Katie Welch, PhDLING 3311, Section 001

University of Texas at Arlington

Phonetics is the study of _________________ What is the IPA? Why is it needed? What is meant by pulmonic egressive

airstream mechanism? Consonants are described by what three

characteristics? In what order? What is the difference between a vowel

and a consonant? What is the difference between a fricative

and an affricate? What change occurs in the vocal tract to

produce a nasal sound?

Reminder

Articulation

Humans are fallible. Therefore, our assessments of articulation are only approximations. We must employ more precise, scientific

methods to verify that our intuitions are correct.

Consonants: Place and Manner of ArticulationPalatography=picture of where the tongue

touches the roof of the mouthStatic Palatography (black dye)Dynamic Palatography

(electropalatography) Vowel Articulation

X-ray (not used as much because of safety reasons)

MRI= Magnetic Resonance ImagingEMA=Electromagnetic Articulography

Study Holds Promise for Patients Silenced by StrokeCallier Center Researcher Using Rare Machine to Track Speech MovementsMarch 3, 2008

To say the word “slant,” the tongue must touch a bit behind the teeth. For the word “boot,” the mouth must be pursed.

Although automatic to most people, speech is a complex process of tongue, mouth and jaw, a combination of body parts known as the articulatory organs, which, because they are inside the mouth, are difficult to observe in action.

“In the past scientists used candle soot to mark the placement of these organs in making words,” said Dr. William F. Katz, a professor of communications disorders at the UT Dallas Callier Center, in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Today Katz is using an Electromagnetic Articulograph (EMA) to see inside patients’ mouths to track their speech movements. The EMA is a machine so rare that there are only about 40 in the world, but it holds out promise as a therapy tool for people who have lost the ability to speak. The Callier Center has two of these advanced machines. With a three-year grant from the Department of Veterans Affairs, Katz is using the machine to treat stroke victims.

Wearing a halo apparatus over their heads, the patients sit in front of computer screens. Small sensors attached to thin wires are placed inside their mouths. As they struggle to form words, magnified images of their mouth movements appear on the screen before them. The EMA machine helps patients with motor learning by showing them how to position their tongues to create speech sounds – a process that Katz calls “physical therapy for speech.”

Most of the people Katz sees at the Callier Center suffer from Apraxia of Speech (AOS). This disorder is marked by an inability to perform voluntary movements of the articulatory organs, which are necessary to produce spoken language. So even though they understand language, some stroke survivors may not be able to produce any words at all or may say the wrong words instead.

However, the EMA is not a magic bullet and is very expensive, costing $50,000 to $80,000.

“It takes a lot of time to fix broken speech, but this machine is giving us an important new tool,” said Katz. “The VA has a long history of funding cutting-edge research, and we could not do the work we are doing without its support.”

Articulation

Think of your native language and/or other languages that you speak besides English.

What vowel sounds does your language have that English does not have?

Can you find them on the IPA chart on the back cover of the book?

Do you speak a language that has nasalized vowels?

Length, Intonation, Tone, Stress

Segments Suprasegments

Individual sounds Includes tongue

height and advancement, manner and place of articulation, lip rounding, etc.

Can be identified by viewing a single segment

Supra- means ‘over’ or ‘above’

These are things that “ride on top of” individual sounds

Include length, intonation, tone, and stress

Almost impossible to identify in single segment

Some speech sounds are longer than others

A relative variation In some languages, differences in length

are meaningful Finnish example (p. 64) Inherent differences in sounds

(voiceless consonants longer than voiced consonants)

Surrounding sounds can influence (beat vs. bead)

Pattern of pitch movements across a stretch of speech (such as a sentence)

Intonation can affect meaning. You got an A on the testWhat a beautiful cake

Pitch Accent: A change in frequency in the middle of an utteranceExample 3 on p. 65

Edge Tone: change in frequency at the end of a phraseExample 4 on p. 66

Meaning affected by the pitch at which the syllables in a word are pronounced

[ma] in Mandarin Chinese Many ways to transcribe tones

Numbers (55, 35, 214)Accent marks over the syllablesLow-high-low, low-low-high

Tone is relative, not absolute A language can have both tone and

intonation

A property of syllables A stressed syllable is more prominent than

an unstressed one, due to having greater loudness, longer duration, different pitch, or full vowels

Photograph vs. photography (changes from full vowel to schwa)

Some languages predictable for the placement of stress; others must be memorized

For those where placement is not predictable, a change in stress can result in a change in meaning (ex. incite, insight)