introduction to phonetic science
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TRANSCRIPT
Introduction toPhonetic Science
HESP 403
Spring 2007
Our backgrounds
...
Syllabus
Course / Instructor info• www.bsos.umd.edu/hesp/mwinn
Office hours Book (yes, there’s a book) Syllabus/Grading
• Exams, quizzes, prep work, homework, (=attendance)
Purpose of the course ASHA guidelines
Communication between clinicians
Understanding of the speech mechanism
Physical and theoretical properties of speech sounds
Goals of today’s class:
Understand what the science of phonetics is.
Understand linguistic terms like “phoneme” “allophone” and “syllable”
Understand Stress
Know why we use phonetic symbols
Phonetics
Where does it fit in?
What kinds of explanations does it offer?
What comparisons and analogies can we make?• To other fields of study,
within the study of language
Kinds of Phonetics Articulatory / Transcription Phonetics
• What is being said?
• How do we classify sounds that we make in speech?
Acoustic Phonetics• What are the physical properties of speech sounds?
Auditory Phonetics• How do we organize speech sounds in our brains?
Clinical Phonetics• How can we use this knowledge to solve problems?
Articulatory / Transcription PhoneticsWhat is being said?
How do we classify sounds that we make in speech?
English Sounds in the IPAhttp://www.yorku.ca/earmstro/ipa/index.html
Acoustic phoneticsWhat are the physical properties
of speech sounds?
Auditory PhoneticsHow do we organize speech sounds in our ears and in our brains?
Clinical Phonetics
The application of the knowledge of phonetics to solving practical problems• Phonological disorders
• Understanding dialects
• Accent reduction
• Language acquisition
The most important slideEVER
Orthography (how a word is written)Does not indicate
Pronunciation (how a word is spoken)
• Don’t be fooled by spelling! Phonetics is concerned with sounds, not letters
• Digraphs “th” “sh” “ch” “-ti” etc.• Represent one sound
• Vowels• Are often not clearly reflected by spelling.
Spelling
Wood – would Fly – high Here – hear Cough – scoff Mission – ration – fishing Mission – fission
Helpful symbols to start off
“word” a normal, typewritten word in plain English
/ word / the basic idea we have about how a word is pronounced
[ word ] an actual pronunciation of a word (usually from an audio recording)
Terms: Phoneme: A sound in a language
• Smallest unit of sound that distinguishes meaning in a word/language
• “cat” has three sounds, each of which can distinguish its meaning from another word
• “rat” “kit” “cab”
• If you change any of the three sounds, the word no longer means the same thing.
• Each phoneme is represented by one symbol in the IPA alphabet
Understanding phonemes
Every sound that is “important” to the word is a phoneme
“Phoneme”
Ph o n e me
/ f / / o / / n / / i / / m /
“Boat”
B oa t
/ b / / o / / t /
Activity How many phonemes do these
words have?
“Good” “Half” “Through” “Chips”
Minimal Pairs Words that differ by only one phoneme
• “Shoe” / š u /
• “Do” / d u /
• Min. Pair even though it is 4 letters vs 2
Not minimal pairs:
• “Cough” “rough” differ by more than one sound, thoughonly one letter.
•“Pair” and “Pare” both the same – no change in sounds, though there is a change in orthography.
Are they Minimal pairs?
Shoe – sue Shoe – stew Flew – stew Correct – collect Mice – nice Wail – sale Wail – where
Phoneme categorization
Each speaker sounds a bit different.
Every time to say a word, it might sound a bit different.
Still, we can learn to put these physically different sounds into categories. • The categories are phonemes
Allophones
Variant pronunciations of a phoneme
So… they are different phones (sounds) but the same phoneme (category)
Any speech sound
Because they don’t change the meaning of the word
Allophone examples
Keep and Keep (unreleased or released final sound)
Light and Dark L sounds• Little vs ball
Keel and cool • Front and back /k/
Allophone example
/ ph I t / “pit”• Aspirated (puff of air escapes from the mouth)
/ s p I t / “spit”• Unaspirated
Both are still perceived as the same sound
Allophones Phonemes
Japanese
/ r /p
h
o
n
e
p
h
o
n
e
[ l ] [ r ]
English
/ l / / r /p
h
o
n
e
phone
[ l ] [ r ]
“Allophone” is a language-specific designation.
Allophones Phonemes
English / i /
p
h
o
n
e
p
h
o
n
e
[ i ] [ i: ]
Finnish/ i / / i: /
p
h
o
n
e
phone
[ i ] [ i: ]
“Allophone” is a language-specific designation.
“See”“Sika”
“Siika”
Different phones can be the same or different phonemes
Phonemes in Sindhi• voiceless d
• aspirated t
• breathy d
• unaspirated t
Allophones of the same phoneme / t /(in English)
Non-phonemic phones
Clicks• Velar click
• Palatal click
• Dental click
• Glottal click
Other sounds• Bbbbbb!
• Whistle
• Scream
Not phonemes Not phonemes in in EnglishEnglishhttp://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/
VowelsandConsonants/course/chapter11/zulu/zulu.html
Phonemes from other languages Clicks – not phonemic in our
language, but they are phonemes in !Xóõ
• ”be seated”
• “to die”
• “not to be”
• “shoot you”
Analogy for Allophones:orthography
Representation in the head “ b ”
b B
Normal use Proper names
special words
2 realizations of the same letter
So far...
Phonetics as a sound science Spelling is generally not useful for phonetics
• May not reflect sound contrasts
• May imply false contrasts
• Is not consistent
Sounds can distinguish meaning• This is language-specific
Kinds of transcription
If we use Broad Transcription, we just use the intended phoneme and disregard the slight variation• All k’s are k’s. All b’s are b’s
If we use Narrow Transcription, we use the exact allophone being spoken• Different sounds are written differently
The IPA
The International Phonetic Alphabet
• Purpose Guiding principle: one sound = one symbol
• A different symbol for each distinctive sound
• The same symbol should be used for that sound in every language which uses it
• Simple symbols for major sounds (from the roman alphabet where possible)
• Diacritics are used for minor modifications
IPA symbols
Familiarize yourself with the IPA chart
(handout)
It contains the characters used in broad transcription• Extended IPA charts show markings (diacritics)
to use for slight variations.
IPA symbols – introductory issues
/ j / = “y” “th” “sh” and “ch” “ng”
classification
Sound inventories
English has roughly 42 sounds• Different dialects may drop or add some
• This is above-average (~29)
Small inventories: Rotokas, Mura – 11 sounds Hawaiian 13 sounds
Largest inventory: !Xóõ - 141
Combining sounds
Syllables – sound units of words
• Are “countable”
• Are “singable”
• Contain a vowel / a vowel quality
Syllables Definition?
Word – “behave”
Syllable Syllable
onset rhyme onset rhyme
nucleus coda nucleus coda
B e ø h a ve
Kinds of Syllables
Open syllables• End in a vowel (no coda)
• The, he, she, play
Closed syllables• End with a consonant (have a coda)
• Bring, them, luck, speech
Syllables and phonotactics
Not all sounds are permitted in any position / in any combination in a syllable.• “ng” “ts” “rf” at start of syllable?
English consonant clusters• 3 @initial 4 @coda
Japanese lack of clusters
Stress
= “lexical stress” = “accent” An increase in muscular force for one vowel
in a word General tendencies:
• Longer duration
• Higher pitch
• Louder
Types of stress
Trochaic (English) vs. Iambic (French) stress
Photo Defense Strategy
Stress
If you can sing it long... If you say it loud when you’re mad...
Which syllable is stressed?• Baker
• Enter
• Infer
• Police
it is probably the stressed syllable”
•Accident
•Guitar
•Computer
•Plant
Stress as a semantic identifierin (phonetic) homographs
• convict vs. convict
• project vs. project
• converse vs. converse
• first syllable stressed: noun
(Same sounds in the word)
• second syllable stressed: verb
Interchangeable stress
Inside Hello
Non-Interchangeable stress
Gather Sleepy Computer
Transcription of stress
Transcr|ibe• Insert | before the stressed syllable (or vowel)
Pr|emon|ition
• Insert | before a syllable (vowel) of secondary stress
(this one is not as important)
Examples of stress transcriptionin orthography
M|emphis Sevent|een Revol|ution Inv|est B|ubble
|Invoice Inst|ead Ind|eed |Insect |Index Insp|ire
So far...
We use IPA to transcribe sounds• The IPA is governed by specific and simple
principles
• Different languages vary greatly in their inventory of contrastive sounds
Syllables
Stress
Homework for next week
( Handout)
QUIZ next week: Basic linguistic terms that we discussed today The nature of phonetic transcription Identifying phonemes and stress in words
Think about prep question