Phonetics and Phonology

Lesson: 01

1. The _____ component provides a detailed analysis and description of speech sounds with
particular emphasis on articulatory phonetics.
phonology phonetic Semantic Pragmatic b

2. The ______ component examines the internal structure of simplex and complex word
forms.
Semantic phonetic phonology Pragmatic c

3. In ______ words are arranged into a certain order.

Pragmatic phonetic Morphology Syntax d

4. In ____, beginnings and endings of the words are changed to adjust the meaning.
morphology phonetic Pragmatic Semantic b

5. Through ____ , the meaning itself can be affected by the arrangement of words.
phonology phonetic Semantic Pragmatic c

6. The branch of linguistics in which by the knowledge of the speaker about what the hearer
will understand is _____.
phonology phonetic Semantic Pragmatic d

7. Sets of phonemes and sound patterns are dynamic; as in ______ speech.

isolated connected random fixed b

8. Sets of phonemes and sound patterns are ______ as in isolation within a human language.
dynamic connected static random c

9. Human sounds are divided into ___ broad categories.

2 3 4 5 a
10. A consonant is a speech sound in which air is at least ______ blocked.
fully partly once twice b

11. ______ is a sound in which there is no obstruction found and the air passes through the
cavity freely.
vowel monothong consonant nasal a

12. A ________ is classified in terms of the places and manners of articulation and voicing
vowel monothong consonant nasal c

13. A vowel is classified in terms of the position of tongue, the part of tongue and ____.
Air flow Jaw opening voicing Lip-rounding d

14. Vowels are further classified into two terms; pure vowels and ______.
monothong diphthongs Soft vowel Long vowel b

15. Pure vowels are known as_______.

monothong diphthongs Soft vowel Long vowel a
 Phonetics and Phonology
Lesson: 02
Sound Category Qty voicing Qty IPA Examples
ɪǝ peer
eǝ pair
ʊǝ poor
eɪ aɪ ɔɪ ǝʊ
eɪ bay
Diphthong 8 aʊ ɪǝ eǝ
aɪ buy
ʊǝ
ɔɪ boy
ǝʊ no
aʊ now
ɪ pit
e pet
Vowels 20
æ pat
Short ɪeæʌɒʊ
7 ʌ putt
vowels ǝ
ɒ pot
Monothongs
ʊ put
(Pure
ǝ another
Vowels)
iː bean
ɑː barn
Long iː ɑː ɔː uː
5 ɔː born
vowels ɜː
uː boon
Total
ɜː burn
English
p pin
Sound
b bin
are
t tin
Plosives 6 p bt d k g
d din
k kin
44
g gum
m sum
Nasals 3 mnŋ n sun
ŋ sung
f fine
v vine
θ think
Consonants 24
ð this
Fvθðsz
Fricatives 9 s seal
ʃʒh
z zeal
ʃ sheep
ʒ measure
h how
ʧ chain
Affricates 2 ʧʤ
ʤ Jane
l light
l r w r right
Approximants 4
j w wet
j yet
 Phonetics and Phonology
Lesson: 03

1) Phonology is the study of how sounds are organized in individual languages.

2) Phonology focuses on the organization of sounds by studying speech patterns.
3) The key words for describing phonology are ‘distribution’ and ‘patterning’ related to
speech
4) Phonologists may look into questions like – why there is a difference in the plurals of cat
and dog.
5) Phonetics is the study of actual process of sound making.
6) Phonetics has been derived from the Greek word ‘phone’ meaning sound or voice.
7) Phonology covers the domain of speech production and its transmission and reception.
8) A phone is a sound (or a segment) which has some physical feature and the term is mostly
used in a non-technical sense.

9) A phoneme is the smallest meaningful unit of sound (therefore, a smallest unit in

phonology) in a language and this meaningful unit of sound is one that will change one
word into another word.
10) Linguists have also defined phoneme as a group or class of sound events having common
patterns of articulation.
11) If phoneme is a group then allophones are the group members.
12) An allophone is a definable systematic variant of a phoneme.
13) Variants do not change meaning (and we simply take them as alternate sounds), they are
called allophone.
14) Phone is a sound pattern having some acoustic features.
15) Phoneme is a group of sound having the ability to change meaning.
16) Phonetics as a field of study has a long history, going back certainly to well over two
thousand years ago.
17) The central concerns in phonetics are the discovery of how speech sounds are produced;
how they are used in spoken language; how we can record speech sounds with written
symbols and how we hear and recognize different sounds.
18) In first area (articulatory phonetics) when we study the production of speech sounds we
can observe what speakers do (articulatory observation) and we can try to feel what is
going on inside our vocal tract (kinesthetic observation).
19) The second area (acoustic phonetics) is where phonetics overlaps with phonology.
20) Usually in phonetics we are only interested in sounds that are used in meaningful speech,
21) Phoneticians are interested in discovering the range and variety of sounds used this way
in all the known languages of the world. This is sometimes known as linguistic phonetics.
22) Finally, the auditory aspect of speech is very important: the ear is capable of making fine
discrimination between different sounds, so much so that sometimes it is not possible to
define in articulatory terms precisely what the difference is.
23) Articulatory phonetics deals with studying the making of single sounds by the vocal tract.
24) In articulatory phonetics where we study the way in which speech sounds are made
(‘articulated’) by the vocal organs.
25) Articulatory phonetics derives much of its descriptive terminology from the fields of
anatomy and physiology, and is sometimes referred to as physiological phonetics.
26) Articulation has traditionally held a central place in the training of phoneticians.
27) The classification of sounds used in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA is based on
articulatory variables.
28) Acoustic phonetics is related to the study of physical attributes of sounds produced by the
vocal tract.
29) In acoustic phonetics we studies the physical properties of speech sound as transmitted
between mouth and ear
30) It is primarily dependent on the use of instrumental techniques of investigation such as
Praat software
31) The physical ‘facts’ of speech sounds are as duration, formants F1, F2 and F3, etc.
32) Auditory phonetics deals with understanding how human ear perceives sound and how the
brain recognizes different speech units.
33) Auditory phonetics studies the perceptual response to speech sounds as mediated by ear,
auditory nerve and brain.
34) Auditory phonetics is a very less well-studied area of phonetics, mainly because of the
difficulties encountered as soon as one attempts to identify and measure psychological and
neurological responses to speech sounds
35) . On the other hand, anatomical and physiological studies of the ear are well advanced, as
are techniques for the measurement of hearing, and the clinical use of such studies is now
established under the headings of audiology and audiometry.

Phonetics and Phonology

Lesson: 04
1) Descriptive phonetics provides an account of how different languages and accents are
pronounced.
2) Prescriptive phonetics states how they ought to be pronounced.
3) Experimental phonetics, aimed at the development and scientific testing of hypotheses.
4) Experimental phonetics is quantitative (based on numerical measurement).
5) In the acoustic field we examine the relationship between articulation and the resulting
acoustic signal, and look at physical properties of speech sounds in general.
6) In the auditory field we do perceptual tests to discover how the listener’s ear and brain
interpret the information in the speech signal.
7) Three areas of experimental phonetics in 1967:
a. Stress in respiratory activity
b. The nature of vowel quality
c. Perception and production of speech address
8) Like other areas of grammar, a major change in the theory of phonology came about in the
1960s
9) Morris Halle and Noam Chomsky showed that there were many sound processes which,
while they are observable in the phonology, are actually regulated by grammar and
morphology.
10) In order to highlight phonological rules, an elaborate method of writing in an algebra-like
style was evolved: this can be seen in the best known generative phonological treatment of
English (The Sound Pattern of English by Chomsky and Halle, 1968).
11) Following are the theories that have stemmed from ‘generative phonology’:
a. Auto segmental phonology
b. Metrical phonology
c. Lexical phonology
d. Optimality theory
12) Most of the movements relevant to speech take place in the mouth and throat area (though
we should not forget the activity in the chest for breath control).
13) Parts of the mouth and throat area that we move when speaking are called articulators.
14) In articulatory phonetics, we study the principal articulators (such as tongue, lips, lower
jaw and the teeth, velum or soft palate, uvula and larynx)
15) and other processes related to speech production. This includes the features of various sounds
such as vowels and consonants and their specific properties including places and manners of
articulation, phonation, etc.
16) The process of speech production mainly includes respiration, phonation, articulation and
resonance.
17) In order to produce speech, we need the air stream mechanism (so that the process of speech
is activated), the exploitation of the air stream at larynx (this process is called phonation or
voicing),
18) The modification of the air passage with the help of articulators at the cavity (either oral or
nasal) and finally the transfer of energy.
19) In phonetics, speech production is a term used for the activity of the respiratory, phonatory
and articulatory systems during speech, along with the associated processes required for their
co-ordination and use.
20) A contrast is usually drawn with the receptive aspects of spoken communication, such as
speech perception and recognition.
21) As the anatomy of speech, some experts (such as Ladefoged) highlight the following four
main components—
a. The air stream process,
b. the phonation process,
c. the oro-nasal process, and
d. the articulatory process.
22) The airstream process includes all the ways of pushing air out that provide energy for
speech.
23) The phonation process is the name given to the actions of the vocal folds.
24) A sound wave is the pattern of disturbance caused by the movement of energy traveling
through air (sound always travels in the shape of waves in the air).
25) Sound basically consists of small variations in air pressure that occur very rapidly one
after another.
26) These variations are caused by actions of the speaker’s vocal organs that are (for the most
part) superimposed on the outgoing flow of lung air.
27) In the case of voiced sounds, the vibrating vocal folds chop up the stream of lung air so that
pulses of relatively high pressure alternate with moments of lower pressure.
28) Variations in air pressure in the form of sound waves move through the air somewhat like
the ripples on a pond. When they reach the ear of a listener, they cause the eardrum to vibrate.
29) A graph of a sound wave is very similar to a graph of the movements of the eardrum.
30) Physical features of sound waves are amplitude, its loudness and its time duration of
vibration.
31) The possibility of the airstream going out through the mouth, as in [v] or [z], or the nose, as
in [m] and [n], is determined by the oro-nasal process.
32) Consider the consonants at the end of rang, ran, ram (ŋ, m, n) which are all nasal sounds.
33) In the formation of these sounds in a sequence, the point of articulatory closure moves
forward, from velar in ‘rang’, through alveolar in ‘ran’ and to bilabial in ‘ram’.
34) When it is lowered and there is an obstruction in the mouth, we say that there is a nasal
consonant.
35) Raising or lowering the velum controls the oro-nasal process, the distinguishing factor
between oral and nasal sounds.

Phonetics and Phonology: Lesson: 05

Place of Articulation
Place Meaning The sounds produced
Bilabial Articulated by the lower lip and upper lip /m/ /b/ /p/ /w/
Labio-dental Articulated by the lip and teeth /f/ /v/
Lingua-dental Articulated by the tongue and teeth /θ/ /ð/
Lingua-alveolar Articulated by the tongue and gum ridge /t/ /d/ /s/ /z/ /ʧ/ /ʤ/ /n/ /l/ /t̬/
Lingual palatal Articulated by the tongue and hard palate /∫/ /ʒ/ /r/ /j/
Lingua-velar Articulated by the tongue and soft palate(velum) /k/ /g/ /η/ (/w/
Glottal Articulated by the glottis /h/
Manner of Articulation
Manner Meaning Sound
stop We (start or finishing point) stop the air /p/ /b/ /d/ /t/ /k/ /g/
completely.
Fricative We let the air leak from a narrow passage. /f/ /v/ /s/ /z/ /∫/ /ʒ/ /θ/ /ð/ /h/
Affricate We block the air (starting or finishing point) /ʤ/ /ʧ /
and then abruptly release it.
Nasal We push air out from our nose. /m/ /n/ /η/
Liquid We position the tongue in a manner that /r/ /l/
(approximant) obstructs the airflow but without causing a
friction (as in the case of /s/ or /f/, hence the
term fricative)resulting in a consonant with a
vowel-like quality.
Glide/Semivowel We begin a sound from a vowel position and /w/ /j/
(Approximants) end it in a consonant's.
• Bilabial: This sound is made with two lips (for example, /p/ and /b/). The lips come
together for these sounds.
• Labiodental: This sound is made when thelower lip is raised to touch the upper front teeth
(for example, /f/ and /v/).
• Dental: This sound is made with the tongue tip or blade and upper front teeth. For example,
say the words thigh, thy and you will find the first sound in each of these words to be dental.
• Alveolar: This sound is made with the tongue tip or blade and the alveolar [Link]
maypronounce words such as tie, die, nigh, sigh, zeal, lie using the tip of thetongue or the
blade of the tongue for the first sound in each of these words (which are alveolar sounds).
• Retroflex: This sound is produced when the tongue tip curls against the back of the
alveolar ridge. Many speakers of Englishdo not use retroflex sounds at all but it is a
common sound in Pakistani languages such as Urdu, Sindhi, Pashto, Balochi and Punjabi.
• Palato-alveolar: This sound is produced with the tongue blade and the back of the
alveolar ridge (for example, first sound in each of words like shy,she, show)
• Palatal: This sound is produced with front of the tongue and the hard palate (such as the
first sound in ‘yes’.
• Velar: This sound is produced with back of the tongue and the soft palate (such as /k/
and /g/).

1. Vowel makes very little obstruction,

2. Plosive consonant makes complete obstruction.
3. Air/sound obstruction is known as the manner of articulation
4. A stop sound [p] is pronounced by blocking the air passage completely in the oral cavity.
5. Consonantal sounds are divided, in terms of their manner of articulation, into two major
types
(1) Obstruents (such as stops, fricatives and affricates)
(2) Sonorants (such as nasals, liquids and glides).
6. Stop refers to any sound which is produced by a complete closure in the vocal tract, and
thus traditionally includes the class of plosives.
7. Both nasal and oral sounds can be classified as stops, though the term is usually reserved
for the latter.
8. The term ‘stop’ is used in the phonetic classification of consonant sounds on the basis of
their manner of articulation (it refers to a sound made when a complete closure in the vocal
tract is suddenly released; the air pressure which had built up behind the closure rushes out
with an explosive sound).
9. Thus the sound stop has two processes; the closure of air passage (stop) and the burst
(release).
10. Plosive consonants are one type of stop consonant.
11. Nasal stops include [m, n, ŋ].
12. A fricative consonant is made by forcing air through a narrow gap so that a hissing noise
is generated. strident
13. Fricative are divided into two groups
(1) Sibilant
 (2) Strident
14. A distinction is sometimes made between sibilant or strident fricatives.
15. Sibilant fricatives (such as s, ʃ) are strong and clearly audible
16. strident fricatives are weak and less audible (such as θ, f).
17. BBC pronunciation has nine fricative phonemes: f, θ, s, ʃ, h (voiceless) and v, ð, z, ʒ
(voiced).
18. Approximant is a phonetic term used to denote a consonant which makes very little
obstruction to the airflow.
19. Traditionally approximants have been divided into two groups:
(1) Semivowels
(2) liquids
20. “semivowels” such as [w] in English ‘wet’ and [j] in English ‘yet’, which are very similar
to close vowels such as [u] and [i] but are produced as a rapid glide.
21. “liquids”sounds which have an identifiable constriction of the airflow but not the one that
is sufficiently obstructive to produce fricative noise. This category includes laterals such
as English [l] in ‘lead’ and non-fricative [r] (phonetically ɹ) as in ‘read’.
22. BBC English has four approximant sounds which include [l] as in light, [r] as in right,
[w] as in wet and [j] as in yet.
23. Affricate is a type of consonant consisting of a plosive followed by a fricative with the
same place of articulation (e.g., [tʃ] and [dʒ] sounds at the beginning and end of the English
words ‘church’ and ‘judge’).
24. [tʃ], [dʒ] as affricate phonemes are symbolized č, ǰ by American writers.
25. Trap, Flap and Trill are also called central approximants.
26. In the case of tap and flap, there is only one rapid contact.
27. In the case of trill [r] the tongue is striking continuously (rrrrr) as the stricture of
intermittent closure.
28. Tap is up and down movement of the top of the tip of tongue.
29. Example of Tap is ‘pity’ with typical American accent [ɾ].
30. Flap is front and back movement of tongue tip at the underside of tongue with curling
behind.
31. Flap is found in abundance in Indo-Aryan (IA) languages [ɽ].
32. In the production of trill the articulator is set in motion by the current of air [r].
33. It is a typical sound of Scottish English as in words like ‘rye’ and ‘row’.