-syllabic sound is called a semivowel. In all languages, vowels form the nucleus or peak of syllables, whereas consonants form the onset and (in languages which have them) coda. However, some languages also allow other sounds to form the nucleus of a syllable, such as the syllabic l in the English word table [ˈteɪ.bl̩] (the stroke under the l indicates that it is syllabic; the dot separates syllables), or the r in the Serbian word vrba[vr̩ .ba] "willow". The word vowel comes from the Latin word vocalis, meaning "speaking", because in most languages words and thus speech are not possible without vowels. ArticulationThe articulatory features that distinguish different vowels in a language are said to determine the vowel's quality. Daniel Jones developed the cardinal vowel system to describe vowels in terms of the common features height (vertical dimension), backness(horizontal dimension) and roundedness (lip position). These three parameters are indicated in the schematic IPA vowel diagram on the right. There are however still more possible features of vowel quality, such as the velum position (nasality), type of vocal fold vibration (phonation), and tongue root position. Height Height refers to the vertical position of the tongue relative to either the roof of the mouth or the aperture of the jaw. In high vowels, such as [i] and [u], the tongue is positioned high in the mouth, whereas in low vowels, such as [a], the tongue is positioned low in the mouth. Sometimes the terms open and close are used as synonyms for low and high for describing vowels. The International Phonetic Alphabet identifies seven different vowel heights, although no known language distinguishes all seven: . close vowel (high vowel) . near-close vowel . close-mid vowel . mid vowel . open-mid vowel . near-open vowel . open vowel (low vowel) It may be that some varieties of German have five contrasting vowel heights independently of length or other parameters. The Bavarian dialect of Amstetten has thirteen long vowels, reported to distinguish four heights (close, close-mid, mid, and near-open) each among the front unrounded, front rounded, and back rounded vowels, plus an open central vowel: /i e ɛ̝ æ̝ /, /y ø œ̝ ɶ̝ /, /u o ɔ̝ ɒ̝ /, /a/. Otherwise, the usual limit on the number of vowel heights is four. The parameter of vowel height appears to be the primary feature of vowels cross-linguistically in that all languages use height contrastively. No other parameter, such as front-back or rounded- unrounded (see below), is used in all languages. Some languages use only height to distinguish vowels. Backness Vowels Have Three Distinctive Features: 1. Tongue height:The high vowels represent vowels made with the body of the tongue close to the roof of the mouth while the low vowels are made with the mouth open and the body of the tongue away from the roof of the mouth. Try saying "ee" then "a" (as in cat) repetitively. Feel your tongue move up for the "ee" and down for the "a" (as in cat). 2. Tongue position: Try saying "ee" then "oo" repetitively and feel your tongue move from front to back. 3. Roundness: Another important dierence among the vowels is whether the lips are rounded or unrounded. For example the "oo" has rounded lips while the "ee" has the lips spread apart. In North American English the high back vowels are rounded. .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Vowel Quality and Phonological Projection
    i Vowel Quality and Phonological Pro jection Marc van Oostendorp PhD Thesis Tilburg University September Acknowledgements The following p eople have help ed me prepare and write this dissertation John Alderete Elena Anagnostop oulou Sjef Barbiers Outi BatEl Dorothee Beermann Clemens Bennink Adams Bo domo Geert Bo oij Hans Bro ekhuis Norb ert Corver Martine Dhondt Ruud and Henny Dhondt Jo e Emonds Dicky Gilb ers Janet Grijzenhout Carlos Gussenhoven Gert jan Hakkenb erg Marco Haverkort Lars Hellan Ben Hermans Bart Holle brandse Hannekevan Ho of Angeliek van Hout Ro eland van Hout Harry van der Hulst Riny Huybregts Rene Kager HansPeter Kolb Emiel Krah mer David Leblanc Winnie Lechner Klarien van der Linde John Mc Carthy Dominique Nouveau Rolf Noyer Jaap and Hannyvan Oosten dorp Paola Monachesi Krisztina Polgardi Alan Prince Curt Rice Henk van Riemsdijk Iggy Ro ca Sam Rosenthall Grazyna Rowicka Lisa Selkirk Chris Sijtsma Craig Thiersch MiekeTrommelen Rub en van der Vijver Janneke Visser Riet Vos Jero en van de Weijer Wim Zonneveld Iwant to thank them all They have made the past four years for what it was the most interesting and happiest p erio d in mylife until now ii Contents Intro duction The Headedness of Syllables The Headedness Hyp othesis HH Theoretical Background Syllable Structure Feature geometry Sp ecication and Undersp ecicati on Skeletal tier Mo del of the grammar Optimality Theory Data Organisation of the thesis Chapter Chapter
    [Show full text]
  • LT3212 Phonetics Assignment 4 Mavis, Wong Chak Yin
    LT3212 Phonetics Assignment 4 Mavis, Wong Chak Yin Essay Title: The sound system of Japanese This essay aims to introduce the sound system of Japanese, including the inventories of consonants, vowels, and diphthongs. The phonological variations of the sound segments in different phonetic environments are also included. For the illustration, word examples are given and they are presented in the following format: [IPA] (Romaji: “meaning”). Consonants In Japanese, there are 14 core consonants, and some of them have a lot of allophonic variations. The various types of consonants classified with respect to their manner of articulation are presented as follows. Stop Japanese has six oral stops or plosives, /p b t d k g/, which are classified into three place categories, bilabial, alveolar, and velar, as listed below. In each place category, there is a pair of plosives with the contrast in voicing. /p/ = a voiceless bilabial plosive [p]: [ippai] (ippai: “A cup of”) /b/ = a voiced bilabial plosive [b]: [baɴ] (ban: “Night”) /t/ = a voiceless alveolar plosive [t]: [oto̞ ːto̞ ] (ototo: “Brother”) /d/ = a voiced alveolar plosive [d]: [to̞ mo̞ datɕi] (tomodachi: “Friend”) /k/ = a voiceless velar plosive [k]: [kaiɰa] (kaiwa: “Conversation”) /g/ = a voiced velar plosive [g]: [ɡakɯβsai] (gakusai: “Student”) Phonetically, Japanese also has a glottal stop [ʔ] which is commonly produced to separate the neighboring vowels occurring in different syllables. This phonological phenomenon is known as ‘glottal stop insertion’. The glottal stop may be realized as a pause, which is used to indicate the beginning or the end of an utterance. For instance, the word “Japanese money” is actually pronounced as [ʔe̞ ɴ], instead of [je̞ ɴ], and the pronunciation of “¥15” is [dʑɯβːɡo̞ ʔe̞ ɴ].
    [Show full text]
  • Vowel Sounds Can Symbolise the Felt Heaviness of Obje
    CORRESPONDENCES AND SYMBOLISM Cross-Sensory Correspondences in Language: Vowel Sounds can Symbolise the Felt Heaviness of Objects Peter Walker1,2 & Caroline Regina Parameswaran2 1 Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, UK 2 Department of Psychology, Sunway University, Malaysia Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Peter Walker, Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YF, UK e-mail: [email protected] tel: +44 (0) 1524 593163 fax: +44 (0) 1524 593744 1 CORRESPONDENCES AND SYMBOLISM Abstract In sound symbolism, a word's sound induces expectations about the nature of a salient aspect of the word's referent. Walker (2016a) proposed that cross-sensory correspondences can be the source of these expectations and the present study assessed three implications flowing from this proposal. First, sound symbolism will embrace a wide range of referent features, including heaviness. Second, any feature of a word's sound able to symbolise one aspect of the word's referent will also be able to symbolise corresponding aspects of the referent (e.g., a sound feature symbolising visual pointiness will also symbolise lightness in weight). Third, sound symbolism will be independent of the sensory modality through which a word's referent is encoded (e.g., whether heaviness is felt or seen). Adults judged which of two contrasting novel words was most appropriate as a name for the heavier or lighter of two otherwise identical hidden novel objects they were holding in their hands. The alternative words contrasted in their vowels and/or consonants, one or both of which were known to symbolise visual pointiness. Though the plosive or continuant nature of the consonants did not influence the judged appropriateness of a word to symbolise the heaviness of its referent, back/open vowels, compared to front/close vowels, were judged to symbolise felt heaviness.
    [Show full text]
  • Part 1: Introduction to The
    PREVIEW OF THE IPA HANDBOOK Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet PARTI Introduction to the IPA 1. What is the International Phonetic Alphabet? The aim of the International Phonetic Association is to promote the scientific study of phonetics and the various practical applications of that science. For both these it is necessary to have a consistent way of representing the sounds of language in written form. From its foundation in 1886 the Association has been concerned to develop a system of notation which would be convenient to use, but comprehensive enough to cope with the wide variety of sounds found in the languages of the world; and to encourage the use of thjs notation as widely as possible among those concerned with language. The system is generally known as the International Phonetic Alphabet. Both the Association and its Alphabet are widely referred to by the abbreviation IPA, but here 'IPA' will be used only for the Alphabet. The IPA is based on the Roman alphabet, which has the advantage of being widely familiar, but also includes letters and additional symbols from a variety of other sources. These additions are necessary because the variety of sounds in languages is much greater than the number of letters in the Roman alphabet. The use of sequences of phonetic symbols to represent speech is known as transcription. The IPA can be used for many different purposes. For instance, it can be used as a way to show pronunciation in a dictionary, to record a language in linguistic fieldwork, to form the basis of a writing system for a language, or to annotate acoustic and other displays in the analysis of speech.
    [Show full text]
  • SSC: the Science of Talking
    SSC: The Science of Talking (for year 1 students of medicine) Week 3: Sounds of the World’s Languages (vowels and consonants) Michael Ashby, Senior Lecturer in Phonetics, UCL PLIN1101 Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology A Lecture 4 page 1 Vowel Description Essential reading: Ashby & Maidment, Chapter 5 4.1 Aim: To introduce the basics of vowel description and the main characteristics of the vowels of RP English. 4.2 Definition of vowel: Vowels are produced without any major obstruction of the airflow; the intra-oral pressure stays low, and vowels are therefore sonorant sounds. Vowels are normally voiced. Vowels are articulated by raising some part of the tongue body (that is the front or the back of the tongue notnot the tip or blade) towards the roof of the oral cavity (see Figure 1). 4.3 Front vowels are produced by raising the front of the tongue towards the hard palate. Back vowels are produced by raising the back of the tongue towards the soft palate. Central vowels are produced by raising the centre part of the tongue towards the junction of the hard and soft palates. 4.4 The height of a vowel refers to the degree of raising of the relevant part of the tongue. If the tongue is raised so as to be close to the roof of the oral cavity then a close or high vowel is produced. If the tongue is only slightly raised, so that there is a wide gap between its highest point and the roof of the oral cavity, then an open or lowlowlow vowel results.
    [Show full text]
  • Vocale Incerta, Vocale Aperta*
    Vocale Incerta, Vocale Aperta* Michael Kenstowicz Massachusetts Institute of Technology Omaggio a P-M. Bertinetto Ogni toscano si comporta di fronte a una parola a lui nuova, come si nota p. es. nella lettura del latino, scegliendo costantamente, e inconsciamente, il timbro aperto, secondo il principio che il Migliorini ha condensato nella formula «vocale incerta, vocale aperta»…è il processo a cui vien sottoposto ogni vocabolo importato o adattato da altri linguaggi. (Franceschi 1965:1-3) 1. Introduction Standard Italian distinguishes seven vowels in stressed nonfinal syllables. The open ɛ,ɔ vs. closed e,o mid-vowel contrast (transcribed here as open è,ò vs. closed é,ó) is neutralized in unstressed position (1). (1) 3 sg. infinitive tócca toccàre ‘touch’ blòcca bloccàre ‘block’ péla pelàre ‘pluck’ * A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the MIT Phonology Circle and the 40th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, University of Washington (March 2010). Thanks to two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments as well as to Maria Giavazzi, Giovanna Marotta, Joan Mascaró, Andrea Moro, and Mario Saltarelli. 1 gèla gelàre ‘freeze’ The literature uniformly identifies the unstressed vowels as closed. Consequently, the open è and ò have more restricted distribution and hence by traditional criteria would be identified as "marked" (Krämer 2009). In this paper we examine various lines of evidence indicating that the open vowels are optimal in stressed (open) syllables (the rafforzamento of Nespor 1993) and thus that the closed é and ó are "marked" in this position: {è,ò} > {é,ó} (where > means “better than” in the Optimality Theoretic sense).
    [Show full text]
  • Glossary of Key Terms
    Glossary of Key Terms accent: a pronunciation variety used by a specific group of people. allophone: different phonetic realizations of a phoneme. allophonic variation: variations in how a phoneme is pronounced which do not create a meaning difference in words. alveolar: a sound produced near or on the alveolar ridge. alveolar ridge: the small bony ridge behind the upper front teeth. approximants: obstruct the air flow so little that they could almost be classed as vowels if they were in a different context (e.g. /w/ or /j/). articulatory organs – (or articulators): are the different parts of the vocal tract that can change the shape of the air flow. articulatory settings or ‘voice quality’: refers to the characteristic or long-term positioning of articulators by individual or groups of speakers of a particular language. aspirated: phonemes involve an auditory plosion (‘puff of air’) where the air can be heard passing through the glottis after the release phase. assimilation: a process where one sound is influenced by the characteristics of an adjacent sound. back vowels: vowels where the back part of the tongue is raised (like ‘two’ and ‘tar’) bilabial: a sound that involves contact between the two lips. breathy voice: voice quality where whisper is combined with voicing. cardinal vowels: a set of phonetic vowels used as reference points which do not relate to any specific language. central vowels: vowels where the central part of the tongue is raised (like ‘fur’ and ‘sun’) centring diphthongs: glide towards /ə/. citation form: the way we say a word on its own. close vowel: where the tongue is raised as close as possible to the roof of the mouth.
    [Show full text]
  • UC Berkeley Phonlab Annual Report
    UC Berkeley UC Berkeley PhonLab Annual Report Title Strengthening, Weakening and Variability: The Articulatory Correlates of Hypo- and Hyper- articulation in the Production of English Dental Fricatives Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1hw2719n Journal UC Berkeley PhonLab Annual Report, 14(1) ISSN 2768-5047 Author Melguy, Yevgeniy Publication Date 2018 DOI 10.5070/P7141042482 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UC Berkeley Phonetics and Phonology Lab Annual Report (2018) Yevgeniy Melguy Susan Lin, Brian Smith M.A. Qualifying Paper 9 December 2018 Strengthening, weakening and variability: The articulatory correlates of hypo- and hyper- articulation in the production of English dental fricatives 1. INTRODUCTION A number of influential approaches to understanding phonetic and phonological variation in speech have highlighted the importance of functional factors (Blevins, 2004; Donegan & Stampe, 1979; Kiparsky, 1988; Kirchner, 1998; Lindblom, 1990). Under such approaches, speaker- and listener-oriented principles—ease of articulation vs. perceptual clarity—often work in opposite directions with respect to consonantal articulation. Minimization of effort is thought to drive a general “weakening” of consonants (resulting in decreased articulatory constriction and/or duration) which often makes them more articulatorily similar to surrounding sounds. This can result in assimilation, lenition, and ultimately deletion, and generally comes at the expense of clarity. By contrast, maximization of clarity drives consonantal “strengthening” processes (resulting in increased articulatory constriction and/or duration) that makes target segments more distinct from neighboring sounds, which can result in fortition. Clear speech generally involves more extreme or “forceful” articulations, and usually comes at the expense of requiring more articulatory effort from the speaker.
    [Show full text]
  • Ohne Lös SS 11 Slides III NN
    Semester Outline Introduction to English Phonology and Phonetics 1. Phonetics and phonology: basics (& introducing transcription) 2. English consonants Dr. Nadja Nesselhauf 3. English vowels 4. Beyond the phoneme (connected speech, suprasegmentals etc.) 5. Accents of English English Vowels: Outline Phonetic Classification of Vowels Phonetic criteria for the classification of vowels: 1. Classification of vowels - tongue shape (tongue height = closeness/openness + part of tongue which is highest = frontness/backness) 2. English monophthongs - lip shape (rounded vs. unrounded or spread vs. neutral vs. round) - constancy of tongue/(lip)-shape (diphthongs vs. 3. English diphthongs monophthongs) - position of velum (oral vs. nasal vowels) - duration (long vs. short) 1 Classification of Vowels: Classification of Vowels: Extreme Vowels Extreme Vowels [i]: [u]: extremely extremely front and back and close close Source: Collins/Mees 2003, 59 Source: Collins/Mees 2003, 59 Classification of Vowels: Classification of Vowels: Extreme Vowels Extreme Vowels [a]: [@]: extremely extremely front and back and open open Source: Collins/Mees 2003, 60 Source: Collins/Mees 2003, 60 2 Classification of Vowels: Classification of Vowels: Vowel Diagram Cardinal Vowels (D. Jones) “si” “gut” “thé” “Rose” “même” “Sonne” “la” “pas” Source: Collins/Mees 2003, 61 Source: Collins/Mees 2003, 61 Classification of Vowels: Cardinal Vowels (D. Jones) Vowels in the IPA chart Source: Collins/Mees 2003, 61 Daniel Jones pronouncing the cardinal vowels: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UIAe4p2I74 3 Alternative Vowel Chart Vowels - a Continuum… (Primary Cardinal Vowels) George Bernard Shaw: Pygmalion (Preface: “there are touches of [Henry] Sweet in the play”): HIGGINS: Tired of listening to sounds? PICKERING: Yes. It‘s a fearful strain.
    [Show full text]
  • A Phonetic, Phonological, and Morphosyntactic Analysis of the Mara Language
    San Jose State University SJSU ScholarWorks Master's Theses Master's Theses and Graduate Research Spring 2010 A Phonetic, Phonological, and Morphosyntactic Analysis of the Mara Language Michelle Arden San Jose State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses Recommended Citation Arden, Michelle, "A Phonetic, Phonological, and Morphosyntactic Analysis of the Mara Language" (2010). Master's Theses. 3744. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31979/etd.v36r-dk3u https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/3744 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Master's Theses and Graduate Research at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A PHONETIC, PHONOLOGICAL, AND MORPHOSYNTACTIC ANALYSIS OF THE MARA LANGUAGE A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of Linguistics and Language Development San Jose State University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts by Michelle J. Arden May 2010 © 2010 Michelle J. Arden ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Designated Thesis Committee Approves the Thesis Titled A PHONETIC, PHONOLOGICAL, AND MORPHOSYNTACTIC ANALYSIS OF THE MARA LANGUAGE by Michelle J. Arden APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY May 2010 Dr. Daniel Silverman Department of Linguistics and Language Development Dr. Soteria Svorou Department of Linguistics and Language Development Dr. Kenneth VanBik Department of Linguistics and Language Development ABSTRACT A PHONETIC, PHONOLOGICAL, AND MORPHOSYNTACTIC ANALYSIS OF THE MARA LANGUAGE by Michelle J. Arden This thesis presents a linguistic analysis of the Mara language, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in northwest Myanmar and in neighboring districts of India.
    [Show full text]
  • Learning [Voice]
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations Fall 2010 Learning [Voice] Joshua Ian Tauberer University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the First and Second Language Acquisition Commons Recommended Citation Tauberer, Joshua Ian, "Learning [Voice]" (2010). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 288. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/288 Please see my home page, http://razor.occams.info, for the data files and scripts that make this reproducible research. This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/288 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Learning [Voice] Abstract The [voice] distinction between homorganic stops and fricatives is made by a number of acoustic correlates including voicing, segment duration, and preceding vowel duration. The present work looks at [voice] from a number of multidimensional perspectives. This dissertation's focus is a corpus study of the phonetic realization of [voice] in two English-learning infants aged 1;1--3;5. While preceding vowel duration has been studied before in infants, the other correlates of post-vocalic voicing investigated here --- preceding F1, consonant duration, and closure voicing intensity --- had not been measured before in infant speech. The study makes empirical contributions regarding the development of the production of [voice] in infants, not just from a surface- level perspective but also with implications for the phonetics-phonology interface in the adult and developing linguistic systems. Additionally, several methodological contributions will be made in the use of large sized corpora and data modeling techniques. The study revealed that even in infants, F1 at the midpoint of a vowel preceding a voiced consonant was lower by roughly 50 Hz compared to a vowel before a voiceless consonant, which is in line with the effect found in adults.
    [Show full text]
  • Northern Tosk Albanian
    1 Northern Tosk Albanian 1 1 2 Stefano Coretta , Josiane Riverin-Coutlée , Enkeleida 1,2 3 3 Kapia , and Stephen Nichols 1 4 Institute of Phonetics and Speech Processing, 5 Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München 2 6 Academy of Albanological Sciences 3 7 Linguistics and English Language, University of Manchester 8 29 July 2021 9 1 Introduction 10 Albanian (endonym: Shqip; Glotto: alba1268) is an Indo-European lan- 11 guage which has been suggested to form an independent branch of the 12 Indo-European family since the middle of the nineteenth century (Bopp 13 1855; Pedersen 1897; Çabej 1976). Though the origin of the language has 14 been debated, the prevailing opinion in the literature is that it is a descend- 15 ant of Illyrian (Hetzer 1995). Albanian is currently spoken by around 6–7 16 million people (Rusakov 2017; Klein et al. 2018), the majority of whom 17 live in Albania and Kosovo, with others in Italy, Greece, North Macedonia 18 and Montenegro. Figure 1 shows a map of the main Albanian-speaking 19 areas of Europe, with major linguistic subdivisions according to Gjinari 20 (1988) and Elsie & Gross (2009) marked by different colours and shades. 21 At the macro-level, Albanian includes two main varieties: Gheg, 22 spoken in Northern Albania, Kosovo and parts of Montenegro and North 1 Figure 1: Map of the Albanian-speaking areas of Europe. Subdivisions are based on Gjinari (1988) and Elsie & Gross (2009). CC-BY-SA 4.0 Stefano Coretta, Júlio Reis. 2 23 Macedonia; and Tosk, spoken in Southern Albania and in parts of Greece 24 and Southern Italy (von Hahn 1853; Desnickaja 1976; Demiraj 1986; Gjin- 25 ari 1985; Beci 2002; Shkurtaj 2012; Gjinari et al.
    [Show full text]