PHONETICS

DEFINITION OF PHONETICS
Phonetics is the scientific study of the production, transmission
and reception of speech sounds. It studies the medium of spoken
language. Touching upon physiology and physics, phonetics is
now a pure science that studies speech processes, including the
anatomy, neurology and pathology of speech, as well as the
articulation, description, classification, production and
perception of speech sounds. It looks at speech from three
distinct but interdependent viewpoints: it studies the speech
organs, which produce sounds of language; it studies waves, the
physical form in which sounds are transmitted through the air
from one person to another; and it studies the way in which
human beings perceive sounds through the medium of the ear.

Phonetics studies the defining characteristics of all human vocal

noise, and concentrates its attention on those sounds which
occur in the languages of the world. In other words, phoneticians
try to study how the various organs of speech—the lungs, the
larynx, the soft palate, the tongue and the lip—function in the
production of speech. They also attempt to offer articulatory
descriptions of various sounds by describing the air-stream-
mechanism and the phonatory and articulatory processes
involved. Acoustic phoneticians examine the physical nature of
sounds and analyse the speech waves with the help of various
instruments.
Branches of Phonetics

The study of phonetics can be divided into three main branches:

acoustic, auditory, and articulatory.
1. Acoustic Phonetics
Acoustic phonetics is the study of the physical properties of
speech sounds such as frequency and amplitude in their
transmission. Acoustic phoneticians analyse the speech waves
with the help of instruments; they attempt to describe the
physical properties of the stream of sound that issues forth from
the mouth of a speaker.
It is in the field of acoustic phonetics that the most striking
developments have taken place since the Second World War.
Complex sound waves produced in speech can be analysed into
their component frequencies and relative amplitudes.
Considerable progress has also been made in speech-synthesis.
Acoustic analysis has confirmed (if confirmation was needed)
that speech is not made up of a sequence of discrete sounds. The
articulatory features of rounding of voice, of nasality, of
obstruction and of friction can also be identified acoustically.
Acoustic phonetics has achieved a good deal of success in
matters of the study of the sound of vowels, but regarding
consonants it has not reached final conclusions.

2. Auditory Phonetics
Auditory phonetics is the study of hearing and the perception of
speech sounds. It studies different auditory impressions of
quantity, pitch, and loudness of sounds. The auditory
classification of sounds has not yet been carried to a decisive
phase. At the present time, phonetics can be regarded as being
made up of two main branches: articulatory and acoustic
phonetics.
In a book like this, it would not be of any significant use to go
into the details of acoustic and auditory phonetics. The results of
acoustic and auditory phonetics need very minute observations
and great scientific and technical expertise, and are often
puzzling. These branches use instruments which cannot be used
easily outside a laboratory, and cannot be transported
successfully from one place to another. Hence the easiest
approach to observations about speech is the traditional and
most common approach of articulatory phonetics, and we shall
be dealing with it in great detail.

3. Articulatory Phonetics
Articulatory phonetics recognizes that speech is produced by
some kind of sound-making apparatus inside the human body,
and that specific sounds may be related to specific movement of
the apparatus. Hence it is the study of movement of the speech
organs in the articulation of speech. Speech is produced by the
movements of the organs of speech-- lungs, larynx, soft palette
,tongue , teeth, and lips. The knowledge of the organs of speech,
their relation to each other, and the way in which they are used
while speaking, provides a sound basis for the classification of
sounds of human language.
THE PRODUCTION OF SPEECH: THE SPEECH
MECHANISM
1. Speech Operation
The transmission in sound of the simplest concept in the mind is
the result of a complicated chain of events. Any speech
operation depends on such a chain of speech acts. An effective
act of speech is an exceedingly complex operation involving a
number of operations. The first class is physical, the second is
physiological, and the third is psychological. First a concept is
formulated in the speaker’s brain, and human nervous system
transmits this linguistic message to the so-called organs of
speech as either articulatory or physiological. The organs of
speech are thus activated; their movements create disturbances
in the air; and these sound waves are received by the listener’s
ears. And at the listener’s end, first of all the ears receive the
linguistic codification; his nervous system passes all the
linguistic message to the brain, where the linguistic
interpretation of the message takes place.

The linguistic message conveyed to the organs of speech by the

nervous system activates the lungs, larynx and the cavities above
in such a way that they perform a series of movements to
produce a particular pattern of sound. For production of speech
we need an air-stream mechanism. (For the sounds of English
we make use of an egressive pulmonic air-stream, that is, the air
pushed out of the lungs through the mouth or nose or both.)
Generally all speech-sounds are made by an egressive pulmonic
air-stream of outgoing breath, although in a few languages (such
as Bushman, Hottentot), there are speech-sounds, often called
“clicks” which are produced on ingressive (in-going) air.

In this way the speech-sound is produced by the articulatory

movements in the chest, throat, mouth and nose. The articulatory
apparatus has four areas:
a) the larynx containing the vocal cords,
b) the oral cavity (mouth),
c) the pharyngeal cavity (throat), and
d) the nasal cavity (nose).
The airstream coming from the lungs may be modified in any of
these areas in a variety of ways, and modifications result from
one kind of interference with the movement of the air stream.
The most important roles are played by the vocal cords, soft
palate, tongue, lips, teeth, and nose.

The role of each speech organ in the production of

speech:

(a) The Diaphragm and Lungs

The diaphragm is situated in the human body below the lungs
and controls the expansion and contraction of the lungs in
breathing. It is involved in the production of chest-pulses on
which the division of syllables is based. The lungs serve as a
source for air, which passes upward through the wind-pipe and
larynx consisting of the vocal cords on the mouth or both, and
comes outwards. The source of energy for the production of
speech is generally the air-stream coming out of the lungs. It is
certainly so in the case of all sounds used in Punjabi, Hindi, and
English.

Figure : organs of speech

(b) The Larynx and Vocal Cords
The larynx is the little box that is popularly called the Adam’s
apple. It is a casing, formed of cartilage and muscle, a bony box-
like structure in the front of the throat, situated at the upper part
of the wind-pipe or the trachea, containing a valve-like opening
consisting of two membranous tissues, the vocal cords. The
vocal cords are like a pair of lips placed horizontally from front
to back. They are attached at the front, but can be separated at
the back, and the opening between them is called the glottis.
When we breathe in and out, the glottis is open. This is the
position of production of the breathy or voiceless sounds.

For example: /f/, /θ/, /s/, /h/ as in the English words fan, thin,
sell, hell.

The glottis may be held tightly closed to produce a glottal stop

or glottal catch (such as the speakers of RP make between the
two /t/’s of bottle and butter when said in surprise or reproof).
The glottis may be held so loosely that when the air is passed
through with sufficient energy, there is audible glottal friction as
in /h/.
The major role of the vocal cords is that of a vibrator in the
production of voice, or phonation. If the vocal cords are held
loosely together, the pressure of the air coming from the lungs
makes them vibrate; in this way they open and close regularly
many times a second. This vibration of the vocal cords produces
a musical note called voice, and sounds produced in this way are
called voiced-sounds. For example, all vowels and sounds like
the consonants /v, m, n, l, r/ as in English words valley, zero,
mad, nail, red are voiced.

Closed Open

The number of times the vocal cords open and close in one
second is known as the frequency of vibration, and this
determines the pitch of the voice. Whereas tension of the vocal
cords determines the pitch, the force with which air is passed out
from the lungs determines the loudness.

(c) The Soft Palate

The roof of the mouth has three parts: the hard convex surface
just behind the upper front teeth called the alveolar or teeth
ridge; the hard concave surface behind it called the hard palate;
and the soft palate at the back, with the uvula hanging at its end.
The soft palate, also called the velum, can be moved up to block
the passage into the nose. If the air from the lungs then has to
come out through the mouth only, and the sounds produced in
this way are called oral sounds. All English sounds except /m/,
/n/, /ŋ/ are oral sounds. If the soft palate is lowered and the
passage through the mouth is closed, the air from the lungs can
get out through the nose only. Sounds produced in this manner
are called nasal sounds.
For example, /m/, /n/, /ŋ/ in English words man, nun, song.

(d) The Tongue

Of all the movable organs within the mouth, the tongue is by far
the most flexible, and capable of assuming a great variety of
positions in articulation of both vowels and consonants. The
tongue, for convenience of description (as shown in Figure 4.4)
has four parts: the tip, the blade, the front, and the back. The tip
of the tongue is largely responsible for the difference in the
sound of those speech sounds where the tongue is called the
lingual. The part opposite the upper teeth or alveolar ridge is
called the blade, the part opposite the hard palate is called the
front, and the part opposite the soft palate is called the back.

(e) The Lips

The position of lips affects very considerably the shape of the
total cavity. They may be short or held apart in various ways.
When they are held tightly, they form a complete obstruction to
produce bilabial stops, e.g., /p/, /b/. If the lips are held apart,
various positions may be assumed and can be summarized in the
following manner:

(i) held sufficiently close together so as to allow friction in

sound /v/ sounds, for example, the initial consonant in Hindi
words bhai, bhanja.
(ii) held sufficiently far apart so that no friction is heard, yet in a
spread position, as in the vowel in see.
(iii) held in a neutral position, that is, a relaxed position with a
medium lowering of the lower jaw as in the vowel of get.
(iv) held in an open position, that is, a position in which lips are
held relatively wide apart without marked rounding, as in the
vowel in car, part.
(v) held in a close rounded position as in the vowel of do.
(vi) held in an open rounded position as in the vowel of got.

The Active and the Passive Articulators

In the production of speech sounds we make use of two kinds of
articulators: the active articulators and the passive articulators.
The active articulators are the lower lip and the tongue; these
articulators make contacts with the passive articulators. The
passive articulators include the upper lip, the upper teeth, the
roof of the mouth (divisible for the sake of convenience into the
teeth-ridge, the hard palate and the soft palate), and the back
wall of the throat or pharynx. The passive articulators I called
passive because they do not move to touch other articulators. On
the other hand, the active articulators are called active because
they remain active and come in contact with the passive
articulators in the production of speed sounds.

4.5. DESCRIPTION OF SPEECH SOUNDS

An ideal description of speech sounds should include
information concerning the production, transmission, and
reception stages of sound, i.e., it should describe a sound in
terms of the movements of the organs of speech, the nature of
the sound which is produced and the features perceived by a
listener. But such a description would be lengthy, complicated,
and cumbersome, and may provide information much of which
may be irrelevant to a particular purpose. In an introductory
book like this, acoustic information about speech sounds is
included. The approach here is based on the articulatory or
auditory criteria, or a combination of both. Whereas sounds
known as ‘consonants’ are described mainly in terms of their
articulation, in the description of ‘vowel’-sounds the auditory
impressions will dominate. Furthermore, in our phonetic
analysis the syllable has been considered the basic unit, the
theory being that the movement of the respiratory muscles,
called a chest-pulse, produces a syllable, and “nothing less than
a syllable can be produced.
Syllable
The units or sections into which words are divided while
pronouncing them, are called syllables. The Syllable is a unit of
pronunciation consisting of a vowel alone or of a vowel with
one or more consonants. The vowel is the nucleus and the
consonant a marginal element in the syllable; that is, a
consonant either at the beginning or at the end of a syllable. A
consonant at the end of a syllable is called an arresting
consonant, and at the beginning of a syllable is called a releasing
consonant. The marginal elements are not obligatory. These may
occur either before the nucleus or after the nucleus, or some
before and after the nucleus. The word pick consists of one
syllable which consists of two marginal elements: /p/ a releasing
consonant and /k/ an arresting consonant and of nucleus /ɪ/,
which is a vowel. It is also possible to have a cluster of two or
three consonants before and/or after the nucleus. For example, in
school /skuːl/, we have the cluster of two consonants /s/ and /k/
which is the first marginal element. Some syllables are made up
of the nucleus alone e.g. /ə/ or /aɪ/. Usually it is a vowel, for
example /iː/ in seat /siːt/, which is the nucleus in a syllable; but
in words of more than one syllable the nucleus can also be a
consonant, e.g. /n/ and /l/ in the second syllable of button and
apple.
It is also possible to explain the syllable in terms of the
pulmonic air stream mechanism. In the production of speech, the
air from the lungs does not come out in a continuous stream at a
constant pressure. The muscles of the chest push the air out in
small puffs at the rate of approximately five times a second, and
each puff of air produces a syllable. Each movement of the
muscles of the chest is known as a chest-pulse. In order to
produce a stressed syllable a re-inforced chest-pulse is used. The
English word president has three syllables /prez-i-dənt/, and the
first syllable is stressed. And it is on the arrangement of stressed
and unstressed syllables and the way they follow one another
that the rhythm of a language depends.

The structure of a syllable can be represented by the formula

CVC, C standing for consonant and V for vowel. Examples of
some common structures of syllables used in English are cited
below:—

The Structure of The Exemplification

The Syllable of the Structure

V I or eye /aɪ/
CV die/dye /daɪ/
CVC pack, back, lack, sack, that
VC in /ɪn/
VC eat /iːt/
VC add /æd/
VC ink /ɪŋk/
VCC eagle /iːgl/
CVCC fox /fɒks/
CCVC school /skuːl/
CCVCC street /striːt/
CCCVC straight /streɪt/
CCVCC crisp /krɪsp/
CVCCC masks /mɑːsks/

It is on the basis of the number of syllables that the words are

classified into monosyllabic, disyllabic and polysyllabic[Lord
(monosyllabic); Lord-ship (disyllabic); Ten-der-ly (Trisyllabic);
Ia-vo-ca-tion (tetrasyllabic); In-vul-ner-a-ble (pentasyllabic);
Un-hes-i-tat-ing-ly (hexasyllabic); In-vul-ner-a-bi-li-ty
(heptasyllabic)] words. We have also seen that English permits
initial consonant clusters [A consonant cluster is the syntagmatic
arrangement of more than one consonant sound at the C level in
a syllable] of more than one C element in words such as sky
/skaɪ/ (CCV), and of three consonants in words such as script
/skrɪpt/ (CCCVC). English also permits consonant clusters in the
final position. Looks /lʊks/ (CVC) has a cluster of two
consonants; sixth /sɪksθ/ (CVCCC) has a consonant cluster of
three consonants, and sixths /sɪksθs/ (CVCCCC) has a cluster of
four consonants in the final position. In the monosyllabic word
comb—/kəʊm/, the structure of the syllable is CVC, because the
final /b/ is silent and therefore it does not exist in the structure of
the syllable. Sometimes two syllables in a word may be fused
into one by suppressing a vowel sound in pronunciation, e.g.
wa—(e)ry, lit(e)ral. This process is known as Elision or
Slurring.