Articulatory phonetics

Articulatory phonetics is concerned with how the sounds of language are physically produced
by the vocal apparatus. The units articulatory phonetics deals with are known as gestures, which are
abstract characterizations of articulatory events. In terms of articulation, the sounds that we utter to
make language can be split into two different types :

Consonants
Vowels

For the purposes of articulatory phonetics, consonant sounds are typically characterized as sounds
that have constricted or closed configurations of the vocal tract. Vowels, on the other hand, are
characterized in articulatory terms as having relatively little constriction; that is, an open
configuration of the vocal tract. Vowels carry much of the pitch of speech and can be held different
durations, such as a half a beat, one beat, two beats, three beats, etc. Of speech rhythm. Consonants,
on the other hand, do not carry the prosodic pitch (especially if devoiced and not nasalized) and do not
display the potential for the durations that vowels can have. Linguists may also speak of 'semi-vowels'
or 'semi-consonants' (often used as synonymous terms). For example, a sound such as [w]
phonetically seems more like a vowel (with relative lack of constriction or closure of the vocal tract)
but, phonologically speaking, behaves as a consonant in that it always appears before a vowel sound
at the beginning (onset) of a syllable.1
Consonants
In the formation of consonants, the airstream through the vocal tract is obstructed in some way.
Consonants can be classified according to the place and manner of this obstruction. Some of the
possible places of articulation are indicated by the arrows going from one of the lower articulators to
one of the upper articulators. The principal terms that are required in the description of english
articulation, and the structures of the vocal tract that they involve are :

Bilabial
The two lips; dental, tongue tip/blade,
The upper front teeth; alveolar, tongue tip/blade,
The teeth ridge; retroflex, tongue tip and the back part of the teeth ridge; palato-alveolar,
tongue blade, palatal, front of tongue and hard palate; and velar, back of tongue and soft
palate.

The additional places of articulation are required in the description of other languages. Note that
the terms for the various places of articulation denote both the portion of the lower articulators and the
1 https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Linguistics/Phonetics

portion

of

the

upper

articulatory

structures that are involved. Thus velar

denotes a sound in which the back of the
tongue and the soft palate are involved,
and retroflex implies a sound involving
the tip of the tongue and the back part of
the alveolar ridge. If it is necessary to
distinguish between sounds made with
the tip of the tongue and those made
with the blade, the terms apical (tip) and
laminal (blade) may be used.2 There
are

six

basic

manners

of

articulation that can be used at

these places of articulation:

stop
Stops involve closure of the articulators to obstruct the airstream. This manner of articulation
can be considered in terms of nasal and oral stops. If the soft palate is down so that air can
still go out through the nose, there is said to be a nasal stop.

Fricative
A fricative sound involves the close approximation of two articulators, so that the airstream is
partially obstructed and a turbulent airflow is produced. The mechanisms used in the
production of these sounds may be compared to the physical forces involved when the wind
whistles round a corner.

Approximant
Approximants are produced when one articulator approaches another but does not make the
vocal tract so narrow that a turbulent airstream results. The terms frictionless continuant,
semivowel, and glide are sometimes used for some of the sounds made with this manner of
articulation.

Trill
A trill results when an articulator is held loosely fairly close to another articulator, so that it is
set into vibration by the airstream. The tongue tip and blade, the uvula, and the lips are the
only articulators than can be used in this way.

Tap
A tap is produced if one articulator is thrown against another, as when the loosely held tongue
tip makes a single tap against the upper teeth or the alveolar ridge.

2 https://www.britannica.com/science/phonetics

Lateral
When the airstream is obstructed in the mid-line of the oral tract, and there is incomplete
closure between one or both sides of the tongue and the roof of the mouth, the resulting sound
is classified as a lateral.

Vowels
Vowels are very different from consonants, but our method of decomposing sounds into sets of
features works equally well. Vowels can essentially be viewed as being combinations of three
variables:

Height: this measured how close our tongue is to the roof of our mouth. For example, trying
pronouncing [] (as in "cat") and [i] (as in "feet"). Our mouth should be much more open for the
former than the latter. Thus [] is called either open or low, and either closed orhigh.

Backness: this is what is sounds like. for example, alternating between pronouncing the
vowels [] (as in "cat") and [] (as in "cot"), and get a feel for the position of our tongue in our
mouth. It should move forward for [] and back for [ ], which is why the former is called
a front vowel and the latter a back vowel.

Rounding: pronouncing the vowels [i] and [u], and look at our lips in a mirror. They should
look puckered up for [u] and spread out for /i/. In general, this "puckering" is referred to in
phonetics as rounding.3
The specification of vowels in terms of the position of the highest point of the tongue is not

entirely satisfactory for a number of reasons.

In the first place, it disregards the fact that the shape of the tongue as a whole is very different
in front vowels and in back vowels.

Second, although the height of the tongue in front vowels varies by approximately equal
amounts for what are called equidistant steps in vowel quality, this is just not factually true in
descriptions of back vowels.

Third, the width of the pharynx varies considerably, and to some extent independently of the
height of the tongue, in different vowels.
Some authorities use terms such as tense and lax to describe the degree of tension in the

tongue muscles, particularly those muscles responsible for the bunching up of the tongue lengthways.
Other authorities use the term tense to specify a greater degree of muscular activity, resulting in a
greater deformation of the tongue from its neutral position. Tense vowels are longer than the

3 https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Linguistics/Phonetics

corresponding lax vowels. The vowels in heed and hayed are tense, whereas those in hid and head are
lax.
Because of the difficulty of observing the precise tongue positions that occur in vowels, a set
of eight vowels known as the cardinal vowels has been devised to act as reference points. This set of
vowels is defined partly in articulatory and partly in auditory terms. Cardinal vowel number one is
defined as the highest and farthest front tongue position that can be made without producing a
fricative sound; cardinal vowel number five is defined as the lowest and farthest back vowel. Cardinal
vowels two, three, and four are a series of front vowels that form auditorily equidistant steps between
cardinal vowels one and five; and cardinal vowels six, seven, and eight are a series of back vowels
with the same sized auditory steps as in the front vowel series. Phoneticians who have been trained in
the cardinal vowel system are able to make precise descriptions of the vowels of any language in
terms of these reference points.
Acoustic phonetics
Acoustic phonetics deals with the physical medium of speech, that is how speech manipulates
sound waves. Sound is composed of waves of high and low pressure areas which propagate through
air. The most basic way to view sound is as a wave function. This plots the pressure measured by the
sound-recording device against time, corresponding closely to the physical nature of sound. Loudness
may be found by looking at the amplitude of the sound at a given time.
As a sound is produced in the oral tract, the column of air in the tract serves as a harmonic
oscillator, oscillating at numerous frequencies simultaneously. Some of the frequencies of oscillation
are

at

higher

amplitudes

than

others,

property

called resonance.

The resonant

frequencies (frequencies with relatively high resonance) of the vocal tract are known in phonetics
as formants. There are two basic ways to analyze the formants of a speech signal.

First, at any given time the sound contains a mixture of different frequencies of sound. The
relative amplitudes (strengths) of different frequencies at a particular time may be shown as
a frequency spectrum. As you can see on the right, frequency is plotted against amplitude, and

formants show up as peaks.

Second is by using a spectrogram. This plots time against frequency, with amplitude represented
by darkness. Formants show up as dark bands, and their movement may be tracked through
time.

Given the development of modern technology, acoustic analysis is now accessible to anyone with a
computer and a microphone.
Auditory phonetics
Auditory phonetics focuses on the perception of sounds or the way in which sounds are heard
and interpreted. Thus, we may say that while articulatory phonetics is mainly concerned with the

speaker, auditory phonetics deals with the other important participant in verbal communication, the
listener.
In auditory phonetics, we are dealing with two distinct operations which are closely
interrelated and influence each other. On the one hand we can talk about audition proper, that is the
perception of sounds by our auditory apparatus and the transforming of the information into a neural
sign and its sending to the brain and, on the other hand, we can talk about the analysis of this
information by the brain which eventually leads to the decoding of the message, the understanding of
the verbal message.
Depending on the frequency of the sound coming in, a different part with different receptor
cells of the basilar membrane is stimulated. Thus, low-frequency (grave) sounds will make the
membrane vibrate at the less stiff (upper) end, while high-frequency (acute) sounds will cause the
lower and stiffer end of the membrane to vibrate. The cells on the basilar membrane convert these
vibrations into neural signals that are transmitted via the auditory nerves to the central receptor and
controller of the entire process, the brain, where we identify the incoming sound as actual sound with
a specific pitch 4

4 http://www.ello.uos.de/field.php/PhoneticsandPhonology/AuditoryPhonetics