Introduction to Phonetics - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

1 / 36
About This Presentation
Title:

Introduction to Phonetics

Description:

Physical facts and visual perception ... Interpreting the visual facts ... without regard to how the change might fit into a sound system. phonetics ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:1638
Avg rating:3.0/5.0
Slides: 37
Provided by: chssMon
Category:

less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: Introduction to Phonetics


1
Lecture 1
  • Introduction to Phonetics
  • Introduction to Phonology
  • A Brief History of 20th c. Phonology

2
Introduction to Phonetics
3
Phonetics the study of speech sounds
  • How speakers make these sounds
  • (articulatory phonetics)
  • How the sounds travel in air
  • (acoustic phonetics)
  • How listeners perceive the sounds
  • (perceptual phonetics)

4
Phonology the study of sound patterns
  • Ways that sounds sequence
  • brick blick bnick
  • blick - an accidental gap
  • bnick - a systematic gap
  • Ways that speakers impose other linguistic
    elements on sound
  • She gave him a Nprésent.
  • He will Vpresént 3 options.
  • My name is Sally Crew. ?
  • My name is Sally Crew. ?
  • Ways that sounds affect each other
  • mops mobs mosses
  • pats pads passes
  • lacks lags latches
  • banka bank bankalar banks
  • tren train trenler trains
  • Turkish vowel harmony

5
Phonetics studies
  • Segments
  • the individual sounds in the language
  • (the Consonants and Vowels)
  • Suprasegmentals
  • the "music" imposed on the segments

6
Suprasegmentals
  • Pitch
  • (1) My name is Sally Crew. ( I'm happy to meet
    you.)
  • (2) My name is Sally Crew. (You have a
    reservation for me?)
  • Timing
  • (1) After he ate, my cat Freddy took a nap.
    (cat is diner)
  • (2) After he ate my cat, Freddy took a nap. (cat
    is dinner)
  • (ate is longer in (1) than in (2))
  • Loudness
  • I have a présent to presént.

7
The Place of Phonetics in Linguistics
  • Language uses gestures to convey meaning
  • for spoken languages, the gestures are vocal
    tract articulations

Syntax
Phonology Phonetics
Semantics Pragmatics
Phonetics where abstract theory meets physical
articulation
8
Some Current Questions about Segments (1)
  • How does the infant learn, from the continuum of
    sounds, which sounds are important in their
    native language? i.e.
  • How does the infant move from making phonetic
    distinctions between sounds to making phonemic
    distinctions?
  • How does the infant move from continuous
    perception to categorial perception?

9
Some Current Questions about Segments (2)
  • At what age does a child cue into sounds of
    native language and dismiss non-native sounds?
  • What happens in the brain when humans acquire the
    sounds of their native language?

10
Some Current Questions about Segments (3)
  • Can adults be taught to differentiate the sounds
    of a 2nd language?
  • What factors contribute most to a 2nd language
    accent? (duration differences, voicing, timing, .
    . .)
  • Different languages have different sound
    inventories. Does the size of the sound
    inventory affect speaking rate?

11
Some Current Questions about Segments (4)
  • If one vowel is articulated differently in one
    dialect, how does it affect the pronunciation of
    other vowels in the dialect? k?tgtkAt, hAt gt
    hQt
  • How much does vision affect the perception of
    sounds? The McGurk effect

12
Introduction to Phonology
  • Physical facts and perception
  • Phonetics and Phonology
  • Phonology in the 20th Century

13
Physical facts and visual perception
  • The eyes lens gives an image to the retina
    upside down, reversed left to right, and flat

Retina
Lens
14
Interpreting the visual facts
  • But the brain interprets retinal images as
    right-side up, unreversed, and in depth
  • This ability to interpret retinal images comes
    from experience that begins at birth

15
Physical facts and audial perception
k?pH
k?p
/k?p/
k?p?
k?PfUl
16
Interpreting the acoustic facts
  • By 10 months, a child can discriminate the sounds
    of her own language. A child in an
    English-speaking environment will respond to the
    difference between r and l, a child in a
    Japanese-speaking environment will not.
  • At a later stage the child will
  • store one underlying representation for cup
  • link this representation with a meaning

17
The Organization of Language
Syntax
Phonology Phonetics
Semantics Pragmatics
the signified
the signifier cup
18
Phonetics Phonology
  • Phonetics
  • covers articulatory, acoustic and perceptual
    facts
  • concrete
  • research based on experiment
  • Phonology
  • covers the organization of these facts
  • abstract
  • research based on hypothesis testing

19
A Brief History of 20th Century Phonology
20
19th century linguistics
  • historical linguistics
  • emphasis on individual sound changes
  • without regard to how the change might fit
    into a sound system
  • phonetics
  • emphasis on accounts of the articulatory and
    acoustic events associated with the production
    of particular words

21
Ferdinand de Saussure (1916)
  • emphasized language as a system of related
    elements
  • the system connects sound (the signifier) and
    meaning (the signified)
  • with respect to sound, the linguist must be
    concerned with the differences between sounds

22
The Prague School (1925-1939)
  • defined the tasks of phonology
  • to identify the characteristics of phonological
    systems in terms of language-particular
    significant differences
  • to identify recurrent differences across
    languages (e.g., voicing)
  • to formulate laws governing this recurrence
  • to account for historical change in terms of the
    phonological system

23
Roman Jakobson (1886-1982)
  • the fundamental unit of linguistic analysis is
    the feature, not the phoneme
  • there is a universal inventory of distinctive
    features that differentiate significant
    oppositions in natural languages
  • precise definition of these features will allow
    us to make specific claims about what is and is
    not a possible phonological system

24
Feature Oppositions
  • Stage 1 /-consonant papa or baba
  • Stage 2 /-oral papa, mama
  • Stage 3 /-labial mama/nana, papa/tata
  • Stage 4 /-high papa, pipi
  • Stage 5 /-back pipi, pupu

25
Feature OppositionsRoman Jakobson, 1941
  • Silence
  • -consonantal consonantal
  • high -high oral -oral
  • -back back labial -labial labial -labial
  • apply in language acquisition
  • apply in language dissolution
  • correspond to the frequency of sounds in the
    worlds languages

26
Edward Sapir (1884-1939)
  • speech is a human activity that varies without
    assignable limit as we pass from social group to
    social group Language
  • language is an abstract, psychological activity
    rather than a physical activity
  • The Psychological Reality of the Phoneme

27
Taxonomic Phonemics
  • developed by American linguistics
  • (Leonard Bloomfield, Bernard Bloch, Zellig
    Harris)
  • divorced sound from meaning, since meaning was
    unobservable
  • assumed certain principles that would lend a
    scientific precision to phonemics
  • abstract systems are not testable
  • psychological entities are not testable
  • only sound discrimination is testable

28
The Phoneme
  • A phoneme is a family of similar sounds which
    language treats as being the same.
  • If there is a contrast between two sounds in one
    environment, then these two sounds must be
    considered different phonemes in all
    environments.
  • Bernard Bloch. 1941. Phonemic overlapping.

29
In most environments, the presence of A and
A? is predictable
  • The long/short distribution in
  • pAt pA?d
  • lAk lA?g
  • mAp mA?b
  • suggests that theA vs. A? distribution
  • is predictable. What causes the long/short
  • difference?

30
But in some words, A vs. A? is the only
contrasting sound
  • The contrast of /A/ and /A?/ in
  • bomb bAm balm bA?m
  • indicates that /A/ and /A?/ are phonemes in
    contrast, i.e., that English speakers distinguish
    these two words only on the basis of the short
    vs. long vowel.

31
Asymmetry in Phonemic Representations
  • To account for the phonemic contrast of
  • bomb A balm A?
  • Taxonomists had to claim that the distinction in
    pAt pA?d
  • was also phonemic even though the variation is
    predictable from context (see slide 28)

32
Features
  • Chomsky pointed out that we could have both the
    predictability of pAt pA?d and the contrast
    of bAm bA?m by describing the sound variation
    with
  • a unit smaller than the phoneme (the feature)
  • a lexicon that contained underlying features
  • rules to describe the variation
  • Chomsky, N. 1964. Current Issues in Linguistic
    Theory.
  • Chomsky, N. M. Halle. 1968. The Sound Pattern
    of English.

33
A Feature Account of the A A? Distinction
  • Lexicon Phonological Rule Pronunciation
  • /bAm/ bAm
  • /bA?m/ bA?m
  • /pA?t/ V?-long/__-voiced pAt
  • /pA?d/ pA?d
  • -long, -voiced are called distinctive features

34
Generative Phonology (SPE)
  • based on The Sound Pattern of English. 1968. Noam
    Chomsky Morris Halle.
  • assumes
  • a universal set of features
  • assumes a systematic phonology
  • assumes an abstract representation of words in
    terms of features
  • assumes a surface representation of words derived
    by rules

35
Trends since 1968
  • Generative (Linear, or SPE) Theory
  • Autosegmental (non-linear) Theory
  • Expansion beyond sound inventories to
  • Syllable structure
  • The Phonology-Morphology interface
  • Metrics and rhythmic structure
  • Tone and Intonation
  • Prosodic Phonology
  • Optimality Theory

36
References
  • Bloch, Bernard. 1941. Phonemic Overlapping.
    American Speech 16278-84 (reprinted in Joos
    195793-96).
  • Chomsky, Noam and Morris Halle. 1968. The Sound
    Pattern of English. Harper Row.
  • Joos, Martin. 1957. Readings in Linguistics
    One.. Univ. of Chicago Press.
  • Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language. Harcourt, Brace
    World.
  • Sapir, Edward. 1933. The Psychological Reality
    of the Phoneme. in Selected Writings of Edward
    Sapir, ed. David Mandelbaum. 1986. Univ. of
    California Press.
  • Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1916. Cours de
    linguistique generale. Paris Payot. see Course
    in General Linguistics, translated by Wade
    Baskin. McGraw-Hill.
  • Jakobson, Roman. Kindersprache, Aphasie, und
    allgemeine Lautgesetze.
  • Trubetskoy, N.S. 1939. Grundzuge der Phonologie.
    Travaux du cercle linguistique de Prague 7.
Write a Comment
User Comments (0)
About PowerShow.com