Phonetics: Places and Manners of Articulation

Places of Articulation

• Bilabial: sounds produced by using both lips together, e.g., /b/, /p/, /m/, /w/
• Labiodental: sounds produced using both the lower lip and the upper front teeth, e.g., /v/, /f/
• Interdental/Linguadental: sounds produced by placing the tongue between upper and lower teeth, e.g., /th/, /th/
• Alveolar: sounds produced when tongue tip touches the alveolar ridge, e.g., /t/, /d/, /s/, /z/, /n/, /l/, /r/
• Palatal: sounds produced when tongue touches or almost touches the hard palate, e.g., /sh/, /ch/, /j/
• Velar: sounds produced when tongue approaches the velum or soft palate, e.g., /k/, /g/
• Glottal: sound produced at the level of the vocal folds, e.g., /h/

Manner of Articulation

• Stops/Plosives: consonant made by completely blocking the airflow and then releasing it, e.g., /b/, /p/, /d/, /g/, /t/, /k/
• Fricatives: characterized by a “hissing” sound, produced by air escaping through a small passage in the mouth, e.g., /f/, /v/, /sh/, /s/, /z/, /th/, /th/, /h/
• Affricates: consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, e.g., /ch/, /j/
• Nasals: consonant in which air escapes only through the nose, e.g., /n/, /m/
• Glides: consonant that sounds like a vowel but behaves like a consonant, e.g., /y/, /w/
• Liquids: e.g., /l/, /r/

Voicing

• Voiced sounds: produced with vibration, e.g., /van/
• Voiceless sounds: produced without vocal fold vibration, e.g., /fan/

Speech Sound Disorders

• Articulation impairment: disorders of production of speech sounds
• Phonological impairment: disorders of understanding and applying the rules and sound system of speech

Phonemes

• Universal phonemes: found in all languages
• Language-specific phonemes: used in only a few languages
• Phonemes are generally written between two slashes, as in /ð/
• Transcribed phonemic combinations such as words are often transcribed between brackets, as in [ðæt] for the word "that"

Phonological Processes

• Patterns of sound errors that typically developing children use to simplify speech
• Used because they don’t have the ability to coordinate lips, tongue, teeth, palate, and jaw for clear speech
• Examples of phonological processes include:
  • Substitutions: one phoneme is replaced with another
  • Omissions: the deletion of a phoneme
  • Distortions: nonstandard form of a phoneme is used