REVIEW 1: PHONETICS

I. What is phonetics?
Phonetics is the study of the human speech sounds. It deals with how speech sounds are
produced, transmitted and perceived.
 A speech sound is a physical event with three aspects: articulatory (physiological),
acoustic (physical) and auditory (psychological). They are presented in the study of
characteristics of sounds such as articulation, height, length, quality, loudness, pitch,
melody.
 The regional aspect of phonetics is the variety of accents
 The social aspect of phonetics is the social effects on the production of speech sounds,
which is evidence in the phonetically distinctive features of sounds.
Articulatory Phonetics is the primary concern of the linguistics study of phonetics. It deals
with the way in which speech sounds are produced. Its main task is to describe characteristics
of individual sounds. In the description of the sounds, it is necessary to understand the features of
the articulators (organs of speech).
 Active articulators are the organs of speech that can be moved under the control of the
speaker (e.g. the lips, the tongue, the velum, the vocal cords, the lower jaw)
 Passive articulators are the organs of speech that are immobile (e.g. the upper teeth,
alveolar ridge, the hard palate)
Acoustic Phonetics is the study of how speech sounds are transmitted through the air.
Auditory Phonetics is the study of how speech sounds are perceived by the listener.
II. The Production of Speech
1. The speech chain
 Psychological stage: the formation of the idea
 Physiological (articulatory) stage: the production of a particular pattern of sounds
 Acoustic stage: the movement of the organs of speech that create disturbances in the air
2. The speech mechanism
 Lungs: the source of air streams
 Windpipe
 Larynx: the vocal cords functioning as the vibrator to modify the air stream before it
acquires the quality of a speech sound
 Cavities: the air stream modified by the articulators to produce speech sounds
3. The state of the Glottis
 Glottis: the space between the vocal cords
 Wide glottis: the vocal cords are wide apart and the results are voiceless consonant
sounds.
 Narrow glottis: the result is whispered sound called voiceless glottal fricative /h/
 Tightly-closed vocal cords: voiced sounds
III. The Classification of speech sounds: Vowels and Consonants
1. Vowels:
Vowels are speech sounds in the production of which the air passing through the mouth freely.
They divided into pure vowels and diphthongs.
A pure vowel is an unchanging sound in the production of which the articulators do not change
their position during the length of the sound.
The classification of Pure Vowels is based on
 Position of the tongue
 Height of the tongue
 Position of the lips
 Length of the vowel
Notes:
 All vowels are voiced.
 All vowels are syllabic.
 Vowels are more sonorous than
consonants

A diphthong is a combination of two vowel sounds pronounced as one. In the pronunciation of

2. Consonants
A consonant is a sound in the production of which there is an obstruction formed by the active
articulators in the vocal tract.
The classification of Consonants is based on
 Place of articulation (Consonants are named after the articulators participating in the
production of sounds)
 Manner of articulation
 The state of vibration of the vocal cords (voiced vs. voiceless)
 The position of the velum (nasal vs. oral)
 REVIEW EXERCISES
Exercise 1. True or False
1. ___ The term labio-dental refers to an obstruction formed by the lower lip and the upper
teeth.
2. ___ Letters [ow] represent the vowel in ‘show’.
3. ___ The raising velum enables the air to flow through the nasal cavity.
4. ___ In the articulation of the voiced sounds, the vocal cords are brought to close together.
5. ___ Plosives are produced with complete closure in the vocal tract followed by a gradual
release.
6. ___ The production of sounds /w/, /k/ and /g/ involves a movement of the body of the
tongue towards the direction of the velum.
7. ___ In the production of /ǝ/, /æ/ and /ɪ/, the lips are rounded.
8. ___ The velum is one of the passive articulators.
9. ___ All vowels are either voiceless or voiced.
10. ___ Glottis is the space between the vocal cords.
Exercise 2. Odd one out
Circle the word with a different sound
1. dead mean bread head
2. fruit suit juice built
3. half have has ham
4. horse history story cord
5. look good foot blood
6. country young youth couple
7. oven colour son gone
8. talk chalk calm fall
Exercise 3. Sound description
Write down the sounds based on the following description
a) A voiced labio-dental fricative
b) A voiceless alveolar fricative
c) A voiced palate-alveolar affricative
d) A voiceless glottal fricative
e) A voiceless bilabial plosive
f) A voiceless dental fricative
g) A close front unrounded vowel
h) An open back unrounded vowel