By: Syed Mohsin Raza Rizvi

2.  Transcribing: descriptive phonetics?
transcriptional phonetics? No standard name.
 Articulatory phonetics
 Acoustic phonetics
 Perceptual phonetics (Psychology)
 Computational phonetics (CS)

5.  There is a (1-dimensional) sequence of units that define or
characterize the utterance – rather than 2 or more parallel
streams. We think of the articulators as being a single
instrument rather than as an orchestra.
 We can slice the utterances into pieces vertically, in time, and
ignore most differences in duration.
 Sounds follow one another, and that’s it: there is no packing of
them into groups.

6. Consonants: first, the stops:
 b as in bat, sob, cubby
 d as in date, hid, ado
 g as in gas, lag, ragged
 p as in pet, tap, repeat
 t as in tap, pet, attack
 k as in king, pick, picking
When we need to emphasize
that we are using a phonetic
transcription, we put square
brackets [b] around the symbols.

7.  f as in fail, life
 v as in veil, live
 Ɵ as in thin, wrath
 ð as in this, bathe
 s as in soft, miss
 z as in zoo, as
 š (American) or ʃ (IPA) as in shame, mash
 ž (American) or ǯ (IPA)as in triage, garage,
azure,
 h as in help, vehicular

8.  č (American) or tʃ (IPA) as in cheap, hatch
 ǰ (American) or ʤ (IPA) as in jump, hedge

9.  m as in map, him
 n as in knot, tin (alveolar POA)
 ñ as in canyon
 ŋ as in sing, gingham, dinghy

10.  l as in large, gull
 r as in red, jar

11.  y (American) or j (IPA) as in boy, yellow
 w as in wall, cow

12.  6 stops
 2 affricates
 9 fricatives
 4 nasals
 2 liquids
 2 glides

13. Front:
I as in bit
Ɛ as in bet
æ as in bat
Back
as in put
ʌ as in putt
 as in bought
a or ɑ as in Mott, ma,
spot
ǝ “schwa” as in
about

14.  iy or i as in beet
 ey or ej as in bait
 ay as in bite
 oy as in boy
 uw or u as in boot
 ow as in boat
 aw as how

15.  We’ve listened to the sounds of “our” English, and
assigned a set of symbols to them.
 We abstracted away from pitch, loudness, and duration.
 We hope to better understanding our language’s sounds
by analyzing them as being composed of a sequence of
identifiable sounds, each of which occurs frequently in
words of the language.

16.  Frequently? If a sound occurs in just 2 or 3 words, we
don’t take it seriously (glottal stop, velar fricative)
 We do this against the background knowledge that the
inventory of sounds in English is not necessary as human
languages go: they are what they are against a much
wider backdrop of possible linguistic sounds.

17.  We also attempt to physically characterize these sounds:
acoustically and articulatorily. Consonants are easier to
characterize articulatorily, vowels acoustically.
 We are particularly interested in those ways in which the
English of Speaker 1 is different from the English of
Speaker 2: again, working against the background
knowledge of variation.

18.  We also characterize differences of sounds across sound
contexts: we say, notice the different sound that occurs
in front of a voiceless consonant in height.
 Looking ahead to phonology, we will attempt to get a
handle on variation in sounds in two ways:
 Two sounds are similar if (roughly) we can characterize one of
them as a variant of the other used in a particular context
(“under the influence of that context,” so to speak)
 Two sounds are distinct (hence, different) if two distinct words
differ only with regard to these two sounds, in otherwise
identical positions

19.  We try to characterize the inventory of sounds in
a language, knowing that that language chose one
set of sounds when a vast range of other
possibilities might have been chosen.

20.  We assign symbols to these sounds; in
addition, we want to characterize them as
best we can articulatorily and acoustically.
Sounds can be divided into two major groups,
consonants and vowels; or set along a
continuum known as the sonority hierarchy:

21.  Vowels
 Glides
 Liquids
 Nasals
 Obstruents:
 Fricatives
 Affricates
 Stops

22.  Consonants = obstruents + sonorants
 Obstruents: (oral) stops, affricates, and
fricatives
 Sonorants: nasals and liquids (l,r)

23. The crucial points of articulation for English
consonants are:
 Labial
 Labio-dental
 Dental
 Alveolar: at the alveolar ridge, behind the teeth
 Post-alveolar/palato-alveolar/alveopalatal:
multiple names for the same thing
 Retroflex (r only)
 Palatal (y, ñ)
 Velar
 Laryngeal

24. Obstruents:
 6 stops
 9 fricatives
 2 affricates
 Nasals (4)
 2 other sonorants (what are they?)
 2 glides

26.  Vowels are harder to characterize
articulatorily, but we try!
 The fact that it’s harder is reflected in the
fact that there is more than one way in
which it’s done. IPA is one way; American is
another.

30. From: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/music/vocres.html

31. /i/ green
/ae/ hat
/u/ boot
graphics thanks to
Kevin Russell, Univ of Manitoba

32. “Hi” /haj/
we were away a year ago FORMANTS