Fig. 3.1 The articulation
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 from the chest to the mouth. After passing through the larynx, the air goes through what we call the vocal tract, which ends at the mouth and nostrils; we call the part comprising the mouth the oral cavity and the part that leads to the nostrils the nasal cavity.
- In order to learn how the sounds of speech are produced it is necessary to become familiar with the different parts of the vocal tract.
- These different parts are called articulators, and the study of them is called articulatory phonetics.
i)The pharynx is a tube which begins just above the larynx.
ii)The soft palate or velum is seen in the diagram in a position that allows air to pass through the nose and through the mouth.
iii)The hard palate is often called the “roof of the mouth”. You can feel its smooth curved surface with your tongue. A consonant made with the tongue close to the hard palate is called palatal. The sound j in ‘yes’ is palatal.
iv)The alveolar ridge is between the top front teeth and the hard palate. Sounds made with the tongue touching here (such as t, d, n) are called alveolar.
v) The tongue is a very important articulator and it can be moved into many different places and different shapes. Parts of the tongue : tip, blade, front, back and root.
vi) The teeth (upper and lower) only at the front of the mouth, immediately behind the lips. Sounds made with the tongue touching the front teeth, such as English θ, ð, are called dental.
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.
VOWEL AND CONSONANT
- The words vowel and consonant are very familiar ones, but when we study the sounds of speech scientifically we find that it is not easy to define exactly what they mean.
- The most common view is that vowels are sounds in which there is no obstruction to the flow of air as it passes from the larynx to the lips.
Make a vowel like the i: in the English word ‘see’
In making the two vowels described above, it is the front part of the tongue that is raised. We could therefore describe /i:/ and /æ/ as comparatively front vowels.
- There is another important variable of vowel quality, and that is lip-position. Although the lips can have many different shapes and positions, we will at this stage consider only three possibilities. These are:
- Rounded, where the corners of the lips are brought towards each other and the lips pushed forwards. This is most clearly seen in cardinal vowel no. 8 [u].
- Spread, with the corners of the lips moved away from each other, as for a smile. This is most clearly seen in cardinal vowel no. 1 [I].
- Neutral, where the lips are not noticeably rounded or spread. The noise most English people make when they are hesitating (written ‘er’) has neutral lip position.
- English has a large number of vowel sounds; the first ones to be examined are short vowels.
- The symbols for these short vowels are: I,e, ɔ, ʊ, ʌ, Ə and æ. Short vowels are only relatively short; as we shall see later, vowels can have quite different lengths in different contexts.
- Each vowel is described in relation to the cardinal vowels.
- /I/ (example words: ‘bit’, ‘pin’, ‘fish’)
- /e/ (example words: ‘bet’, ‘men’, ‘yes’)
- /æ/ (example words: ‘bat’, ‘man’, ‘gas’)
- /ʌ/ (example words: ‘cut’, ‘come’, ‘rush’)
- /ɔ/ (example words: ‘pot’, ‘gone’, ‘cross’)
- /ʊ/ (example words: ‘put’, ‘pull’, ‘push’)
- There is one other short vowel, for which the symbol is Ə. This central vowel – which is called schwa – is a very familiar sound in English; it is heard in the first syllable of the words ‘about’, ‘oppose’, ‘perhaps’
English Long vowels
If we compare some similar pairs of long and short vowels, for example /i:/ with / I /, or / u: / with /ʊ/, or / æ / with /ɑ:/, /ɜ:/ and /Ə/
- /I:/ (example words: ‘beat’, ‘mean’, ‘peace’)
- /Ə:/ (example words: ‘bird’, ‘fern’, ‘purse’)
- /ɑ:/ (example words: ‘card’, ‘half, ‘pass’)
- /ɔ:/ (example words: ‘board’, ‘torn’, ‘horse’)
- /u:/ (example words: ‘food’, ‘soon’, ‘loose’)
Diphthongs
- The total number of diphthongs is eight (though /uƏ/ is increasingly rare). The easiest way to remember them is in terms of three groups divided as in this diagram
- The centring diphthongs glide towards the /Ə/ (schwa) vowel, as the symbols indicate.
- / lƏ / (example words: ‘beard’, ‘weird’, ‘fierce’) The starting point is a little closer than I in ‘bit’, ‘bin
- /eƏ/ (example words: ‘aired’, ‘cairn’, ‘scarce’) This diphthong begins with a vowel sound that is more open than the e of ‘get’, ‘men’.
- /ʊƏ/ (example words: ‘moored’, ‘tour’, ‘lure’) For speakers who have this diphthong, this has a starting point similar to /ʊ/ in ‘put’, ‘pull’. Many speakers pronounce /ɔ:/ instead.
- The closing diphthongs have the characteristic that they all end with a glide towards a closer vowel.
- Because the second part of the diphthong is weak, they often do not reach a position that could be called close.
- The most complex English sounds of the vowel type are the triphthongs.
- eI + Ə = eIƏ
- Əʊ + Ə = ƏʊƏ
- aI + Ə = aIƏ
- aʊ + Ə = aʊƏ
- ɔi + Ə = ɔiƏ
- However, to help identify these triphthongs, some example words are given here:
- /eIƏ/ ‘layer’, ‘player’ / ƏʊƏ/ ‘lower’, ‘mower’
- /aIƏ/ ‘liar’, ‘fire’ / aʊƏ/ ‘power’, ‘hour’
- /ɔiƏ/ ‘loyal’, ‘royal’
PRACTICE
Transcribe to the phonetic transcription
1.Cure : _________
2. Court: ____________
3.Shirt : _________
4. flirt : _________
5.Fine : _________
6. tired : _________
7.Sure : _________
8. these : _________
9.Teeth : _________
10. feet : _________
11.Foot : _________
12. food : _________
13.Fat : _________
14. port : _________
15. Dear : _________
16. fly : _________
17. Mean : _________
18. man : _________
19. Shark : _________
20. For : _________
