PHONETICS

Phonetics is the scientific study of speech sounds. It consists of three main sub-fields:

Articulatory phonetics : how speech sounds are produced Acoustic phonetics : how speech sounds are transmitted from

producer to perceiver

Perceptual phonetics : how speech sounds are perceived Phonetic Transcription

The primary tool of phonetic science is phonetic

Transcription The basic idea:

Represent speech as a sequence of segments.

i.e., with an alphabet. Segments = individual consonants and vowels. Deep thought questions: What kind of alphabet should we use?

How about the English alphabet? The Trouble with English

Some letters represent more than one different sound

Minimal Pairs

A minimal pair consists of: two words that have different meanings

 which differ from each other in only one sound. Some minimal pairs in English: pit vs. bit ~ /p/ vs. /b/ beet vs. bead ~ /t/ vs. /d/ boat vs. boot ~ /o/ vs. /u/ A series of minimal pairs is called a minimal set. tee ~ bee ~ key ~ sea ~ fee

between sounds that are found in language

including some which we cannot easily hear.Technical Terms A phone is any sound that is used in speech. (may or may not be contrastive) A phoneme is a contrastive sound in a language It may be used to distinguish between words in

minimal pairs

An allophone is a phonetic variant of a phoneme Different allophones often occur in specific contexts.

Note: analogy with allomorphs. Phonemic Analysis

Phoneme: /t/ Allophone 5: bit (aspirated) (unaspirated)

flap glottal stop (unreleased) In our native language, we tend to hear the phonemes

that the allophones belong to Rather than the allophones themselves.

English Phonemes

[p] pot 7. [r] rot 12. [m] ma [b] bought 8. [f] fought 13. [n] not [t] tot 9. [v] vote 14. [l] lot [d] dot 10. [s] sot 15. [w] walk [k] kit 11. [z] zit 16. [h] hot [g] got Familiar IPA symb

These two phonetic symbols: Consonants (Unvoiced consonants underlined)

/p/: pat, hoping, stop; happy, shepherd /b/: bat, tribal rub; robbed, cupboard /m/: mat, timing, sum, lamb, summer, column /f/: fine, lifer, reef; coffer, laugh, often, elephant /v/: vine, savings, skivvy, Stephen, //: thick, author, mouth (noun) //:they, withinmouth (verb) /t/: ten, later, not; patter, ptomaine, night, subtle, stopped, two, Thomas, worked /d/: dot, rider, nod; bladder, red /n/: not, finer, ten; banner, knight, reign, pneumonia, Wednesday /s/: sit, basin, gas; massive, cede, science, psychology, listen, answer, waltz (some speakers) /z/: zone, hazy, fez; buzz, rose, xylophone, crescent, dessert //: chin, perching, larch; hatch, nature, cello //: gin, judge, strange, sandwich, gradual, exaggerate, //: shout, washing, dish, machine, passion, delicious, caution, sugar, conscience, schedule (some speakers) //: genre, rouging, beige; measure, seizure /k/: kit, baker, took; cot, succor, back, pique, character, saccharine racquet /g/: got, begin, sag; bigger, ghost, league, guest //: sing, hanger, sink /h/: has, behind, who /r/: read, horror, write, rhyme, catarrhal /l/: lead, solo, pool; poll, island Vowels /i:/: me, bead, key, see, deceive, people, quay, encyclopaedia, foetus, police, relieve, soliloquy, Yves /I/: bid, Greenwich, hymn, luggage, mountain, pretty, wanted, women, sieve, busy. foreign, //: look, put, woman Worcester /u:/: booed, boot, through, true, truth, whose, route, new, lieu manoeuvre /e/: bed, said, head, any, leisure, leopard, friend

//: about, the, teacher*, ration, Russia, photography, cemetery, thorough, bureaucrat, , station, patient pigeon, gorgeous, forget failure, status, tortoise, famous, /:/: bird, burred, turn, herd, heard, myrtle, myrrh, worse, masseuse connoisseur, journalist oeuvre, /:/: bored, board, broad, thought, law, awe, caught, fall, warm, George //: bad, plaid //: bud, rough, money, flourish, flood, does /:/: bard, barred, father, aunt, heart, clerk, catarrh, palm reservoir //: cough, want, because, knowledge, sausage, geography

Diphthongs /I/: beard, leer, fierce, weird, here, Liam, idea //: (Many speakers do not utter this, using /:/ instead, especially in such words as those underlined):obscure, tour, sure, moor /e/: bare, there, air, wear, where aeroplane /eI/: bayed, say, make, weigh, main, vein, break, gauge, ballet, they, gaol /I/: buoyed, buoy, boy, coil, (Schadenfreude) /aI/: bide, nigh, lie, buy, by, eye, aisle, height, choir //: bode, know, although, oh, groan, beau, gauche, Cockburn: brooch chauffeur /a/: cow, mound, bough, Faust, cowed.