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ANALYSIS OF CONSONANTS SOUNDS

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THE SOUNDS OF SPOKEN LANGUAGE

CONSONANT AND VOWEL SOUNDS CONTRASTED

                      CONSONANT  AND  VOWEL  SOUNDS  CONTRASTED

Almost  all speakers  have an  intuitive understanding of the difference between  consonants and vowels, though they  may not be able always to express in it technical terms.  The  vowels are the resonant, open sounds, and the consonants are the sounds that  are characterized by short duration, lack of sonority or a predominance of friction noise  in their make up, or by  various combinations of these features.  In others words, the speech tract is relatively unimpeded in the pronunciation of vowels, while there is always some kind of restriction or closure in the pronunciation of consonants.

All languages seem to have  a feature that can  be called a syllable, and again most speakers have an intuitive understanding of what  a syllables is, or how many syllables a given  word contains, even though a technically  accurate definition of the syllable is extremely difficult.   In English, almost all syllables contain a vowel; the only ones that do not are those like the second syllables of baffle and button, in which “syllabic” l and n are the only sounds.  These consonants, belonging  to a group usually called resonants, are of such nature  that they can be prolonged and can function as the only sound in a syllable.  (In phonemic analysis such syllables are considered to consist of a vowel followed by a consonant; actually, of course, in phonemic terms, the consonant amd the vowel, if there is one, are pronunced simultaneously).  More will be said on this point later.

There are also sounds like the first  sounds in year or we, which  clearly give a consonantal impression to speakers of English  but which, in  phonetic terms, resemble vowels more than consonats,  Such sounds are usually called semiconsonants and will be discussed separately.

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THE SPEECH ORGANS AND THEIR FUNCTIONS

                 

                

   THE SPEECH ORGANS AND THEIR FUNCTIONS

Speech is produced in the throat, mouth and nasal passage, but there are no  “speech organs” as such, strictly speaking;  all of the organs used in speech have other, and perhaps more fundamental, purpose involving eating and breathing.   Nevertheless the term is familiar and meaninful in the contex of articulatory phonetics, and will be used here.  The speech organs are shown in a diagram, a cross-section of the head and throat.

The  lungs, diaphragm, chest muscles and windpipe also act in the production of speech, but they will not be discussed in detail as their function is more  or less automatic.

Speech is produced by causing a column of enclosed air to víbrate.  It is the same  prosses, basically, as the production of sound by a wind instrument  in music.  Air is forced under pressure from the lungs trough the windpipe (trachea), to the voice box  (larnyx), a structure that sits on top of the windpipe and contains  the vocal cords, as they are called. (These are not cords  at all, really,  and would  be more properly named band sor membranes).  The vocal cords have the capability of closing off entirely the opening (glottis) and can hold considerable air pressure  (as when a person coughs or strains to lift a heave  weight).  They can also assume other positions. They may be  wide open, allowing the air to pass unimpeded.  Or they may be closed almost but not quite completely, so that  the scaping air, forced through the narrow opening between  them causes them to víbrate like the reed in a musical instrument.  This vibration  makes tthe all-important  vocal tone. known  technically as voice, without  which speech would be impossible.  Speech sounds that have this tone as part of their makeup are called voiced., and those without it are called  unvoiced or voiceless.  Varying the amount of tensión on the vocal cords causes the vocal tone to vary in quality  and in number of cycles per second; in other words, the timbre and pitch of the tone can be changed voluntarily, within limits. by the speakers.

The air stream issuing from the larynx w ith or without voice, can now be modified in many ways;  that is, we are at the stage of  articulation.  Almost  all the parts of the throat and lower  head that are accesible to the air stream can take part in articulation.  For discussion purposes, we can divide these parts into three groups;  resonating cavities, ariticulators, and points of articulation.

RESONATING CAVITIES

The size, the shape, and the material composition of the vessel enclosing a vibrating  air column  all  have important effects  on the quality of the sound that comes from it.  There are quite a few spaces in the speech tract that effect sounds by their resonating  qualities; in acousting terms, their reinforce (amplify) certain frecuencies and and suppress or weaken (dampen) others. In addition  to te sinuses and other spaces in the head, which function  passively and without the control of the speaker, the resonating cavities involved in speech production are these:  the pharnyx, the space formed by the root of the tongue and the walls of the throat, which affects  the sound by its shape but is not actively used in English;  the nose, which adds its quite distinctive quality to the sounds if the air is allowed to pass through it whether or not the mouth is involved at the same time; and finally, the mouth, the most important of all because it contains a number of highly mobile organs and can assume a tremendous number of different shapes.

ARTICULATORS

These are movile organs that can be brough close to, or into contact withi, various locations in the speech tract (known as points of articulation) so as to stop or impede the free passage  of the air stream.  The manner of articulation is determined by the kind of closure or near closure that is made, as well as its manner of release.  The articulators are the lips, especially the lower one; the tongue, usually divided into four parts; tip, front, middle, and back; the uvula; and, to an extent, the jaw, through its role is minor (it is posible to speak quite clearly with the jaws clenched, as ventriloquist do).

POINTS OF ARTICULATION

These are fixed locations againts  which the movile articulators operate in order to produce speech sounds: the teeth, the gums, the alveolar ridge, the various parts of the palate (sometimes called “hard” palate  to distinguish it from the “soft” palate or velum),  the velum, the walls of the pharynx and the glotis.

PHONETIC CHAT OF IPA SYMBOLS

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P H O N E T I C S

 

Phonetics (from the Greek: φωνή, phōnē, "sound, voice") is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign   It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs (phones): their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory perception, and neurophysiological status. Phonology, on the other hand, is concerned with the abstract, grammatical characterization of systems of sounds or signs.

The field of phonetics is a multiple layered subject of linguistics that focuses on speech. In the case of oral languages there are three basic areas of study:

• Articulatory phonetics: the study of the production of speech sounds by the articulatory and vocal tract by the speaker
• Acoustic phonetics: the study of the physical transmission of speech sounds from the speaker to the listener
• Auditory phonetics: the study of the reception and perception of speech sounds by the listener

These areas are inter-connected through the common mechanism of sound, such as wavelength (pitch), amplitude, and harmonics.

History

Phonetics was studied as early as 500 BC in ancient India, with Pāṇini's account of the place and manner of articulation of consonants in his 5th century BC treatise on Sanskrit. The major Indic alphabets today order their consonants according to Pāṇini's classification. The Ancient Greeks are credited as the first to base a writing system on a phonetic alphabet. Modern phonetics began with Alexander Melville Bell, whose Visible Speech (1867) introduced a system of precise notation for writing down speech sounds.

Phonetic transcription

The International Phonetic Alphabet(IPA) is used as the basis for the phonetic transcription of speech. It is based on the Latin alphabet and is able to transcribe most features of speech such as consonants, vowels, and suprasegmental features. Every documented phoneme available within the known languages in the world is assigned its own corresponding symbol.

The difference between phonetics and phonology

Phonology concerns itself with systems of phonemes, abstract cognitive units of speech sound or sign which distinguish the words of a language. Phonetics, on the other hand, concerns itself with the production, transmission, and perception of the physical phenomena which are abstracted in the mind to constitute these speech sounds or signs.

Using an Edison phonograph, Ludimar Hermann investigated the spectral properties of vowels and consonants. It was in these papers that the term formant was first introduced. Hermann also played back vowel recordings made with the Edison phonograph at different speeds in order to test Willis' and Wheatstone's theories of vowel production.

Relation to phonology

In contrast to phonetics, phonology is the study of how sounds and gestures pattern in and across languages, relating such concerns with other levels and aspects of language. Phonetics deals with the articulatory and acoustic properties of speech sounds, how they are produced, and how they are perceived. As part of this investigation, phoneticians may concern themselves with the physical properties of meaningful sound contrasts or the social meaning encoded in the speech signal (e.g. gender, sexuality, ethnicity, etc.). However, a substantial portion of research in phonetics is not concerned with the meaningful elements in the speech signal.

While it is widely agreed that phonology is grounded in phonetics, phonology is a distinct branch of linguistics, concerned with sounds and gestures as abstract units (e.g., features, phonemes, mora, syllables, etc.) and their conditioned variation (via, e.g., allophonic rules, constraints, or derivational rules).  Phonology relates to phonetics via the set of distinctive features, which map the abstract representations of speech units to articulatory gestures, acoustic signals, and/or perceptual representations.

Subfields

Phonetics as a research discipline has three main branches:

• articulatory phonetics is concerned with the articulation of speech: The position, shape, and movement of articulators or speech organs, such as the lips, tongue, and vocal folds.
• acoustic phonetics is concerned with acoustics of speech: The spectro-temporal properties of the sound waves produced by speech, such as their frequency, amplitude, and harmonic structure.
• auditory phonetics is concerned with speech perception: the perception, categorization, and recognition of speech sounds and the role of the auditory system and the brain in the same.

Transcription

Main article: Phonetic transcription

Phonetic transcription is a system for transcribing sounds that occur in spoken language or sign language. The most widely known system of phonetic transcription, the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), uses a one-to-one mapping between phones and written symbols. The standardized nature of the IPA enables its users to transcribe accurately and consistently the phones of different languages, dialects, and idiolects   The IPA is a useful tool not only for the study of phonetics, but also for language teaching, professional acting, and speech pathology

Applications

Application of phonetics include:

• forensic phonetics: the use of phonetics (the science of speech) for forensic (legal) purposes.
• Speech Recognition: the analysis and transcription of recorded speech by a computer system.

References

• O'Grady, William, et al. (2005). Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction (5th ed.). Bedford/St. Martin's. ISBN 0312419368. 

External links

• Comparative phonetics
• the Web Site of the Phonetic Sciences Laboratory of the Université de Montréal.
• The International Society of Phonetic Sciences (ISPhS)
• A little encyclopedia of phonetics, Peter Roach, Professor of Phonetics, University of Reading, UK. (pdf)
• The sounds and sound patterns of language U Penn
• UCLA lab data
• UCLA Phonetics Lab Archive
• EGG and Voice Quality (electroglottography, phonation, etc.)
• IPA handbook
• IPA-SAM Phonetic Fonts
• Speech Analysis Tutorial
• Lecture materials in German on phonetics & phonology, university of Erfurt
• Real-time MRI video of the articulation of speech sounds, from the USC Speech Articulation and kNowledge (SPAN) Group
• Beginner's course in phonetics, with some exercises
• Praat - Phonetic analysis software
• SID- Speech Internet Dictionary
• Extensive collection of phonetics resources on the Web (University of North Carolina)
• Phonetics and Phonology (University of Osnabrueck)