Consonants and vowel

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Consonants and vowel

• January 13, 2004

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(No Transcript)
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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

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More consonants fricatives

• f as in fail, life
• v as in veil, live
• ? as in thin, wrath
• ? as in this, bathe
• s as in soft, miss
• z as in zoo, as
• ? as in shame, mash
• ž or ? as in triage, garage, azure?,
• h as in help, vehicular

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affricates

• t? or c as in cheap, hatch
• d? as in jump, hedge

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nasal consonants

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

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Liquids

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

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glides and semi-consonants

• y as in boy, yellow
• w as in wall, cow

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

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Short vowels

• Front
• I as in bit
• e as in bet
• æ as in bat
• Back
• ? as in put
• ? as in putt
• ? as in bought
• a as in Mott, ma, spot

• ? schwa as in about

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Long vowels

• iy or i as in beet
• ey or ej as in bait
• ay as in bite
• oy as in boy
• uw or u as in boot
• ow as in boat

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Review where weve been

• Weve 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 languages
  sounds by analyzing them as being composed of a
  sequence of identifiable sounds, each of which
  occurs frequently in words of the language.

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• Frequently? If a sound occurs in just 2 or 3
  words, we dont take it seriously (glottal stop,
  velar fricative)
• We do this against the background knowledge that
  the inventory of sounds in English is not
  necessary as human languages go they are what
  they are against a much wider backdrop of
  possible linguistic sounds.

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• We also attempt to physically characterize these
  sounds acoustically and articulatorily.
  Consonants are easier to characterize
  articulatorily, vowels acoustically.
• We are particularly interested in those ways in
  which the English of Speaker 1 is different from
  the English of Speaker 2 again, working against
  the background knowledge of variation.

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• We also characterize differences of sounds across
  sound contexts we say, notice the different
  sound that occurs in front of a voiceless
  consonant in height.
• Looking ahead to phonology, we will attempt to
  get a handle on variation in sounds in two ways
• Two sounds are similar if (roughly) we can
  characterize one of them as a variant of the
  other used in a particular context (under the
  influence of that context, so to speak)
• Two sounds are distinct (hence, different) if two
  distinct words differ only with regard to these
  two sounds, in otherwise identical positions

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• We try to characterize the inventory of sounds in
  a language, knowing that that language chose one
  set of sounds when a vast range of other
  possibilities might have been chosen.

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Symbols

• We assign symbols to these sounds in addition,
  we want to characterize them as best we can
  articulatorily and acoustically.
• Sounds can be divided into two major groups,
  consonants and vowels or set along a continuum
  known as the sonority hierarchy

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Sonority hierarchy

• Vowels
• Glides
• Liquids
• Nasals
• Obstruents
• Fricatives
• Affricates
• Stops

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Consonants

• Consonants obstruents sonorants
• Obstruents (oral) stops, affricates, and
  fricatives
• Sonorants nasals and liquids (l,r)

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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

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

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(No Transcript)
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Vowels

• Vowels are harder to characterize articulatorily,
  but we try!
• The fact that its harder is reflected in the
  fact that there is more than one way in which
  its done. IPA is one way American is another.

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IPA
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Two systems side by side
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A phonetic chart based on the first two formants
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From http//hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/m
usic/vocres.html
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/i/ green
/ae/ hat
/u/ boot
graphics thanks to Kevin Russell, Univ of
Manitoba
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Hi /haj/
FORMANTS
we were away a year ago