Phonetics ~ Class 6

CD 233

Lisa Lavoie

(there is no class 5)

Today’s goals

Discuss exam

Recap course structure and progress

Learn the definition and major areas of linguistics

Explore helpful linguistics concepts

Get ready to study Clinical Phonetics

The three chunks of our course

1. Broad transcription

2. Articulation I’m including Linguistics here

3. Narrow transcription/variation

You’ve been learning how to:

Use phonetic symbols to transcribe speech accurately

Listen to unfamiliar sounds and categories of sounds (ear training)

Have you changed how you listen to your world? To family? Friends? Strangers?

The task of transcription

Seems clerical (it’s applied)

But you find order in chaos!

Transcription uncovers generalizations that casual listening misses

Must continue ear training and accuracy

Must add articulatory component now

Where we go next

Now we move to how sounds are articulated

Both more embodied and more theoretical

Train your brain to understand the connection between a change in articulation and the change in sound so you can figure out what people are doing to make the sounds you hear

Continue transcribing to make sense of pronunciation variation

First, a stopover in linguistics

Scientific study of language

Well, what’s language? A system that uses some physical sign

(sound, gesture, mark) to express meaning Examples: spoken languages, signed

languages, computer programming languages

Linguist Attitudes

Lisa says: “I’m not cooking for a chef.”

Others say: “I’m not talking for a linguist.”

Sociologists don’t study how societies should be, but rather how they are

Physiologists study athletic endeavors but athletes carry them out

Humans: the only language users

Other animals communicate Bees inform other bees where food is

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7ijI-g4jHg

Cats arch their backs to scare other cats Chimps can learn primitive sign language to

communicate desires

Humans: the only language users

Humans can separate vocalization/signs from a given situation (cats only arch back in appropriate situation)

Humans can lie (animals only report)

Humans can speculate (animals are bad at counterfactuals)

Is it really only humans?

Alex the African Grey Parrot http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXoTaZotdHg

Washoe the Chimpanzee http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V_rAY0g9DM

Koko the Gorilla http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNuZ4OE6vCk

Three main parts of linguistics

Language form or structure = grammar

Language meaning = semantics

Language in context = pragmatics

What linguists do

Explicitly describe linguistic knowledge Explain how linguistic knowledge is acquired

and how it is used

Language form = grammar

Parts of grammar Phonology (sound structure) Morphology (word structure) Syntax (sentence structure)

& Semantics (language meaning)

Creativity of language

Linguistic knowledge enables all speakers to be very creative (and consistent) using their language

…produce & understand sentences they’ve never heard before

…judge whether Ss belong to their language …form new words from words they’ve never

heard before …adjust foreign words to fit

Preludes to linguistics

Three dichotomies: Prescriptive vs. descriptive Competence vs. performance Function word vs. content word

They help us see what’s systematic and what’s idiosyncratic

Prescriptive vs. descriptive

Prescriptive grammar How you’re supposed to speak Holds people to a standard (often arbitrary) “Linguistic purism”

Descriptive grammar How people actually speak No value judgments attached

Be prescriptive … aggravate

It’s the endless wait for luggage that aggravates me about air travel.

Getting hit on the head by a brick aggravated my already painful headache.

Be prescriptive … amount

The elephant drank an amazing amount of water.

The elephant sprayed that water at an amazing amount of spectators.

Be prescriptive … between

We shared the money between Anna, Bob and me

The duck swam between the reeds

You’ll find my brain between my ears

The house was built between the pine trees

Be prescriptive … hopefully

“Hopefully, I shall be spared the guillotine,” thought the prisoner.

Hopefully, the prisoner approached the guillotine. His hope was misplaced. So was his head.

Be prescriptive … unique

Fenway Park is unique.

Massachusetts has many unique baseball fields.

None of those may be more unique than the field that Braintree High calls home

Competence vs. performance

Competence is the system of linguistic knowledge possessed by native speakers of a language (idealized)

Performance is the way the language system is used in communication

How would you study that?

How would you study someone’s linguistic competence?

How would you study someone’s linguistic performance?

What kinds of constraints do you find on each of these?

Content word vs. function word

Which words are which?

Open class vs. closed class

Special qualities of function words with respect to phonetics and their ability to reduce in connected speech

Content words

Content words are words that have a culturally shared meaning in labeling an object or action

Content words are necessary to convey an idea to someone else

They are an “open” class

Function words are the glue

Function words are like thumbtacks. We don’t notice thumbtacks; we look at the calendar or poster they are holding up. If we were to take the tacks away, the calendar or poster would fall down. From Aronoff & Fudeman

Take away the function words

And speech would be hard to understand because we wouldn’t know the relationships between words

What could these sentences be?

people low self-esteem earned

book children book kid read

With function words

“Most people with low self-esteem have earned it.” George Carlin

“Every book is a children's book if the kid can read.” Mitch Hedberg

Function words reduce more

Phonemes: f o r It’s for hand combat vs. it’s forehand combat

Phonemes: h I m Sing him a song vs. Sing hymn or song

Phonemes: t u Go to pieces vs. go two paces

Phonemes: t + ju They’ll get you vs. They’ll get unionized

Levels in linguistics

Language is organized into levelsFamiliarity with the levels helps pinpoint

a client’s problemFrom narrowest to widest… bottom to

top... smallest to largest …Phonetics, phonology, morphology,

syntax, semantics, pragmatics

Phonetics

What we have been doing!

Studying the physical phenomena of sound / quantifiable reality

Articulatory

Acoustic

Auditory

Phonology

The study of how sounds pattern within and across languages

Function, behavior and organization of sounds Each language has an inventory of abstract

phonemes and rules Rules combine phonemes into legal

(sequences, clusters, syllables) words of the language

Phonological rules

Example rules: an English word can… End, but not begin, with engma Begin, but not end, with h or j or w

Phonological rules reveal themselves when borrowed foreign words are adjusted Spanish borrowing of “switch” or “strike” Japanese Starbucks as “sutarubukusu” Sbarro restaurant pronunciation

Try out some phonology

The plural “s” sounds different depending on the sound that precedes it

Cat + s

Dog + s

Fish + s

General awareness of plural sound

Aware Not aware

Morphology

Study of “shape” borrowed from biology

The study of the internal structure of words

A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit, including root words, prefixes, suffixes (and a couple of sketchy infixes)

Words

Many morphemes are words on their own, too

Approx 3 million words in English; ~200K in common use

Un-do some morphology

Separate these words into morphemes… Cats, untrue, rejoin, woodchuck, Signpost, spacious, squirrel, fewest Massachusetts, tricycle, thickeners, unspeakably, incompletely Bess’s, unionize, hymnal, museum, Vermont, government

The Wug Test

Have you heard of this before?

What does it test?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElabA5YICsA http://blog.onbeing.org/post/12115178026/sunday-morning-exercise-take-the-wug-test

Inflectional morphemes

The endings we add for specific situations (plural, possessive, tense, 3rd singular -s)

Present progressive “-ing”

Plural “-s”

Possessive “ ’s”

3rd person singular “s” (she writes)

Regular past “-ed”

Irregular past tense forms (went, brought)

English informal infixing

Make the following more intensive Unbelievable Absolutely

Syntax

Principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences of a language

What are the possible strings of word in your language?

Is word order “free” or “fixed”?Subject + Verb + ObjectHow do you form questions from

statements?

Try out some adjectival syntax

Here are four sentences. Make them into one.

I want to buy a blue car.

I want to buy a new car.

I want to buy a European car.

I want to buy a beautiful car.

Try out more adjectival syntax (1)

Chip wants a (stone, square, gray) coffee table

The ambassador took a (European, 2-week, exhausting) tour.

These are (chocolate chip, delicious, miniature) cookies! 

Try out more adjectival syntax (2)

Isabella prefers (leather, Italian, black) furniture. 

Archeologists get very excited when they find (animal, large, prehistoric) bones. 

Kittens love to chase (laser, red, fast) light.

Try out some interrogative syntax

Here are some statements.

Transform them into questions.

Write the “rules” you used She is a guest. You are a student. He has a sister.

Now make these into questions

Donna sings doo-wop.

Dick does dishes.

What rule do you need now?

Yoda

Probably the single most important “individual” to draw attention to word order

How does Yoda talk?Or … describe Yoda’s syntax

Yoda statements

Still much to learn, there is.

Obi Wan, my choice is.

To fight Lord Sidious, strong enough you are not.

Not far, are we, from the emergency ship.

To a dark place, this line of thought will carry us.

Stink, this mud does.

When you look at the dark side, careful you must be ... for the dark side looks back.

Semantics is Language Meaning

The study of meaning that is used to understand human expression through language

Meanings of individual words and combinations of words

Meaning is the conditions under which a sentence is true (“the truth conditions”)

There can still be ambiguity in interpretation

Humorous ambiguity

I just met the old Irishman and his son, coming out of the toilet.

I wouldn’t have thought there was room for the two of them.

No silly, I mean I was coming out of the toilet. They were waiting.

Groucho Marx line

In his movie Animal Crackers

“One morning, I shot an elephant in my pajamas; how he got into my pajamas, I’ll never know.”

#53 on list of top 100 movie quotes

Try out some ambiguity

Combination of syntax and semantics Mary claims that John saw her duck. Flying planes can be dangerous Every man loves a motorcycle. The French teacher is beautiful. Look at the man in the chair with the broken leg. I just went to the bathroom and man was it big.

Pragmatics

The contribution of context to meaning

The relationships between linguistic forms and the users of those forms, Yule

All meaning may not actually be there in the words and different speakers may mean different things

Pragmatics is language in context

Three major communication areas…

• Using language

• Changing language

• Following rules

Pragmatics may challenge people on the autism spectrum, and adults who’ve had a brain injury or stroke

Pragmatics

Use language for certain purpose Greet, inform, demand, promise, request Routinized language, hi/thanks/goodbye http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj4HLySvJfw

Change language for the situation Baby, unfamiliar, playground/classroom

Follow rules for conversations and story telling Take turns, stay on topic, rephrase, make eye

contact, respect personal space

People with pragmatic problems

Say inappropriate or unrelated thingsTell stories in a disorganized wayHave little variety in language useMay have lowered social acceptance!

Try out some pragmatics

To fully understand spoken utterances, must take context into account … give me some contexts for these

“It’s hot in here”

“Can you reach the ketchup?”

“Are you gonna eat that?

“Do you like this show?”

Train station pragmatics

Which track is the 11 am train from Philadelphia coming in on?

I’m wondering which track the 11 am from Philadelphia is coming in on

Uh…the 11 am from Philadelphia The train from Philadelphia I have a friend who lives in Philadelphia Same answer to all: Track 8

Combination fields

Using the different parts of linguistics with or in other fields of inquiry

Historical linguistics, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, sociolinguistics, computational linguistics, forensic linguistics

Clinical linguistics

Historical linguistics

How languages change over time

For ex., how Latin evolved into all of the Romance languages

Phonetics example for us: How did “newt” come from “ewt?” How did “apron” come from “napron?”

Contested historical linguistics

“Ultraconserved” words

Proto-Eurasiatic, 15,000 years ago

“You, hear me! Give this fire to that old man. Pull the black worm off the bark and give it to the mother. And no spitting in the ashes!”

Psycholinguistics

Language as a psychological phenomenon

How we acquire language

How we assemble our speech (and writing)

How we understand others

How we store and use vocabulary

Neurolinguistics

Language in the brain

Studying processing patterns

What happens to language when particular regions of the brain are injured? Aphasias

Sociolinguistics

The study of language and society

Effects of society on how language is used

What clues can language give to the social situation?

How do people mark or try to change their social status through speech?

Computational linguistics

How computers mimic speech production (speech synthesis)

How computers mimic speech perception (speech recognition)

Finding generalizations over huge quantities of data (using computers)

Forensic linguistics

Application of linguistic knowledge, methods, and insights to the law Understanding the language of the law Understanding language use in forensic

and judicial process Providing linguistic evidence

A varied field with varied practitioners

Clinical linguistics

Applies linguistic theory to the field of communication disorders

Uses linguistics to describe, analyze, and treat language disabilities

Clinical Phonetics An area in its own right Application of phonetics to disorders

Applied linguistics

Interdisciplinary field

Identifies, investigates, offers solutions to language-related real-life problems.

Related fields: education, psychology, computer science, communication research, anthropology, and sociology

Applying sociolinguistics

A Revere, Mass. firefighter had a stroke

Will you worry in therapy that he cannot produce /r/ in all positions of the word?

Will you worry that he lost the distinction between “cot” and “caught”?

Not necessarily! You take his variety of English into account

Clinical phonetics

Application of phonetics to development and disorders

Perception and production of speech sounds

Acoustic, articulatory, auditory, appliedMust acquire skill in perception to

understand what’s going on with clients

Scoring in clinical phonetics

See the “cube” sheet from your book Linguistic complexity

Sound in isolation Word Sentences Continuous speech

More complex to produce = more complex to evaluate

Scoring, cont.

Response Complexity Single vs. Multiple Sound(s)

System Complexity Two-way scoring Five-way scoring Infinite scoring = phonetic transcription

Two-way scoring

Right vs. wrong ~ or ~

Typical vs. atypical ~ or ~

Socially acceptable vs. unacceptable

Five-way scoring

Correct (everyone forgets this one)

Substitution

Omission

Distortion

Addition