1. Sounds of English
Class 2

2. Sounds of English Consonants: first, the stops:
b as in bat, sob, cubby
d as in date, hid, ado
g as in gas, lag, ragged
p as in pet, tap, repeat
t as in tap, pet, attack
k as in king, pick, picking
When we need to emphasize
that we are using a phonetic
transcription, we put square
brackets [b] around the symbols.

3. More consonants: fricatives
f as in fail, life
v as in veil, live
Ɵ as in thin, wrath
ð as in this, bathe
s as in soft, miss
z as in zoo, as
š (American) or ʃ (IPA) as in shame, mash
ž (American) or ǯ (IPA)as in triage, garage, azure,
h as in help, vehicular

4. affricates č (American) or tʃ (IPA) as in cheap, hatch
ǰ (American) or ʤ (IPA) as in jump, hedge

5. nasal consonants m as in map, him n as in knot, tin (alveolar POA)
ñ as in canyon
ŋ as in sing, gingham, dinghy

6. Liquids
l as in large, gull
r as in red, jar

7. glides and semi-consonants
j (IPA) as in boy, yellow
w as in wall, cow

8. 6 stops
2 affricates
9 fricatives
4 nasals
2 liquids
2 glides

9. Short vowels Front vowels: Ɛ as in bet æ as in bat Back vowels:
I as in bit
Ɛ as in bet
æ as in bat
Back vowels:
U as in put
ʌ as in putt
ɔ as in bought
a or ɑ as in Mott, ma, spot
ǝ “schwa” as in about

10. Long vowels ij or i as in beet ej as in bait aj as in bite
oj as in boy
uw or u as in boot
ow as in boat
aw as in how

11. Not all Americans talk the same way
Some people do not have a contrast between [ɔ] and [a]:
cot versus caught
Sean versus Connery.
There are (interesting) details we are ignoring, like the difference between the vowel in cat and that in sand, for most Americans.
There are far more differences than that, of course!

12. Review where we’ve been
We’ve listened to the sounds of “our” English, and assigned a set of symbols to them.
We abstracted away from pitch, loudness, and duration.
We hope to better understanding our language’s sounds by analyzing them as being composed of a sequence of identifiable sounds, each of which occurs frequently in words of the language.

13. Consonants Consonants = obstruents + sonorants
Obstruents: (oral) stops, affricates, and fricatives
Sonorants: nasals and liquids (l,r)

14. Consonants Consonants can be defined by:
Point of articulation (or “place”): Specification of the active and passive articulators.
Manner of articulation:
Oral stop; nasal stop; fricative; affricate; lateral; flap; approximant; and some others.

15. Consonants have a point of articulation
The crucial points of articulation for English consonants are:
Labial
Labio-dental
Dental
Alveolar: at the alveolar ridge, behind the teeth
Post-alveolar/palato-alveolar/alveopalatal: multiple names for the same thing
Retroflex (r only)
Palatal (y, ñ)
Velar
Laryngeal

16. Places of articulation: labial
Bilabial: made with two lips
(pie, buy, my)
Labiodental: lower tip and
Upper front teeth (fie, vie).
Slide from Liberman and Yuan

17. Places of articulation: coronal
Dental: tongue tip or blade and upper front teeth (thigh, thy). (interdental: the tip of the tongue protrudes between the upper and the lower front teeth).
Alveolar: tongue tip or blade and the alveolar ridge (tie, die, nigh, sigh, zeal, lie).
Retroflex: tongue tip and back of the alveolar ridge (rye, row, ray).
Palato-Alveolar (post-alveolar): tongue blade and the back of the alveolar ridge (shy, she, show).
Slide from Liberman and Yuan

18. Places of articulation: dorsal
Palatal: front of the tongue and hard palate (you). Palatal sounds are sometimes classified as coronal.
Velar: back of the tongue and the soft palate (hack, hag, hang).
Slide from Liberman and Yuan

19. [From: Dan Jurafsky slide]
Oro-nasal process
[From: Dan Jurafsky slide]
Oral sounds: soft palate
is raised (closing the passage).
Nasal sound: soft palate is
lowered, so air passes through
the nose.

20. Manners of articulation
Stop
Fricative: near closure, creating frication (heavy air turbulence)
Affricate (combined stop and fricative)
Approximant (no turbulence) (y,w,r)
Lateral approximant (l) obstruction in the middle, air passage around the side of the tongue.
Tap or flap: American symbol [D], IPA [ɾ]

21. Obstruents:
6 stops
9 fricatives
2 affricates
Nasals (4)
2 other sonorants (what are they?)
2 glides

23. Vowels Vowels are harder to characterize articulatorily, but we try!
The fact that it’s harder is reflected in the fact that there is more than one way in which it’s done. IPA is one way; American is another.

24. Vowels are displayed in a two-dimensional chart, corresponding only roughly to the position of the tongue, and the first two formants of the vowel.
Plus: whether the lips are rounded
Monophthong or diphthong (no movement, or movement)

25. From: Jennifer Venditti slide

26. IPA

27. Two systems side by side

28. the end

29. A phonetic chart based on the first two formants

30. From: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/music/vocres.html

31. /i/ green /ae/ hat /u/ boot graphics thanks to
Kevin Russell, Univ of Manitoba

32. “Hi” /haj/
FORMANTS
we were away a year ago