🤟🏼Intro to the Study of Language Unit 2 – Phonetics: Language Sound Basics

What's Phonetics All About?

• Phonetics focuses on studying the physical properties of speech sounds and how they are produced, transmitted, and perceived
• Examines the physiological aspects of speech production involves the study of the vocal tract, articulators, and the process of articulation
• Investigates the acoustic properties of speech sounds analyzes the sound waves produced during speech, including their frequency, amplitude, and duration
• Explores the auditory perception of speech sounds focuses on how the human ear and brain process and interpret the acoustic signals of speech
• Provides a systematic way to describe and classify speech sounds across languages enables linguists to compare and contrast sounds from different languages and dialects
• Serves as a foundation for other areas of linguistics such as phonology, which studies the sound systems and patterns of languages
• Contributes to various practical applications including speech therapy, language teaching, and speech recognition technology

Sounds of Speech: The Building Blocks

• Speech sounds are the basic units of spoken language that are combined to form words and utterances
• Phonemes are the smallest units of sound that distinguish one word from another in a particular language (p and b in "pin" and "bin")
• Allophones are the different phonetic realizations of a phoneme that do not change the meaning of a word (aspirated and unaspirated p in "pin" and "spin")
• Consonants are speech sounds produced with a constriction or complete closure in the vocal tract
  • Manner of articulation describes how the airflow is modified during the production of a consonant (stop, fricative, nasal)
  • Place of articulation refers to where the constriction or closure occurs in the vocal tract (bilabial, alveolar, velar)
• Vowels are speech sounds produced without significant constriction in the vocal tract
  • Vowels are typically described by the position of the tongue and the shape of the lips (front, back, high, low, rounded, unrounded)
• Diphthongs are complex vowel sounds that involve a change in tongue position during production (ai in "bite", ou in "bout")

The IPA: Your New Best Friend

• The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a standardized set of symbols used to represent speech sounds across languages
• Each symbol in the IPA represents a distinct speech sound based on its articulatory and acoustic properties
• Consonant symbols are organized in the IPA chart according to their manner and place of articulation
  • Rows represent the manner of articulation (plosives, nasals, trills)
  • Columns represent the place of articulation (bilabial, dental, velar)
• Vowel symbols are arranged in the IPA vowel chart based on the position of the tongue and the shape of the lips
  • The vertical axis represents the height of the tongue (close, close-mid, open)
  • The horizontal axis represents the backness of the tongue (front, central, back)
• Diacritics are additional symbols used to modify the basic IPA characters and indicate specific phonetic features (voicing, aspiration, nasalization)
• Learning the IPA enables linguists and language learners to accurately transcribe and describe speech sounds across languages
• IPA transcriptions are enclosed in square brackets [ ] to indicate a phonetic representation, as opposed to slashes / / for phonemic representations

Consonants: How We Make Them

• Consonants are produced by creating an obstruction or complete closure in the vocal tract
• The manner of articulation describes how the airflow is modified during consonant production
  • Plosives (stops) involve a complete closure followed by a sudden release of air (p, t, k)
  • Fricatives are produced with a narrow constriction that causes turbulent airflow (f, s, ʃ)
  • Affricates combine a plosive and a fricative (tʃ in "chair", dʒ in "judge")
  • Nasals are produced with a complete closure in the oral cavity and lowered velum, allowing air to escape through the nose (m, n, ŋ)
  • Approximants are produced with a slight constriction that does not cause turbulent airflow (l, r, w)
• The place of articulation refers to where the obstruction or closure occurs in the vocal tract
  • Bilabial consonants are produced with both lips (p, b, m)
  • Labiodental consonants are produced with the lower lip and upper teeth (f, v)
  • Alveolar consonants are produced with the tongue tip or blade touching the alveolar ridge (t, d, s, z)
  • Velar consonants are produced with the back of the tongue touching the soft palate (k, g, ŋ)
• Voicing distinguishes consonants based on the vibration of the vocal cords
  • Voiced consonants are produced with vibrating vocal cords (b, d, g)
  • Voiceless consonants are produced without vocal cord vibration (p, t, k)

Vowels: The Tricky Ones

• Vowels are speech sounds produced without significant constriction in the vocal tract
• Vowels are typically described by the position of the tongue and the shape of the lips
  • The height of the tongue distinguishes vowels as close (high), close-mid, open-mid, or open (low)
  • The backness of the tongue distinguishes vowels as front, central, or back
  • Lip rounding distinguishes vowels as rounded or unrounded
• Monophthongs are simple vowel sounds that maintain a relatively stable tongue position throughout their production (i in "beat", u in "boot")
• Diphthongs are complex vowel sounds that involve a change in tongue position during production
  • Closing diphthongs move from a more open to a more closed position (ai in "bite", ou in "bout")
  • Centering diphthongs move towards a central vowel position (iə in "dear", eə in "care")
• Vowel length can be phonemic in some languages, distinguishing words based on the duration of the vowel sound
• Vowel reduction occurs in unstressed syllables, where vowels are often shortened, centralized, or elided (ə in "about", i in "decimal")
• Vowel harmony is a phonological process in which vowels within a word or domain assimilate to share certain features, such as backness or rounding

Suprasegmentals: Beyond Individual Sounds

• Suprasegmentals are phonetic features that extend beyond individual speech sounds and affect larger units of speech, such as syllables, words, or phrases
• Stress refers to the relative prominence of syllables within a word or phrase
  • Stressed syllables are typically louder, longer, and produced with higher pitch than unstressed syllables
  • Stress patterns can be contrastive, distinguishing words with the same segmental composition (CONtent vs. conTENT)
• Intonation is the variation in pitch over the course of an utterance, conveying linguistic and paralinguistic information
  • Intonation can indicate sentence type (declarative, interrogative), focus, and emotional state
  • Pitch contours, such as rising or falling tones, can be phonemic in some languages (Mandarin Chinese)
• Tone is the use of pitch to distinguish words or grammatical categories
  • Tonal languages (Mandarin Chinese, Yoruba) use different pitch patterns to convey lexical or grammatical meaning
  • Contour tones involve a change in pitch over the duration of a syllable (rising, falling, dipping)
  • Level tones maintain a relatively stable pitch throughout the syllable (high, mid, low)
• Rhythm refers to the temporal organization of speech, including the timing and duration of syllables and pauses
  • Stress-timed languages (English, German) tend to have regular intervals between stressed syllables, with unstressed syllables compressed to maintain the rhythm
  • Syllable-timed languages (Spanish, French) tend to have syllables of roughly equal duration, regardless of stress
• Juncture refers to the phonetic cues that signal boundaries between words, phrases, or clauses
  • Pauses, changes in pitch, and segmental modifications (e.g., glottalization) can indicate juncture in speech

Acoustic Phonetics: The Science Behind Speech

• Acoustic phonetics studies the physical properties of speech sounds as they are transmitted through the air
• Sound waves are the primary medium through which speech is conveyed, characterized by their frequency, amplitude, and duration
  • Frequency is the number of cycles per second, measured in Hertz (Hz), and determines the perceived pitch of a sound
  • Amplitude is the magnitude of the sound wave, measured in decibels (dB), and determines the perceived loudness of a sound
  • Duration is the length of time a sound lasts, measured in milliseconds (ms) or seconds (s)
• Formants are the resonant frequencies of the vocal tract that give vowels their distinct quality
  • Formants are determined by the size and shape of the vocal tract, which is modified by the position of the tongue, lips, and jaw
  • The first two formants (F1 and F2) are the most important for vowel perception, with F1 corresponding to vowel height and F2 corresponding to vowel backness
• Spectrograms are visual representations of speech sounds, displaying frequency, amplitude, and duration information over time
  • Formants appear as dark bands on a spectrogram, with their position and intensity reflecting the acoustic properties of the vowels
  • Consonants can be identified on spectrograms by their distinctive noise patterns, such as the high-frequency energy of fricatives or the brief silence of plosives
• Acoustic analysis tools, such as Praat, allow phoneticians to measure and manipulate speech sounds for research and practical applications
  • Pitch tracking, formant measurement, and duration analysis are common tasks in acoustic phonetic research
  • Speech synthesis and recognition systems rely on acoustic phonetic principles to generate and interpret speech sounds

Practical Applications: Why This Stuff Matters

• Speech therapy utilizes phonetic knowledge to diagnose and treat speech disorders
  • Phoneticians can help identify the specific sounds and articulatory patterns that are problematic for a client
  • Therapy techniques, such as articulation drills and auditory discrimination training, are based on phonetic principles
• Language teaching and learning benefit from a solid understanding of phonetics
  • Language teachers can use phonetic descriptions and IPA transcriptions to help students produce and perceive the sounds of the target language accurately
  • Learners can use phonetic information to improve their pronunciation and listening comprehension skills
• Speech recognition technology relies on acoustic phonetic models to interpret and transcribe spoken language
  • Automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems use statistical models of speech sounds to match acoustic input to phonetic and lexical representations
  • Phonetic knowledge informs the design and training of ASR algorithms, improving their accuracy and robustness
• Forensic phonetics applies phonetic analysis to legal and criminal investigations
  • Speaker identification and verification tasks involve comparing the acoustic properties of speech samples to determine their likely source
  • Phonetic analysis can also help decipher unclear or distorted speech in recordings, such as emergency calls or surveillance tapes
• Linguistic research in various subfields, such as historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics, often incorporates phonetic data and methods
  • Studying sound change over time requires a detailed understanding of the phonetic properties of the languages involved
  • Investigating the social and regional variation in speech relies on phonetic descriptions and acoustic measurements
  • Examining the cognitive processes underlying speech perception and production benefits from phonetic experimentation and analysis