11-Phonetics - Bases Produced

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Transcript 11-Phonetics - Bases Produced

Phonetics
October 10, 2012
Housekeeping
• Morphology homeworks are due!
Allomorphy
• What’s going on here?
/in-/ + probable =
improbable
/in-/ + mobile
=
immobile
/in-/ + possible
=
impossible
• /in-/ changes to /im-/ before both /p/ and /m/.
• /p/ and /m/ are both produced with the lips.
To explain patterns like this, we’re going to need to know
something about how we actually produce the sounds of
English.
We have to study Phonetics!
What is phonetics?
Phonetics is the scientific study of speech sounds. It
consists of three main sub-fields:

Articulatory phonetics


Acoustic phonetics


= how speech sounds are produced
= how speech sounds are transmitted from
producer to perceiver
Perceptual phonetics

= how speech sounds are perceived
Phonetic Transcription

The primary tool of phonetic science is phonetic
transcription.

The basic idea:

represent speech as a sequence of segments.

i.e., with an alphabet.

Segments = individual consonants and vowels.

Deep thought questions:

What kind of alphabet should we use?

How about the English alphabet?
The Trouble with English
• Some letters represent more than one different sound
c: recall vs.
receive
g: gear vs.
siege
• Some letters represent no sounds at all
receive
use
high
knee
• Sometimes two letters represent just one sound
recall
phonetics
• Some letters represent two or more sounds at once
tax
use
• The same sound can be represented by many different
letters (or letter combinations).
sh: shy, mission, machine, special, caution
Phonetic Alphabet
• Solution: use a phonetic alphabet
• In a phonetic alphabet, sounds and symbols have a oneto-one relationship to each other
• Each symbol represents one sound
• Each sound is represented by one symbol
• The use of a phonetic alphabet to represent speech is
called phonetic transcription.
• Our phonetic alphabet of choice:
• The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
The IPA
 Presided over by the International Phonetic Association
 Created in 1886
 Still active and evolving today.
Some IPA Principles
1. The alphabet should consist as much as possible of
the ordinary letters of the Roman alphabet.
2. In assigning values to the Roman letters, international
usage should decide.
• ex: vowel in English “bee” is transcribed with [i]
3. “There should be a separate letter for each distinctive
sound; that is, for each sound which, being used
instead of another, in the same language, can change
the meaning of the word.”
• one letter  one sound
•
Sound contrasts can be shown to exist in a language
by finding minimal pairs.
Minimal Pairs
• A minimal pair consists of:
• two words that have different meanings
• which differ from each other in only one sound.
• Some minimal pairs in English:
pit vs. bit
~ /p/ vs. /b/
beet vs. bead
~ /t/ vs. /d/
boat vs. boot
~ /o/ vs. /u/
• A series of minimal pairs is called a minimal set.
• tee ~ bee ~ key ~ sea ~ fee …
Problem: Language Specific
Phonetics
 The IPA must be able to represent all the contrasts
between sounds that are found in all languages of the world.
• …including some which we cannot easily hear.
• An English example:
 Contrast:
bit vs. pit
 Non-contrast:
• Check out Thai:
vs.
[ba]
[pa]
[pha]
‘crazy’
‘aunt’
‘cloth’
• Closer to home: how about “Don” and “Dawn”?
Technical Terms
• A phone is any sound that is used in speech.
• (may or may not be contrastive)
• A phoneme is a contrastive sound in a language
• It may be used to distinguish between words in
minimal pairs.
• An allophone is a phonetic variant of a phoneme
• Different allophones often occur in specific contexts.
• Note: analogy with allomorphs.
Phonemic Analysis
• Phoneme: /t/
(aspirated)
(unaspirated)
“flap”
“glottal stop”
Allophone 5:
‘bit’
(unreleased)
• In our native language, we tend to hear the phonemes
that the allophones belong to…
• Rather than the allophones themselves.
Broad and Narrow
 Broad transcriptions
• Represent only contrastive sounds (phonemes)
• Enclosed in slashes: / /
• Generally use only alphabetic symbols
• Narrow transcriptions
• Represent phones
• Capture as much phonetic detail as possible
• Enclosed in brackets: [ ]
• Can require use of diacritics