Sounds of English

1. Sounds of English Class 2

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 emphasize that we are using a phonetic transcription, we put square brackets [b] around the symbols.

3. 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

4. affricates • č (American) or tʃ (IPA) as in cheap, hatch • ǰ (American) or ʤ(IPA) as in jump, hedge

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

6. Liquids • l as in large, gull • r as in red, jar

7. glides and semi-consonants • j (IPA) as in boy, yellow • w as in wall, cow

8. 6 stops • 2 affricates • 9 fricatives • 4 nasals • 2 liquids • 2 glides

9. Front vowels: I as in bit Ɛ as in bet æ as in bat Back vowels: U as in put ʌ as in putt ɔ as in bought a or ɑ as in Mott, ma, spot ǝ“schwa” as in about Short vowels

10. 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

11. 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!

12. 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.

13. Consonants • Consonants = obstruents + sonorants • Obstruents: (oral) stops, affricates, and fricatives • Sonorants: nasals and liquids (l,r)

14. 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.

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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

19. Oro-nasal process [From: Dan Jurafsky slide] Oral sounds: soft palate is raised (closing the passage). Nasal sound: soft palate is lowered, so air passes through the nose.

20. 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]

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

23. 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.

24. 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)

25. From: Jennifer Venditti slide

26. IPA

27. Two systems side by side

28. the end

29. A phonetic chart based on the first two formants

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

31. /i/ green /ae/ hat /u/ boot graphics thanks to Kevin Russell, Univ of Manitoba

32. “Hi” /haj/ FORMANTS we were away a year ago