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Home , Allophone, Cardinal vowels, Mid back rounded vowel, Mid back unrounded vowel, Phonology, Phonotactics

Essentials of and

Phonetics is the study of human sounds in general without reference to their systemic role in a specific (contrast phonology below). Phonetics is divided into three types according to the production (articulatory), transmission (acoustic) and (auditive) of sounds. Sounds can be divided into and . The former can be characterised according to 1) p lace, 2) m anner of a rticulation and 3) oice (voiceless or voiced). For vowels one uses a coordinate called a v owel quandrangle within which actual values are located.

Phonology This is the functional classification of the sounds of a particular language. It is the system of sounds by means of which meanings are differentiated in a language and which serve as the building blocks for the higher linguistic levels, e.. .

Phoneme This is the smallest unit of language which distinguishes meaning, it is the organisational unit of phonology. are written in slashes: / /. Examples of phonemes are /k/ and /g/ in English or German. Their status is shown by finding minimal pairs in which the only difference is between the two sounds in question, e.g. c ot and got in English or Kunst and G unst in German.

Allophone This term has two basic meanings. a) the realisation of a ; b) non-distinctive variants of a phoneme. are written in square brackets: [ ]. Examples of allophones are provided by different sounds in a language which do not change the meaning of a , e.g. the uvular and alveolar /r/ of German as in Brot [bRo:t] or [bro:t]. An English example would be provided by the alveolar and the velarised /l/ of English as in leap [li:p] and d eal [di:1].

Phonotactics T his is the area which is concerned with the possible sequences of sounds in a language. For instance, there is a word f act in English with a -final /-kt/ but there is no word ctaf as /kt-/ cannot occur at the beginning of a syllable. Another example of a phonotactic restriction can be seen with the vowel /v/ which occurs in closed but not in open ones, e.g. do ve /dvv/ is a permissible word in English but /dv/ is not because the syllable is not closed by a at the end.

Prosody is concerned with features of and sentences above the level of individual sounds, e.g. , pitch, . Stress is frequently contrastive in English as in /convert (noun) and c on/vert (verb). Note that the stressed syllable of a word is indicated by a superscript vertical stroke placed before the syllable in question, e.g. hostel //

It is essential to distinguish between and sound. There are various terms to characterise the relationship between the written and the spoken word depending on what the m atch between the two is like: homophony ‘ sameness of sound’, e.g. m eat and meet, homography ‘sameness of writing’, e.g. l ead and l ead, ho monymy ‘sameness of sound and writing’, e.g. bear and bear.

The following charts are given for the sounds of English; note that the values refer to Received and vary greatly between varieties of English. Raymond Hickey E ssentials of phonetics and phonology Page 2 of 5

CONSONANT CHART FOR ENGLISH

labial dental alveolar palatal-alveolar palatal velar glottal 1) p b t d k g 2) f v 2 3 s $ g h 3) t$ dg 4) m n 5) l, r 6) w j (labio-velar) (palatal)

1) stops, 2) , 3) , 4) nasals, 5) liquids, 6) glides The left symbol of each pair is voiceless, the right one voiced.

VOWEL CHART AND SYMBOLS

Monophthongs Front Back i: u: High i u e q =: Mid v : Low mid æ <: > Low

Examples: b eat /bi:t/, b it /bit/; b et //; bat /bæt/, ba rd /b<:d/, bo (ttom) /b>tqm/; bu ll /bul/, but /bvt/; bought /bo:t/, boot /bu:t/; (butt)er /bvtq/, b ird /b=:d/.

Diphthongs rising: ai, au, o i b ile /bail/ bow /bau/ boil /boil/ ei, qu bait /beit/ boat /bqut/ centring: iq, eq, uq p ier /piq/ p ear /peq/ poor /puq/ Raymond Hickey E ssentials of phonetics and phonology Page 3 of 5

Transcribing English

Received Pronunciation This is the standard pronunciation of . This stems originally from the of the middle and upper classes in London. In the course of the 19th century it developed into a sociolect, particularly when adopted by the public schools, and attained a wide distribution in Wales and Scotland as well. The term was coined by the English phonetician Daniel Jones. The term is often abbreviated to RP. is the form of English which is generally taught to European students. It differs from is some key respects, chiefly in the realisation of vowels and in the lack of /r/ in syllable-final position, e.g. a word like dark is pronounced without an /r/ in RP and with an /r/ in American English and many other varieties of English as well.

International Phonetic A system of transcribing the sounds of which consists of some Latin and Greek letters and a of additional symbols and diacritics. The goal is to represent each recognisable sound in a unique fashion. The alphabet was developed at the end of the 19th century. The is usually abbreviated to IPA. Many of the symbols found in the IPA are the same as those of the as largely used for English and German, e.g. kept is transcribed as /kept/. In order to transcribe other English words, however, certain special symbols are required. These are listed below.

Special consonant symbols

labial dental alveolar palatal-alveolar palatal velar glottal 1) (p b) (t d) (k g ) 2) (f v) 2 3 (s z) $ g (h) 3) t $ d g 4) (m) (n) n 5) (l, r) 6) (w) (j) (labio-velar) (palatal)

Please bear in mind also that some Latin letters used in the IPA have different sound values from the English alphabet, e.g. /x/ is a velar as in German B uch /bu:x/, /j/ is a as in y awn /jo:n/.

Broad and narrow transcription

The amount of phonetic detail you indicate in a transcription is often a matter of choice. For instance, the lateral /l/ is velarised in syllable-final position in RP, thus pull is narrowly transcribed as [pu1]. The /r/ in English is not rolled so that a narrow transcription would demand [r] rather than [r] as in [rein] (which is a trilled /r/ as in Italian in narrow transcription). However, for practical purposes, a broader transcription Raymond Hickey E ssentials of phonetics and phonology Page 4 of 5 is used so as not to have too much detail which makes the recognition of a word difficult. Here one would transcribe the words just given as [pul] and [rein] respectively.

Special vowel symbols

Nearly all the vowel symbols needed for English (Received Pronunciation) are different from the Latin alphabet symbols. Only the long vowels in b eet, boot and the short vowel in bet are the same. A mark — : — is used to indicate that a vowel is long.

(i:) (u:) High i u e q =: Mid v o: Low mid æ <: > Low

Symbol Description English word

[ i ] centralised high front unrounded vowel bid [ æ ] low front unrounded vowel bat [ < ] low back unrounded vowel class (RP) [ > ] low back rounded vowel stop [ o ] thought [ v ] low cup [ u ] centralised high back rounded vowel push [ q ] unstressed () about [ = ] stressed central vowel (schwa) bird (RP) [ Q ] r-coloured schwa bird (AmerEng)

Transcription samples teeth [ti:2] teethe [ti:3] cease [si:s] seize [si:z] beat [bi:t] bit [bit] pull [pul] pool [pu:l] man [mæn] men [men] occur [q/k=:] display [dis/plei] jaw [dgo:] both [bqu2] thought [2o:t] blockage [/bl>kqdg] Latin [/lætin] Danish [deini$] c hap [t$æp] cancel [/k<:ns)] butter [/bvtq] verse [v=:s] because [bi/ko:z] patient [/pei$qnt] Raymond Hickey E ssentials of phonetics and phonology Page 5 of 5 occur [q/kq:] below [bi/lqu] consider [kqn/sidq] executive [eg/zekju:tiv] l uxury [/lvggqri] manager [/mænqdgq] Berlin [bq:/lin] Kanada [/kænqdq] hypothesis [hai/p>2isis] linguistics [lin/gwistiks] synchrony [/sikrqni] diachrony [dai/ækrqni] homogenize [hq/m>dgqnaiz] paralysis [pq/rælisis] variable [/veiriqb)]

The system of cardinal vowels

The system of cardinal vowels was developed early in the 20th century by the English phonetician Daniel Jones. The idea was to use an abstract rectangle roughly representing a sagittal section of the mouth and to take the extreme points of this rectangle as reference points when describing actual vowels of real languages. The cardinal vowels are thus vowel values at the extreme edges of the vowel quandrangle and represent the furthest the can travel towards the edge of the quadrangle without the vowel quality of the articulation being lost. For instance, the cardinal vowel /i/ is articulated by pushing the tongue as far forward and upwards as possible while still pronouncing a vowel. Any further and the sound would be the palatal fricative /j/. The four extremes of the vowel quandrangle are covered by /i/ (front, high), /u/ (back, high), /a/ (front, low) and />/ (back, low). Apart from these points one can also recognise two further levels of height between high and low. These are mid-open and mid-closed and are necessary when describing many of the world’s languages. The mid-open is /e/ and the mid-closed front vowel is /e/ while the mid-open is /o/ and the mid-closed back vowel is /o/. You will note that this gives eight vowels, but there are in fact 16 cardinal vowels. The explanation here is that vowels can be rounded or unrounded. Across the world´s languages one can notice a significant statistic, namely that front vowels tend to be unrounded and back vowels to be rounded. There are some exceptions to this, for instance French, German, Finnish, Hungarian, etc. have the front rounded vowels /y/ and /#/. Unrounded back vowels are comparatively rare cross-linguistically.

Points of articulation

The following table illustrates the main points of articulation in the mouth. The most important of these is the alveolar ridge as the most common sounds are produced here, e.g. /t,d,s,z,n,l/. The nasal cavity is used to produce nasals, e.g. /m, n, n /. In German the /r/ is articulated by the back of the tongue towards the uvula. The glottis is the space between the vocal folds. When air escapes here and the folds are brought together the latter vibrate. This accounts for the characteristically ‘soft’ sound of /z/ as opposed to /s/.