place of articulation, continued september 30, 2013
TRANSCRIPT
Place of Articulation, continued
September 30, 2013
Administrative Stuff1. Production exercise #1 is due at 5 pm on Wednesday.
• I’ve only received a few recordings so far!
2. This Friday: practice transcription exercise on place of articulation.
• This has been posted to the course website.
3. For next Monday: another English transcription exercise
• Broad and narrow
• Phonetic features (dimensions of articulation)
• Mid-sagittal diagrams
4. Let’s walk over a basic transcription problem…
A Useful Diacritic• Some English syllables have a consonant peak.
• This can only happen with /n/, /m/, /l/ and /r/.
• When this happens, the consonant is said to be syllabic and is denoted with a small vertical dash underneath.
• Examples:
‘chasm’
‘ribbon’
‘eagle’
‘feature’
An Interesting Fact• Some vowels are louder than others
• dB of different vowels relative to (Fonagy, 1966):
: 0.0
[e] : -3.6
[o] : -7.2
[i] : -9.7
[u] : -12.3
• Why?
Another Interesting Fact• Some vowels are inherently longer than others.
• Data from Swedish (Elert, 1964):
long short
high [i y u] 140 msec 95
mid 155 103
low 164 111
• Why?
Sonority• Loudness is also a highly context-dependent measure.
• Can vary wildly within speaker, from speaker to speaker, from room to room, and across speaking contexts.
• However, all things being equal, some speech sounds are louder than others.
• Course in Phonetics:
“The sonority of a sound is its loudness relative to that of other sounds with the same length, stress and pitch.”
From Ladefoged
A Sonority Scale
low vowels
high vowels
glides
liquids
nasals
fricatives
stops
high sonority
low sonority
Sonority and Syllables
• An old idea (e.g., Pike, 1943): syllables are organized around peaks in sonority.
• This is the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP).
• Example: [bæd] is a well-formed syllable in English.
[æ]
[b] [d]
high sonority
low sonority
Sonority and Syllables
• An old idea (e.g., Pike, 1943): syllables are organized around peaks in sonority.
• This is the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP).
• Example: [blænd] works well, too.
[æ]
[l] [n]
[b] [d]
high sonority
low sonority
Technical Terms
[æ]
[l] [n]
[b] [d]
high sonority
low sonority
sonority peak
Technical Terms• The sonority peak forms the nucleus of the syllable.
[æ]
[l] [n]
[b] [d]
high sonority
low sonority
nucleus
Technical Terms• The sonority peak forms the nucleus of the syllable.
• The sounds that precede the nucleus form the syllable onset.
[æ]
[l] [n]
[b] [d]
high sonority
low sonority
onset
Technical Terms• The sonority peak forms the nucleus of the syllable.
• The sounds that precede the nucleus form the syllable onset.
• The sounds that follow the nucleus form the syllable coda.
[æ]
[l] [n]
[b] [d]
high sonority
low sonority
coda
Technical Terms• The sonority peak forms the nucleus of the syllable.
• The sounds that precede the nucleus form the syllable onset.
• The sounds that follow the nucleus form the syllable coda.
• Together, the nucleus and coda form the syllable rhyme.
[æ]
[l] [n]
[b] [d]
high sonority
low sonority
rhyme
Let’s Try This One More Time• If a liquid or nasal is in the syllable onset, it is not
syllabic:
• “reach”, “look”
• If a liquid or nasal is in the syllable coda, it is not syllabic:
• “fear”, “mall”, “form”, “cold”
• If a liquid or nasal is in the syllable peak, it is syllabic:
• “bird”, “worm”
• “pull” (for speakers like me)
IPA Chart:Stops
• You are already familiar with Bilabial, Alveolar, Velar
• = the 3 most common places of articulation for stops
• UPSID Database (in Maddieson’s Patterns of Sounds, 1984)
• surveys 317 languages
• 314 have bilabial stops (Wichita, Hupa, Aleut)
• 316 have alveolar/dental stops (Hawaiian)
• 315 have velar stops (Hupa, Kirghiz)
Bilabials-Alveolars-Velars
Palatals
Palatal Stops
• Peter says:
• 59 languages in UPSID database have palatal stops
• Palatals vs. Velars in Ngwo (spoken in Cameroon)
Also: Palatal Nasals
• symbol:
• not to be confused with the velar nasal:
• PL:
• Examples from Hungarian
Uvulars
Uvular Stops
• Peter says:
• 47 languages in UPSID database have uvular stops
• Uvular nasal:
• Peter, again:
• Japanese: ‘Japan’
Quechua Contrasts
• Quechua is spoken primarily in Bolivia and Peru.
Pharyngeals
Epiglottals, Glottals
• There are no pharyngeal stops.
• However, there is an epiglottal stop:
• Peter says:
• Check out Stefan’s epiglottis
• There are also glottal stops:
• As in English: “uh-oh”, “bottle”, “kitten”
• More on these later
Epiglottals in Agul
• Agul is spoken in Dagestan, near the Caspian Sea, in Russia
• Note: no nasal pharyngeals, epiglottals, or glottals.
• Why?
Back to the Coronals
Back to the Coronals• Two parameters to consider here:
• The active articulator
1. The tongue tip (apical)
2. The tongue blade (laminal)
• The passive articulator or target
1. The upper lip (linguo-labial)
2. Between the teeth (interdental)
3. The upper teeth (dental)
4. The alveolar ridge (alveolar)
5. Behind the alveolar ridge (post-alveolar)
Coronal Basics• Coronal stops are usually dental or alveolar.
• Dental stops are usually laminal
• produced with the blade of the tongue
• as is typical in, e.g., French, Spanish
• Alveolar stops are usually apical
• pronounced with the tip of the tongue
• as is typical in English
• Dental ~ Alveolar contrasts are rare, but they do exist.
Laminal Dentals
• check out the labio-dental flap file
Apical Alveolars
Yanyuwa Coronal Contrast
• Yanyuwa is spoken in the Northern Territory of Australia
• UPSID data--
Languages with the following number of stop place contrasts:
2 -- 2 3 -- 171 4 -- 103
5 -- 35 6 -- 6 <-- 5 of these languages are from Australia!
• Yanyuwa has 7 stop place contrasts!
Retroflex Stops• Retroflex stops are produced in the post-alveolar region, by curling the tip of the tongue back.
• Common in south Asian languages.
•Peter says:
Sindhi place contrasts
Malayalam Place Contrasts
Palatography +
Linguography
Yanyuwa, again
Two Places at Once• Labial-velar stops are not uncommon, especially in African languages.
• Examples from Idoma (spoken in Nigeria):
Linguolabials• Linguolabials are formed by touching the blade of the tongue to the upper lip.
• Examples from V’enen Taut, a language spoken in Vanuatu (the South Pacific):
Place Contrast Round-up• Most languages have three stop places:
• bilabial
• dental/alveolar
• velar
• If a language has a fourth stop place, it is usually
• palatal or uvular
• If a language has a fifth stop place, it is usually
• retroflex
• sometimes labial-velar