Phonetics Quiz

The Sounds of Language

• In Comoro Islands, October 1967, the author struggled to pronounce a sound between the /t/ of "train" and the /ch/ Of "chain", with help from Nounou, a Lycee student.
• They were learning each other's languages.
• The author was corrected repeatedly on saying /r/ instead of /tr/.
• It is important to learn the new /tr/ sound to avoid making mistakes when speaking in Shinzwani.
• The author used linguistic anthropology training and identified the /tr/ sound as a retroflex, achieving a perfect pronunciation.

Sounds

• Linguistics courses do not teach every sound in every language
• Instead, teach the basics of sound production.
• Knowing these basics aids with speaking other languages with less accent, and clear communication,
• Learning a new language means learning new sounds and some phonology.

Phonology

• Phonology studies language sounds and analyzes them individually or as systems in individual languages
• First time hearing a language sounds different and is the first thing to notice
• Language differences stem from using different collections of sounds.
• Phonology deals with these differences by splitting its study into phonetics and phonemics.
• Phonetics identifies and describes language sounds.
• Phonemics analyzes how sounds are arranged in languages.
• Phonetics pays attention to sound production details and catalogs every variation that speakers use.
• Phonemics focuses on how variations are grouped, separated, or where in a word each sound occurs, and the differences those occurrences make
• Phonetics identifies the Comorian /tr/ sound, while phonemics clarifies the difference between /tr/ and /t/.
• In English, the "p" sounds in "pill" and "spill" are slightly different; English speakers don't typically notice because they are 1 sound
• Phonetic description gives info for speakers of other languages to produce both kinds of /p/ successfully.
• English speakers group the sounds and hear it as different from other sounds and use to differentiate such as in pill, till, and kill from one another
• Phonological analysis describes this, so other speakers know where to use and to be careful using certain sounds
• Phonetic chart shows sounds of a language, would show both kinds of p for English while a phonemic chart would only use one symbol

Phones and Phonemes

• Phones are sounds on a phonetic chart in square brackets, while phonemes are distinctive sounds of language on a phonemic chart
• Phonemes are often listed in language dictionaries, but can mislead because phonemes represent groups of phones
• Dictionaries/grammars by linguists and linguistic anthropologists give phonemic charts and phonetic variations.
• Kenneth Pike likened phonetics to gathering raw material and phonemics to cooking it
• Understanding phonology can be used in psychobiology, education, speech perception, pathology, and court cases
• Sound shifts over time and space help linguists distinguish languages and dialects and accents unconsciously distinguish friends from from enemies
• Most people use the phonological system they grew up with so learn its phonemic groupings/phonetic intricacies, and do analyses with books and speakers

Phonetics

• Acoustic phonetics studies the physical properties and sound waves, like amplitude, duration, and frequency.
• Spectrograms help with this and is useful in machine and natural language recognition, and useful in making individuals' "voiceprints."
• Auditory phonetics studies how sounds are perceived using lab experiments with speech variations to determine how we hear speech
• Articulatory phonetics studies how sounds are produced using fieldwork
• It aims to collect and catalog sounds people can and do make in language, like descriptive phonetics, and is most useful in learning languages
• Articulatory phonetics helps to pronounce or articulate speech sounds by using a guide to identify and produce the sounds
• The lungs force air out to the larynx (vocal cords modify air to create sound waves).
• The area above the vocal cords (supralaryngeal vocal tract) shapes the waves into recognizable speech sounds.

The Larynx: Voicing

• Passing air moves vocal cords open/relaxed or close together/vibrating in the larynx modifying voice
• Open/relaxed cords sound voiceless (z).
• Closed/vibrating cords sound voiced (s)
• English uses this as differences in meaning like kill and gill
• After voice modulation, air reaches mouth/nose to be articulated or modified, like constricting the oral cavity with Tongue movement particularly affects air quality
• Velum opens/closes passage to nasal cavity and Lips, so air leaves through mouth/nose
• Articulation described in terms of PLACE and MANNER

Phonetic Charts and Symbols

• A phonetic chart will give information about whether it the sounds are modified, voiced or voiceless and other places of interest
• Provides convenient GRID for cataloging any language, with place on top and manner along the left; with voice as subcategory
• The value is in that we may represent every speech sound, providing basics
• relying on systems like the one in English can confuse in which
• • "c" in cat like k
• English sound k also spelled as c in cat, k as in kit, or <ck as in tack in english
• English and french both spell and as the same
• One letter may use the same sound in different languages
• On a phonetic chart, both the English and the French are written [J], the of cat is [k], the of ciel is [s], and the of cizí is [ts].
• The Phonetic alphabet was designed in 1800s
• 1 symbol needed for every unique sound
• Result was the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which adopted in 1988.
• New symbols added to describe "new" sounds and different groupings of sounds were proposed but many were complex and expensive
• Missionary linguist Kenneth Pike developed a set of symbols called the American Usage System that could be easily typed for the typewriter
• Even after typewriters were removed, many AMerican anthropologists kept using Symbol for computers but eventually would return back to IPA symbols.

Charts

• Familiarity with two main kinds of phonetic charts and symbols can be helpful.
• Memorize the basic underlying principles of phonetic charts and understand the concepts of voicing, place, and manner
• Phonetic symbols allow you to transcribe any language accurately and help you pronounce all languages
• Pay attention to charts, but also principles
• Note if consonants, or sounds constriction in the airflow,

Consonants

• Figure 3.2 shows the IPA chart for all basic (pulmonic) consonants
• Phonetic charts for consonants show where a sound is articulated (place) and how it is articulated (manner), to produce consonants
• For example, to stop and release with two lips. So, stopping and releasing the air with two lips will give you either a [b] or a [p]
• A [b] should be called a voiced bilabial stop (or plosive) and a [p] should be called a voiceless bilabial stop (or plosive).

Places of Articulation

• In the glottis, or the space between your vocal cords

• In the pharynx, above your vocal cords

• With back of tongue and uvula (hangs down in the back of your mouth)

• With back of tongue and velum (in front of the uvula)

• With middle of tongue and hard palate (roof of your mouth)

• With tip of tongue and hard palate

• With tip of tongue just behind alveolar ridge (the ridge just behind your teeth)

• With tip of tongue against alveolar ridge

• With tip of tongue between the teeth

• With the lower lip against the upper teeth Manners of Articulation

• With both lips

• The air stream is stopped, then released out of the mouth

• There is friction in the air stream (the air hisses or buzzes)

• The combination of a stop followed by a fricative

• Like an ultra brief stop: a tap is one touch; a trill is many fast ones

• Minimum obstruction to airflow, less than a fricative

• The velum is lowered; air resonates and escapes through the nasal cavity

DLA: Learning the Czech ř

• It was going to be a challenge
• It seemed to be made up of elements that sounded familiar
• Our instructor tried to reassure us that we didn't need to get it "right." It was my obligation as a linguistic anthropologist to figure it out A: where is her tongue? B: it is closer to A: next I needed to know the manner for that sound B: It was buzzed, like the g of rogue so it was a fricative but also trilled, In addition, it was voiced. So, I concluded, it was a voiced trilled alveolar fricative. Now I had identified all the components, the trick was to practice combining them. A: what is one easy to practice? trill+alveolar vowels - the differences are in degree and also the degree

Utensils

• The sun and spoon have to relate in some way if they are going to function
• You are probably know you could solve a lot better
• Vowel charts that helps you to place and chart vowel and consonants
• So what needs to be on the right charts and the later charts you don't learn. So you have a chart
• The charts are 1, 2, 3 important ways the airspace or the modified a a height of tough by place by tongue. In summary
• For example, Ottenheimer pronounces the o in the English word coffee with a mid open back [3], typical of New York speech.
• Voweals sound different and how that can be a challenge to try to sound like the people around you, it can also help you to fit in a little better
• A tilde [˜] can be added to any vowel symbol, such as [a] or [õ], to indicate that it is a nasal vowel Little arrows can be added to stops to indicate that the air is released inward, rather than outward, producing clicks Oa tilde [˜] can be added to any vowel symbol, such as
• So you can write for the symbol of the prepared to learn so
• Different pitches the differences they can be more than you
• I love the difference between the two

Phonemics

• Mapping out the sound inventory of a language is just a beginning. . In order to really learn a language You will continue like their same ways.
• Phonetics could help her to identify it, to place it into the correct spot in a phonetic chart , to pronounce it correctly. But it couldn't tell her how the sound is used.
• It helps the tones with an information from both of the students and it is to be determined
• Phonemics helps to identify all kinds of phones of a speech sound in languages Phoneme
• This all the sounds they know you might had the two in all the details so you might even had some detail

Doing linguist anthropology 3: Sun and Moon

I made lists out of consonance to me was there was no way to locate letters on a chart. The patters literally jumped out of this. The heart will to get in line with the

Allophones and Distinctions

• Some years ago Ottenheimer took an Italian student sailing (yes, you can sail in Kansas).

• Now, English has several minimal pairs that distinguish the ee sound (as in beets) from the i sound (as in bits), but Italian does not.

• If we examine this minimal pair closely, we discover that the primary difference between the two words is the aspi- rated [ph] of [phəl] and the unaspirated [p] of [pəl]. Allophones

• So what can the meaning of the word change?

• First, in two or more sounds that don't seem to make a ifference to take step is to ask whether they might be "allo ones".

• Allophone = variant forms of that group togethre form a single phoneme

• Like the fingers on your hand

• They were going to be or less than two sons of one interested in there

• Complementary distribution" or “A conditioned variation.” means that

• “Same” sounds are to native speakers of that language

• Confirmation like this can help linguistic anthropologists to know that

• They also want to be the right track with their analyses.

• You you say more better if you are able to put the for and more

• The second different or you would like to do you do

Test your knowledge of phonetics with this quiz. Questions cover phonetic symbols, vowel and consonant production, articulation, and the description of speech sounds. Evaluate your understanding of key concepts in phonetics.