Today

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Today

• What is Phonetics?
• Decoding the speech stream
• Principles of phonetic transcription
• IPA
• Readings 3.1-3.2

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Phonetics

• The scientific study of human speech sounds
• How they are produced (articulatory)
• How they are perceived (auditory)
• Their physical properties (acoustic)

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X-ray movie

• Why did Ken set the soggy net on top of
  his deck?

http//hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistic
s/VowelsandConsonants/course/chapter1.1/chapter1.1
.htm
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Decoding the speech stream

• The speech signal is a continuous stream of sound
• No spaces between words in speech

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Decoding the speech stream

• How many words in the following sentence?

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• ...rather than his actual warning
• This guy is falling. (true)

Chicken Little parsed as saying The sky is
falling (untrue)...
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Decoding the speech stream

• How many sounds in the following words?
• leaf feel

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Decoding the speech stream

• leaf lif vs. feel fil forwards
• feel fil vs. leaf lif backwards
• lull vs. llul backwards

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Decoding the speech stream

• Sounds in a string are continuous, yet we
  perceive them as discrete, separate sounds

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Goals for Phonetics section

• Be able to identify human speech sounds
• Learn symbols used for transcribing speech sounds
• Describe and classify sounds according to
  articulatory properties

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Phonetic transcription

• The most widely used tool in phonetics is
  transcription

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International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

• A standardized set of symbols for transcribing
  all possible human speech sounds
• One-to-one correspondence between symbol and sound

We will use symbol IPA letter spelling
(orthography)
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Interactive IPA chart can be found at
http//hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistic
s/VowelsandConsonants/course/chapter1/chapter1.htm
l
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Why use the IPA?

• Some languages have no writing system
• There is no one-to-one correspondence between
  letters and sounds
• Same letter different sounds
• dad, father, about, many
• Same sound different letters
• believe, people, amoeba, tree
• Several letters used for one sound
• shoot, nation, chord, chip

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Why use the IPA?

• One letter used for several sounds
• box, use
• Some letters have no sound
• gnaw, sword, debt, damn, bomb

baks juz
nç...bam
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IPA preview

• Some symbols will look and sound familiar
• b n w
• Some will look familiar, but sound strange
• x q
• Some will sound familiar, but look strange
• S T N
• Some will look and sound unfamiliar
• / µ ß

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IPA consonants

• p spit, tip, appear
• b ball, globe, amble
• t stack, pat, stuffed, pterodactyl
• d dip, card, drop, loved
• k skit, joker, attic, exceed
• g guard, bag, longer
• / uh-oh (the catch in your throat preceding
  both syllables), mitten
• f foot, laugh, philosophy, coffee
• v vest, dove, gravel
• T through, bath, thistle, ether, teeth
• D the, their, mother, either, teethe

Hints -Pay attention to how you SAY it not
how its spelled. -check your pronunciation
against a native speakers.
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• s soap, psychology, nice
• z zip, roads, kisses, xerox, design
• S shy, mission, nation, glacial, sure
• Z measure, vision, azure, casualty
• h who, hat, reheat
• tS choke, match, church
• dZ judge, george, jelly, region, residual
• m moose, lamb, smack
• n nap, snow, can, know
• N lung, thing, think, finger, singer, ankle

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• l leaf, feel, mild, sleep
• r reef, fear, prune, carry
• R writer, rider, latter, ladder, pretty
• w with, swim, mowing, queen, twin
• j you, beautiful, feud, use, yell
• In the IPA, r is actually a trill like in
  Spanish perro. The IPA symbol for American r
  is , but you can use either symbol since the
  text uses r for American r.