Week 3 (Language sounds)

An abstract system that relates to the distribution of sounds in language. They can be identified how many phonemes a language has by identifying minimal pairs

• Allophones which are a more detailed potential realisation of a phoneme (basic concept of the sound of a consonant).
• Different people pronounce this differently

Smallest contrastive unit in the sound system of a language

Produced when impedance of the air through the vocal tract is minimal and the voice tract is completely open.

A phonetic variant of a phoneme in a particular language

Sounds made by a partial or complete closure of the vocal tract

• Air being expelled from the lungs
• Airflow is restricted at some point along the vocal tract and this produces consonants

Egressive (outward flowing) stress-timed (rather than syllable timed like Japanese)

Glottis

(responsible for voicing)

Made when 'h' sound is said or when someone speaks w/ glottal stops

The soft palette that produces velar sounds, by raising the tongue towards the soft palette in the mouth 

• (k,g)
• The 'in' sound in 'ring'

• The ridge in front of the tongue behind the top teeth. Produces alveolar sounds such as 'd,n,z,s' 
• All consonants are produced around the alveolar ridge.

The hard palette which is further back in the mouth than the alveolar (schwa produced here)

Hard palate between postalveolar and velar. Produces palatals like the /j/ in yellow

Made with tongue on top of front teeth and lips

• ø - teeth
• ð - teethe

Bottom lip to top front teeth 

• /f/ - fair 
• /v/ - viking

With lips together 

• /p/ - peace
• /b/ - base
• /m/ - monkey

Voiceless sounds are through an open glottis whereas voiced sounds are through a closed glottis which vibrates to create sound. 

• /s/ = voiceless
• /z/ = voiced

• Plosive
• Nasal
• Fricative 
• Affricate 
• Approximant

Complete closure of vocal tract then release, can't hold onto the plosives sound 

/p/ /b/ /k/ /g/

Complete closure of vocal tract with nasal passage open. You can hold on to nasal sounds (humming) and they are always voiced

/m/ /n/

Lips closed with small gap for air to escape. Can hold on to sound and they are buzzy or hissy

/f/ /v/

Plosive which is released slightly more slowly, so is quickly followed by a fricative

Larger gap between articulation - always voiced 

• /w/ - weird 
• /j/ - yo
• /r/ - rope

Vowels are always voiced 

(unless whispering)

Not produced in all areas of the UK 

A sound formed by the combination of two vowels in a single syllable, in which the sound begins as one vowel and moves towards another (coin, loud)

Words with one vowel sound in a single position

schwa (ə)

• Stress + schwa 
• Assimilation 
• Elision 
• /r/ - linking

Weak and strong

(unstressed and stressed)

Unstressed syllables in polysyllabic words 

• 'bitter' - /ˈbɪtə/
• 'about' - /əˈbaʊt/
• dependant' - /dɪˈpɛnd(ə)nt/

• Voiced alveolar plosive before a bilabial nasal becomes a voiced bilabial plosive.
• Properties of articulation influence how the preceding consonant is articulated 

'Ed Miliband' is an example

• Sounds dropping out after sounds come together 
• Consonants are sometimes deleted (elided) from clusters to make articulation easier. 
• This often affects alveolar plosives.

'next day' - /nɛksdɛɪ/

Don't roll the 'r' sound

Sound that connects words 

/jəra:nti/ - 'your aunty'

Sound that is added into words

Because of regional accents, which are altered by interaction with class, ethnicity and gender

Received Pronunciation used in dictionaries 

Originally put forward by aristocrats. 

Not everyone speaks in RP

A regional accent that changes the sounds of vowel

• Southern English 'put' = /p^t/
• Northern English 'put' = /pʊt/

• A spelling system to indicate non-standard (deviant) accents
• Creative graphology to 'mimic' accent

lexical and non lexical 

'splash' vs 'kran kran'

• Sound patterning 
• Rhythm (Repetition of patterns)
• Metre

Two syllables with the first being unstressed and the second being stressed

Two syllables with the first being stressed and the second being unstressed

A feature of sound patterning which forms a bridge between style and content. Can occur in lexical and non-lexical forms

• Lexical onomatopoeia uses recognised words (eg buzz) whose pronunciation enacts their sound outside of language
• Lexical onomatopoeia plays an important role in the stylistic texture of poetry

Nonlexical onomatopoeia refers to clusters of sounds which echo the world in a more unmediated way, without the intercession of linguistic structure (eg the mimicking of the sound of a car revving its engine may be ‘vroom vroom’)

Nonlexical onomatopoeia is the most direct form of verbal imitative art insofar as patterns of sound are crafted to represent the real world without the intercession of grammatical or lexical structures

Nonlexical onomatopoeia requires the reader to have knowledge about the sound that the writer is recreating

The idea that labels given to sounds are impressionistic and have no place in the systematic study of speech sounds

Both