phonetic and phonology English Vowel and Consonant theory how to make sounds in English

1. ENGLISH PHONETICS
AND PHONOLOGY
LECTURER: IIP SARIP HIDAYAT, M.Pd

2. 1. INTRODUCTION
 PHONETICS
is the study of the way we make, transmit, and
perceive speech sounds.
 PHONOLOGY
is the study of the sound systems of languages.
It discovers the range and the function of
speech sounds in languages.

3. 2. THE PRODUCTION OF
SPEECH SOUND
 To speak we need air, which is pushed
out of our lungs.
 Different sounds are made by obstructing
the air stream in different ways.
 We use our vocal organs to make the
obstructions.

4. The major parts of the anatomy that
relate to speech production
 Subglottal system, including lungs and
trachea
 Larynx, including the vocal folds and
glottis
 Supraglottal system, including the oral
cavity, nasal cavity, and pharynx

5. When the air is pressed out of the lungs, air
travels up the trachea, or windpipe, to the
larynx of the speech system.

6. THE ARTICULATORS

7. The Larynx
 The larynx (voice box) is a mass of cartilage
at the top of the trachea.
 The larynx contains folds of muscle called
the vocal folds (vocal cords).
 The opening between the vocal folds is
known as the glottis. These folds can be
relaxed, letting air flow freely through the
glottis, or tensed, so that the air vibrates as
it passes through the glottis.

8.  Sounds that are produced with relaxed
vocal folds are known as voiceless
sounds
Voiceless

9.  sounds that are produced with tensed
vocal folds are known as voiced sounds.
Voiceless

10.  If the folds are only partially closed, a
whispered sound is produced.
Voiceless

11. ARTICULATORS ABOVE THE LARYNX

12. Articulators above the larynx
 All the sounds we make when we speak are
the result of muscles contracting.
 Muscles in the larynx produce many
different modifications in the flow of air.
 After passing through the larynx, the air
goes through the vocal tract, which ends
at the mouth and nostrils (nose).

13. The articulators
 i) The pharynx is a tube which
begins just above the larynx.
 At its top end it is divided into two:
one part being the back of the
mouth and the other being the
beginning of the way through the
nasal cavity

14. The articulators
 ii) The velum or soft palate is in
speech raised so that air cannot escape
through the nose. It can be touched by
the tongue.
 When we make the sounds k and g ,
the tongue is in contact with the lower
side of the velum, and we call these
velar consonants.

15. The articulators
 iii) The hard palate is often called
the "roof of the mouth". You can feel
its smooth curved surface with your
tongue.
 iv) The alveolar ridge is between
the top front teeth and the hard
palate. Sounds made with the
tongue touching here (such as t
and d ) are called alveolar.

16. The articulators
 v) The tongue is a very important articulator,
and it can be moved into many different places
and different shapes.
 Fig. 2 shows the tongue on a larger scale with
these parts shown: tip, blade, front, back
and root.

17. The articulators
 vi) The teeth (upper and lower) are only
at the front of the mouth, immediately
behind the lips.
 The tongue is in contact with the upper
side teeth for many speech sounds.
 Sounds made with the tongue touching
the front teeth are called dental.

18. The articulators
 vii) The lips are important in speech. They
can be pressed together (when we produce
the sounds p, b ), brought into contact with
the teeth (as in f , v), or rounded to
produce the lip-shape for vowels like u:
 Sounds in which the lips are in contact with
each other are called bilabial, while those
with lip-to-teeth contact are called
labiodental.

19. The articulators
There are three more other articulators:
 Firstly, the larynx described as an articulator is a
very complex and independent one.
 Secondly, the jaws are also articulators; certainly
we move the lower jaw a lot in speaking.
 Finally, the nose and the nasal cavity are an
important part of our equipment for making
sounds, particularly nasal consonants such as m,
n.

20. English Pronunciation
 The term ‘accents’ refers to differences in
pronunciations.
 Two major standard varieties in English
pronunciation: British English and American
English.
 There are also a variety of accents: Received
pronunciation (RP)* and General American (GA).
(Received pronunciation is sometimes defined as
the "educated spoken English of southeastern
England". RP is close to BBC English, and it is
represented in most British dictionaries. Similarly,
GA is spoken by many newscasters in the US.)

21. English Pronunciation
 English pronunciation is also divided into
two main accent groups, the rhotic and
the non-rhotic, depending on when the
phoneme /r/ is pronounced.
 Non-rhotic accents are RP and some other
types of British English, Australian, New
Zealand and South African English.
 American English is rhotic (the "r" is
always pronounced).

22. The Sounds of English and Their Representation
 There is no one-to-one relation between the
system of writing and the system of
pronunciation.
 English has 26 letters but in (Standard British)
English there are approximately 44 speech
sounds.
 The number of speech sounds in English varies
from dialect to dialect.
 To represent the basic sound of spoken
languages linguists use a set of phonetic symbols
called the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

23. The IPA symbols
English vowels, diphthongs and consonants:

24. THE PHONEMIC SYMBOLS
LONG AND SHORT VOWELS

25. THE PHONEMIC SYMBOLS- Diphthongs
ɪə
hear
eɪ
play
ʊə
newer
ɔɪ
boy
əʊ
go
eə
hair
ɑɪ
tie
ɑʊ
now

26. THE PHONEMIC SYMBOLS
CONSONANTS

27. Vowels and Consonants
 Sounds can be classified into two
major categories: vowels and
consomants.
 The difference between vowels and
consonants is not only in the way
that they are made but also the way
the sounds are distributed.

28. English Vowels
 Vowels are sounds made by opening the
mouth and letting air come out freely. There
is no obstruction to the flow of air when it
passes from the larynx to the lips.
 Dictionaries say that there are 20 vowel
sounds in English. Phonetically there are
three distinct kinds of vowels used in
English: short vowels, long vowels and
diphthongs. All vowels are voiced by
definition.

29. Vowel Classification
 Vowels differ from each other on the
basis of the shape and position of
the tongue.
 Each vowel is described in relation to
the cardinal vowels.
 Vowel classification is based on four
major aspects: tongue height, tongue
backness, lip rounding, and the
tenseness of the articulators.

30. Vowel Classification- Tongue Height
 Vowels are classified in terms of how
close is the tongue to the roof of the
mouth, which is determined by the height
of the tongue.
 There are three primary height distinctions
among vowels: high, low, and mid.
 High (close) vowels are: I ɪ: ʊ u:
 Low (open) vowels are: æ ɑ:
 Mid vowels are: e ə ə: ɒ ɔ:

31. illustration of tongue height
I e æ

32. Vowel Classification- Tongue Backness
 Vowels are classified in terms of how far
the raised body of the tongue is from the
back of the mouth, which is called the
backness of the tongue.
 Three primary height distinctions among
vowels: front, back, and central.
 Front vowels are: I ɪ: e æ
 Back vowels are: ʊ u: ɒ ɔ: ɑ:
 Central vowels are: ə ɜ:

33. illustration of tongue backness
I u:

34. Vowel Classification- Lip Rounding
 Another aspect of vowel classification
is the presence or absence of lip
rounding.
 Back vowels ʊ u: ɒ ɔ: are
rounded (except ɑ: - unrounded).
 English front and central vowels are
always unrounded.

35. Vowel Classification- Tense vs. Lax
 The classification is characterized in terms
of the tenseness or laxness of the
articulators.
 Tense vowels (produced with a great
amount of muscular tension) are:
i: ɜ: u: ɔ: ɑ:
 Lax vowels (produced with very little
muscular tension) are: I e æ ʌ ɒ ʊ ə .
Lax vowels are always short.

36. Vowel quadrilateral (cardinal vowels)

37. The vowel chart for English (pure vowels)

38. English Short Vowels
 Short vowels are relatively short. They differ
from long vowels not only in quantity but also
in quality.
 The precise length of vowels varies depending
on context and stress.
 The symbols for these short vowels are:
I e æ ʌ ɒ ʊ ə

39. English Long Vowels
 There are five long English vowels:
i: ɜ: u: ɔ: ɑ:
 They are longer than short vowels in a
similar context.
Ex: beat / b i: t / and bit / b I t /

40. English diphthongs
 Diphthongs are two-part vowel sounds consisting
of a glide from one vowel to another in same
syllable.
 There are 8 diphthongs in English:
- Centring diphthongs: Iə eə ʊə
- Closing diphthongs: eI aI ɔI əʊ aʊ
 The first part of a diphthong is normally louder
and longer than the second, which is short and
quieter.

41. Diphthongs of RP

42. English triphthongs
 A triphthong is a glide from one vowel to
another and then to a third; all produced
rapidly and without interuption.
Ex: hour / aʊə / - fire / faIə /
 Triphthongs can be viewed in a
combination of closing diphthongs and
/ə/. They are: eIə aIə ɔIə əʊə aʊə

43. Semi-vowels
 j yes, beyond
 w well, where, cow
-These two sounds are phonetically vowels
but phonologically consonants. That is,
phonetically they are pronounced as /i:/
and /u:/ but a little bit shorter. But, then,
they only occur before vowel phonemes.
-Consonants +y at the end of the words is
pronounced /i/: happy, any, thirty

44. English Consonants
 Consonants are sounds made with or
without vocal fold vibration. There is some
obstruction or narrowing in the vocal tract
when consonants are produced.
 Consonants occur at the edge of a
syllable.

45. Voicing
 If the vocal folds are held apart, the
glottis is in a voiceless state, while if the
vocal folds are held together, and allowed
to vibrate, the glottis is in a voiced
state.
 Ex: / b / is a voiced sound
/ p / is a voiceless sound.

46. /k/
/t/
•In producing consonant sounds, the
point at which the vocal tract is altered is
known as the place of articulation.

47. Consonant classification
Consonants are classified
according to their manner and
place of articulation, and their
voicing.

48. VOICED & VOICELESS CONSONANTS
VOICED
b d g v z ð dʒ ʒ m n ŋ j l r w
VOICELESS
p t k f s θ tʃ ʃ h

49. Some places of articulation:
bilabial consonants
p pie b buy m mute w wood
lips

50. Labiodental consonants
f fine v vine
upper teeth
lower lip

51. Dental consonants
θ thin ð this
upper teeth
tip of tongue

52. Alveolar consonants
t tie d die s Sue z zoo
n night l light
alveolar ridge
tip/blade of tongue

53. Post-alveolar / palato-alveolar
consonants
ʃ shoe, pressure Ʒ pleasure
ʧ cheap ʤ jeep r rack

54. Palatal consonants
j yes

55. Velar consonants
velum
back of tongue
k curl g girl ŋ rang

56. Some manners of articulation:
plosives (think explosion) or stops
Bilabial: p b Alveolar: t d Velar: k g

57. Fricatives (think friction)
Labiodental: f v Alveolar: s z
Palato-alveolar or
post-alveolar: ʃ Ʒ

58. Oral Nasal
(Velum is lowered, allowing air
to enter the nasal cavity)

59. Nasals
Bilabial: m Velar: ŋ
Alveolar: n

60. Other consonants
 Affricates (a combination of stop + fricative):
ʧ = voiceless post-alveolar affricate
ʤ = voiced post-alveolar affricate
 Approximant (articulators approach each other
but do not touch): w r j
 Lateral (also called lateral approximant; air
flows over sides of tongue): l

61. Summary of Places of
Articulation
 Bilabial (lips) p b m w
 Labiodental (lips and teeth) f fine v vine
 Dental (tongue and teeth) θ thin ð then
 Alveolar (tongue and alveolar ridge)
t d s z n l
 Palato-alveolar (tongue and front part of hard
palate) ʃ shoe ʒ measure ʧ cheap ʤ jeep r
 Palatal (tongue and hard palate) j yes
 Velar (tongue and velum) k g ŋ running
 Glottal (glottis) h

63. Summary of manners of articulation
 Plosive / Stop p b t d k g
 Fricative f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ h
 Affricate (stop + fricative) ʧ ʤ
 Nasal m n ŋ
 Approximants w r j (central) l (lateral)

64. Phonology- The sound patterns of a
language
 Phonology focuses on the way languages
use differences between sounds to convey
differences of meaning between words.
 Phoneme: the smallest ‘distinctive unit
sound’ of a language.
 Changing a phoneme in a word produces
another word that has a different meaning.
Ex: In the minimal pair 'cat' and 'bat', the
distinguishing sounds /c/ and /b/ are both
phonemes.

65.  Phones: are the actual sounds produced such as a
simple vowel or consonant sound.
 Allophones: A phoneme may have several
allophones, related sounds that are distinct but do
not change the meaning of a word when they are
interchanged.
Ex: The sounds corresponding to the letter "t" in
the words 'tea' and 'trip' are not quite the same.
The position of the tongue is slightly different,
which causes a difference in sound detectable by
an instrument such as a speech spectrograph. Thus
the [t] in 'tea' and the [t] in 'trip' are allophones of
the phoneme /t/.

66.  Phonemic transcription: uses only phonemic
symbols put between slashes / /. It indicates only
the more noticeable phonetic features of an
utterance.
 Phonemic transcription is found in normal
dictionaries. It is called a broad phonetic
transcription.
Ex: / fəʊ'ni:mɪk træn'skrɪpʃn /
 Phonemic transcription doesn't include such
features as aspiration (/p/ in pin and spin),
devoicing (/w/ in wet and twice ), or
shortening (/i:/ in feed and feet)

67.  Phonetic transcription needs a much
larger set of symbols and diacritics (dấu phụ)
to represent sounds precisely. It is put
between square brackets [ ].
Ex: little [‘l I t ɫ] –> The final / l / is dark [ɫ]
 Phonetic transcription encodes more
information about the phonetic variations of
the specific allophones in the utterance. It is
called a narrow phonetic transcription.
 Phonetic transcription is used mainly by
specialists.

69. The Syllable- Definition
 Phonetically, a syllable is one or more
letters representing a unit of spoken
language consisting of a single
uninterrupted sound (centre)

70. WORD STRESS
 A multi-syllable word has a prominent
syllable. This is called a stressed syllable.
 Stressed syllable is longer in duration, higher
in pitch, and louder in volume.
 Duration is the primary attribute to the
prominence of a syllable.
 Usually 2 syllable nouns (90%+) have the
stress on the first syllable; 2 syllable verbs
(60%+) have the stress on the second.

71. STRESS PRACTICE
 When a word has
more than one
syllable, one is more
prominent than the
others. When this
happens, we say that
the syllable has a
stress, or that it is
stressed
tea.cher • .
beau.ti.ful • . .
un.der.stand . . •
con.ti.nue . • .
con.ti.nu.a.tion . • . • .
black.board . .

72. two syllables de.sign a.bout af.ter
three syllables va.nil.la Ca.na.da graf.fi.ti
four syllables in.dif.fe.rent A.ri.zo.na a.vai.la.ble
five syllables u.ni.ver.si.ty ca.fe.te.ri.a la.bo.ra.to.ry*

73. Group the following words so that they match their patterns .
word list
infamous banana calendar statement
dinosaur imply cluster kingdom
enjoyment mountain eternal countless
excel passage before defeated
begin arrive worry history

74. Placement of stress
 The location of stress is determined by a set
of many complex rules. Therefore predicting
where the stress falls is not easy. However,
some sets of words follow a simple pattern.
 Except for the compounds, stressed syllables
in words with more than 2 syllables never
stand next to each other (Stressed syllables
and weak syllables alternate).

75. Intonation
Intonation contours in English
 Not all rises and falls in pitch that occur in
the course of an English phrase can be
attributed to stress. The same set of
segments and word stresses can occur with
a number of pitch patterns.
 Consider the difference between:
You're going. (statement)
You're going? (question)
 The rise and fall of pitch throughout is called
its intonation contour.

76.  English has a number of intonation
patterns which add conventionalized
meanings to the utterance: question,
statement, surprise, disbelief, sarcasm,
teasing.
 An important feature of English intonation is
the use of an intonational accent (and
extra stress) to mark the focus of a
sentence.
 Normally this focus accent goes on the last
major word of the sentence, but it can come
earlier in order to emphasize one of the
earlier words or to contrast it with something
else.

78. Questions
The normal intonation contours for questions:
 final rising pitch for a Yes/No question
– Are you coming today?
 final falling pitch for a Wh-question
– When are you coming?
 Using a different pattern adds something extra to the
question.
- E.g: falling intonation on a Yes/No question =
abruptness.
- Rising intonation on a Wh-question = surprise or
asking to have it repeated.

79. Cross-linguistic differences
Contrastive emphasis
 Many languages mark contrastive emphasis like
English, using an intonational accent and
additional stress.
 Many other languages use only syntactic devices for
contrastive emphasis, for example, moving the
emphasized phrase to the beginning of the sentence.
 Instead of
– I want a car for my birthday. (as opposed to a bike)
you would have to say something like:
– A car I want for my birthday. / It's a car that I want
for my birthday.

80. Aspects of connected speech
Weak Forms
This regards a series of words which have one
pronunciation (strong) when isolated, and another (weak)
when not stressed within a phrase, e.g.
a car
/eɪ kɑ:/
I bought a car /aɪ bɔ:t ə kɑ:/

81.  the most important words, those that are
central to the message, can be emphasised:
 I went to the hotel and booked a room for
two nights for my father and his best
friend.
 /aɪ’went tə ðə həʊ’tel ən ˈ’bʊkt ə ˈ’ru:m fə
ˈ’tu: ˈ’naɪts fə maɪ ˈ’fɑ:ðər ən hɪz ˈ’best
ˈ’frend/

82. Aspects of connected speech- Assimilation
 BEFORE A VELAR (/k/, /g/)
/n//ŋ/bank /bæŋk/
/d//g/good girl /gʊg ˈgɜ:l/
/t//k/that kid /ðæk ˈkɪd/
 BEFORE A BILABIAL (/m/, /b/, /p/)
/n//m/ten men /tem 'men/
/d//b/bad boys /bæb ˈbɔɪz/
/t//p/hot mushrooms /ˈhɒp ˈmʌʃru:mz/

83. Aspects of connected speech- Elision
Elision is the omission of certain sounds in certain
contexts.
The next day…. /ðə neks deɪ/
The last car… /ðə lɑ:s kɑ:/
Hold the dog!
/həʊl ðə dɒg/
Send Frank a card. /sen fræŋk ə kɑ:d/

84. secretary /ˈsekrət(ə)ri/
camera /ˈkæm(ə)rə/
memory /ˈmem(ə)ri/

85. Aspects of connected speech-
R-linking
Care/keə/
Caring/keərɪŋ/
Care about/keər əbaʊt/
Draw all the flowers/drɔ:r ɔ:l ðə flaʊəz/
There's a comma after that/ðəz ə kɒmər ɑ:ftə
θæt/
Australia or New Zealand/ɒsˈtreɪlɪər ɔ: nju:
ˈzi:ln
̩ d/

86. End of the course