VOWELS and CONSONANTS

Phonology deals with the following questions:  Of all the sounds in a language, which are predictable?  What is the phonetic context that allows us to predict the occurrence of these sounds?  Which sounds affect the meaning of words?  PHONOLOGY What is a phoneme?  A class of speech sounds that are identified by a native speaker as the same sound is called a phoneme  The different phonetic realizations of a phoneme are called allophones  PHONEMES CONSONANTS  When describing a consonant, use the following parameters:  VOICE: your vocal cords vibrate?  PLACE: Which cavity is involved? Which articulators are used?  MANNER: how is the sound produced?  Phonemes of English   Try putting a hand lightly on your throat and then say the following words, drawing out the initial sounds If you feel vibration, this means that your vocal cords are open and the sound in question is a voiceless sound If, on the other hand, you feel some vibration or a buzzing feeling, this is due to the vibration of your vocal cords which are closed together This means that the sound you are making is a voiced sound Voicing How is the air stream modified by the vocal tract to produce the sound?  Stops : Sounds that are stopped completely in the oral cavity for a brief period of time  Fricatives: If the air stream is not completely stopped because of a narrow passage in the oral cavity that causes friction and turbulance  Manner of Articulation Affricates: a stop closure + slow release (fricative)  Liquids: some obstruction formed by the articulators, but not narrow enough to cause any real constriction  Glides: slight closure of the articulators, they are almost like vowels Therefore, they are often called semi-vowels   Consonants are produced with some closure or restriction in the vocal tract as the air stream is pushed through the glottis out of the mouth  When vowels are produced, there is nothing in the vocal tract that narrows the passage such that it would obstruct the free flow of the air stream That is, vowels are produced without any articulators touching or even coming close together CONSONANTS VS: VOWELS    Vowels are the most audible, SONORANT (or intense) sounds in speech Vocal fold vibration is the sound source for vowels Therefore, all vowels are, almost always, VOICED Unlike consonants, there is neither place of constriction or closure (place of articulation), nor a specific manner of articulation     The shape of the vocal tract determines the quality of the vowel There are several ways in which we can change the shape of the vocal tract: raising or lowering the body of the tongue pushing the tongue forward or pulling it back rounding the lips         How high is the tongue? HIGH , MID , LOW Is the tongue advanced or retracted? FRONT , CENTRAL , BACK Are the lips rounded? ROUNDED , UNROUNDED Is the tongue tense? TENSE, LAX VOWEL CLASSIFICATION Compare the vowels in ‘beat’ and ‘bit’, or ‘bait’ and ‘bet’  TENSE vowels ([i],[u],[e],[o]) are produced with greater tension of the tongue muscles than their LAX counterparts (all others)  TENSE vowels are phonetically longer than LAX vowels  EXAMPLE If two sounds are separate phonemes, then they are contrastive (in terms of meaning)  If the two phones are allophones of the same phoneme, then they are noncontrastive  To determine whether a given pair of sounds is contrastive, linguists look for minimal pairs  Aspiration: The period between the release of the closure of a consonant and the start of the vocal cord activity for the vowel that comes after it This period is usually felt as a puff of air  Aspiration occurs on all voiceless stops occurring  as the first sound in a stressed syllable  For English, aspiration is not employed to create a meaning difference  ASPIRATION A minimal pair is a pair of words with different meanings with exactly the same  pronunciation except for one sound that differs  Examples:  [tek] vs [tep] "take" vs "tape"  [tim] vs [dim] "team" vs "deam"  Minimal Pairs [...]...Compare the vowels in ‘beat’ and ‘bit’, or ‘bait’ and ‘bet’  TENSE vowels ([i],[u],[e],[o]) are produced with greater tension of the tongue muscles than their LAX counterparts (all others)  TENSE vowels are phonetically longer than LAX vowels  EXAMPLE If two sounds are separate phonemes, then they are contrastive (in terms... phoneme, then they are noncontrastive  To determine whether a given pair of sounds is contrastive, linguists look for minimal pairs  Aspiration: The period between the release of the closure of a consonant and the start of the vocal cord activity for the vowel that comes after it This period is usually felt as a puff of air  Aspiration occurs on all voiceless stops occurring  as the first sound in a stressed