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Teaching Phonetics:�Theory and Practice��December 19, 2021 at JOSEPH UPATHAM SCHOOL (Online Training)

Asst.Prof.Dr.Udomkrit Srinon

Department of English, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Science

Kasetsart University, Kamphaeng Saen Campus

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Outline of presentation is mainly based on the work of Delahunty and Garvey (The English Language: From Sound to Sense, 2010)�

Introduction of phonetics and phonology
Key concepts

Articulatory phonetics, phonetic symbols (IPA)
Consonants, vowels
Syllables, feet
Phonology, phonemes, allophones, phonological rules
Conclusion

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Phonetics (สัทศาสตร์)

Phonetics (สัทศาสตร์) is a system for describing and recording the sounds of language objectively.
Phonetics (สัทศาสตร์) provides a valuable way of opening our ears to facets of language that we tend to understand by reference to their written rather than their actual spoken forms.
Phonology (สัทวิทยา) concerns itself with the ways in which languages make use of sounds to distinguish words from each other.

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Teachers should be knowledgeable about the phonetics (สัทศาสตร์) and phonology (สัทวิทยา) of English because;

the sound system is primary and the basis for the spelling system;
they may have to teach English pronunciation to students who are not native speakers of English;
they may have to teach poetry, which requires that they teach about rhyme, alliteration, assonance, and other poetic devices that manipulate sound;

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it is important to understand accents and language variation and to react appropriately to them and to teach appropriate language attitudes about them to students;

we are so literate that we tend to “hear” the sounds of our language through its spelling system, and phonetics/phonology provides a corrective to that; and

phonetics and phonology provide systematic and well-founded understandings of the sound patterns of English

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Articulatory phonetics

Introduce you to the ways in which the sounds of English are produced.
Second, we develop a system for classifying speech sounds on the basis of how they are produced.
Simultaneously we introduce an alphabet approximating that developed by the International Phonetics Association (IPA), which will allow us to refer to sounds quite precisely.
When we want to indicate that letters are to be interpreted as phonetic symbols, we enclose them in square brackets, [ ], and when we want to indicate that letters are to be interpreted as letters from an ordinary spelling system, we enclose them in angled brackets, < >.

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Gustavo Andrade - Miranda 2017

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David Hill 1980

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Kartazyna Pisanski 2014

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Amanda Lillet, nd

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The phonetic alphabet uses many of the letters of the English alphabet, but their pronunciations are very restricted and are not always the ones you might expect.
In this system, there are no “silent” letters—every phonetic symbol represents an actual sound.
Every letter always has the same pronunciation regardless of its context, no letter has more than one pronunciation, and no sounds are represented by more than one letter.

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To make fine distinctions, phoneticians add special symbols, called diacritics, to the basic letters. For some English sounds and for languages other than English, symbols not from the English alphabet have been devised. (You might visit the IPA web site for a full listing of the symbols.)

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In the sections to follow, we describe the sounds represented by these symbols and how these sounds are made.

As we go through these sections, pay attention to the ways in which individual sounds are ordinarily spelled in English, as well as to the phonetic spellings.

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To produce speech, air must flow from the lungs through the vocal tract, which includes the vocal folds (popularly called the vocal cords, though they are more like thick elastic bands than strings), the nose or nasal cavity, and the mouth or oral cavity (See Figure 1).

The vocal folds vibrate for some sounds but not for others. Air flows through the nose for certain sounds but not others. But the main creator of speech sounds is the mouth. We will describe the roles that each of these elements plays in the following paragraphs.

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consonants

Consonants include the sounds we represent as in the ordinary alphabet. All consonants are produced by entirely or almost entirely stopping the airstream coming from the lungs. When we almost entirely stop the airstream we force it through such a narrow opening that the airflow at that point is turbulent and noisy.

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We classify consonants according to the following characteristics: (a) whether or not the vocal folds are vibrating (voicing); (b) whether the sound is made with a fully stopped or merely constricted airstream (its manner of articulation); (c) where in the mouth the stoppage or constriction is made (its place of articulation); (d) whether or not air is flowing through the nasal cavity (nasality); and (e) whether or not the lips are pursed (liprounding).

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Voicing

As a warm-up exercise, make the sound fffff, and keep it going for a count of five. Now make the sound vvvvv, and keep it going for a count of five. Now alternate these two: fffffvvvvvfffffvvvvv. You probably noticed that vvvvv had a “buzz” that fffff did not have.
That “buzz” is caused by the vibrating of your vocal folds—which you can check by putting your fingers on your throat or by covering your ears as you alternate fffff and vvvvv. Now try the same exercises with the first sounds of the following words: thigh, thy; sip, zip. You should be able to feel the vocal folds vibrate as you make the second sound of each pair.

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Sounds produced with vibrating vocal folds (see Figure 1) are said to be voiced; those produced without vocal cord vibration are voiceless. Table 1 lists the voiced and voiceless consonants of English. The letters in [ ] are the phonetic symbols for the sounds.

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Voiced	Voiceless
by [b] my [m] wet [w] vie [v] thy [ð] die [d] nigh [n] zip [z] lie [l] rye [r] beige [ʒ] jive [dʒ] yet [j] guide [g] gong [ŋ]	pie [p] fie [f] thigh [θ ] tie [t] sip [s] bash [ʃ ] chive [tʃ ] kite [k] hive [h]

Table 1: voiced and voiceless consonants �

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Consonant sounds

p pen /pen/ b bad /bæd/ t tae /tiː/ d did /did/ k cat /kæt/ g got /ɡɒt/ tʃ chin /tʃɪn/ dʒ June /dʒuːn/ f fall /fɔːl/ v voice /vɔɪs/ θ thin /θɪn/ ð then /ðen/	s so /sou/ z zoo /zuː/ ʃ she /ʃiː/ ʒ vision /ˈvɪʒ.ən/ h how /haʊ/ m man /mæn/ n no /nou/ ŋ sing /sɪŋ/ l leg /leg/ r red /red/ j yes /jes/ w wet /wet/

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e went /went/ æ cat /kæt/ ʌ fun /fʌn/ ʊ put /pʊt/ ɒ rob /rɒb/ ə live /lɪv/ i: need /niːd/ ɜ: nurse /nɜːs/ ɔ: talk /tɔːk/ u: few /fjuː/ ɑ: fast /fɑːst/	ɪə near /nɪər/ eə hair /heər/ eɪ face /feɪs/ ɔɪ joy /dʒɔɪ/ aɪ my /maɪ/ əʊ alone /əˈləʊn/ aʊ mouth /maʊθ/

Vowel sounds

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Nasality

Make the sound represented by <m> in the word Pam and continue it for some seconds. As you continue it, pinch your nose and observe what happens to the sound. It should stop immediately. This shows that air was flowing through your nose as you produced this sound. Now try the same little experiment with the <n> of pan and the <ng> of pang. You should find that the air flows through the nose in these two cases also. Sounds in which air flows through the nose are called nasal sounds. The air is allowed into the nose by lowering the velum, the soft palate at the back of the mouth (see Figure 1). English has three main nasal sounds:

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[m] Pam clammy mat
[n] pan clannish Nat
[ŋ] pang clingy ---

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Manner of articulation

By manner of articulation we mean the kind of closure or constriction used in making the sound. We classify English consonants according to three manners of articulation: stops (full stoppage of the airstream somewhere in the oral cavity between the vocal folds and the lips, as in [p], [b], [m]); fricatives (constriction of the airstream in the oral cavity producing turbulence and noise, as in [f], [v]); affricates (full stoppage of the airstream followed immediately by constriction, as in [tʃ ], [dʒ]). Table 2 summarizes the different manners of articulation

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Stops

[p] pad [b] bad [m] mat

[t] tad [d] dad [n] Nat

[k] cad [g] gad [ng] tang

Fricatives

[f] fie [v] vie

[θ] thigh [ð] thy

[s] Sue [z] zoo

[ʃ ] shoe [ʒ] jus (au jus)

[h] how

Affricates

[tʃ ] chin

[dʒ] gin

Table 2: manners of articulation �

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Place of articulation

By place of articulation we mean the area in the mouth at which the consonantal closure or constriction occurs. English uses only seven places of articulation (see Figure 1) which we describe and illustrate below.

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Bilabial sounds are made by bringing both lips together to stop the airstream:

[p] pie cupping cup
[b] by clubbing cub
[m] my coming come

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Labiodental sounds are made by bringing the top teeth into contact with the bottom lip and forcing air between the two to create the fricatives:

[f] feel raffle tough
[v] veal ravel dove

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Interdental sounds are made by placing the tip of the tongue between the top and bottom teeth and forcing air through. Again, these are both fricatives:

[θ] thigh ether mouth bath (noun)
[ð] thy either mouth bathe (verb)

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Alveolar sounds are made by bringing the tongue and the alveolar ridge (the bony ridge just behind the top teeth) together to create either a stop or fricative:

[t] tub boating boat
[d] dub boding bode
[n] knit boning bone
[s] sip fussy grace
[z] zip fuzzy graze
[r] rip terror tear

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(Alveo-)palatal sounds are made by bringing the blade of the tongue to, or close to, the alveo-palatal area of the roof of the mouth to create fricatives and affricates:

[ʃ] sure vicious rush
[ʒ] genre vision rouge
[tʃ ] chin catcher etch
[dʒ] gin edger edge

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Velar sounds are created by stopping the airstream by bringing the back of the tongue into contact with the velum:

[k] could backer tuck
[g] good bagger tug
[ŋ] ------ banger tongue

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Glottal sounds are created by either narrowing the vocal folds sufficiently to create a fricative or closing them to create a stop:

[h] hat cahoots
[?] butter (some varieties of English)

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Vowels

Vowels include the sounds we ordinarily represent as the letters , as well as a number of other sounds for which the ordinary alphabet has no unique symbols.
Vowels are distinguished from consonants in several ways. As we have seen, consonants are produced by constricting the airstream to various degrees as it flows through the oral tract. Vowels are produced with a smooth, unobstructed airflow through the oral tract.

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Differences in vowel quality are produced by different shapes of the oral cavity. Characteristic vowel qualities are determined by (a) the height of the tongue in the mouth; (b) the part of the tongue raised (front, middle, or back); (c) the configuration of the lips; and (d) the tension of the muscles of the oral tract. An articulatory description of a vowel must include all of these features.

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Tongue height

Pronounce the words eat and at. Now pronounce just the vowels of these two words. Notice that as you go from the vowel of eat to the vowel of at, your mouth opens. If this is not obvious to you just by playing with these two vowels, look in a mirror as you produce them. Alternate the words, and then just the two vowels.

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Once you’ve become accustomed to the different degrees of openness of these two vowels, pronounce ate between eat and at. The degree of openness of its vowel falls between those of eat and at, so there is a continuous increase in mouth openness as you go from one vowel to another. These degrees distinguish high, mid, and low vowels. We will use the following symbols for this sequence of vowels:

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(1) eat [i] High

ate [e] Mid

at [æ] Low

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Front and back vowels

Now compare the vowel of beat with that of boot. Alternate the words, and then just the vowels. It will be more difficult this time to monitor the activities of your tongue as you shift from one of these to the other, but try anyway.
You produce the [i] of beat with the front (blade) of your tongue raised toward your palate. If you draw in your breath as you make this vowel, you will feel the cold air against your palate. As you shift from [i] to [u], the vowel of boot, you will find yourself raising the back of your tongue. (You will also find yourself pursing (rounding) your lips, but disregard this for the moment.) Because of the relative positions at which these vowels are made in the mouth, phoneticians call [i] and the other vowels in (1) front vowels, and [u] a back vowel.

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The back vowels, like the front ones, descend from high, through mid, to low, in a continuous sequence. You can observe this by pronouncing the words coot, coat, and cot, and then just their vowels. As you produce this series of vowels you’ll find your mouth opening (monitor your lower jaw) as you go from coot to coat to cot. We use the following symbols for these back vowels:

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(2) coot High

coat [o] Mid

cot Low

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We combine these two series of vowels in Table 4: �

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Lip rounding

As you compared [i] and [u] you probably noticed that your lips changed shape as you shifted from the front vowel to the back one. Your lips were rounded as you produced [u]. They were unrounded (spread or neutral) as you produced [i].
As you moved through the series of back vowels you may also have noticed that lip rounding decreased as you moved from high to low. In fact the lips are unrounded during the pronunciation of . In English, the only rounded vowels are back, though many languages, such as French and German, have rounded front vowels.

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Intermediate vowels �

First, pronounce the words meat, mitt, mate, met, and mat. Then pronounce just their vowels: �

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You may have noticed that all of the example words we have used to exemplify the vowels we have distinguished consist of a single syllable. This is because vowels in multi-syllabic words can differ from those in monosyllables, and we wanted to compare vowels in similar contexts. We have now distinguished the following vowels: �

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Not all American English speakers distinguish [O] and [A] in all contexts. �

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Vowels in multi-syllabic words

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We can present the vowels as we presented the consonants, on a chart indicating their articulatory properties. �

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Diphthongs

We have approached vowels as if they were articulated by a specific configuration of the tongue, lips, and oral cavity, which is held constant throughout their pronunciation. Vowels made like this are called monophthongs; others, called diphthongs, involve a change in the configuration of the mouth.

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A second set of English diphthongs is not as clearly distinguished as the�first, primarily because we tend to perceive them as simple vowels. However,�in a precise (narrow) phonetic transcription they must be represented as�diphthongs. The tense front vowel [e] is diphthongized. If you listen carefully you will notice that the vowel of bate is actually pronounced [ei]. The�tense back vowel [o] is also diphthongized: if you listen carefully you will�notice that the vowel of boat is actually pronounced [ou]. So, the front tense�vowel is diphthongized by the addition of a front vowel and the back tense�vowel is diphthongized by the addition of a back vowel. We can express this�pattern as a rule: Mid and high tense vowels are diphthongized by the addition�of a high lax vowel that matches the original vowel in frontness or backness. �

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Diphthongization of these vowels is a feature of English rather than a�universal feature of natural language. Other languages, notably Spanish and German, do not diphthongize their corresponding vowels. The tendency to diphthongize these vowels is one characteristic of the “foreign accent” that betrays English speakers when they begin to learn these languages. �

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Syllables and feet

It’s a lot easier to count syllables than to give them a satisfactory definition. If the entire class were to count the syllables in this paragraph, there would be considerable agreement about the number, but probably not about where each syllable begins and ends.
The fact that syllabic writing systems developed before alphabetic systems suggests that syllables are very salient linguistic units. That children seem to be able to associate symbols with syllables before they can associate symbols with phonetic segments also points to the importance of the syllable.

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Every syllable (symbolized as $) consists of at least a nucleus (symbolized as N), which is typically a vowel. The nucleus may be preceded by an onset (symbolized as O), consisting of one or more consonants, and followed by a coda (symbolized as C), again consisting of one or more consonants. The nucleus and the coda together make up a unit called the rhyme (R). The diagram (3) illustrates the constituent of the single-syllable word then.

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Because vowels are high in sonority, a syllable nucleus is usually a vowel.�However, a consonant with high sonority, such as may also be�a nucleus. The sonority level of a syllable thus rises from the onset (if there�is one) up to a peak in the nucleus and falls off again in the coda. In this�respect, the onset and coda are (almost) mirror images of each other. �

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Parts of syllables may be repeated for poetic effects. Of these repetitions, rhyme is the most important: it involves repeating the rhyme of syllables, usually at the ends of lines, as the rhyming words in the following stanza show: �
(4) Piping down the valleys wild,�Piping songs of pleasant glee,�On a cloud I saw a child,�And he laughing said to me:�(William Blake, Introduction to Songs of Innocence) �

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The syllable onsets, [w] of wild, of child, of glee, and [m] of me are�not part of Blake’s rhymes.
Repeating onsets, or first sounds in onsets, as in then and there, creates�alliteration. Repeating nuclei, as in Mikey likes it, or the incredible edible egg�creates assonance.
In speech, syllables are combined into rhythmic units called feet, which�are also of considerable importance in scanning lines of poetry. Each foot�consists of at least one stressed syllable (its energy peak) and one or two unstressed syllables. Feet are differentiated from each other by the number of stressed syllables they contain and by the position of the stressed (S) syllable(s) relative to other syllables in the foot. In (5), S represents a stressed syllable and U an unstressed one; the stressed syllable of each example word is bolded. ��

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(5) Iambic: [U S] today�Trochaic: [S U] trochee�Anapestic: [U U S] intervene�Dactylic: [S U U] personal�Spondaic: [S S] good news �

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In English, stressed syllables tend to be approximately equally far apart in time; as a result unstressed syllables may be articulated slower or faster, depending on the type of foot. (See Beers (2003: 339)

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Phonology �

While phonetics is the study of the ways in which speech sounds are produced, phonology is the study of (1) how the speech sounds of a language are used in that language to distinguish meaningful units (such as words) from each other, and (2) how sounds are patterned in a language. Consequently, the study of phonology requires us to take meaning into consideration, while phonetics does not. In this section we explore phonology and the basic unit of phonological analysis, the phoneme. ��

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Phonemes �

You might reasonably have assumed that whenever speakers distinguish between a pair of sounds, they will use that difference to distinguish between words. For example, we know that English speakers distinguish between [s] and [z], and we use this difference to signal the difference between the words sip and zip.

�

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We will say that [s] and [z] contrast with each other in English.�In fact, all of the sounds we have described so far contrast with each other in English and so are used by English speakers to distinguish words from each other.
You can test this out by taking any pair of sounds (as we took [s] and [z]) and creating a pair of words (like sip and zip) which are identical, except that where one has one sound, the other has the other sound, just as where sip has [s], zip has [z].
Pairs of words like this are called minimal pairs, and are used to demonstrate that pairs of sounds are used in a language to distinguish words from each other. Sound units that distinguish words from each other are called phonemes. We enclose phonemes in / / (e.g., /s/, /z/)�to distinguish them from sounds ([s], [z]) and ordinary letters (<s>, <z>).

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Allophones �

Now listen to the vowels in the words cat and cad. Are they identical or different? We hope you said “different.” Can you now say how they differ? We hope you said that one was longer than the other. Now listen to the consonants after the vowels. Are these the same or different? Again, we hope you said different, and that you know that [t] is voiceless and [d] is voiced. Now, which vowel, the longer or the shorter, precedes [d] and which precedes [t]?�We hope you said that the longer vowel precedes the voiced consonant. ��

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Are the two vowels similar in any way? Again, we hope you said that they seem to be longer and shorter versions of the same vowel, . Let’s use [:] to indicate extra length. So, the vowel before voiceless is just , but the one before voiced [d] is . �

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Now let’s listen to some more word pairs like cat and cad: �

Now let’s listen to some more word pairs like cat and cad:��

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Listen to the vowels in each pair. You should hear that the vowel in the second word in each pair is a little longer than the vowel in the first.
Now determine the similarities and differences between the consonants�after the vowels in each word pair. You should find that the consonant in the�first word is the voiceless version of the consonant in the second word.
Turning our attention again to the vowels in each word pair: how are�they related? We hope you said that they were very similar vowels, specifically, short and long versions of the same vowel.
You should now be able to determine a very general rule of English.�When are vowels lengthened and when are they not lengthened?
Your answer should be something along the lines of: English vowels are�lengthened when they occur before a voiced consonant; otherwise they are not�lengthened. �

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Phonemes and allophones �

A good way to think about a phoneme is as a group of phonetically similar�sounds that are treated as members of the same sound category. Because the�members of a sound category are treated as “the same sound” in a language,�they cannot be used for communicating differences in meaning. English�speakers treat and [t] as belonging to the same sound category, so they�cannot be used to distinguish one word from another.
Different phonemes are different categories of sounds and the differences among these categories can signal differences in meaning. English speakers treat [t] and [d] as�belonging to different sound categories—/t/ and /d/, respectively—and so these can be used to differentiate one word from another. ��

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Sound categories are abstractions. We can only perceive them when one�of their members is pronounced. The sounds that make up the category are�called the allophones of that phoneme. Thus [t] and are allophones of�the English phoneme /t/. Notice that the individual sound symbols are the�same as those we used for phonetics, but to distinguish phonology from�phonetics, we enclose phonemes in slanted brackets / / and use square�brackets [ ] for phonetic notation. Perhaps the following diagram will help.�It represents the phoneme /u/ and two of its allophones: �

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That is, the phoneme /u/ is pronounced in (at least) two ways, [u] and [u:],depending upon its context. Table 8 lists the phonemes of English. �

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As you have no doubt noticed, there are nearly 40 phonemes of English (the number varies somewhat from dialect to dialect), while there are only 26 letters in the English alphabet. This is one of the reasons why the alphabet appears to fit the language so poorly. �

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Allophones and their contexts �

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Phonological rules �

As we saw above, a phonological rule is a general statement about the�distribution of a phoneme’s allophones, e.g., those of /t/. There are several�types of phonological rules to represent the several patterns of distribution�of sounds in a language.
The rule for the allophone of /t/ can be seen as adding extra breathiness after the release of a voiceless stop. This rule adds the aspiration feature�to the consonant. Such rules are referred to as feature addition rules. �

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The study of phonology shows that languages make use of unpredictable units (phonemes) to differentiate words from each other. It also shows that languages employ very general patterns of sounds. By representing the general, predictable patterns as phonological rules, we leave only that information which is unpredictable and idiosyncratic to be listed in the set of�phonemes.

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This way we minimize the number of basic phonemic units we�need to posit; we also minimize the number of times any given piece of information is mentioned, thus simplifying the overall grammar or description of the language. For example, English has two series of vowels, those with and those without nasalization. The nasalized vowels occur only before nasal consonants; the non-nasalized ones occur everywhere else. If we merely listed all these vowels as belonging to the language, then we would have postulated far more basic units than we—or native speakers—really need.