Phonetics

Phonetics

Phonetic s the study of sound. To understand the physiolgy of the human body. Letters represent sound in a rather intricate way. This has advantages and disadvantages. To represent sounds by letters in an accurate and uniform way the International Phonetic Alphabet(IPA) was created.

The Analysis of Speech Sounds

            First of all, the continuum of speech is broken up into a squence of discrete units, which we referred to as souds. Thus we are analysing language utterancs as sequence of sounds. Right away we mention that there is an exception. Intonation and stress are an exception to this. The sentences below ae distinct only in intonation ( falling pitch versus falling and rising pitch).

·         you spoke with the maneger.

·          you spoke with the manager?

Naming the Sound

The way to name a sound is by stringing together its attributes. However, there is a distinction between  naming vowels and consonants. For example, [p] is described as a voiceless, bilabial stop, [m] is called a (voiced) bilabial nasal. The rules are as follows :

• ·         Voicing place manner

            Sometimes other features are added. If we want to describe [p] we say that it is a voiceless bilabial aspirate stop. The additional specification ‘aspirated’ is a manner attribute, so it is put after the place description(but before the attribute ‘stop’, since the latter is a noun ). For example, the squence’voiced retroflex fricative’ refers to [z], as can be seen from the IPA chart.

            Vowels on the other hand ae always described as ‘vowel’, and all the other features are attributes. We have for example the description of[y] as’ high front rounded vowel’. This showes that the squeance is

• ·         Hight place lip-attitude [nasality]  vowel

Nasality is optional. If nothing is said, the vowel is not nasal.

On Strict Transcription

Since IPA tries to symblize a sound with precision, there is a tension between accuracy and usefulness. As we shall see later, the way a phoneme is realized changes from environment to environment.

           

 The Sound of English

Phonetic symbol                                         word illustrating

p                                                                                     pope

b                                                                                               barber

m                                                                                              mum

f                                                                                                 fife

v                                                                                               vital, live

t                                                                                                taunt

d                                                                                               deed

n                                                                                               nun

r                                                                                                rare

θ                                                                                               thousandth

Ò                                                                                               this, breathe

 s                                                                                               source, fuss

z                                                                                                zanies

∫                                                                                                 shush