Sounds of English

Class 2

Sounds of English

Consonants: first, the stops:• b as in bat, sob, cubby• d as in date, hid, ado• g as in gas, lag, ragged• p as in pet, tap, repeat• t as in tap, pet, attack• k as in king, pick, picking

When we need to emphasizethat we are using a phonetic transcription, we put squarebrackets [b] around the symbols.

More consonants: fricatives

• f as in fail, life• v as in veil, live• Ɵ as in thin, wrath• ð as in this, bathe• s as in soft, miss• z as in zoo, as• š (American) or ʃ (IPA) as in shame, mash• ž (American) or ǯ (IPA)as in triage, garage,

azure, • h as in help, vehicular

affricates

• č (American) or tʃ (IPA) as in cheap, hatch

• ǰ (American) or ʤ (IPA) as in jump, hedge

nasal consonants

• m as in map, him• n as in knot, tin (alveolar POA)• ñ as in canyon • ŋ as in sing, gingham, dinghy

Liquids

• l as in large, gull• r as in red, jar

glides and semi-consonants

• j (IPA) as in boy, yellow• w as in wall, cow

• 6 stops• 2 affricates• 9 fricatives• 4 nasals• 2 liquids• 2 glides

Short vowels

Front vowels: I as in bitƐ as in betæ as in batBack vowels:U as in putʌ as in puttɔ as in

boughta or ɑ as in Mott, ma,

spot

ǝ “schwa” as in about

Long vowels

• ij or i as in beet• ej as in bait• aj as in bite• oj as in boy• uw or u as in boot• ow as in boat• aw as in how

Not all Americans talk the same way

• Some people do not have a contrast between [ɔ] and [a]:

• cot versus caught• Sean versus Connery.• There are (interesting) details we are

ignoring, like the difference between the vowel in cat and that in sand, for most Americans.

• There are far more differences than that, of course!

Review where we’ve been

• We’ve listened to the sounds of “our” English, and assigned a set of symbols to them.

• We abstracted away from pitch, loudness, and duration.

• We hope to better understanding our language’s sounds by analyzing them as being composed of a sequence of identifiable sounds, each of which occurs frequently in words of the language.

Consonants

• Consonants = obstruents + sonorants– Obstruents: (oral) stops, affricates, and

fricatives– Sonorants: nasals and liquids (l,r)

Consonants

Consonants can be defined by:Point of articulation (or “place”):

Specification of the active and passive articulators.Manner of articulation:

Oral stop; nasal stop; fricative; affricate; lateral; flap; approximant; and some others.

Consonants have a point of articulation

The crucial points of articulation for English consonants are:

• Labial• Labio-dental• Dental• Alveolar: at the alveolar ridge, behind the

teeth• Post-alveolar/palato-alveolar/alveopalatal:

multiple names for the same thing• Retroflex (r only)• Palatal (y, ñ)• Velar• Laryngeal

Places of articulation: labial

• Bilabial: made with two lips

(pie, buy, my)• Labiodental: lower

tip and Upper front teeth

(fie, vie).

Slide from Liberman and Yuan

Places of articulation: coronal

• Dental: tongue tip or blade and upper front teeth (thigh, thy). (interdental: the tip of the tongue protrudes between the upper and the lower front teeth).

• Alveolar: tongue tip or blade and the alveolar ridge (tie, die, nigh, sigh, zeal, lie).

• Retroflex: tongue tip and back of the alveolar ridge (rye, row, ray).

• Palato-Alveolar (post-alveolar): tongue blade and the back of the alveolar ridge (shy, she, show). Slide from Liberman and Yuan

Places of articulation: dorsal

• Palatal: front of the tongue and hard palate (you). Palatal sounds are sometimes classified as coronal.

• Velar: back of the tongue and the soft palate (hack, hag, hang).

Slide from Liberman and Yuan

Oro-nasal process

[From: Dan Jurafsky slide]

Oral sounds: soft palateis raised (closing the passage).

Nasal sound: soft palate is lowered, so air passes through the nose.

Manners of articulation

• Stop• Fricative: near closure, creating frication

(heavy air turbulence)• Affricate (combined stop and fricative)• Approximant (no turbulence) (y,w,r)• Lateral approximant (l) obstruction in

the middle, air passage around the side of the tongue.

• Tap or flap: American symbol [D], IPA [ɾ]

Obstruents:• 6 stops• 9 fricatives• 2 affricates• Nasals (4)• 2 other sonorants (what are they?)• 2 glides

Vowels

• Vowels are harder to characterize articulatorily, but we try!

• The fact that it’s harder is reflected in the fact that there is more than one way in which it’s done. IPA is one way; American is another.

• Vowels are displayed in a two-dimensional chart, corresponding only roughly to the position of the tongue, and the first two formants of the vowel.

• Plus: whether the lips are rounded• Monophthong or diphthong (no

movement, or movement)

From: Jennifer Venditti slide

IPA

Two systems side by side

the end

A phonetic chart based on the first two formants

From: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/music/vocres.html

/i/ green

/ae/ hat

/u/ boot

graphics thanks to Kevin Russell, Univ of Manitoba

“Hi” /haj/

we were away a year ago FORMANTS