Transcript New Employee Orientation

Linguistics week 11 2007
Phonetics 3
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Check
table 6.2,
p243
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Parameters for describing
consonants

So far (this is not complete yet) we have
–
–
–
–
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Airstream (usually the same for all consonants)
Place of articulation
Voicing
Manner of articulation
So, [p] is …
–
–
–
–
egressive pulmonic
bilabial
voiceless
plosive
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More manners of articulation:

Trills (articulators collide rapidly and
repeatedly)
–
–
–
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Bilabial (brrr: not really part of English) [ʙ]
Alveolar (perro dog, in Spanish) [r]
Uvular (Paris, in French) [ʀ]
Tap (usually alveolar)
–
–
Like a trill, but only one collision
In Spanish pero but [ɾ]
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And glottal consonants…
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The glottal stop [ʔ]
–
–
–
–

Usually without plosion
Used in Cantonese 識唔識, 得唔得
Taiwanese?
And English, in London accent!
The glottal fricative [h] is generally used to
represent English “h”, and ㄏ spoken by
Taiwanese people
–
In mainland Mandarin, it’s [x], a velar fricative
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Some other fricative sounds

Mandarin has a voiceless retroflex fricative
–
–
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There is also a voiced retroflex fricative
–
–
–
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It is [ʂ], representing ㄕ
Retroflexion means that the tongue is curled
[ʐ], aka ㄖ
However, some people transcribe this as [ɻ]
They believe it is a retroflex approximant
And, there is a voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative
–
[ɕ], or ㄒ (only the consonantal part)
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Affricates
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A plosive followed by a homorganic
fricative
–
–
–
–
Homorganic = “same place of articulation”
so [kf] in breakfast is not an affricate, because
[k] and [f] do not have the same place of artic.
[ʣ] and [ʦ] are affricates, but are not normally
treated so in English phonology
The only affricate English phonemes are /ʤ/
and /ʧ/
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Affricates in Mandarin
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

/tsʰ/ and /ts/
/tʂʰ/ and /tʂ/
/tɕʰ/ and /tɕ/
–
–
–



Can you guess what they are?
What is the ʰ?
Why have I suddenly started using /asd/ instead of
[asd]? (slant brackets instead of square brackets)
ㄘ and ㄗ
ㄔ and ㄓ(retroflex affricate)
ㄐ and ㄑ(alveolo-palatal affricate)
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Aspiration
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Aspirated and unaspirated consonants
–
–

English: spit vs pit (aspiration difference)
–
–
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ㄅ is unaspirated [p]
ㄆ is aspirated [ph] (puff of air)
Compare pit vs bit
That is a voicing difference
Aspiration is much less important in English than
in Chinese
–
Can you explain why?
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Because aspiration in Mandarin is
phonemic (also, tone in Mandarin is
phonemic)


pʰ and p are two different phones; two different
sounds
but in Mandarin they are different phonemes
–
–
–
/pʰa/ (ㄆㄚ) and /pa/ (ㄅㄚ) represent different
meanings
in English pʰ and p do not help to distinguish meaning
There are no minimal pairs like pʰa and pa
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Mandarin sounds

http://www.wfu.edu/~moran/Cathay_Cafe/I
PA_NPA_4.htm
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Vowels vs consonants
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Consonants
–
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There is some obstruction in the vocal tract
(=the mouth or throat)
Vowels
–
There is no such obstruction (the air flows
freely)
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Regional accent variation
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English accents
–
–
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The consonants are generally the same
The vowels are often very different
Mandarin Chinese accents
–
Pronunciation of consonants often varies
widely according to region
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Describing vowels
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Say [i] followed by [æ] (like cat)
–
–
–
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Think about where your tongue is
Look in a mirror
What changes? What can you say about the
position of the tongue in the two cases?
This is one of the features of vowel
description
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Another feature (=characteristic)




Now compare [ɑ] (father) with [æ] (like
cat)
You can also try comparing the vowels in
ㄢ and ㄤ
Notice any difference?
This is the second distinguishing feature
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The third parameter
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
Compare 四 with 速
Or, compare ㄧ with ㄩ
–
The difference should be quickly apparent
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So, the 3 features are…
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The IPA vowel chart
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
This represents of the
inside of the mouth
It shows
–
the cardinal vowels
» marked by black dots
–
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and the approximate
position of vowels common
in many languages
The next slide shows the
position of English vowels
on the same kind of chart
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British
American
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Diphthongs
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Yule describes these as a vowel + an approximant
(p49) so /bajt/; /bawt/
We can also say there are two vowels involved
–
–
–
–
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an initial vowel, in “bite” or ㄞ = a
a target vowel, in “bite” or ㄞ = I
the tongue moves towards I
but doesn’t actually reach its target
Check the cool website for a demo
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So what is a phoneme?
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
A phoneme is a member of the set of sounds of a
particular language
A phoneme can be spoken in different ways, depending on
–
–
–
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the other sounds near it, in the utterance (context)
the local accent or dialect
the person speaking
These different realizations (different ways) are the
allophones of the phoneme
A phoneme can be distinguished from every other
phoneme
–
You do this by checking that a minimal pair exists
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Economy of effort: allophonic
differences within one syllable
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The vowels in ㄢ and ㄤ are different (front and back)
because the speaker is preparing for the following
consonant
The consonants /k/ in kit and cat differ slightly because the
speaker is preparing for the following vowel. Tongue
position for the first is further forward
Why do these allophonic differences exist?
In language, as in life, people are lazy!
–
–
It is logical that tongue movement should be minimized
As long as people can understand what we are saying!
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Economy of effort: assimilation
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Another syllable or word influences
pronunciation, in rapid speech
How do you pronounce 根本?
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
This is an example of progressive assimilation
What about 多少錢
–
This is an example of elision
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Assimilation in English and
French
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Usually it’s regressive
–
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A phoneme is changed to accommodate
(match) the next phoneme.
Voicing
–
–
–
Newspaper, of course, have to
News has /z/; newspaper has [s] to
accommodate the following /p/
French avec /avek/ in avec vous /aveg vu/
“with you”
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Assimilation of place of
articulation
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
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/tem/ in ten minutes
/iƷ/ in is she?
http://www.btinternet.com/~ted.power/assi
milation.html
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For more examples
Read about assimilation at
http://www.personal.rdg.ac.uk/~llsroach/ph
on2/asscoareli-into.htm
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