Giáo trình ngữ âm âm vị tiếng anh

CHAPTER II ENGLISH PHONETICS 2.1 The study of how organs of speech work in producing speech sounds Phonetics is concerned with speech and investigates the processes which underlie human

LỜI NÓI ĐẦU

Giáo trình ngữ âm - âm vị tiếng Anh giới thiệu cho sinh viên chuyên ngữ sư phạm và cử nhân tiếng Anh những vấn ñề cơ bản lý thuyết về ngữ âm học và âm vị học thuộc lĩnh vực ngôn ngữ học nói chung và lĩnh vực ngôn ngữ cụ thể - tiếng Anh nói riêng Giáo trình trình bày khái quát kiến thức về quá trình sản sinh lời nói, quá trình cấu âm của lời nói, hoạt ñộng của dây thanh, luồng hơi từ trong lồng ngực, âm

vị, biến thể âm vị, ñồng hóa, dị hóa, trọng âm và ngữ ñiệu tiếng Anh

Trong thời lượng 2 tín chỉ, giáo trình ñược biên soạn cô ñọng, xúc tích dễ tiếp thu Phần bài tập cho sinh viên tập nhằm làm rõ và củng cố phần lý thuyết

Giáo trình ñược kết cấu như sau: Phần I trình bày khái quát về dẫn luận ngôn ngữ học, giới thiệu ngôn ngữ và lời nói, ngôn ngữ và chữ viết, vị trí của ngữ âm - âm

vị học trong lĩnh vực ngôn ngữ học Phần II giới thiệu quá trình sản sinh lời nói, quá trình cấu âm, hoạt ñộng dây thanh và hoạt ñộng của luồng hơi từ trong lồng ngực ñi

ra khoang miệng hoặc khoang mũi Phần III là một trong những nội dung trọng tâm của giáo trình giới thiệu về ngữ âm học, nguyên âm, phụ âm và các tiêu chí phân loại chúng Phần này cung cấp kiến thức về hoạt ñộng của cơ quan cấu âm, vị trí phát âm, phương thức cấu âm, vị trí của lưỡi, ñộ nâng của lưỡi, hình dáng của môi và ñộ dài ngắn của nguyên âm Phần IV giới thiệu về âm vị học, âm vị âm ñoạn tính và âm vị siêu ñoạn tính Trong phần âm vị âm ñoạn tính, giáo trình giới thiệu âm vị, biến thể

âm vị, biến thể tự do, một số quy luật về ñồng hóa, hiện tượng dị hóa, âm tiết hóa, âm nối Trong phần siêu ñoạn tính, giáo trình tập trung trình bày các mục về âm tiết có trọng âm, âm tiết không trọng âm, trọng âm từ, vị trí trọng âm từ, chức năng của trọng âm, các phương thức nghiên cứu trọng âm từ góc ñộ người phát ngôn và người nghe; Ngữ ñiệu tiếng Anh là phần không thể thiếu trong môn ngữ âm âm vị học Phần này giới thiệu về giọng ñiệu, ngôn ñiệu và ngữ ñiệu, ý nghĩa và các hình thức biểu thị của ngữ ñiệu cũng như các chức năng của chúng

Giáo trình không thể quán xuyến tất cả các hiện tượng ngữ âm âm vị tiếng Anh vì nhiều lý do Những hạn chế này là nhược ñiểm của giáo trình Chúng tôi rất mong nhận ñược ý kiến ñóng góp của các ñồng nghiệp ñể giáo trình ñược tốt hơn

Introduction

It is believed when we are speaking a foreign language there are times when the other person does not understand us, or we do not understand the other person This case is called a communication breakdown Sometimes communication breakdown is due to a grammar or vocabulary mistake and sometimes it is due to a pronunciation mistake As we need to be able to analyze and correct our grammar and vocabulary mistakes we need to be able to analyze and correct our pronunciation mistakes

In pronunciation, it is not necessary to pronounce every sound perfectly to be understood – only a few parts of each sentence are really important, but these parts are essential The native speaker depends on hearing these parts clearly; therefore we need to know which parts of a sentence must be clear and how to make them clear

As the sound systems of English and Vietnamese differ greatly, Vietnamese speakers can have quite severe pronunciation problems Vietnamese is a tone language; that is, pitch changes distinguish word meaning Most words in Vietnamese consist of only one syllable; there are fewer consonants than in English and there are no consonant clusters On the other hand, the Vietnamese vowel system makes a large number of distinctions Vietnamese uses a modified Roman alphabet but many of the letters have quite different sound values from those of English

This course cannot be learned in a few days If we tried to cover all of these topics quickly, the result would be little more than a dry terminological list with brief definitions, accompanied by a few diagrams and an abstract discussion of the associated theories It would not be especially useful for us to require you to memorize these terms with learning anything much about the underlying realities Instead of giving a tour of the whole of English phonetics and phonology, this portion has two more limited goals The first goal is to put language sound structure

in context Why do human languages have a sound structure about which we need to say anything more than that vocal communication is based on noises made with the eating and breathing apparatus? What are the apparent "design requirements" for this system, and how are they fulfilled? The second goal is to give you a concrete sense of what the language sound systems are like In order to do this, we will go over, in a certain amount of detail, a few aspects of the phonetics and phonology of English, and also a bit about the contrastive phonetics and phonology of the Vietnamese language, a language spoken in our country, Vietnam Along the way, a certain amount of the terminology and theory of phonetics and phonology will emerge

The first part of the course presents briefly introduction to language, to explaine speech and language, sounds and speech, writing, language and grammar, and phonetics and linguistics Unit II deals with the production of speech sounds through the speech chain, the speech mechanism, the vocal cords and the airstream

In Unit III, the English sounds are mainly presented Unit IV is concerned with English phonology Segmental phonology and suprasegmental phonology are emerged in this last part, and they cover the main subject matters of the course such

as phonemes, allophones, minimal pair, minimal set, free variation, transcription as well as sounds in connected speech Unit IV ends with matters dealing with weak forms, the English stress and intonation

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LỜI NÓI ĐẦU 1

INTRODUCTION 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

CHAPTER I A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO LANGUAGE 5

1.1 L ANGUAGE AND S PEECH 5

1 2 S OUNDS AND SPEECH 5

1.3 W RITING 5

1.4 L ANGUAGE 6

1.5 G RAMMAR 7

1.6 T HE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SPEECH AND LANGUAGE 8

1.7 P HONETICS AND L INGUISTICS 10

CHAPTER II ENGLISH PHONETICS 14

2.1 T HE STUDY OF HOW ORGANS OF SPEECH WORK IN PRODUCING SPEECH SOUNDS14 2.2 P HONETIC A SPECTS 15

2.3 T HE PRODUCTION OF SPEECH SOUNDS 18

2.4 T HE S PEECH C HAIN 20

2.5 T HE SPEECH MECHANISM (A RTICULATORS ) 21

2.6 T HE VOCAL CORDS 22

2.7 T HE AIR STREAM 25

CHAPTER III THE ENGLISH SOUNDS 27

3.1 T HE E NGLISH V OWELS 27

3.2 T HE E NGLISH C ONSONANTS 30

CHAPTER IV ENGLISH PHONOLOGY 37

4.1 S EGMENTAL PHONOLOGY 37

4.1.1 Minimal Pairs 38

4.1.2 Minimal set 38

4.1.3 Phonemes – contrastive phonemes 39

4.1.4 Allophones – non-contrastive phonemes 39

4.1.5 Free Variation 40

4.1.6 The Transcription 40

4.1.7 The Description 41

4.2 S OUNDS IN C ONNECTED S PEECH (G ENERAL P HONOLOGICAL R ULES ) 42

4.2.1 Assimilation 48

4.2.2 Types of assimilation: 48

4.2.3 Basic Rules of Assimilation 49

4.2.4 Degrees of Assimilation 50

4.2.5 The Elision 50

4.2.6 Liaison (sound linking) 52

4.3 S UPRA -S EGMENTAL P HONOLOGY 54

4.3.1Weak forms 55

4.3.2 Vowel reduction in English 55

4.3.3 Alternation 58

4.3.4 The English Stress 58

4.3.5 Stress is as an intonation unit 59

4.3.6 Word stress 60

4.3.7 Types of word stress 61

4.3.8 Function of word stress 62

4.3.9 Stress in phrasal verbs 63

4.3.10 Secondary stress 64

4.3.11 Degrees of stress in English 64

4.3.12Tonic Stress 66

4.3.13 Emphatic Stress 67

4.3.14 Contrastive Stress 67

4.3.15 New Information Stress 68

4.4 R HYTHM IN E NGLISH 68

4.5 T HE E NGLISH I NTONATION 70

4.5.1 Intonation Units 71

4.5.2 Tone 72

4.5.3 Functions of Intonation 77

4.5.4 Attitudinal function 77

4.5.5 Grammatical function 77

4.5.6 Accentual function 78

4.5.7 Interactive function approaches (discourse function) 78

APPENDIXES 81

A PPENDIX 1 A SSIMILATION 81

A PPENDIX 2 G LOSSARY TO PRONUNCIATION TERMS AND TERMINOLOGY 87

REFERENCES 91

1.1 Language and Speech

The purpose of speaking is to convey meaningful ideas to the listener In order

to do this, the listener should be able to interpret the meaning of the spoken sounds One way of doing this is by providing a coding mechanism with set of rules enabling the listener to interpret the meaning of the speech The human being uses linguistics

as the tool for coding the information The coding mechanism is not straightforward The new ideas are converted into linguist structure This requires selection of appropriate words, phrases These words are ordered in sequence according to grammatical rules

1 2 Sounds and speech

From the linguistic point of view the smallest speech unit is known as phonemes, which indicates a different in meaning and is normally written between

slashes as for example /m/ in hum In fact the sounds produced for individual

phonemes vary depending on where it appears in a word, phonemes sets are different for different languages, as for example about 44 phonemes are sufficient to discriminate between all the sounds made in British English

Phonemes are characterized into six different groups These are the vowels, diphthongs, semi vowels, stop, fricative and affricative consonants The grouping of these phonemes is based on the way these sounds are produced Each phoneme is a combined version of the first three dominant formant frequency which is originated due to the vibration of the vocal cord However the formant frequency largely varies depending on the speaker

One of the chief characteristics of the human being is his ability to communicate to his fellows complicated messages concerning every aspect of his activity A man possessing the normal human faculties achieves this exchange of information mainly by means of two types of sensory stimulation, auditory and visual The child will learn from a very early age to respond to the sounds and tunes which his elders habitually use in talking to him; and a need to communicate, he will himself begin to imitate the recurrent sound patterns with which he has become familiar In other words, he begins to make use of speech; and his constant exposure

to spoken form of his own language, together with his need to convey increasingly subtle types of information, leads to a rapid acquisition of the framework of his spoken language Nevertheless, with all the conditions in his favor, a number of years will pass before he has mastered not only the sound system used in his community but also has at his disposal a vocabulary of any extent or is entirely familiar with the syntactical arrangements in force in his language system It may be said that, as we grow older, the acquisition of a new language will normally entail a great deal of conscious, analytic effort, instead of the child’s ready and facile imitation

1.3 Writing

Later in life the child will be taught the conventional visual representation of speech, he will learn to use writing Today, in considering those languages which

have long possessed a written form, we are apt to forget that the written form is originally an attempt at reflecting the spoken language and that the latter precedes the former for both the individual and the community Indeed, in many languages, so parallel are the two forms felt to be that the written form may be responsible for changes in pronunciation or may tend to impose restraints upon its development In the case of English, this sense of parallelism may be encouraged by the obvious lack

of consistent relationship between sound and spelling A written form of English, based on the Latin alphabet, has existed for more than 1,000 years and, though the pronunciation of English has been constantly changing during this time, few basic changes of spelling have been made since the fifteenth century The result is that written English is often inadequate and misleading representation of the spoken language of today Clearly it would be unwise, to say the least, to base our judgments concerning the spoken language on prejudices derived from the orthography Moreover, if we are to examine the essence of the English language, we must make our approach through the spoken rather than the written form Our primary concern will be the production, transmission, and reception of the sounds of English, in other words, the Phonetics of English

1.4 Language

It is clear that the analysis of the spoken form of English is by no means simple Each of us uses an infinite number of different speech sounds when speaking English Indeed, it is true to say that it is difficult to produce two sounds which are precisely identical from the point of view of instrumental measurement: two utterances by the same person of the word “cat” may well show quite marked differences when measured instrumentally Yet we are likely to say that the same sound sequence has been repeated In fact we may hear clear and considerable differences of quality in the vowel of “cat” as in the London and Manchester pronunciation of the word; yet, though we recognize differences of vowel quality, we are likely to feel that we are dealing with a variant of the same vowel

It seems that we are concerned with two kinds of reality: the concrete, measurable reality of the sounds uttered, and another kind of reality, an abstraction made in our minds, which appears to reduce this infinite number of different sounds

to a manageable number of categories In the first concrete, we are dealing with sounds in relation to speech; at the second, abstract, our concern is the behavior of sounds in a particular language

A language is a system of conventional signals used for communication by a whole community This pattern of conventions covers a system of significant sound units (the phonemes), the inflexion and arrangement of ‘words’, and the association

of meaning with words An utterance, an act of speech, is a single concrete manifestation of the system at work As we have seen, several utterances which are plainly different on the concrete, phonetic level may fulfill the same function on the systematic language level It is important in any analysis of spoken language to keep distinction in mind and we shall later be considering in some detail how this dual approach to utterance is to be made It is not, however, always possible or desirable

to keep the two level of analysis entirely separate: will draw upon our knowledge of the linguistically significant units to help us in determining how speech continuum

shall be divided up on the concrete, phonetic level; and our classification of linguistic units will be helped by our knowledge of their phonetic features

It is obvious that language is the system of human communication by means of

a structured arrangement of sounds (or their written representation) to form larger units, e.g Morphemes, words, sentences In common usage it can also refer to non-human systems of communication such as the language of bees, the language of dolphin The possession of language distinguishes humans from other animals

Today, linguists agree that the knowledge of a language is that of something quite abstract: it is a knowledge of rules and ways of saying and doing things with sounds, words, and sentences without any guiding principles for their use It is knowing what is in the language and what is not; it is knowing the possibilities the language offers and what is impossible This knowledge explains how it is we can understand sentences we have not heard before and reject others as ungrammatical: in the sense of without being possible in the language Communication among people is possible because such a knowledge is shared or even how it is acquired, - is not well understood

The knowledge of a language is an internalized system of many things Probably without being aware of it, we know the sounds that are part of our language

as well as those are not Knowledge of the sound patterns also includes knowing which sounds may start a word, end a word, and follow each other This, nevertheless, constitutes only one part of our linguistic knowledge Another important part is knowing that certain sounds and sound sequences signify or represent different concepts or “meaning” Note not all strings of words make sense

in a language Our linguistic knowledge enable us to form larger and larger sentences

by joining words into phrases, phrases into clauses, clauses into sentences, and sentences into discourses There is a difference between having the necessary knowledge to produce sentences in a language and the way we use this knowledge in linguistic performance or behavior In fact, our linguistic knowledge works on two levels: What we know linguistic competence and how we use this knowledge in actual behavior- linguistic performance

1.5 Grammar

A language consists of all the sounds, words, and possible sentences When

we know a language, we know the sounds, the words, and the rules for their combination The elements and rules constitute the grammar of a language Grammar represents our linguistic competence

According to Victoria Fromkin (1984), the grammar includes the sound system, called phonology, the system of meaning, called semantics, the rules of words formation, called morphology; and rules of sentence combination, called syntax It also includes the rules of act of communication, called discourse

Every human who speaks a language knows the grammar of that language Chomsky maintains that a native speaker has somewhere in his/ her brain a set of grammar rules which s/he uses to make sentences with This by no means that s/he can tell us what the rules are, or rather how that language works, grammatically Of course there may be some differences between the knowledge that one speaker has

and of another, there must be shared knowledge because it enables speakers to talk to and to understand one another

There are two types of grammar A description of the grammar is called Descriptive Grammar- it describes how a language is actually spoken and or written;

it explains how it is possible for us to speak and understand speech; it does not state what is right or what is wrong; neither does it evaluate what is better nor prescribes how the language ought to be spoken or written, but it describes what is happening in the language

Prescriptive Grammar prescribes rules for what is considered the best or the most correct usage It is based on the grammarians’ view of what is best Prescriptive grammar does not help speakers learn their language, but rather, it is an aid in foreign language teaching, or keeps a language in a country in uniform

When talking all the aspects of grammar into consideration, linguists have identified some properties that all natural language share: systematic, arbitrary, and conventional; without these characteristics, communication among humans would hardly be possible

1.6 The differences between speech and language

When observing a group of people engaged in a conversation you witness several kinds of communication There is first of all the voice, with all its complexity and richness of intonation and other modulation There is also a tapestry of gestures, including hand waving of various sorts, body stance, gaze, and other facial movements These combine to communicate intention

The ordinary vehicle of linguistic communication is the voice, and speech is a primary mode of human language This is so hardly surprising for speech has several advantages over other vehicles of human communication It is extremely valuable to have a vehicle with other life-sustaining activities Because speech does not need to

be seen, it can do its work as effectively in darkness as in light, around corners, and

in other visually inaccessible spots Although in its natural state it cannot span time, its physical reach is far greater than arm’s length Unlike singing, speech leaves eyes and the hands free for other work We can talk and listen while looking at things besides our interlocutors In the development of speech in the human species, when hands and eyes were occupied in hunting, fishing, food gathering, and other manual activities of work and play, speech was free to carry out other tasks: to report, point, ask for and give direction, explain, promise, bargain, warn

Speech has still other advantages For one thing, the human voice is a complex vehicle with many channels It has variable volume, pitch, stress, and speed: it is capable of wide-ranging modulation Speech is not a single channel mode It has intonation and stress, as well as the more familiar grammatical levels Besides a set

of sounds, speech takes advantages of the organization of those sounds – of their sequencing into words and sentences Like wring and singing, speech can take advantage of word choice and word order Intonation, stress and volume are more fully privileges of the spoken mode than of the written or signed modes

Speech and writing are the two primary modes of linguistic communication, each with advantages and limitations For example, speech is the only modes of linguistic communication possible when visibility is hindered It is also the only

mode in which the communication’s hands and eyes are left free to do other things Speech has limitations too Speech has an evanescent character and vanishes upon being uttered unless it was tape-recorded or filmed

Writing, on the other hand, has evolved to meet other needs It can be preserved for thousands of years Writing has another advantage over speech in that it can transcend space One can send a written massage anywhere on earth With technology, of course, this advantage of writing over speech is decreasing

1.6.1 Speech as Rule-Governed Language Use

There is much more to the ability to speak than grammatical competence Being as the elements of a language, speech is used to put together into well-formed,

or grammatical, sentences Speech falls far short of knowing how to accomplish the work that speakers accomplish with language, and falls short of native speaker fluency To be fluent in a language requires not only mastery of its grammatical rules but also competence in the appropriate use of the sentences that are structured by those rules

Fluency requires knowledge of how to put sentences together in conversation, for example, and how to rely on nonlinguistic context and previous linguistic context

in shaping utterances appropriately, and in interpreting them The point is that fluency presumes two kinds of competence: knowledge of how to form sentences and knowledge of what those sentences are capable of doing and of when and how to use them appropriately (as well as how to interpret them in context) The capacity that enables us to use language appropriately is called communicative competence It enables language users to weave utterances together into conversation, apologies, requests, directions, descriptions,

Knowing a language presumes both communicative competence and grammatical competence To be fluent, grammatical competence and communicative competence are jointly needed

We can summarize by saying that grammatical competence is the language user’s implicit knowledge of vocabulary, pronunciation, sentence structures and meaning, while communicative competence is the implicit knowledge that underlies the appropriate use of grammatical competence in the various situations of language use The rules that govern the appropriate use of language differ from one speech community to the next, so even a shared grammatical competence may not be adequate to make you a fluent speaker in another community, at least in some situations

1.6.2 Language as Rule-Governed Systems

Precisely because the relationship between linguistic symbols and the things they represent is arbitrary, languages must be highly organized systems if they are to function as reliable vehicles of expressions and communication If there were no pattern to the way we voiced our thoughts and feelings, listeners would face an insuperable task in determining what we meant If language were not highly organized and patterned systems, listeners would find it impossible to unravel their arbitrary symbols for the content they encode

It is not surprising then that languages have evolved over centuries into such extraordinary complex systems

Language is rule governed It follows observable patterns that obey certain inherent rules Such rules are not imposed from the outside, and they do not specify how something should be done Instead, they are merely the regularities that we can observe being followed when people use language In other words, the linguistic rules described are based on nothing more than the observed regularities of language behavior and of the underlying systems

A language is a set of elements and a system of rules for combining those elements to form patterned sentences that can be used to do specific jobs in specific contexts

Utterances report something, greet someone, invite a friend to lunch, request the time of day, express admiration, propose marriage, create fictional worlds, and so

on in an endless list And languages do this using a finite system of elements and rules that a child normally masters in a few short years The mental capacity that enables speakers to form grammatical sentences is called grammatical competence

In our course we focus on language as it is represented in spoken and written communication It is important to keep in mind that historically and developmentally, writing is a secondary mode of linguistic communication This can be a challenge to you as students, whose principal focus and principal context for discussing language has been written language

Since speech and writing are the two modes of linguistic communication, language is a system of grammatical rules that structured the organization of expression Equally important is the role of language as a tool that we use to accomplish tasks with one another Structure and use go hand in hand and correspond

to the dual function of language as an integral component of our mental functions and as a tool in the regulation of social interactions

Human language is a system primarily of arbitrary symbols, although certain symbols are representational Communication that involves language can take place

in any of two modes speech and writing

To describe what language is, G.H Lewes compares as follows “Just as birds have wings, man has language The wings give the birds its peculiar aptitude for aerial locomotion Language enables man’s intelligence and passions to acquire their peculiar characters of intellect and sentiment.” Walt Whitman argues that “Language

is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary-makers, but is something arising out of the work , needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground.” H.G Widdowson points out language functions as follows “Language serves as a means of cognition and communication; it enables us to think for ourselves and to cooperate with other people in our community It provides for present needs and future plans, and at the same time carries with it the impression of things past”

1.7 Phonetics and Linguistics

This course is primarily concerned with the sound system of English and it is proper that phonetic and phonemic analysis should occupy an important place in the study of any language It should be remembered that phonetic analysis constitutes but one step in a linguistic investigation A complete description of the current state of a

language must provide information on several interrelated levels:-

(1) Phonology,- The concrete phonetic characteristics of the sounds used in the language; the functional, phonemic behavior of these sounds for distinctive purposes; the combinatory possibilities (syllabic structure) of the phonemes; the nature and use

of such prosodic features as pitch, stress and length A study of the phonic substance

of the language may be accompanied by a description of the written form of the language

(2) Lexis - The total number of word forms which exist

(3) Grammar - The system of rules governing the structures of phrases, clauses and sentences consisting of words contained in the lexicon

(4) Semantics - The relation of meaning to the signs and symbols of language (5) Other aspects of language which would require investigation include the variation of the same language in different regions and social classes (dialectology); the influence of context and style upon the form and substance of the language; the behavior of human beings in their production and perception of the language (psycholinguistics); the interaction of the language and the society in which it is spoken (socio-linguistics)

Finally, it is clear that the phonology, lexis, grammar and semantics of a language are always undergoing change in time The state of a language at any moment must

be seen against a background of its historical evolution This course provides the basic sound system of English in a limited phonetical and phonological subject but required one at professional levels

The purpose of this course is to explain how English is pronounced in the accent normally chosen as the standard for people learning the English spoken in England This course is aimed to present the pronunciation in the context of a general theory about speech sounds and how they are (speech sounds) used in language It is necessary to learn this theoretical background, because at lower levels of study one is concerned simply with setting out how to form grammatical sentences, but people who are going to work with the language at an advanced level as teachers or researchers need the deeper understanding provided by the study of grammatical theory and related areas of linguistics This theoretical course is for anyone who needs to understand the principles regulating the use of sounds in spoken English, and it is called English Phonetics and Phonology

The nature of phonetics and phonology is the study of used sounds (vowels and consonants) that we call phonemes Because of the confusing nature of English spelling, it is particular important to learn English pronunciation in terms of phonemes rather than letters of the alphabet This course is concerned with identifying and describing the phonemes of English, with the practical business of how some English sounds are pronounced and with large units of speech such as the syllable and aspects of speech such as stress and intonation This course deals almost with R.P (Received Pronunciation) The reason is simply that R.P is the accent that has always been chosen by British teachers to teach to foreign learners, and is the accent that has been most fully described and has been used as the basis for pronouncing dictionaries If your accent is different from R.P you should try to note what your main differences are for purposes of comparison and you shouldn’t try to change your pronunciation to R.P and you will find it an interesting job to listen, to see if you can identify the ways in which they differ from R.P or even to learn to

pronounce some examples of different accents yourself

As a teacher of English you already know that English spelling is obviously different from its pronunciation So the purpose of the study English phonetics and phonology is very simple: to help your learners to pronounce English better than they

do now, because there are many problems facing the English language learners when they communicate orally Among these difficulties the problem of pronunciation is considered as the most serious problem for students who learn English as a foreign language, especially in the Vietnamese environment Many foreign students want to learn English as well as they can; for some their purpose is for a matter of reading and writing, and they will find no help here But many students want to be able to speak English well, with a pronunciation that can be easily understood by English people and speaking English people Written English and spoken English are very different things Writing consists of marks on paper that makes no noise and are taken in by the eyes, whilst speaking is organized sound, taken by the ear How can a book, which is nothing but marks on paper, help anyone to make their English sound better? The answer to this is that it can’t, not by itself But if you will co-operate, and listen to English as much as you can, then you will find that your afford will make your ears shaper for the sound of English and when you can hear English properly you can go on and improve your performance Language starts with the ear When a baby starts to talk, he does it by hearing the sounds his mother makes and imitating them If a baby is born deaf he cannot hear these sounds and therefore cannot imitate them will not speak But normal babies can hear and can imitate; they are wonderful imitators, and this gift of imitation, which gives us the gift of speech, lasts for a number of years It is well known that a child of ten years old or less can learn any language perfectly, if it is brought up surrounded by that language, no matter where it was born or who its parents were But after this age the ability to imitate perfectly becomes less, and we all know too well that adults have great difficulty in mastering the pronunciation of foreign languages Some people are more talented than others; they find pronouncing other languages less difficult, but they never find them easy Why is this? Why should this gift that we all have as children disappear in later life? Why can’t grown-up people pick up the characteristic sound of a foreign language as

a child can? The answer to this is that our native language won’t let us, because of the mother tongue interference By the time we are grown up the habits of our own language are so strong that they are very difficult to break In our own language we have a fairly small number of sound units which we put together in many different combinations to form the words and sentences we use every day And as we get older

we are dominated by this small number of units It is as if we had in our heads a certain fixed number of boxes for sounds; when we listen to our own language we hear the sounds and we put each into the right box, and when we speak we go to the boxes and take out the sounds we want And as we do this over the years the boxes get stronger and stronger until everything we hear, whether it is our own language or another, has to be put into one of these boxes, and everything we say comes out of one of them But every language has a different number of boxes, and the boxes are arranged differently

The main problem of English pronunciation is to build a new set of boxes corresponding to the sounds of English, and to break down the arrangement of boxes which the habits of our native language have so strongly built up We do this by

establishing new ways of hearing, new ways of using our speech organs, new speech habits This may sound easy, but it isn’t Unfortunately, it is never easy to establish good habits, it is always the bad ones which come most naturally, and you will need

to do a great deal of hard work if you want to build yourself a set of English boxes which are nearly as firm as those of your own language

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION

1 Share your understanding of rule-governed system and rule-governed

language use between language and speech among your classmate group

2 State the differences between sounds and speech

3 Indicate theoretically the position of phonetics in language studies in general

CHAPTER II ENGLISH PHONETICS

2.1 The study of how organs of speech work in producing speech sounds

Phonetics is concerned with speech and investigates the processes which underlie human communication from speech production to utterance comprehension Speech is an extremely complex phenomenon, and its study requires theoretical and experimental research, often together with fields bordering phonetics

The research areas of the English Phonetics fall partly in the domain of basic research and partly in that of applied research One main topic is the acoustic phonetic and perceptual analysis of spontaneous speech We seek answers to the questions of how the pronunciation of speech sounds is modified in continuous speech, what effect neighboring sounds have on each other, what influences the speed of speech, or the features of melody or stress The analyses, which begin theoretically and continue through the processing of the experimental data, target the dependencies between articulation, acoustic structure and perception

Phonetic research has undergone major development in the last three decades, primarily due to advances in its technical and technological prerequisites The aim of speech research, which used to be mostly descriptive, has now become to discover all processes involved in speech, based on the achievements of the pioneers of experimental phonetics In laying the foundations of modern phonetics, a detailed presentation of the mechanisms involved in the production of speech sounds, with the help of figures showing the movement of the lips or the way the tongue touches the palate, or with X-ray pictures taken at the time of the production of speech sounds, played an important role The analysis of the acoustic effects of pronunciation led to more and more detailed accounts of the physical properties of speech Research concentrating on the recognition of speech sounds also got major impetus in this period Present research primarily aims to analyze spontaneous speech from the point

of view of pronunciation, acoustic properties, and speech perception

The research topics are investigated at the department of phonetics: the study

of the role of the vocal cords in the production of speech; the analysis of speech sounds and of the effect they have on each other; the description of the variability of vowels, of consonant complexes, of the inner temporal structure, and of the properties of voicing assimilation; the development of a model predicting the length

of speech sounds; and the description of the dependencies between speech melody and sentence type

The results of applied research are the systems transforming written text into speech that have been developed It has become possible to determine the identity of

a person to a high degree of efficiency by means of the phonetic analysis of his/her speech The development of speech perception diagnostics is capable of analyzing the speech perception and comprehension abilities of children between 3 and 13 counts as a significant achievement It is used by several thousand experts in the country to determine a child’s readiness for school or for children struggling with a speech defect or learning difficulties

The study of speech sounds, which are utilized by all human languages to represent meanings, is called phonetics, which is concerned with describing the speech sounds occurring in a language of the world So the first job of phonetician is

us with a tool for describing the differences among varieties of the language

Phonetics is the attempt to record and describe the sounds of language objectively It provides a valuable way of opening our eyes - and ears to the many nuances of language that we take for granted, while Phonology concerns itself with the ways in which a given language shapes sounds into distinctive categories of perception Through phonology, we can begin to see the way in which language is rule-governed In reality, many sounds occurring in speech are not easily found in language this leads to fail to contribute to adequate analyses Movements of the articulators give the basic for physiological description, but this data has been modified by the acoustic feature of the sounds and by the function which they perform in speech systems Briefly, phonetic classifications are based on a limited number of sounds; different kinds of sound data have contributed to the analysis and classification of sounds

Learning about the sound structure of language requires covering a lot of ground Some of the key topics are the anatomy, physiology, and acoustics of the human vocal tract; the nomenclature for the vocal articulations and sounds used in speech, as represented by the International Phonetic Alphabet; hypotheses about the nature of phonological features and their organization into segments, syllables and words; the way that features like tone align and spread relative to consonants and vowels; the often-extreme changes in sound of morphemes in different contexts; the way that knowledge of language sound structure unfolds as children learn to speak; the variation in sound structure across dialects and across time

The vocal tract consists of a sound source (vocal cords) and two resonating chambers (the oral and nasal cavities) On the basis of how they are produced, we distinguish between consonants and vowels and deal with each class of sounds separately

2.2.1 Articulatory Phonetics

The vocal tract can be considered a single tube extending from the vocal folds

to the lips, with a side branch leading to the nasal cavity The length of the vocal tract

is typically about 17 centimeters, though this can be varied slightly by lowering or raising the larynx and by shaping the lips

The pharynx connects the larynx (as well as the esophagus) with the oral cavity The oral cavity is the most important component of the vocal tract because its size and shape can be varied by adjusting the relative positions of the palate, the tongue, the lips, and the teeth

- Vocal Tract Resonances: Formants

Phonemes are distinguished from one another by the resonances of the vocal tract The peaks that occur in the sound spectra of the vowels, independent of pitch, are called formants Just three formants are typically distinguished

- Vocal Tract Models

Though the exact shape of the vocal tract is quite complex, many of its most prominent features can be recreated with simple models The resonances of a closed-open cylinder of 17 centimeters occur around 500, 1500, and 2500 Hz, which are close to the formant frequencies of the vowel sound Models composed of two cavities with a connecting constriction can approximate the formants associated with several consonant sounds

- Prosodic Features of Speech

Prosodic features are characteristics of speech that convey meaning, emphasis, and emotion without actually changing the phonemes

Pitch, rhythm, and accent

- Physics Review

To fully understand the various acoustical aspects of sound production, it is generally necessary to use powerful mathematical methods such as calculus However, it is possible to understand a great deal about the physical aspects of sound production with just a few simple concepts

The study of how the vocal tract produces the sound of language First of all, the air-stream provided by the lungs undergoes important modifications in the upper stages of the respiratory tract before it requires the quality of a speech sound In the larynx with the action of the vocal cords the sounds can be voiced or voiceless After the larynx the air-stream is subjected to further modifications as being released according to the position of the soft palate which results in nasal sounds if the nasal cavity is used or oral sounds if the nasal cavity is not used We also have different speech sounds depending on the disposition of the speech organs in the mouth i.e the

shape of the lips (rounded or unrounded) the part of the tongue which is raised (front, central or back) the place of articulation that we have different consonants

Three goals in articulatory phonetics introduce:

• the ways in which the sounds of English are produced;

• an alphabet which will allow us to refer to individual sounds;

• and develop a system for classifying speech sounds on the basis of how they’re produced

- The oral and nasal cavities are a very important part in producing speech sounds

- The pharyngeal cavity is a part between oral and nasal areas which begins just above the larynx

- The soft palate (velum) is one of the articulators that allow air to pass through the nose or through the mouth Sounds produced with the air that passes through the nose are called nasal; and if through the mouth are called oral The soft palate can be touched by the tongue in making velar sounds

- The hard palate is the roof of the mouth The hard palate is just behind the alveolar ridge

- The alveolar ridge is one of the articulators which are between the top front teeth (bony tooth ridge) and the hard palate The alveolar ridge is in the anterior section of the mouth Sounds produced by raising the front part of the tongue to the alveolar ridge are called alveolar sounds

- The tongue is an important articulator and it can be moved into different places and different shapes

- The teeth (upper and lower) are immediately behind the lips The tongue is in contact with the upper teeth for many speech sounds

- The lips are one of the articulators in producing speech sounds The lips can be pressed together in producing bilabial sounds; can be brought into contact with the teeth in producing labiodentals; can be rounded or spread to produce lip-shape vowel sounds

- The larynx is an independent articulator used in speech

- The Jaws are also called articulator The jaws cannot themselves make contact with other articulators, and in speaking they move a lot

2.2.2 Acoustic phonetics- the study of physical characteristic of the sound:

+ Sound quality: we hear a variety of vowels and consonants

+ Pitch: the pitch of a sound is that auditory property that enables a listener to place it

on a scale going from low to high We appreciate the melody or intonation of the utterance

+ Loudness and intensity: is proportional to the average size, amplitude, the size of the variation in air pressure that occurs We will agree that some sounds or syllables sound louder than others

+ Length: some sounds will be appreciably longer to our ears than other

+ sound waves: variations in the air pressures that occur very rapidly one after another when we are speaking

+ Frequency: is a technical term for an acoustic property of a sound The number of complete repetitions (cycles) of variations in air pressure occurring in a second (hertz)

2.2.3 Auditory phonetics

The study of the way listeners perceive the sounds of language The ability of distinguishing different sounds are normally gained over a long period of time and conditioned by the experience of handling the language: the hearing mechanism plays

an important part in monitoring the speech Those who are born deaf or became deaf before the acquisition of speech habits are rarely able to learn normal speech Similarly, a severe hearing loss later in life is likely to lead to a deterioration of speech

2.3 The production of speech sounds

From the technical, signal-oriented point of view, the production of speech is widely described as a two-level process In the first stage the sound is initiated and in the second stage it is filtered on the second level This distinction between phases has its origin in the source-filter model of speech production

(source from http://www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/phonetic/EGG)

The basic assumption of the model is that the source signal produced at the glottal level is linearly filtered through the vocal tract The resulting sound is emitted

to the surrounding air through radiation loading (lips) The model assumes that source and filter are independent of each other Although recent findings show some interaction between the vocal tract and a glottal source This theory of speech production is still used as a framework for the description of the human voice, especially as far as the articulation of vowels is concerned

From the linguistic phonetic point of view, the production of speech is regarded as a superposition of initiation, phonation, articulation and prosodic organization processes An overview of the physiological constraints on speech production will be given later in this section The organs involved in the production of speech are depicted in the Fig below:

(source from http://www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/phonetic/EGG)

In this section, we study the behavior of our vocal mechanism Despite the fact that there are many aspects of this system that we do not completely understand (particularly around the vocal folds), our ability to conduct experiments with our own speech mechanism allows us to quickly verify much of its behavior

1 Lungs serve as an air reservoir and energy source

2 The Larynx and the Vocal Cords:

- The larynx contains the vocal folds

- The vocal cords consist of folds of ligament extending from the thyroid cartilage in the front to the arytenoids cartilages at the back

- The space between the vocal folds, called the glottis, is controlled by the arytenoids cartilages

- For normal breathing, the arytenoids are spaced well apart They come together when sound is produced

- The vocal cords may be closed, blocking the flow of air, and then opened suddenly

to produce a glottal stop

- For unvoiced consonants, the folds may be completely open (such as when producing ``s'', ``sh'', and ``f'' sounds) or partially open (for ``h'' sounds)

- Voiced sounds are created by vibrations of the vocal folds

- The rate of vibration of the vocal cords is determined primarily by their mass and tension, though air pressure and velocity can contribute in a smaller way

- Normal speech varies over an approximate range of one octave Typical speech center frequencies are 110 Hz (men), 220 Hz (women), and 300 Hz (children)

- During a ``normal'' mode of vibration, the vocal cords open and close completely during the cycle and generate puffs of air roughly triangular in shape when air flow is plotted against time

- A ``breathy'' voice quality is produced during an open phase mode of vibration, such that the folds never completely stop the air flow through them

- A minimum of air passes through the folds, in short puffs, when producing a

- Unvoiced consonants make extensive use of broadband noise, caused by turbulent air flow through a constriction in the vocal tract

When we speak we make sounds that are the result of muscles contracting We use the muscles in the chest to produce all speech sounds with the flow of air from the chest to the mouth In the larynx muscles produce many different modifications when the flow of air passes through the mouth into the atmosphere Muscles can produce changes in the shape of the different parts of the vocal tract To study how speech sounds are produced it is necessary to become familiar with phonetic aspects: articulatory, acoustic and auditory phonetics

2.4 The Speech Chain

When we are speaking, a number of activities involve one part of the speaker and another one of the listener In the first place, the formulation of the concept will take place at a linguistic level, i.e in the brain The first stage may be said to be psychological

+ Psychological stage

-What happens to those activities?

-How does the activity occur from speaker?

-How does the activity transmit to listener?

• Speaker:

Language is as tool to do something Before speaking you must have the idea How can you form or get the idea?

Speaker codes the idea in the brain and then forms the idea by five senses Since we’ve got the idea in the brain, what happens next, what’s activity? The nervous system transmits the message to the so-called ‘organs of speech’ producing a particular pattern of sound This stage may be said to be articulatory or physiology, stage 2

+ Physiological stage

Nervous system will carry the message from the brain to the mouth The brain orders the mouth speaking When the order comes to the mouth, the mouth is working then varying air pressures coming out with different levels (low/high), physical stage, and stage 3

+ Physical stage:

The movement of our organs of speech will create disturbances in the air, or whatever the medium may be through which we are talking; these varying air pressures may be investigated and they constitute the third stage in our chain, the physical or acoustic

• Listener:

+ Physiological stage:

Since communication generally requires a listener as well as a speaker, these stages will be reversed at the listening end: the reception of the sound waves by the hearing apparatus, physiological At this stage the nervous system carries the message

to the brain

+ Psychological stage:

Psychological stage is the transmission of the information along the nervous system to the brain, where the linguistic interpretation of the message takes place (psychological)

Phonetic analysis has often ignored the role of the listener But any investigation of speech as communication must ultimately be concerned with both the production and perception ends A number of phonetic features, e.g stress, must be defined in different terms according to whether the emphasis is laid on the speaker’s

to discover how the various organs behave in order to produce the sounds of speech

2.5 The speech mechanism (Articulators)

In common with many other animals, man possesses the ability to produce sounds by using certain of his body’s mechanisms The human being differs from other animals in that he has been able to recognize the range of sounds which he can emit into a highly efficient system of communication Non-human animals rarely progress beyond the stage of using the sounds they produce as a reflect of certain basic stimuli to signal fear, hunger, sexual excitement they like Nevertheless, like other animals, man when he speaks makes use of organs, whose primary physiological function is connected with vocal communication, namely, those situated in the respiratory track

All the sounds we make when we speak are the result of muscles contracting The muscles in the chest that we use for breathing produce the flow of air that is needed for almost all speech sounds; muscles in the larynx produce many different modifications in the flow of air from the chest to the mouth After passing through the larynx, the air goes through what we call the vocal tract, which ends at the mouth and nostrils Here the air from the lungs escapes into the atmosphere We have a large and complex set of muscles that can produce changes in the shape of the vocal tract,

in order to learn how the sounds of speech are produced it is necessary to become familiar with the different parts of the vocal tract such as the pharynx, the velum or soft palate, the hard palate, the alveolar ridge, the tongue, the teeth, and the lips The articulators mentioned above are the main ones used in speech, but there are three other things could also be descried as articulators too such as the larynx, the jaws, the nose and the nasal cavity

2.5.1 The tongue

The tongue is the most important of the organs of speech because it has the greatest variety of movement The tongue can be divided into four parts as follows: tip, blade, front, back The back of the tongue lies under the soft palate when the tongue is at rest; the front lies under the hard palate, the tip and the blade lie under the alveolar ridge, the tip being the most forward part of all and the blade between the tip and the front The tip and blade are particularly mobile and they can touch the whole of the lips, the teeth, the alveolar ridge and the hard palate

(source from Peter Roach, 1992)

2.5.2 The teeth

The teeth (upper and lower) are at the front of the mouth and immediately behind the lips The lower front teeth are not important in speech except that if they are missing certain sounds, e.g /s/ and /z/, will be difficult to make

2.5.3 The lips

The lips can take up various different positions They can be rough firmly together as in /p/ or /b/ or /m/ so that they completely block the mouth; the lower lip can be drawn inward and slightly upwards to touch the upper front teeth as in the sounds /f/ and /v/ They can be kept apart either flat or with different amounts of rounding, and they can be pushed forward to a greater or lesser extent

2.5.4 The palate

The palate forms the roof of the mouth and separates the mouth cavity from the nose (or nasal) cavity The palate is divided into two parts: hard and soft Make the tip of your tongue touch as much of your own palate as you can, you can see that

it is hard and fixed in position, but when your tongue-tip is far away from your teeth, you will notice that the palate becomes soft Behind the soft palate you will be able to see part of the back wall of the pharynx

2.6 The vocal cords

The air released by the lungs comes up through the wind-pipe and arrives first

at the larynx The larynx contains two small bands of elastic tissue, which can be thought of as two flat strips of rubber, lying opposite each other across the air passage These are called the vocal cords The inner edges of the vocal cords can be moved towards each other so that they meet and completely cover the top of the wind-pipe, or they can be drawn apart so that there is a gap between them, known as the glottis through which the air can pass freely: this is the usual position when we breathe quietly in and out

(source from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/vocal-folds

The vocal folds, also known commonly as vocal cords, are composed of twin enfolding of mucous membrane stretched horizontally across the larynx They vibrate, modulating the flow of air being expelled from the lungs during phonation Open during inhalation, closed when holding one's breath, and vibrating for speech

or singing (oscillating 440 times per second when singing) The foldsare controlled via the vague nerve They are white because of scant blood circulation

The larynx is a major (but not the only) source of sound in speech, generating sound through the rhythmic opening and closing of the vocal folds To oscillate, the vocal folds are brought near enough together such that air pressure builds up beneath the larynx The folds are pushed apart by this increased sub glottal pressure, with the inferior part of each fold leading the superior part Under the correct conditions, this oscillation pattern will sustain itself In essence, sound is generated in the larynx by chopping up a steady flow of air into little puffs

The perceived pitch of a person's voice is determined by a number of different factors, not least of which is the fundamental frequency of the sound generated by the larynx A person's natural fundamental frequency is influenced by many factors, including the length, size, and tension of the vocal folds In an adult male, this frequency averages about 125 Hz, adult females around 210 Hz, in children the frequency is over 300 Hz Depth-Kymography is an imaging method to visualize the complex horizontal and vertical movements of vocal folds The vocal folds generate

a sound rich in harmonics Some singers can isolate some of those harmonics in a way that is perceived as singing in more than one pitch at the same time, a technique called overtone singing

- Location

The folds are located below the epiglottis, the lid-like flap that separates the windpipe from the esophagus The folds are located just above the trachea or the

windpipe which travels from the lungs Food and drink does not pass through the folds but is instead taken through the esophagus, an unlinked tube Both tubes are separated by the tongue and an automatic gag reflex When food goes down through the folds and trachea it causes choking

Folds in both sexes are within the larynx They are attached at the back (side nearest the spinal cord) to the arytenoids cartilages, and at the front (side under the chin) to the thyroid cartilage Their outer edges (as shown in the illustration) are attached to muscle in the larynx while their inner edges or margins are free (the hole) They are constructed from epithelium, but they have a few muscle fibers in them, namely the vocalist muscle which tightens the front part of the ligament near to the thyroid cartilage They are flat triangular bands and are pearly white in color Above both sides of the vocal cord (the hole and the ligament itself) is the vestibular fold or false vocal fold, which has a small sac between its two folds

The air steam provided by the lungs undergoes important modifications in the upper stages of the respiratory tract before it acquires the quality of a speech sound

In the trachea or windpipe, it passes through the larynx, containing the so-called vocal cords In all languages we speak with air from the lungs We draw it into the lungs quickly and we release it slowly and then interfere with its passage in various ways and at various places

The four activities of the vocal cords resulting in the production of:

1 voiced sounds (vibrate, action in producing voice)

2 voiceless (open, in ordinary breathing action)

3 glottal stop (closed)

4 glottal friction (action in producing whisper)

The air released by the lungs comes up through the wind-pipe and arrives first at the larynx The larynx contains two small bands of elastic tissue, which can be thought of as two flat strips of rubber, lying opposite to each other across the air passage

The vocal cords are open, it means, they are far from each other There

is a gap between them we say glottis = large This is their usual position when we breathe quietly in and out The glottis is large so the air can pass through vocal cords freely The vocal cords are not moving, not vibrating, so the sounds we produce voiceless

Open
glottis = large
Vocal cords = no vibration
voiceless Ex: /h/ The sounds which are voiceless sounds are made with the vocal cords drawn apart so that the air can pass out freely between them i.e much air go through the vocal cords together

so there is strong force of articulation, these sounds are called fortis

Voiceless and fortis happen simultaneous at the same time but different activities When vocal cords are open fortis happen The vocal cords are closed, it means, they are brought together tightly no air can pass through them and if the lungs are pushing air from below this air is compressed If the vocal cords are then opened suddenly the compressed air bursts out with a sort of coughing noise When the vocal cords are closed the glottis is narrow, so the air streammakes vocal cords vibrate The sounds

we produce voiced Ex: /L/, /YYP/ at the same time little air passes the vocal cords; we have weak force of articulation we call it lenis We can hear a music note: the height

of the note depends on the speed of opening and closing of the vocal cords; if they open and close very quickly the note will be high, if they open and close slowly the

note will be low The note, whether high or low, produced by the rapid opening and closing of the vocal cords is called voice The difference between voiced and voiceless can be used to distinguish between what are otherwise similar sounds Between the vocal cords open and closed we have medium sounds “whisper”

Places of articulation

(source from http://www.sil.org/Mexico/ling/glosario )

2.7 The air stream

The most usual source of energy for our vocal activity is provided by an air stream expelled from the lungs All the essential sounds of English need lung air for their production Our utterances are largely shaped by the physiological limitations imposed by the capacity of our lungs and by the muscles which control their action

We have to store the air in the lung The mouth is working; the air is coming up to the mouth and produces the sounds

The production of any speech sound involves the movement of an airstream Most speech sounds are produced by pushing air from the lungs out of the body through the mouth and sometimes through the nose Because lung air is used, these sounds are called pulmonic sounds

+ Egressive Pulmonic air stream

The air is starting from the lung and moves out of the mouth: egressive pulmonic
the air from outside to the lung “I’ m cold”
“It’s very hot”
“It pains me!” The majority of sounds used in languages of the world are produced by egressive pulmonic airstream; and such sounds are found in normal English, but not

by ingressive pulmonic

+ Ingressive Pulmonic air stream

The air is coming from outside to the lung The air in the mouth is rolling within the mouth

+ Oral air stream

Indeed, in English we have one or two extra-linguistic sounds such as “tut-tut” which are produced without the aid of the lungs or glottal

+ Pharyngeal air stream (The region in the rear of the soft palate)

It is convenient to identify these sections of the pharynx by naming them: laryngopharynx, oropharynx, and nasopharynx The shape and volume of this long chamber may be modified by the movement of the back of the tongue, by the position

of the soft palate when raised, by the raising of the larynx itself The position of the tongue in the mouth, whether it is advanced or retracted, will affect the size of the oropharingeal cavity (in the description of any vowel) A constriction may be made between the lower rear part of the tongue and the wall of the pharynx so that friction, with or without voice, is produced, such fricative sounds

Questions for dicussion

1 How are speech sounds produced?

2 What are the activities of the vocal cords in producing speech sounds?

3 What kind of airstream is needed to produce English sounds?

Description and Classification of Speech sounds

It is obviously necessary to be able to make sounds different, distinctive, make

one word different from all the other words: beer # deer If we count up the sounds

which are distinctive in initial and final position we will find that there are 24 consonants altogether, and 20 vowels There are 44 sounds in English divided into different kinds of speech: vowels and consonants The vowels are divided into 12 monophthongs and 8 diphthongs In the English consonants there are 2 semivowels /Y U// and / V//

3.1 The English Vowels

Vowels are made by voiced air passing through different mouth-shapes; the different shape of the mouth is caused by different positions of the tongue and of the lips It is easy to see and to feel the lip differences, but it is very difficult to see or to feel the tongue differences, and that is why a detailed description of the tongue position for a certain vowel does not really help us to pronounce it well

3.1.1 The English Monophthongs

In general, a monophthong is a pure vowel sound When we pronounce it the organs of speech does not change, i.e the organs of speech remain in a given position for a period of time During the process of pronunciation, from the beginning to the end there is no the changing of the organs of speech Monophthongs are not the sounds but are representingsymbols of the sounds Ex: / ! / from the beginning to the end just only one sound / ! / pure vowel The mouth is not moving, changing The air stream pass through the mouth easily, it doesn’t form any obstacles, no obstruction;

• How high is the tongue?

• What part of the tongue is involved? (What part is raised lowered?)

• How long or short is the vowel?

• How are shapes of lips?

(source from http://www.sil.org/Mexico/ling/glosario)

• Shapes of lips (mouth): when somebody says or pronounce we look at his or her mouth then we can find different shapes

• Position of the tongue: How high is the tongue?

What part of the tongue is involved; that is what part is raised? What part is lowered? Depending on the vertical distance between the upper surface of the tongue and thepalate: if the tongue is in high position when we produce a vowel, that vowel will be a close vowel On the contrary, if the tongue is in a low position, it is an open vowel For example, when we make the sound /! / the tongue is held up close to the roof of the mouth Whereas, if we produce the sound /%/ we can notice how the distance between the surface of the tongue and the mouth is now much greater The difference between /!/ and /a/ is that of tongue height, and we would describe /!/ as a close vowel, and /%/ as an open vowel Ex ceiling is in a highest place/position vs floor is in a lowest place When we halfway open the mouth we have medium position;

Mouth open: little: high position, middle: medium and high: low position Diagram for the mouth as follows:

(Diagram for High: little open

$ %

Vowels must also be classified in terms of the degree of the opening of the mouth; that is, the part of the tongue is raised – the front, center, or back In producing a vowel, if the front part of the tongue is raised, we have a front vowel If the center of the tongue is raised, we have a central vowel And if the back of the tongue is raised, we have a back vowel The tongue will never be flat It means one part of the tongue will be higher than the other part It may be divided into these positions: small rounded is equivalent that the mouth is closed so the sound is high Open a little more, the tongue’s position is little low

• Highest part of the tongue:

For what the sound is front, central or back of the tongue?

Diagram for the tongue, Daniel John (cardinal vowel chart)

Front Central Back

5 long are: ! * ( & % and 7 short: " # $ + Ǣ ) Ț

Ex: bad, bed = /$ //and /# /: - open – half open; Low – middle; Front - front

The 4 criteria here must be 4 instructions of how to pronounce monophthongs Practical meaning of classification is to find the pronunciation of monophthongs Ex:

/! / : shape of lips: - spread/ unrounded; high; front; long

3.1.3 The English Diphthongs

Diphthong is a complex sound consisting of two vowel elements but pronounced as one syllable A diphthong is a glide from one vowel to another, and the whole glide acts like one of the long, simple vowels The diphthongs of English are in three groups: those which end in /+/: /"+,-+,Ț+/; those which end in /" /: /-

",a",&"/; those which end in /Ț/: /+Ț,aȚ/. We classify diphthongs &according to the glide to the second sound: (1) glide to /+/, (2) glide to /" / and (3) glide to /Ț/

• Closing: the moving from mouth opening to the mouth closing

• Centering: move to the central

The English Triphthongs are the most complex sounds of the vowel type A triphthong is a glide from one vowel to another and then to a third, all produced rapidly and without interruption

3.1.4 The English Triphthongs

Triphthongs are the most complex sounds of the vowel type of English They can be rather difficult to pronounce and very difficult to recognize A triphthong is a glide from one vowel sound to another and then to a third, all its pronunciation occurs rapidly and without interruption The principal causes difficulty for the foreign learner is that in present-day English the extent of the vowel movement is very short, except in very careful pronunciation Because of this, the middle of the three vowel qualities of the triphthong can hardly be heard and the resulting sound is difficult to distinguish from some of the diphthongs and long vowels For example:

player, lower, power, hour, royal, fire

3.2 The English Consonants

The English consonants are:/ A 12 B C D E F G H I J K L M N CM DN

3.2.1 Classification, criteria to consonants

What we are doing here is looking at the different contexts and positions in which particular sounds can occur; this is the study of the distribution of the sounds, and is of great importance in phonology The most important difference between vowel and consonant is not the way they are made, but their different distribution The distribution of vowels and consonants is different for each language

3.2.1.1 Place of Articulation

(source from http://www.sil.org/Mexico/ling/glosario.)

Place of articulation is the study of how the organs of speech combine together to form the barriers; or how the barriers are made in producing speech sounds

- Dentals

• /I J/: the teeth combine together the upper and lower teeth to form these

sounds; sound articulated with tip or blade of the tongue against the upper teeth The sounds produced are called dental

- Alveolars:

• /t D K L S Q/: when we pronounce them, the tip of the tongue rise up to the alveolar ridge; that is why they are called alveolar Some people confuse when pronouncing / S Q// because of misunderstanding of their place of articulation

- /t d/: the tip of the tongue is firmly against the middle of the alveolar

ridge, not too near the teeth and not near the hard palate The soft palate is raised, so the breath cannot escape through either the nose or the mouth, but is trapped for a short time

- /s z/: the tip and blade of the tongue are very close to the alveolar ridge The teeth are very close together

- /l/: the soft palate is raised, the tongue -tip are in firm contact with the

alveolar ridge, obstructing the centre of the mouth

- /n/: the soft palate is lowered for /n/, by pressing the tip of the tongue

against the alveolar ridge, and the sides of the tongue against the sides of the palate

- Post -alveolar

• T: this is one of the gliding consonants For the post alveolar, the tip of the tongue raises up, reaches up somewhere in the alveolar area The tongue has a curved shape with the tip pointing towards the hard palate at the back of the alveolar ridge

- Palatal Alveolars

• For the palatal alveolars /M N CM DN/, the tip of the tongue raises up to the place between alveolar and palate

- For the /M, N/, the position of the speech organs, i.e the soft palate is

raised so that all the breath is forced to go through the mouth There is a narrowing between the tip of the tongue and the back of the alveolar ridge The lips are very slightly rounded

- /CM DN/ are stop consonants of a special kind The tongue- tip touches the back part of the alveolar ridge, and the soft palate is raised so that the breath is trapped for a short time The rest of the tongue is in the /M, N/ position

-Palatal

• /U/: when we pronounce this sound, the palate of the tongue reaches to the palate This consonant is smooth, non-friction and quick glide from the position of the vowel /i/ to any other vowel, as in “yard, yet, you, yatch, your ”

- Velars

• /E F R/ : the tongue raises up, curls back to the soft palate The soft palate will

be the place of velar

- /k/ is a strong stop consonant and /g/ is a weak one For both, the back

of the tongue is in firm contact with the soft palate, and the soft palate is raised, so that the breath is trapped for a short time

- /R/: the soft palate is lowered and all the air passes out through the nose The mouth is blocked by the back of the tongue pressed against the soft palate

- Glottal

• To make /O / sounds, the mouth is held ready for the vowel and a short gasp of breath is pushed up by the lungs /O/ does not make very much noise It is articulated with the root of the tongue and glottis /h/ always occurs before a vowel and consists of the sound of breath passing between the open vocal cords and out of the mouth which is already prepared for the following vowel

- /k g/: When the tongue is lowered suddenly from the soft palate, the

breath rushes out of the mouth with a slight explosion

- Fricatives

• /G H I J K L M N O/: the air stream is partially stopped and gradually releasing Because the air is partially stopped, it makes the hissing sounds, fricking sound; produced by a narrowing of the air passage at some point, so that the air in escaping makes a kind of hissing sound

- For both /f/ and /v/ the bottom lip is very close to the upper front teeth: This forms the narrowing and when air is pushed through this narrowing it causes slight friction The difference between /f/ and /v/ is mainly one of strength: /f/ is a strong consonant, /v/ is a weak one Also /f/ is rather longer than /v/, /f/ is never voiced, but /v/ may be

- /I/ and /J/ are friction sounds, /I/ is strong and /J/ is weak Both have

the same position of speech organs For both sounds, the tip of the tongue is close to the upper front teeth: this is the narrowing where the friction is made The noise made by the friction for /I/ and /J/ is not very great, much less than for /s/ and /z/ /I/ is stronger and longer and always voiceless, /J/ is weaker and shorter and may be voiced

- For the /s/ and /z/, the soft palate is raised so that all the breath is forced

to go through the mouth The tip and blade of the tongue are very close to the alveolar ridge There is a very considerable narrowing at this point, not near the teeth and not near the hard palate The teeth are very close together The friction for these sounds is much greater than for /f,v, I/ and /J/.

- /h/ in order to make this sound, the mouth is held ready for the vowel

and a short gasp of breath is pushed up by the lungs

blocked at some point, so that all the air is pushed out of the nose i.e the air stream passes through the nose If we close the nose we cannot pronounce them

- Lateral

• /S/: The air stream passes between the sides of the tongue and the palate, round the central obstruction formed by the tip and blade of the tongue and so out of the mouth, i.e instead of the breath passing down the centre of the mouth, it passes round the sides of an obstruction set up in the centre

- Glides

• /T U V/: gliding consonants consisting of a quick, smooth, non-friction glide towards a following vowel sound

- /U//; This consonant is quickly glide from the position of vowel /!/ or//"//

to another vowel Ex: yard, yacht, your, jet, you

- /V// consists of a quick glide from the vowel /'/ or /(/ to whatever vowel follows

- /T/ : Get the speech organs ready for / + / and then curl the tip of the

tongue back until it is pointing at the hard palate, quite a long way behind the alveolar ridge Now change smoothly and without friction to the following vowel, as

in ‘red’ /T U V/: glide quickly to the second sound

3.2.1.3 State of vocal cords (Voicing)

• Voiceless: A C G K E CM I M O

• Voiced: B D H L F DN J N P Q R S T U V

3.2.1.4 Position of soft palate

- When the soft palate is down :

• it closes the way to the mouth

• it opens the way to the nose, air stream goes through the nose for nasal sounds /P Q R/

- When the soft palate is up:

• it closes the way to the nose

• opens the way to the mouth; air stream goes to the mouth for oral sounds Ex: /p/: bilabial, plosive, voiceless, oral

/R/ : velar, nasal, voiced, nasal

/DN/: palato-alveolar, affricate, voiced, oral

Note: /U V/ never pronounced alone, they are pronounced with the other vowels

EXERCISES

1 Describe the consonants in the word skinflint using the chart below Fill in all five number criteria, and put parentheses around the terms that may be left out, as shown for the first consonant

1 Mark the words that begin with a bilabial consonant:

met net set bet let pet

2 Mark the words that begin with a velar consonant:

knot got lot cot hot pot

3 Mark the words that begin with a labiodental consonant:

fat cat that mat chat vat

4 Mark the words that begin with an alveolar consonant:

zip nip lip sip tip dip

5 Mark the words that begin with a dental consonant:

pie guy shy thigh thy high

6 Mark the words that begin with a palato-alveolar consonant:

sigh shy tie thigh thy lie

7 Mark the words that end with a fricative:

race wreath bush bring breathe bang rave real ray rose rough

8 Mark the words that end with a nasal:

rain rang dumb deaf

9 Mark the words that end with a stop:

pill lip lit graph crab dog hide laugh back

10 Mark the words that begin with a lateral:

nut lull bar rob one

11 Mark the words that begin with an approximant:

we you one run

12 Mark the words that end with an affricate:

much back edge ooze

13 Mark the words in which the consonant in the middle is voiced:

tracking mother robber leisure massive stomach razor

14 Mark the words that contain a high vowel:

sat suit got meet mud

15 Mark the words that contain a low vowel:

weed wad load lad rude

16 Mark the words that contain a front vowel:

17 Mark the words that contain a back vowel:

maid weep coop cop good

18 Mark the words that contain a rounded vowel:

4 Define the consonant sounds in the middle of each of the following words as indicated in the example:

Voiced or Place of Manner of voiceless articulation

adder voiced alveolar stop

The questions that are the object of phonological inquiry to answer are:

1 What phonic features serve in the language under investigation;

2 What phonic features are capable of serving in natural language to distinguish one utterance from another This was the dominant orientation of phonology from the mid 1920s to the mid 1960s

3 What are the principles determining the pronunciation of the words, phrases and sentences of a language; and the principles determining the organization in this respect of all human languages

The orientation of phonology has led to one variety of phonemics, so called from phoneme, the name given to the minimal unit of sound serving to keep utterances apart The motivation for phonemics is this: physically, objectively, no two speech sounds are exactly alike even those that occur in corresponding positions in utterance which are intentional repetitions of one another Consequently the number

of different sounds that can be used in language infinite since there is no limit to the amount of speech that human beings can produce, but any given language will only utilize a limited number of differences of sounds to carry differences of meaning

Phonetics studies pronunciations and sounds Phonetics provides the means for describing speech sounds and showing how they differ Phonology studies speech and phonemes It studies the ways in which speech sounds form systems and patterns

in human language The phonology of a language is the system and pattern of the speech sounds functioning as phonemes that are able to contrast words and meanings

of words We see the word Phonology is used in two ways: as the study of sound patterns in language in general, and as the sound pattern of a given language; it is also the kind of knowledge that speakers have about the sound patterns of their particular language

What for phonology is to understand how phonetic transcription works i.e the basic principles of phonology It involves studying a language to determine its distinctive sounds and to establish a set of rules that describe the set of changes that take place in these sounds when they occur in different relationships with other sounds

Phonology is essentially the description of the systems and patterns of speech sounds in a language It is based on theory of what every speaker of a language unconsciously knows about the sound patterns of that language Phonology is the description of the systems and patterns of sounds that occur in a language The smallest segments of sound that can be distinguished by their contrast within words are called Phonemes

4.1.1 Minimal Pairs

Minimal pair: is a pair of words (2 words) different in meaning, but they have the same number of segments and in each word there is only one different segment in the same distribution When two words such as ‘hat’ and ‘cat’ are identical in form except for a contrast in one phoneme, occurring in the same position, the two words are described as a minimal pair Ex, fan- van, bet- bat, site- side, hat- cat, man- moon, mad- map, money- many, pity- city… Such pairs have been used in tests of English to determine non-native speakers’ ability to understand the contrast in meaning resulting from the minimal sound contrast

4.1.2 Minimal set

When a group of words are differentiated, each one from the others, by changing one phoneme (always in the same position), then we have a minimal set Thus, a minimal set based on the vowel phonemes of English would include ‘feat, fit, fat, fate, fought, foot, and one based on consonants could have ‘big, pig, rig, fig, dig, wig

By using the minimal pairs one after another to identify the phonemes, we would establish a minimal set – a group of words that are identical in form except for one sound segment in the same place in a string For example, all the following words are identical except for the vowels: therefore each vowel represents a phoneme: beat, bit, bet, bat, bart, but, bot, bought, boot, bert, bite, bait, bout, boat There are also cases in which two different distinctive sounds occur in the same position but which do not change the meaning of the word; that is to say “two different forms” may be “identical in meaning” Ex Economics /#/ or /"/ These 2 forms are not minimal pairs, since the substitution of /#/ or /"/ or vice versa does not change the meaning A case in which one meaning (of each word) is represented by two different phonemic forms is called Free Variation

In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, which differ in only one phonological element, such as a phone, phoneme, toneme or chroneme and have a distinct meaning They are used to demonstrate that two phones constitute two separate phonemes in the language

As an example for English vowels, the pair "let" + "lit" proves that the phones [#] (in let) and ["] (in lit) do in fact represent distinct phonemes /#/ and /"/ An example for English consonants is the minimal pair of "pat" + "bat" In phonetics, this pair, like any other, differs in number of ways In this case, the contrast appears largely to be conveyed with a difference in the voice onset time of the initial consonant as the configuration of the mouth is same for [p] and [b]; however, there is also a possible difference in duration, which visual analysis using high quality video supports

Phonemic differentiation may vary between different dialects of a language, so that a particular minimal pair in one accent is a pair of homophones in another This does not necessarily mean that one of the phonemes is absent in the homonym accent; merely that it is not present in the same range of contexts

Segments are the smallest pieces of sounds divided from a speech

4.1.3 Phonemes – contrastive phonemes

Each one of meaning-distinguishing sounds in a language is described as a phoneme Phonemes are as the single sound type which came to be represented by a single symbol.It is in this sense that the phoneme /C/ is described as a sound type, of which all the different spoken versions of [C] are tokens Note that slash marks are conventionally used to indicate a phoneme, /C/, an abstract segment, as opposed to the square brackets, [C], used for each phonetic, or physically produced, segment

hat cat / YO/$/Y:ZZC// /E/$/C/

1 2 3 1 2 3 : 1 ≠ 11 Y:Z^_/O/ ≠ /E/

In order to find two phonemes in two different words, we have to do the contrast; we must satisfy the following conditions:

1 the two words must be different in meaning

2 the two words must have the same number of segments

3 In each word there is one different segment in the same distribution, the same position In doing the contrast we put the question between them, ex: hat ≠ cat Segment /h/ has a function different from /E/ it means = h ≠ k so /h/ and /k/ are phonemes

Ex Man & moon: /ZP/$ /<Q/ & /P/(/Q/ : $ & ( are phonemes

Mad & map /D/ /A/ are phonemes

Before contrasts, they are phonemes and segments In phonetics /O/ and /E/ are consonants, and /$/ /(/ are vowels Phonemes are smallest sound segments that can be distinguished by their contrast within words Their function is how to pronounce and how to distinguish their meaning 44 segmental phonemes of English exactly areconsonants and vowels

4.1.4 Allophones – non-contrastive phonemes

In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds (phones) that belong to the same phoneme A phoneme is an abstract unit of speech sound that can distinguish words: That is, changing a phoneme in a word can produce another word Speakers of a particular language perceive a phoneme as a distinctive sound in that language An allophone is not distinctive, but rather a variant of a phoneme; changing the allophone won't change the meaning of a word, but the result may sound non-native, or be unintelligible

Every time a speech sound is produced, it will be slightly different from other utterances Only some of the variation is significant to speakers There may be complementary allophones which are distributed regularly within speech according to phonetic environment, as well as notable free variants, which are a matter of personal habit or preference Not all phonemes have significantly different allophones

In the case of complementary allophones, each allophone is used in a specific phonetic context and may be involved in a phonological process A tonic allophone is sometimes called an allotone

Allophones are phonemes divided from the same phonemes in different distributions or relations Ex. [A] and [A] are not distinctive sounds in English words but constitute a single unit of the English sound system: as such they are called allophones of a single phoneme – in this case allophones of the phoneme /A/ Allophones are variants of a single structural element, or phoneme, in the sound system of language Allophones of a given phoneme cannot serve to create different words, and we say they are noncontrastive The phoneme /A/ has three allophones: aspirated [A], unaspirated [A], and unreleased [A] The allophones of a phoneme occur

in complementary distribution or in free variation; allophones of a phoneme can never signal a difference of meaning

A single phoneme may be phonetically realized or pronounced as two or more phones The different phones that represent are derived from one phoneme are called the allophones of that phoneme An allophone is therefore a predictable phonetic variant of a phoneme In English, each vowel phoneme has both an oral and a nasalised allophone The choice of the allophone is not random or haphazard in most cases: it is rule-governed There is a general principle determining the occurrence of oral and nasalised vowels in English No one explicitly teaches you these rules Phonological rules state that vocal vowels will be nasalised if it stands before a nasal consonant As a result, when oral vowels occur, nasalised vowels do not, and vice versa When two or more sounds never occur in the same phonemic context or environment they are said to be in complementary distribution and these sounds are allophones of a phoneme On the contrary, in minimal sets, different sounds occur in the same phonemic context, they are said to be in contrastive distribution and these sounds are phonemes

Ex /E/ in car /E % / [kh% ] aspirated

in sky / KEai / [KEai] unaspirated

in act /$EC / [$E C] unexploded

in booked /B Ț Et / unexploded [B Ț C ]

4.1.5 Free Variation

When phonemes are in free variation, speakers are sometimes strongly aware

of the fact, and will note, for example, that tomato is pronounced differently in British and American English, or that either has two pronunciations which are fairly randomly distributed However, only a very small proportion of English words show such variations In the case of allophones, however, free variation is exceedingly common, and, along with differing intonation patterns, is the most important single feature in the characterizing of regional accents

4.1.6 The Transcription

The symbol representing of sound We use a set of symbols (representing sounds) to show how the sounds are pronounced There are two types of transcriptions

1 Phonemic transcription (broad transcription)