Structures & Varieties
Phonetics & Phonology
Michaelmas 2010
Mark J. Jones
[email protected]
Phonetics & Phonology
• Phonetics is about sounds as sounds
– the things we actually produce / hear
• Phonology is about function
– the way that sounds work – more abstract
– Glottal stops – occur in English & Tahitian
• create lexical contrasts in Tahitian:
– mata = face, eyes vs. ma’a = morsel
• as non-contrastive variants in English:
– matter = ma’er (e.g. Cockney, Manchester
English)
Phonetics & phonology
• How many sounds does English have?
– if counting lexical contrasts (phonemes), glottal stop is ignored
– if counting physically different sounds, glottal stop counts
– Another example:
– English ‘sheep’ vs. ‘shark’ – the same <sh> sound in both?
• not phonetically
– phonological occurrence varies systematically
• contextual variant = allophone
• So phonemes cannot be pronounced or heard directly
• what we say and what we hear are allophones
– phonemes are mental categories, inherently variable
An analogy
• Colour is physically measurable
• the wavelengths of light reflected by an object
•
1) Not all languages divide up the physical colour spectrum in the
same way
• Welsh ‘glas’ = English blue / green
• Japanese ‘aoi’ = English blue / green / yellow
•
2) Colour is not always the same
• the Sun’s light changes during the day
– cloud cover
– angle at which it passes through the atmosphere
•
So ‘green’ is a mental construct which
– is language-specific, and
– unites various physical characteristics in different contexts
(‘allochromes’?)
The vocal tract
From Hewlett &
Beck, 2006
Speech chain
•
speaker formulates message
– cognitive (i.e. ‘mental’) representation
•
translation into articulatory movements etc.
– physics of speech production
•
acoustic signal
– sound travels through the air – sound waves
•
listener hears sound waves
– sound waves processed by ear
•
electrical output is processed by brain
– message is decoded!
Transcription
• The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
– mainstay of phonetic research until 1940s
– now superseded by instrumental techniques
• used more by sociolinguists, clinicians, phonologists
– still useful
• It provides the basis for classifying sounds
– cf. chemical elements, biological classification
– sounds as animals, a useful analogy
» some are rare, some are common – why?
» aspects of their behaviour in different environments
(languages, or phonological contexts)
» evolution = sound change
The IPA
• Different sections
• Basic classification:
– vowels – free airflow
– consonants – airflow constricted in some way
• Pulmonic – airflow from lungs
– usually egressive = outward
Consonants
• Manner
– what kind of constriction?
• plosive, fricative, approximant
• Place
– whereabouts is the constriction made?
• Voice
– are the vocal folds vibrating or not?
– Vowels are different – more later
International Phonetic Alphabet
Manner of articulation
• Plosive (oral stop) – complete closure in oral cavity (or
larynx) and velum raised
• Nasal (stop) – complete closure in oral cavity, lowered
velum
• Trill – rapid repeated contacts
• Tap – single up-down contact
• Flap – retracted articulator ‘wipes’ forward
• Fricative – narrow constriction > audible turbulence =
frication
• Approximant – wide constriction (most vowel-like)
• Laterals – central closure, airflow at one or both sides
Plosive
• Complete constriction
• Plosive = oral stop
– complete oral
constriction
– velum raised
– no airflow
– oral pressure increases
– released explosively
(Images from Ashby & Maidment 2005)
Plosive
International Phonetic Alphabet
Vowel quadrilateral
Vowel quadrilateral
• Articulatory basis
– define height & fronting & lip-rounding
• Auditory impressions
– equidistant points
• Vowels heard related to these reference vowels
– subjective, non-quantitative
– consonants too, but less obviously so…
Vowel formants
Vowel formants
•
The horizontal bands of energy that characterise different vowel
qualities are called formants
– start counting from the bottom up, F1, F2, F3 etc.
– perception experiments show that F1 and F2 are crucial
•
Next plot a scatter graph to show where the vowels are
– F1 on the vertical axis
– F2 on the horizontal axis
•
These plots resemble the vowel quadrilateral if flipped
– vowel height = F1 (inverse, so high vowel has low F1)
– vowel fronting = F2 (back vowel has low F2)
• A high front vowel has a low F1 and a high F2
• A low back vowel has a high F1 and a low F2 (see slide)
Vowel plot
• Measure F1 and F2
– Plot on graph to show position in vowel space
• Reminiscent of vowel quadrilateral…
Vowel plot – French
Vowel plots
• These plots make vowel analysis more accurate
– not relying on subjective impressions
– can quantify the size and shape of the vowel space
• Also shows variation – an important factor in change
– no physical action can be replicated perfectly
– including speech
• Each time a single vowel is said, it is different
– creates a ‘cloud’ of realisations around a central target
• The cloud shows the extent of variation
– Sometimes that variation has direction = sound change
Variation & change
• Next plots are for 4 groups of Cambridge speakers
– young female, young male, old female, old male
• repetition clouds of the same three vowels plotted
– /ɑ/ as in ‘start’, /i/ as in ‘geese’, /u/ as in ‘goose’
• The /u/ vowel for the older speakers is located in the
high and back region (top right)
– More drift is seen for the older females’ /u/ cloud
• Young speakers overlap some /i/ and /u/ realisations
– these speakers have an empty high back region!
• Looks like the change started with older females
Variation & change
Harrington, Kleber, & Reubold, 2008.
Next time
• Look more at phonology
• How languages use sounds
• Sound structure & syllables
Useful references
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Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, CUP.
– contains descriptions of Catalan, Dutch, French, German, Portuguese (and many
other languages; http://web.uvic.ca/ling/resources/ipa/handbook_downloads.htm)
Spanish: Martínez-Celdrán, Eugenio, Ana Ma. Fernández-Planas, & Josefina
Carrera-Sabaté. (2003). “Castilian Spanish.” Journal of the International Phonetic
Association 33: 255-259.
Italian: Bertinetto, Pier Marco & Michele Loporcaro. (2005). “The sound pattern of
Standard Italian, as compared with the varieties spoken in Florence, Milan, and
Rome.” Journal of the International Phonetic Association 35: 131-151.
Rogers, Derek & Luciana d’Arcangeli. (2002). “Italian.” Journal of the International
Phonetic Association 34: 117-121.
Phonetics
Ashby, Michael, & John Maidment (2005) Introducing Phonetic Science, CUP
Reetz, Henning, & Allard Jongman (2009) Phonetics, Wiley Blackwell
Harrington, Jonathan, Felicitas Kleber, & Ulrich Reubold. (2008). “Compensation for
coarticulation, /u/-fronting, and sound change in standard southern British: an
acoustic and perceptual study.” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 123:
2825-2835.