Ling 390 Intro to Linguistics Winter 2005 Class 1 Monday, January 3, 2005

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Practice makes perfect - use a mirror, study
partners/groups, flash cards, dont practice on
bus
This course is a lot of work lots of homework,
quizzes, memorization! Be prepared
Webpage webmail.pdx.edu/connjc
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How speech sounds are made

• Sound waves produced by lungs pushing air out
  (try speaking while breathing in not usual for
  English speakers)
• VOICING
• Air passes through glottis and vocal folds
  (phonation) do different thing voicing means
  vocal folds vibrate chopping up the air as it
  passes through)
• Sounds with vocal folds apart voiceless sounds
  with vibrating vocal folds together voiced
• In English, voicing is contrastive (it makes a
  meaningful difference if sound is
  voiced/voiceless) Ex. bit / pit sip / zip
  (called minimal pair)

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How speech sounds are made

• Vocal tract and articulators
• The sound is further modified by the articulators
  in the oral cavity, and whether the air is
  allowed to flow through the oral and/or nasal
  cavities
• Active articulator One that moves
• Passive articulator One that stays in place, is
  moved against
• Examples?

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• Anatomy

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Places of Articulation for consonants (English)

• Bilabial
• Labiodental
• Dental
• Alveolar
• Retroflex
• Palato-Alveolar
• Palatal
• Velar

• Labial - sounds made with lips
• Coronal - sounds made with tip or blade of tongue
• Dorsal - sounds made with back of tongue

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• Places of articulation (for English)
• Labial Dental Alveolar
  Palatal Velar

also Glottal
Lips Teeth Ridge Roof of Soft Behind
top Mouth Palate Teeth
Bilabial Labiodental Alveopalatal Interdental
Postalveolar Palatoalveolar
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English Consonants

• Liquids and glides are grouped together as
  Approximants
• Also trill and tap

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Consonants

• Order of 3-part descriptive terms
• Voicing -- Place o Articulation -- Manner o
  Articulation

so d is a voiced alveolar stop
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• Consonants Order of 3-part descriptive terms
• Voicing -- Place o Articulation -- Manner o
  Articulation

approximants
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Consonants - Stops

• Oral or nasal (see video1 or 2)
• Complete obstruction in oral cavity
• Closure and then release

• Glottal stop
• 10 English stops

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Consonants - Fricatives

• Narrowing in oral cavity
• Near closure - forcing air through small space -
  hissing
• Fricatives are continuous air through the mouth
  (continuants)
• 9 English fricatives

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• Delayed release of stop causing fricative after
• 2 English affricates

Consonants - Affricates
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• Laterals - air passes over sides of tongue
• rs - bunched up tongue or retroflex
• 2 English liquids - plus tap (See video)

Consonants Liquids (approximants)
?
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• Almost no obstruction in oral cavity
• 2 English glides
• w is really labiovelar

Consonants Glides (approximants)
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• English Consonants (voiceless sounds on the left)

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Practice - Transcribe the following words - all
of them have the vowel e?I
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Practice - Transcribe the following words - all
of them have the vowel ej
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Practice - Transcribe the following words - all
of them have the vowel i
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Practice - Transcribe the following words into
regular spelling- all of them have the vowel E
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Practice give the articulatory descriptions of
the sounds I am saying between as
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• Different from consonants
• A lot more variation (different dialects)
• Vowels are in a continuous space and gradient
• When hear vowels, we hear overtones (formants)
• Described by tongue height and backness
• Also by rounding and tense/lax
• Vowels are a 5 part descriptive terms
• Height -- Back/Front -- Tense/lax -- Un/Rounded
  -- Vowel

Vowels (English)
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(No Transcript)
23
(No Transcript)
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Practice - transcribe the nonsense words
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• Acoustic properties of vowels and consonants (see
  Praat)
• Consonants
• In waveforms, can see fricatives, stops (closure
  and release) nasals and approximants look like
  vowels but not as loud (these sounds are called
  sonorants) can see manners of articulation (but
  not place)
• Vowels
• Pitch the vowel is spoken (like singing) and then
  overtones that are from the shape of the
  resonating cavities of the vocal tract
  (Play-dough?) (tap Adams apple as you make vowel
  gestures or whistle)
• Formants are these overtones
• F1 inversely related to height of the vowel
  (higher F1 lower vowel)
• F2 is inversely related to frontness (the
  higher F2, the fronter the vowel)
• Shown in spectrograms

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Suprasegmentals (prosody)

• Variations in pitch and stress
• Stress
• Increase in activity of respiratory and laryngeal
  muscles (loudness/energy and pitch)
• Can be contrastive, used to distinguish different
  words
• Always relative
• Pitch (auditory property)
• Sometimes called fundamental frequency
• Rate of vibration of vocal folds
• Frequency (acoustic property) - the number of
  complete repetitions of variations in air
  pressure occurring per second (Hz.)
• Intonation
• Pitch pattern on top of words/phrases

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Exercise A
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Exercise B
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Exercise C
labiodental fricative f or v
alveolar oral stop t or d
bilabial oral stop p or b
interdental fricative T or D
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Exercise C
palatal approximant j maybe palato-alveolar
fricative?
alveolar fricative s or z
velar oral stop k or g
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• Finish chapter 1 - Do HW2 from Ch 1 - we will go
  over on Tues (a lot to do)
• Start to read chapter 2 and we will continue