Place of Articulation, continued September 30, 2013.

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