LING 2007 - Phonetics PDF

LING 2007 - Phonetics Introducing Phonetic Science MICHAEL ASHBY & JOHN MAIDMENT 1 Introduction to speech Chapter outline In this chapter, we will explore: The fundamental differences between spoken and written language The various methods used to write the languages of the world...

LING 2007 - Phonetics Introducing Phonetic Science MICHAEL ASHBY & JOHN MAIDMENT 1 Introduction to speech Chapter outline In this chapter, we will explore: The fundamental differences between spoken and written language The various methods used to write the languages of the world The components of speech, including syllables, vowels, and consonants Phonetic symbols as tools for representing speech Speech as an acoustic signal The similarities and differences in the speech sounds of languages worldwide 3/41 Sounds and symbols There are estimated to be 5,000 to 8,000 languages in the world. The total number of symbols is somewhere around two to three hundred. Languages make their selection from the stock of humanly possible sounds. Almost all languages have the sounds at the beginning of the English words ‘tea’, ‘key’, ‘pea’, ‘see’, ‘fee’, ‘me’, and ‘knee’. Almost all languages have vowel sounds resembling those heard in the ‘seat’ and ‘sat’. 4/41 The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) IPA aims to provide a separate symbol for every sound used distinctively in a human language. The IPA has grown and evolved over more than a century of international collaboration. New symbols are added when new sounds appear in languages that had not previously been described. Link to the latest version of the IPA chart: https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/content/full-ipa-chart 5/41 THE INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET (revised to 2015) 6/41 IPA symbols The IPA takes the familiar Latin alphabet as its starting point. The twenty-six letters of the alphabet are all used, mostly with values that seem very natural to us. 7/41 IPA symbols (cont.) Further symbols are obtained in a variety of ways: By using small capital letters with different meanings from the lowercase ones; for example, [ɡ] and [ɢ] stand for different sounds, so do [n] and [ɴ] By turning or inverting existing letter shapes, as in [ə], [ɹ], [ɯ] and [ʁ] By using diacritics, which are dots, hooks, and other small marks added to symbols, as in [n̥], [ã] By using some letters from the Greek alphabet, such as [ɸ] (phi) and [ɣ] (gamma) By inventing new shapes, such as [ɰ], [ɳ] 8/41 The IPA avoids using certain typographical devices Font Differences: Variations in font appearance, such as serifs, do not affect the meaning of symbols. Example: [n] (with serifs) and [n] (without serifs) represent the same sound. Italic or Bold: These styles are not used to create distinct symbols in the IPA. 9/41 Transcribing sounds After phonetic training, we can listen analytically to words or phrases, imitate them, and record them with symbols. We can start from zero with a language we do not know at all, transcribing words with the help of a cooperative speaker who is willing to repeat words for us and listen to our imitations. 10/41 Examples from Divehi (Maldive Islands) ‘hand’: [aeʔ] not [ae] [ʔ]: Glottal stop, ‘finger’: [iŋgiliʔ] essential for meaning distinction in Divehi. ‘head’: [bɔ] ‘frog’: [bɔʔ] 11/41 Types of transcription People often have a wrong idea about how precise phonetic transcription can be. The IPA symbols may look a bit like mathematical symbols but they are not used with mathematical precision. Different observers can make somewhat different transcriptions of the same sample of speech, without either of them being necessarily ‘wrong’. 12/41 Symbols for particular languages A selection from (a subset of) the IPA. As an illustration, symbols for representing one type of English are given in the table. LINK 13/41 The North Wind and the Sun The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger when a traveler came along wrapped in a warm cloak. They agreed that the one who first succeeded in making the traveler take his cloak off should be considered stronger than the other. Then the North Wind blew as hard as he could, but the more he blew, the more closely did the traveler fold his cloak around him; and at last the North Wind gave up the attempt. Then the Sun shone out warmly and immediately the traveler took off his cloak. And so the North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the stronger of the two. 14/41 Syllables A syllable is like one pulse of speech. It always contains one loud or prominent part (almost always a vowel sound), and may optionally have consonant sounds preceding or following the vowel. Though both speaker and listener may have the impression that speech is a sequence of sounds, the shortest stretch of speech that a speaker can actually pronounce in a fairly natural way is not the individual sound, but the syllable. For example: sig – nal (two syllables) sign, eye, be, eat, beat (one syllable) 15/41 Segments: vowels and consonants The term segment is another way of referring to the individual speech sounds that make up syllables. Segments are of two kinds: vowels and consonants. Typical vowel segments are [i a u]; a few examples of typical consonants are [m b k f s]. Using V to stand for any vowel and C for any consonant, the structure of a syllable or word can be shown as a string of Vs and Cs. So, for example, the word ‘book’, pronounced [bʊk], is CVC. This sort of representation is called a CV-skeleton. 16/41 Different types of syllables in English Some examples of CV-skeletons for English, together with some words that conform to each of them. unit, you, win > starting with a consonant my, saw, draw > ending in a vowel 17/41 Different types of syllables in English (cont.) One syllable ‘book’ [bʊk] CVC, ‘house’ [haʊs] CVC, ‘voice’ [vɔɪs] CVC Two syllables ‘going’ [ˈɡəʊɪŋ] CVVC, ‘puppet’ [ˈpʌpɪt] CVCV, ‘support’ [səˈpɔːt] CVCVC Three syllables ‘banana’ [bəˈnɑːnə] CVCVCV, ‘musical’ [ˈmjuːzɪkəl] CCVCVCVC, ‘prominent’ [ˈprɒmɪnənt] CCVCVCVCC 18/41 Different types of syllables in English (cont.) Four syllables ‘applicable’ [əˈplɪkəbəl] VCCVCVCVC Five syllables ‘characteristic’ [ˌkærəktəˈrɪstɪk] CVCVCCVCVCCVC 19/41 Syllables different from word structures Syllables are units of pronunciation rather than elements of word structure. Notice that the word ‘dog’ is monosyllabic, and so is its plural, ‘dogs’; but the plural clearly consists of two elements of word structure: one is the stem, ‘dog-’; the other is the ending indicating plural. On the other hand, ‘banana’ has three syllables, but just one element of word structure, as the word isn’t made up of separate meaningful parts. 20/41 New terms Diphthongs: A vowel that changes quality within a single syllable. An example of a diphthong in English is [aɪ], in such words as ‘fine’, ‘time’, ‘sight’. Syllabic: Some languages also permit certain consonants to be syllabic – that is, to form a syllable by themselves, as in ‘settle’ [setl̩], ‘sudden’[sʌdn̩], and ‘cotton’ [ˈkɒtn̩]. 21/41 Suprasegmentals Segments aren’t the whole story. We also have to pay attention to features that are not themselves segments, and that seem to spread across several successive segments (often a whole syllable). Such properties are called suprasegmentals. Stress and tone are in this category. In English: ‘import’ [ˈɪmpɔːt] (noun) ‘import’ [ɪmˈpɔːt] (verb) In Persian: ‘vali’ [vaˈli] ‘proper name, guardian’ (noun) ‘vali’ [ˈvali] ‘but’ (conjunction) 22/41 Suprasegmentals (cont.) In German: ‘umschreiben’ [ˈʊmʃʁaɪbən] ‘to write’ (verb) ‘umschreiben’ [ʊmˈʃʁaɪbən] ‘to paraphrase’ (verb) In Chinese ‘mā’ (high level tone) ‘mother’ ‘má’ (rising tone) ‘hemp’ ‘mǎ’ (falling-rising tone) ‘horse’ ‘mà’ (falling tone) ‘to scold’ In Italian ‘ancora’ [anˈkora] ‘still’ ‘ancora’ [ˈankora] ‘anchor’ 23/41 Speech as an acoustic signal Speech can be picked up with a microphone, recorded, and analyzed. Sound is a rapid variation of pressure traveling through some physical medium (such as air). When variations in pressure arrive at the eardrum or a microphone, they cause vibration of the eardrum or the diaphragm of the microphone. The human listener experiences hearing a sound, and the microphone produces an electrical signal that can be measured. 24/41 Waveform Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper 25/41 Writing systems The writing systems used by the world’s languages are diverse and numerous. Here, we provide a brief overview to illustrate the variety of writing systems. Broadly, ways of writing can be classified into three main categories: Alphabetic systems Syllabaries Logographic systems 26/41 Alphabets The writing system of English is a development of the Latin alphabet, as are many writing systems used for languages of Europe and in many other parts of the world. Each of these languages has adapted the alphabet used in classical Rome to suit its own needs. Some languages have needed to add letters to the alphabet to suit their needs – English, for instance, has added w. 27/41 Alphabets (cont.) Languages often differ in the value, or range of values, given to a particular letter. So, for instance, the English letter c represents the sounds [s] as in ‘cinema’ or [k] as in ‘cow’, whereas, in the writing system of Zulu, the same letter represents a click sound. In English, x commonly represents a sequence of consonants [ks], as in ‘six’ or ‘tax’, but in some languages (Maltese is an example) the same letter is used to represent the sound [ʃ], which is the consonant at the beginning of the English word ‘shop’. 28/41 Alphabets Perso-Arabic (from right to left): ‫ ابپتثجچحخدذرزژسشصضطظعغفقکگلمنوهی‬ Greek (from left to right): α β γ δ ε ζ η θ ι κ λ μ ν ξ ο π ρ σ/ς τ υ φ χ ψ ω Modern Hebrew (from right to left): ‫אבגדהוזחטיכלמנסעפצקרשת‬ 29/41 Syllabaries If spoken language consists of syllables, one way to write a language is to provide one symbol for each possible syllable. This is what is done in the type of writing system called a syllabary. A portion of the Linear B syllabary, used to write an early form of Greek about 1500 BC, is shown below. 30/41 Logographic writing A logographic writing system does not attempt to represent the pronunciation of words at all. The best known example is the one used in Chinese. Each logogram (or character) represents a complete word and basically it is up to the reader to know how the word is pronounced. 31/41 The relationship between speech and writing Speech and writing are the two main channels through which communication can pass. Speech is the original channel for which human language evolved, and all written languages have (or once had) a spoken form. Writing, the preservation of language messages with visible marks, is a much later development (from about the Bronze Age) and many languages today still have no written form. 32/41 The relationship between speech and writing Speech is transient, quick, and interactive – both listening and speaking. Writing is permanent and we can keep complex ideas that are too difficult for the memory to remember. In writing we lose aspects like intonation, loudness, voice quality, accent, personal identifiers such as age. We can attempt to speak aloud anything written, but we must add characteristics not specified in writing, and not everything written has a spoken equivalent. 33/41 Homophones A good example of the independence of speech and writing in the representation of language comes from looking at homophones (different words that are pronounced the same way). See See (noun meaning the area of authority of a bishop.) Sea C The four words are absolutely identical in speech. 34/41 Sign language Signing represents another mode of communication, which is neither speech nor writing. But sign languages don’t operate by giving a word-for-word version of an otherwise written or spoken language (such as English). The system underlying the signs is a language in its own right. A message that has been originated in Canadian Sign Language (CSL) has to be translated into English, not merely transposed into speech or writing, to make it accessible to a person who doesn’t know CSL. 35/41 Problems with syllables and segments Although segments and syllables are important in the description of speech, it is only fair to point out that there are some problems in defining and making use of these notions. Sometimes the number of syllables in a word is uncertain or variable. For example: science (one or two syllables?) Camera (two or three syllables?) Adding the consonant [l] between the two vowels (and keeping the other sounds the same) gives the word ‘silence’, and we do not doubt that this has two syllables. 36/41 Cautions Some caution is needed with segments, too. Although they are essential for phonetic description and transcription, we should beware of thinking that segments are ‘real’ in any simple sense, or that they necessarily form the basis of the production and perception of speech. Although recordings of speech can be cut up reasonably well into syllables, the same is not true for segments. 37/41 Cautions (cont.) The movements we make in producing speech are smooth and continuous, without abrupt joins between successive segments. It is certainly true that when we hear a stretch of speech in an unfamiliar language we may have real doubts about what segments it contains. 38/41 Chapter Summary Phonetic science is concerned with the objective description and analysis of all aspects of speech. The representation of speech depends upon treating it as a succession of sounds. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) aims to provide a symbol for any sound in any language. The sounds in speech are of two kinds: vowels and consonants. Vowels may be simple or diphthongal. Segments are grouped into syllables, which are the smallest units that can be pronounced naturally. 39/41 Chapter Summary (cont.) Recording speech with a microphone enables us to display a waveform, on which certain aspects of speech can be observed and measured. Speech and writing are separate channels through which language messages can be passed. The two channels have different uses and different characteristics. Writing is important in our culture but we must avoid the mistake of believing that written language can somehow show us what speech is really like (or how it ought to be). 40/41  I welcome your feedback! If you have any suggestions on how we can improve the quality of our class, or if there’s anything you’d like to see more of, feel free to email me. [email protected] Your input is valuable and will help enhance our learning experience! 41/41