Summary
Linguistics 1
Mid-term summary
,Index
Index 1
What is Linguistics? 3
What is Phonetics? 4
Phonetics 4
Speaking vs. Writing 4
Homographs and homophones 4
Standard Southern British English 5
Rhotic and non-rhotic accents 5
Transcribing speech 5
Speech production 6
Body parts involved in producing speech sounds 6
The necessity of air 8
The air passes through the larynx into the vocal tract 8
The vibration of vocal folds 8
Voicing 9
Voiced and Voiceless sounds 9
Phonemes 10
Symbols for English phoneme consonants 10
The importance of the voicing parameter 10
Place of Articulation 11
Articulators 11
Places of Articulation 12
Manner of Articulation 13
Manners of Articulation in English 13
Larger manner classes 14
International Phonetic Alphabet 15
Background 16
The living IPA 16
A note on convention, r and ɹ 16
Blank white vs grey spaces 16
Non-pulmonic consonants 17
Diacritics 17
Vowel 17
Mid-sagittal sections 18
Steps to drawing mid-sagittal sections 18
1
,Vowels 18
Phonetic labels for vowels 19
The vowel diagram 19
Cardinal vowels 19
Secondary Cardinal Vowels 20
Monophthongs 21
Short vs. long monophthongs 21
Diphthongs 22
Categorisation 22
Raising/closing diphthongs 22
Centring diphthongs 22
Acoustic Phonetics 23
Acoustic Phonetics 23
Sound waves 23
The auditory system 23
Air pressure variation 24
Amplitude 24
Fundamental frequency (F0) 24
Overtones (harmonies) 25
Sound spectrum 25
Formants 25
Formants in relation to English monophthongs 25
F1 (1st formant) 26
F2 (2nd formant) 26
Vowel diagram: articulation vs acoustics 26
Backness and rounding 26
Periodic sounds 27
Aperiodic sounds: fricatives 27
Aperiodic sounds: stops 27
Vowels and consonants 27
Airstream Mechanisms 29
Voiced sounds 29
Voiceless sounds 29
Glottal closure 29
Pulmonic Airstream mechanics 29
Glottalic Airstream mechanics 30
Velaric Airstream mechanics 31
Symbols 32
2
,What is Linguistics?
Linguistics
The study of natural human language.
- human rules out e.g. the waggle dance of bees, songs of whales
- natural rules out e.g. artificially constructed languages like Dothraki (GoT)
- Artificial languages like Elvish (LotR), Klingon (Star Trek) and Na’vi (Avatar)
are arguably neither human nor natural.
Linguistics has a lot of different branches, such as:
- Syntax (sentences) - Psycholinguistics
- Morphology (words) - sociolinguistics
- Semantics (meaning) - Neurolinguistics
- Phonology (how sounds - Historical linguistics
‘pattern’ in languages) - Forensic linguistics
Phonetics intersects with all these fields.
Spoken Languages
There are an estimated 6,000 languages in the world. Some of these languages
have many speakers, most have few. Many are endangered.
These languages are naturally acquired by children in the first years of their lives,
without any noticeable strain and without any explicit instruction, suggesting that
humans are predisposed to learn language.
Creole languages
Natural human languages also include creoles. These arise naturally from contact
between two or more languages.
- Papiamento; derived from Portuguese and Spanish, with Dutch, English,
Arawak Indian and African influences.
In some respects, English can also be viewed as a creole resulting from contact
between Old English (Germanic) and Old French (romance) following the Norman
Conquest of 1066, i.e. as ‘English with French influences’.
While this is controversial it is true that the influence of French on English is more
than just loan words. We also see it in English morphology and sentence structure.
Sign languages
Natural human languages include signed languages. These are produced in the
visual-gestural modality. e.g. ASL, BSL, Nederlandse Gebarentaal.
A common misperception is that sign languages are manual representations of
spoken language. Sign language has complicated grammar and children acquire
them similarly to non-deaf children.
3
, What is Phonetics?
Phonetics
- Phonetics is the study of speech sounds.
- Phonetics → Ancient Greek phone (φoνη) ‘sound’
- Phonetics is a branch of linguistics, the scientific study of language.
- Linguistics → Latin lingua ‘tongue, language’
Phonetics is the study of speech sounds
- the production of speech; articulatory phonetics
- the acoustics of speech; acoustic phonetics
- the perception of speech; auditory phonetics
Our focus will be on speech production, the subdiscipline known as articulatory
phonetics, with special emphasis on the phonetics of English.
Speaking vs. Writing
Don’t confuse sounds with letters!
As literate speakers, you will tend to focus on the spelling of words - but spelling and
speech are two different things.
- Different spelling, same sound
- see, sea, scene, protein, thief, key, Caesar, people, machine, debris
- Same spelling, different sound
- boughs, rough, through, cough, enough
- One sound, two letters
- she, apple, boots, fling, rock, this, enough, phonetics
- One letter, two sounds
- university, relax
- Silent letters
- love, island, psychosis, paradigm, knight
Homographs and homophones
Homographs → sound different but spelt the same.
- Polish + polish
Homophones → words that sound the same, but are spelt differently
- dough + doe
- cue + queue
4
Linguistics 1
Mid-term summary
,Index
Index 1
What is Linguistics? 3
What is Phonetics? 4
Phonetics 4
Speaking vs. Writing 4
Homographs and homophones 4
Standard Southern British English 5
Rhotic and non-rhotic accents 5
Transcribing speech 5
Speech production 6
Body parts involved in producing speech sounds 6
The necessity of air 8
The air passes through the larynx into the vocal tract 8
The vibration of vocal folds 8
Voicing 9
Voiced and Voiceless sounds 9
Phonemes 10
Symbols for English phoneme consonants 10
The importance of the voicing parameter 10
Place of Articulation 11
Articulators 11
Places of Articulation 12
Manner of Articulation 13
Manners of Articulation in English 13
Larger manner classes 14
International Phonetic Alphabet 15
Background 16
The living IPA 16
A note on convention, r and ɹ 16
Blank white vs grey spaces 16
Non-pulmonic consonants 17
Diacritics 17
Vowel 17
Mid-sagittal sections 18
Steps to drawing mid-sagittal sections 18
1
,Vowels 18
Phonetic labels for vowels 19
The vowel diagram 19
Cardinal vowels 19
Secondary Cardinal Vowels 20
Monophthongs 21
Short vs. long monophthongs 21
Diphthongs 22
Categorisation 22
Raising/closing diphthongs 22
Centring diphthongs 22
Acoustic Phonetics 23
Acoustic Phonetics 23
Sound waves 23
The auditory system 23
Air pressure variation 24
Amplitude 24
Fundamental frequency (F0) 24
Overtones (harmonies) 25
Sound spectrum 25
Formants 25
Formants in relation to English monophthongs 25
F1 (1st formant) 26
F2 (2nd formant) 26
Vowel diagram: articulation vs acoustics 26
Backness and rounding 26
Periodic sounds 27
Aperiodic sounds: fricatives 27
Aperiodic sounds: stops 27
Vowels and consonants 27
Airstream Mechanisms 29
Voiced sounds 29
Voiceless sounds 29
Glottal closure 29
Pulmonic Airstream mechanics 29
Glottalic Airstream mechanics 30
Velaric Airstream mechanics 31
Symbols 32
2
,What is Linguistics?
Linguistics
The study of natural human language.
- human rules out e.g. the waggle dance of bees, songs of whales
- natural rules out e.g. artificially constructed languages like Dothraki (GoT)
- Artificial languages like Elvish (LotR), Klingon (Star Trek) and Na’vi (Avatar)
are arguably neither human nor natural.
Linguistics has a lot of different branches, such as:
- Syntax (sentences) - Psycholinguistics
- Morphology (words) - sociolinguistics
- Semantics (meaning) - Neurolinguistics
- Phonology (how sounds - Historical linguistics
‘pattern’ in languages) - Forensic linguistics
Phonetics intersects with all these fields.
Spoken Languages
There are an estimated 6,000 languages in the world. Some of these languages
have many speakers, most have few. Many are endangered.
These languages are naturally acquired by children in the first years of their lives,
without any noticeable strain and without any explicit instruction, suggesting that
humans are predisposed to learn language.
Creole languages
Natural human languages also include creoles. These arise naturally from contact
between two or more languages.
- Papiamento; derived from Portuguese and Spanish, with Dutch, English,
Arawak Indian and African influences.
In some respects, English can also be viewed as a creole resulting from contact
between Old English (Germanic) and Old French (romance) following the Norman
Conquest of 1066, i.e. as ‘English with French influences’.
While this is controversial it is true that the influence of French on English is more
than just loan words. We also see it in English morphology and sentence structure.
Sign languages
Natural human languages include signed languages. These are produced in the
visual-gestural modality. e.g. ASL, BSL, Nederlandse Gebarentaal.
A common misperception is that sign languages are manual representations of
spoken language. Sign language has complicated grammar and children acquire
them similarly to non-deaf children.
3
, What is Phonetics?
Phonetics
- Phonetics is the study of speech sounds.
- Phonetics → Ancient Greek phone (φoνη) ‘sound’
- Phonetics is a branch of linguistics, the scientific study of language.
- Linguistics → Latin lingua ‘tongue, language’
Phonetics is the study of speech sounds
- the production of speech; articulatory phonetics
- the acoustics of speech; acoustic phonetics
- the perception of speech; auditory phonetics
Our focus will be on speech production, the subdiscipline known as articulatory
phonetics, with special emphasis on the phonetics of English.
Speaking vs. Writing
Don’t confuse sounds with letters!
As literate speakers, you will tend to focus on the spelling of words - but spelling and
speech are two different things.
- Different spelling, same sound
- see, sea, scene, protein, thief, key, Caesar, people, machine, debris
- Same spelling, different sound
- boughs, rough, through, cough, enough
- One sound, two letters
- she, apple, boots, fling, rock, this, enough, phonetics
- One letter, two sounds
- university, relax
- Silent letters
- love, island, psychosis, paradigm, knight
Homographs and homophones
Homographs → sound different but spelt the same.
- Polish + polish
Homophones → words that sound the same, but are spelt differently
- dough + doe
- cue + queue
4
