1. Linguistics week 6
Phonetics 3

2. Aspiration Aspirated and unaspirated consonants
ㄅ is unaspirated [p]
ㄆ is aspirated [ph] (puff of air)
English: spit vs pit (aspiration difference)
Compare pit vs bit
That is a voicing difference
Aspiration is much less important in English than in Chinese
Can you explain why?

3. Mandarin sounds (not yet)

4. How many words, morphemes, syllables, consonants and vowels in the following? Count semivowels as consonants.
Greenhouse
Red houses
Women 我們
Those sheep 老鼠
老太太 玻璃
John drinks coffee
他不喝咖啡

5. Syllable patterns (actually this is part of Phonology)
With few exceptions, all syllables have exactly one vowel (V)
In Mandarin, there exist 3 possible patterns V CV
CVC, where the last C must be [n] or [ŋ]
English is more flexible
CCCVCCCC is possible, but still only one vowel

6. Check table 6.2, p243

7. Parameters for describing consonants
So far (this is not complete yet) we have
Airstream (usually the same for all consonants)
Place of articulation
Voicing
Manner of articulation
So, [p] is …
egressive pulmonic
bilabial
voiceless
plosive

8. Homework: consonants
For all the plosives, nasals and fricatives that exist in English
Learn the IPA and Fromkin phonetic symbols
Learn how to describe each one in terms of the four parameters, like we just did for [p]

10. Clarification re [ʃ] and [ʒ]
Fromkin says these sounds are palatal
also known as alveopalatal
The IPA chart says they are postalveolar
In the class (including today’s quiz) any of these will be OK
Aathough actually I don’t like the use of palatal here!

11. Clarification 2 Sounds like [t,d,n] are normally alveolar
But they can be dental or postalveolar
It depnds on the speaker, and the shape of their mouth.

13. More manners of articulation:
Trills (articulators collide rapidly and repeatedly)
Bilabial (brrr: not really part of English) [ʙ]
Alveolar (perro dog, in Spanish) [r]
Uvular (Paris, in French) [ʀ]
Tap (usually alveolar)
Like a trill, but only one collision
In Spanish pero but [ɾ]

14. And glottal consonants…
The glottal stop [ʔ]
Usually without plosion
Used in Cantonese 識唔識, 得唔得
Taiwanese?
And English, in London accent!
The glottal fricative [h] is generally used to represent English “h”, and ㄏ spoken by Taiwanese
In mainland Mandarin, it’s [x], a velar fricative

16. Some other fricative sounds
Mandarin has a voiceless retroflex fricative
It is [ʂ], representing ㄕ
Retroflexion means that the tongue is curled
There is also a voiced retroflex fricative
[ʐ], aka ㄖ
However, some people transcribe this as [ɻ]
They believe it is a retroflex approximant
And, there is a voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative
[ɕ], or ㄒ (only the consonantal part)

17. Affricates A plosive followed by a homorganic fricative
Homorganic = “same place of articulation”
so [kf] in breakfast is not an affricate, because [k] and [f] do not have the same place of artic.
[ʣ] and [ʦ] are affricates, but are not normally treated so in English phonology
The only affricate English phonemes are /ʤ/ and /ʧ/

18. Affricates in Mandarin
/tsʰ/ and /ts/
/tʂʰ/ and /tʂ/
/tɕʰ/ and /tɕ/
Can you guess what they are?
What is the ʰ?
Why have I suddenly started using /asd/ instead of [asd]? (slant brackets instead of square brackets)
ㄘ and ㄗ
ㄔ and ㄓ(retroflex affricate)
ㄐ and ㄑ(alveolo-palatal affricate)

20. IPA: approximants (all voiced)
An approximant
occurs as a consonant in syllabic patterning (CVC)
but, it’s like a vowel, because the articulators usually don’t touch.
2 common realizations of /r/ (in addition to the trills described earlier)
[ɻ] retroflex approximant of Mandarin
[ɹ] alveolar approximant of English
A palatal approximant [j], often corresponding to the English spelling “y”
A labial (=with rounded lips) velar approximant [w]
Then there is lateral approximant [l]
Lateral = “side”, that is where the obstruction is

21. Glides and liquids in Fromkin
The treatment of approximants in Fromkin is different
You can read about it yourself on pp
Or you can just use the IPA treatment

22. This week
Sound description, recording and animation. Take a look at and click on “English library”.
Read about vowels, pp What are the parameters for describing vowels (like voicing, airstream etc with consonants)?