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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics
- Sprache: Englisch
Accessible, succinct, and including numerous student-friendly features, this introductory textbook offers an exceptional foundation to the field for those who are coming to it for the first time.
- Provides an ideal first course book in phonology, written by a renowned phonologist
- Developed and tested in the classroom through years of experience and use
- Emphasizes analysis of phonological data, placing this in its scientific context, and explains the relevant methodology
- Guides students through the larger questions of what phonological patterns reveal about language
- Includes numerous course-friendly features, including multi-part exercises and annotated suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter
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Seitenzahl: 484
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011
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Table of Contents
Cover
Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
1 Phonetics
1.1 Phonetics and Phonology
1.2 The Vocal Tract
1.3 Describing Speech Sounds
1.4 Consonants
1.5 Vowels
1.6 Stress and Tone
1.7 Diacritics
1.8 Phonetic Transcription
2 Phonemic Analysis
2.1 Phonology and Phonetics
2.2 Distinctiveness and Contrast
2.3 Sounds that Do Not Contrast
2.4 Phonemes as Categories
2.5 More Instances of Allophonic Variation
2.6 Phonemic Transcription
2.7 Phonological Rules
2.8 Formalizing Phonological Rules
2.9 Phonemes in Other Languages
2.10 Phonemicization
3 More on Phonemes
3.1 Phonemic Analysis and Writing
3.2 The Psychological Reality of the Phoneme
3.3 The Criterion of Phonetic Similarity
3.4 Other Problems in Phonemicization
3.5 Free Variation
3.6 Contextually Limited Contrasts and Phonotactics
4 Features
4.1 Introduction to Features: Representations
4.2 Representations in Phonology
4.3 A Feature Set: Preliminaries
4.4 Manner Features
4.5 Vowel Features
4.6 Place Features for Consonants
4.7 Laryngeal Features
4.8 Zero as a Feature Value
4.9 When and How to Use Features in Writing Rules
4.10 Feature Charts
5 Morphology
5.1 Basics of Morphology
5.2 Formal Types of Morphemes
5.3 Notation
5.4 Compounding
5.5 Morphological Structure
5.6 The Functions of Morphology
5.7 Writing Morphological Rules
5.8 Productivity
5.9 Morphological Analysis
6 Phonological Alternation I
6.1 Alternation as a Consequence of Phonology–Morphology Interaction
6.2 Neutralization
6.3 Dynamic vs. Static Neutralization
6.4 Near-Neutralization
7 Phonological Alternation II
7.1 Phonemic Environments and Rule Ordering
7.2 Phonological Alternation and Rule Ordering in Chimwiini
8 Morphophonemic Analysis
8.1 A Method for Morphophonemic Analysis
8.2 The Isolation Form Shortcut and Why It Sometimes Fails
8.3 Lardil
8.4 Rule-Ordering Terminology
9 Productivity
9.1 Vowel Nasalization – A Fully Productive Rule
9.2 Postnasal /t/ Deletion – An Almost Fully Productive Rule
9.3 Polish /n/ Weakening
9.4 Lesser Degrees of Productivity
9.5 A Possible Case of a Non-Rule
9.6 Major and Minor Rules
9.7 Exceptions in Lardil and Chimwiini
9.8 Experiments with Productivity
9.9 Alternations Specific to Single Morphemes
10 The Role of Morphology and Syntax
10.1 Introduction
10.2 Bounding Domains
10.3 Bounding Creates Pseudo-Minimal Pairs
10.4 An Example of a Non-Bounded Rule
10.5 A Stem-Bounded Rule
10.6 Word-Bounding is Still Necessary
10.7 The Hierarchy of Domains and How Rules Respect It
10.8 Rules Bounded by Phonological Phrases
10.9 Edge-Sensitive Rules
10.10 The Functions of Bounding and Edge-Sensitivity
11 Diachrony and Synchrony
11.1 Historical Change
11.2 Sound Change
11.3 Restructuring
11.4 The Phonology of Conservative American English
11.5 Phoneme Creation
11.6 The Fate of Rules
11.7 Restructuring of Rules
11.8 Restructuring: Summary
12 Abstractness
12.1 Abstractness Defined
12.2 Polish Vowel ~ Zero Alternations
12.3 Abstractness Elsewhere
12.4 Abstractness in English: Is Stress Predictable?
13 Syllables
13.1 Syllables in Phonological Theory
13.2 Representation
13.3 Syllabification
13.4 Syllables and Phonological Derivations
13.5 Word Boundaries and Syllables
13.6 The Onset/Coda Distinction and Its Consequences
13.7 Syllables and Derivations: Vocalic Epenthesis
13.8 Other Remedies for Unsyllabifiable Consonants
14 Stress, Stress Rules, and Syllable Weight
14.1 Introduction
14.2 Some General Properties of Stress
14.3 Stress Rules
14.4 Alternating Stress
14.5 Syllable Weight
15 Tone and Intonation
15.1 The Use of Pitch in Phonology
15.2 English Intonation
15.3 Tunes in Tone Languages: The Phenomenon of Tonal Stability
Appendix: On Phonology Problems
Index
End User License Agreement
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Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
List of Illustrations
1 Phonetics
Figure 1.1
The vocal tract
Figure 1.2
The larynx
Figure 1.3
The upper vocal tract
Figure 1.4
Place of articulation
Figure 1.5
The IPA chart for vowels. www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/IPA_chart_(c)2005.pdf
3 More on Phonemes
Figure 3.1
Lexical entries for “cat” and “envelope”
6 Phonological Alternation I
Figure 6.1
Spectrogram: Russ Schuh
8 Morphophonemic Analysis
Figure 8.1
Hasse diagram illustrating the ordering of three rules of Lardil
9 Productivity
Figure 9.1
Lexical entry for “knife”
Figure 9.2
Nonce-probe study. From J. Berko (1958) “The child’s learning of English morphology.”
Word
, 14: 150–77. © Jean Berko Gleason
15 Tone and Intonation
Figure 15.1
Phonemic tone in Igbo
Figure 15.2
English intonation
Figure 15.3
Japanese pitch accent
Figure 15.4
Pitch tracks: Kentucky, Alabama, Minneapolis with the “Declarative” tune
Figure 15.5
Pitch range: “Kentucky” pronounced with four different pitch ranges
Figure 15.6
The “Emphatic Question” tune: Kentucky, Alabama, Minneapolis
Figure 15.7
Minneapolis misaligned
Figure 15.8
Contour tones: Tennessee, Kalamazoo
Figure 15.9
A four-tone contour on “Anne!!”
Figure 15.10
Blocking the formation of contours
Figure 15.11
The “Regular Question” tune: Kalamazoo?
Figure 15.12
The “Declarative” tune: He forgot the erasers
Figure 15.13
Contrastive stress
Figure 15.14
The “Surprise” tune: The blackboard is orange!
Figure 15.15
The “Surprise” tune: The canoe is orange!
Figure 15.16
The “Predictable” tune: Ebenezer was a saint
Figure 15.17
The “predictable” tune: The end
Figure 15.18
The “predictable” tune: Press the Eject button
List of Tables
1 Phonetics
Table 1.1
The main portion of the IPA consonant chart. www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/IPA_chart_(c)2005.pdf
Table 1.2
The IPA chart: non-pulmonic consonants. www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/IPA_chart_(c)2005.pdf
Table 1.3
The IPA chart: other consonants. www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/IPA_chart_(c)2005.pdf
Table 1.4
The IPA chart: suprasegmentals. www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/IPA_chart_(c)2005.pdf
2 Phonemic Analysis
Table 2.1
English phonemes: consonants
Table 2.2
English phonemes: vowels and diphthongs
4 Features
Table 4.1
The sonority hierarchy
Table 4.2
The features for stops, affricates, and fricatives
Table 4.3
Backness in vowels
Table 4.4
Features used for classifying the dorsals
Table 4.5
Features used for classifying the dorsals
Table 4.6
Analysis with a separate devoicing rule for each fricative
Table 4.7
Consonants I: single place of articulation
Table 4.8
Consonants II: complex segments
Table 4.9
Vowels
Table 4.10
Diacritics
Table 4.11
Vowel chart for exercise 1
Table 4.12
Consonant chart for exercise 2
5 Morphology
Table 5.1
6 Phonological Alternation I
Table 6.1
Derivations for
quote, quotable
, and
quotation
Table 6.2
Neutralization in Korean
7 Phonological Alternation II
Table 7.1
Toba Batak consonant alternations
Rows: last sound of first word.Columns: first sound of second word.
8 Morphophonemic Analysis
Table 8.1
Features for coronal consonants in Lardil
Table 8.2
Summary of rule ordering terminology
15 Tone and Intonation
Table 15.1
Etsakọ data for exercise 4
Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics
The books included in this series provide comprehensive accounts of some of the most central and most rapidly developing areas of research in linguistics. Intended primarily for introductory and post-introductory students, they include exercises, discussion points and suggestions for further reading.
Liliane Haegeman,
Introduction to Government and Binding Theory
(Second Edition)
Andrew Spencer,
Morphological Theory
Helen Goodluck,
Language Acquisition
Ronald Wardhaugh,
An Introduction to Sociolinguistics
(Fifth Edition)
Martin Atkinson,
Children’s Syntax
Diane Blakemore,
Understanding Utterances
Michael Kenstowicz,
Phonology in Generative Grammar
Deborah Schiffrin,
Approaches to Discourse
John Clark, Colin Yallop, and Janet Fletcher,
An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology
(Third Edition)
Natsuko Tsujimura,
An Introduction to Japanese Linguistics
(Second Edition)
Robert D. Borsley,
Modern Phrase Structure Grammar
Nigel Fabb,
Linguistics and Literature
Irene Heim and Angelika Kratzer,
Semantics in Generative Grammar
Liliane Haegeman and Jacqueline Guéron,
English Grammar:
A
Generative Perspective
Stephen Crain and Diane Lillo-Martin,
An Introduction to Linguistic Theory and Language Acquisition
Joan Bresnan,
Lexical-Functional Syntax
Barbara A. Fennell, A
History of English:
A
Sociolinguistic Approach
Henry Rogers,
Writing Systems: A Linguistic Approach
Benjamin W. Fortson IV,
Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction
Liliane Haegeman,
Thinking Syntactically: A Guide to Argumentation and Analysis
Mark Hale,
Historical Linguistics: Theory and Method
Henning Reetz and Allard Jongman,
Phonetics: Transcription, Production, Acoustics, and Perception
Bruce Hayes,
Introductory Phonology
Introductory Phonology
Bruce Hayes
This edition first published 2009© 2009 Bruce Hayes
Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell.
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hayes, Bruce, 1955–Introductory phonology / Bruce Hayes.p. cm. – (Blackwell textbooks in linguistics ; 23)Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-1-4051-8411-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-4051-8412-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)1. Grammar, Comparative and general-Phonology. I. Title.
P217.H346 2009415–dc22
2008009666
For Pat and Peter
Preface
This text is meant as a first course book in phonology. The book has evolved as the textbook for a course taught to a mostly undergraduate audience over a number of years in the Department of Linguistics at UCLA. The course meets in lecture for four hours per week, with a one-hour problem-solving session, during a ten-week term.
The ideal audience for this book is a student who has studied some linguistics before (and thus has some idea of what linguists are trying to accomplish), and has already taken a course in general phonetics, covering at least the basics of articulatory phonetics and the International Phonetic Alphabet. It is possible to make up this material on the fly through reading and practice,1 but I consider this strategy second-best. A short chapter on phonetics, intended for review, is included in this text.
As the title implies, this book is meant to be an introductory text. By this I mean not that it is meant to be easier than other texts, but rather that it emphasizes the following two things:
Analysis of phonological data,
along with methods that experience has shown can be useful in leading to accurate analyses.
The
scientific context
of phonological analysis: what are we trying to understand when we carry out formal analyses of the phonological patterns of languages?
I consider the first item to be crucial in an introductory course, because if analysis is not well done at a basic level, all of the more sophisticated theoretical conclusions that might be drawn from it become untrustable. The second item is likewise crucial, to make phonological analysis meaningful.
As a consequence of these general goals, I have left out quite a few topics that currently are of great interest to many phonologists, myself included. This reflects my goal of teaching first the material that will provide the most solid foundation for more advanced theoretical study.2
I have tried to avoid a common problem of linguistics textbooks, that of presenting data simplified for pedagogical purposes without providing some means for the student to access more information about the language. This is provided in the “Further reading” section at the end of each chapter.
A number of passages in the text offer guidance in eliciting useful and valid data from native speakers. This relates to the phonology course I teach, in which one of the major assignments is a term paper involving analysis of data gathered first hand from a native speaker.
A computer resource for phonology that I have found useful in conjunction with this text is UCLA FeaturePad, a computer program created by Kie Zuraw, which helps students to learn and use features by showing the natural classes that correspond to any selection of feature values. It also shows how the sounds are changed when any feature values are changed. The program may be downloaded for free from www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/hayes/120a/.
Many people provided me with help and feedback on this text, for which I am very grateful. Among them were Marco Baroni, Christine Bartels, Roger Billerey, Abigail Cohn, Maria Gouskova, Jongho Jun, Sun-Ah Jun, Patricia Keating, Charles Kisseberth, the late Peter Ladefoged, Lisa Lavoie, Margaret MacEachern, Donka Minkova, Susan Moskwa, Pamela Munro, Russell Schuh, Shabnam Shademan, Bernard Tranel, Adam Ussishkin, Keli Vaughan, and Kie Zuraw. I’m certain that I’ve left names out here, and in cases where my memory has failed me I hope the unthanked person will understand.
I welcome comments and error corrections concerning this text, which may be sent to bhayes@humnet.ucla.edu or Department of Linguistics, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543.
For sound files, updated web links, typo corrections, and other material, please visit the website for this text at www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/hayes/IP.
Portions of chapters 2, 3, 6, and 7 appeared in earlier form as chapter 12 of Linguistics: An Introduction to Linguistic Theory by Victoria Fromkin et al. (2000, Blackwell).
1
Some recommended material for this purpose: Peter Ladefoged,
A Course in Phonetics
(5th ed., 2005, Heinle), and the accompanying sound materials made available at
http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants
.
2
For students going on to more advanced topics, I have found the following texts to be helpful: John Goldsmith,
Autosegmental and Metrical Phonology
(1990, Basil Blackwell); Michael Kenstowicz,
Phonology in Generative Grammar
(1994, Basil Blackwell); René Kager,
Optimality Theory
(1999, Cambridge University Press); John McCarthy,
A Thematic Guide to Optimality Theory
(2002, Blackwell).
1Phonetics
1.1 Phonetics and Phonology
There are two branches of linguistic science that deal with speech sounds: phonetics and phonology.
Phonetics is primarily an experimental science, which studies speech sounds from three viewpoints:
Production:
how sounds are made in the human vocal tract
Acoustics:
the study of the waveforms by which speech is transmitted through the atmosphere
Perception:
how the incoming acoustic signal is processed to detect the sound sequence originally intended by the speaker
Phonology is also, sometimes, an experimental science, though it also involves a fair degree of formal analysis and abstract theorizing. The primary data on which phonological theory rests are phonetic data, that is, observations of the phonetic form of utterances. The goal of phonology is to understand the tacit system of rules that the speaker uses in apprehending and manipulating the sounds of her language (more on this in chapter 2).
Since phonological data are phonetic, and since (as we will see) the very nature of phonological rules depends on phonetics, it is appropriate for beginning students to study phonetics first. In particular, a phonologist who tries to elicit data from native speakers without prior training in the production and perception of speech sounds will be likely to have a hard time. The material that follows can be taken to be a quick review of phonetics, or else a very quick introduction that can be amplified with reading and practical training from materials such as those listed at the end of the chapter.
In principle, a phonologist should understand all three of the areas of phonetics listed above: production, acoustics, and perception. Of these, production probably has the greatest practical importance for the study of phonology. Since it is also the simplest to describe, it is what will be covered here.
1.2 The Vocal Tract
The term “vocal tract” designates all the portions of the human anatomy through which air flows in the course of speech production (see figure 1.1). These include (from bottom to top):
The lungs and lower respiratory passages
The
larynx
(colloquially: “voice box”). This is the primary (but not the only) source of sound in speech production
The passages above the larynx, called the
pharynx, oral cavity
(mouth), and
nasal cavity
Figure 1.1 The vocal tract
The lungs and respiratory muscles produce a fairly steady level of air pressure, which powers the creation of sound. There are occasional momentary peaks of pressure for certain speech sounds and for emphatically stressed syllables. Air from the lungs ascends through the bronchial tubes, which join to form the trachea (windpipe). The bronchial tubes and the trachea form an inverted Y-shape.
1.2.1 The larynx
The larynx is a complex structure of cartilage and muscle, located in the neck and partly visible in adult males (whose larynxes are the largest) as the “Adam’s apple.” Figure 1.2 shows two diagrams of the larynx:
Figure 1.2 The larynx
The larynx contains the vocal cords (not “chords”), which are parallel flaps of tissue extending from each side of the interior larynx wall. The vocal cords have a slit between them, called the glottis. The vocal cords are held at their rear ends by two small cartilages called the arytenoid cartilages. Since these cartilages are mobile, they can be used to adjust the distance between the vocal cords.
When the vocal cords are held tightly together, the sound known as a glottal stop is produced; it can be heard in the middle of the expression “uh-oh” and is used as a speech sound in many languages.
If the vocal cords are placed close to each other but not tightly shut, and there is sufficient airflow from the lungs, then the vocal cords will vibrate, creating voicing. This is the configuration shown in figure 1.2(a). Voicing is the most important and noticeable sound source in speech.
The vocal cords can also be spread somewhat apart, so that air passing through the glottis creates turbulent noise. This is the way an “h” sound is produced. The vocal cords are spread farther still for normal breathing, in which airflow through the larynx is smooth and silent. This is the configuration shown in figure 1.2(b).
The cartilages of the larynx, especially the thyroid cartilage to which the front ends of the vocal cords attach, can stretch and slacken the vocal cords, thus raising and lowering the pitch of the voice. This is somewhat analogous to the changes in pitch that occur when a guitar string is tightened or loosened.
1.2.2 The upper vocal tract
Sound created at the larynx is modified and filtered as it passes through the upper vocal tract. This area is the most complex and needs the most detailed discussion; you should refer to figure 1.3 while reading the text.
Figure 1.3 The upper vocal tract
The main route through the upper vocal tract is a kind of arch, starting vertically upward from the larynx and bending forward through the mouth. There is an opening about half way from larynx to lips, called the velar port, through which air can pass into the nasal passage and outward through the nostrils. In figure 1.3, the velar port is wide open.
We will first cover the upper surface of the upper vocal tract (the roof of the mouth and the back of the pharynx), then the lower surface (floor of mouth, continued as the front wall of the pharynx).
Going in the “upstream” direction, the crucial landmarks of the upper surface are:
The upper
lip.
The upper
teeth
(in particular, the incisors).
The
alveolar ridge,
a bony ridge just behind the base of the upper incisors. Most people can feel their alveolar ridge by moving the tongue along the roof of the mouth.
1
The
hard palate,
which is that part of the roof of the mouth underlain by bone. You can feel the hard palate, and its rear edge, with the tip of your tongue.
The
velum,
or
soft palate.
This is a flap of soft tissue that separates the mouth from the nasal passages. It is attached at the front (to the hard palate) and at the sides, but hangs loose at its rear edge. Various muscles can raise and lower the velum. When the velum is high, then the velar port is closed, and air is confined to the oral passage.
2
The
uvula
([ˈjuːvjələ]). The little thing that dangles from the rear edge of the velum is called the uvula, Latin for ‘little grape’. The uvula is vibrated (trilled) as a speech sound in some languages.
The
pharynx.
Once we are past the velum, we are no longer in the mouth proper but in the rearward part of the upper vocal tract, commonly called the pharynx. The rear pharyngeal wall is continuous and has no significant landmarks all the way down to the larynx.
The crucial parts of the lower surface of the upper vocal tract are as follows:
The lower lip and the tongue rest on the
jaw,
which raises and lowers the lower lip and tongue when it moves during speech.
The
lower lip
is more mobile than the
upper
in speaking, though both move considerably. They can touch one another, closing the mouth, or the corners of the lips can be pulled in, creating lip rounding.
The
tongue
is somewhat deceptive in its size and shape. The parts that are obvious to an external observer are the
tip
(sometimes called the
apex)
and the
blade.
These are merely an appendage to the much larger tongue
body
(also called
dorsum),
a roundish muscular body that can move in all directions. Movements of the dorsum can radically change the shape of the vocal tract, a fact that is crucial in the production of distinct vowel sounds.
The rear surface of the dorsum is called the
tongue root.
Behind it is a flap called the
epiglottis.
1.3 Describing Speech Sounds
The human vocal tract can produce thousands of audibly distinct sounds. Of these, only a subset are actually used in human languages. Moreover, of this subset, some sounds are much more common than others. For example, almost every language has a t-like sound, whereas very few languages have an epiglottal stop or a bilabial trill. Any one language uses only a fairly small inventory of distinct speech sounds, usually no more than a few dozen.
The commonsense distinction of vowels and consonants is a generally valid one for phonetics and phonology. Roughly, vowels are highly sonorous sounds, made with a relatively open vocal tract. Consonants involve some kind of constriction (or more than one constriction) in the vocal tract. They are quieter than vowels, and often are detectable by the ear not so much by their own sound as by the transitional acoustic events that occur at the boundaries of consonants and vowels.
For both vowels and consonants, phonetic description involves assigning a phonetic symbol to each sound. This book will use the standard, internationally accepted phonetic symbol set called the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), promulgated by the International Phonetic Association.
It should be clear why the use of standard symbols, rather than spelling, is crucial. The spelling systems of most languages are ambiguous (consider read, bow) and inconsistent in the depiction of identical sounds (consider whole/hole, real/ reel). Cross-linguistically, the situation is even worse, as different languages employ the same letters to depict different sounds: the letter j spells four quite different sounds in English, French, Spanish, and German (in IPA these are d͡ʒ, [ʒ], [x], and [j]). Since this book will be presenting data from many languages, I will standardize all data using IPA transcription.
Phonetic transcription is traditionally given surrounded by square brackets. Thus, one possible rendition of the previous sentence in IPA (as pronounced in my own dialect of English) is:
[fəˈnεɾɨk ʈ͡ʂɹæ̃nˈskɹɪpʃə̃n ɨz ʈ͡ʂɹəˈdɪʃɨnəli ˈgɪvə̃n səˈ ɹæ̃ʊ̃ndɨd ba͡I ˈskwεɹ ˈbɹækɨts]
1.4 Consonants
Consonants are classified along three dimensions: voicing, place of articulation, and manner of articulation.
1.4.1 Voicing
In a voiced consonant, the vocal cords vibrate. For example, the “s” sound, for which the IPA symbol is simply [s], is voiceless, whereas the “z” sound (IPA [z]) is voiced. If you say “sa, za” while planting the palm of your hand firmly on the top of your head, you should feel the vibrations for [z] but not for [s].
The sounds [p t k] are voiceless. The sounds [b d g] as they occur in (for example) French or Japanese are voiced; in English they are often voiced for only part of their duration or even not at all; nevertheless the symbols [b d g] are traditionally used for them.
1.4.2 Manner
There are various manners of articulation.
In a stop, the airflow through the mouth is momentarily closed off. This can be done by the two lips, forming [p] or [b]; by the tongue tip touching the alveolar ridge, forming [t] or [d]; by the tongue body touching the palate, forming [k] or [g]; and in other ways.
In a fricative, a tight constriction is made, so that air passing through the constriction flows turbulently, making a hissing noise. Some of the fricatives of English are [f], [v], [θ] (the first sound of thin), and [ð] (the first sound of the). In sibilant fricatives, the mechanism of production is more complex: a stream of air is directed at the upper teeth, creating noisy turbulent flow. The four sibilant fricatives of English are [s], [z], [ʃ] (the first sound of shin), and [ʒ] (the consonant spelled s in pleasure).
An affricate is a stop followed by a fricative, made at the same location in the mouth in rapid succession so that the result has the typical duration of a single speech sound. English has two affricates: voiceless [t͡ʃ] (as in church) and voiced [d͡ʒ] (as in judge). As can be seen, the IPA symbol for an affricate is made with the symbols for the appropriate stop and fricative, optionally joined with a ligature.
Affricates are often considered to be a species of stop; that is, “affricated stops.”
In a nasal consonant, the velum is lowered, allowing air to escape through the nose. Most nasal consonants have a complete blockage within the mouth at the same time. The places of articulation for nasals are mostly the same as those for stops. The nasal consonants of English are [m] (mime), [n] (none), and [ŋ] (young).
Nasals like [m, n, ŋ] in a certain sense are also stops, since they involve complete closure in the mouth; hence the term “stop” is ambiguous. I will use this term here in its strict sense, which includes oral stops only.
In taps and flaps, an articulator makes a rapid brush against some articulatory surface. The motion of the articulator is forward in a flap, backward in a tap. North American varieties of English have alveolar taps (IPA [ɾ]) in words like lighter and rider.
In a trill, an articulator is made to vibrate by placing it near an articulatory surface and letting air flow through the gap. Many dialects of Spanish have an alveolar trill (IPA [r]) in words like perro ‘dog’. The uvula ([R]) and lips ([B]) can also be trilled.
Approximants are consonants in which the constriction is fairly wide, so that air passes through without creating turbulence or trilling. In lateral approximants,the air passes around the sides of the tongue, as in English [l]. In central approximants, the flow is through a gap in the center. English dialects have (at least) three central approximants, namely [j],3 as in youth, [w], as in win, and [ɹ], as in ray.
The last three categories just given are sometimes presented with a different classification. The liquids are the sounds that have the characteristic acoustic quality of l-like and r-like sounds.4 This term groups [l] and similar sounds together with tap [ɾ], trilled [r], approximant [ɹ], and various similar “r” sounds. Under this same scheme, the glides (also called semivowels) are the central approximants; that is, [j], [w], and similar sounds covered below.
1.4.3 Place of articulation
I will cover most of the possible places of articulation, proceeding from front to back. Each place is shown in figure 1.4: dotted lines indicate the approximate path taken by an articulator in making contact with the opposite wall of the vocal tract.
Bilabial
sounds are made by touching the upper and lower lips together. English has a voiceless bilabial stop [p], a voiced bilabial stop [b], and a (voiced) bilabial nasal [m].Note that the description just given follows the standard form for describing a consonant:
voicing,
then
place,
then
manner.
In the case of nasals and approximants, which are normally voiced, it is common to specify only place and manner.
Labiodental
sounds are made by touching the lower lip to the upper teeth. English has a voiceless labiodental fricative [f] and a voiced one, [v].
Dental
sounds are made by touching the tongue to the upper teeth. This can be done in a number of ways. If the tongue is stuck out beyond the teeth, the sound is called an
interdental,
though we will not be concerned with so fine a distinction. English has a voiceless dental fricative [θ] (
th
in
) and a voiced one [ð] (
th
e
).
Alveolar
sounds are made by touching the tip or blade of the tongue to a location just forward of the alveolar ridge. English has a voiceless alveolar stop [t], a voiced alveolar stop [d], voiceless and voiced alveolar fricatives [s] and [z] (both of them sibilants), a voiced alveolar nasal [n], a voiced alveolar lateral approximant [l],
5
and a voiced alveolar central approximant [ɹ].
Figure 1.4 Place of articulation
Palato-alveolar
sounds (sometimes called
post-alveolar)
are made by touching the blade of the tongue to a location just behind the alveolar ridge. English has a voiceless palato-alveolar fricative [ʃ] (
sh
oe
), a voiced palato-alveolar fricative [ʒ] (
vi
si
on),
a voiceless palato-alveolar affricate [t͡ʃ], (
ch
ur
ch
), and a voiced palato-alveolar affricate [d͡ʒ] (
j
u
dg
e
).
Retroflex
sounds are made by curling the tongue tip backward, and touching the area just behind the alveolar ridge. Some English speakers lack the alveolar approximant [ɹ] and instead have a retroflex one, transcribed [ɹ]; retroflex stops and affricates are common in languages of India and Australia.In the strict sense of the term, palato-alveolars and retroflexes have the same place of articulation: the same place on the roof of the mouth is contacted. They differ in the part of the tongue (blade or tip) that makes the contact. Conventionally, however, palato-alveolar and retroflex are referred to as separate places of articulation.
Palatal
sounds are made by touching the tongue blade and the forward part of the tongue body to the hard palate. [j] (
y
oung
) is sometimes described as a palatal approximant (see §1.5.5 below for a different kind of description); various languages have a variety of other manners of articulation at the palatal place.
Velar
sounds are made by touching the body of the tongue to the hard or soft palate. English has three velar sounds: a voiceless velar stop [k], a voiced velar stop [g], and a velar nasal [ŋ] (
si
ng
).
Uvular
sounds are made by moving the tongue body straight back to touch the uvula and neighboring portions of the soft palate. The “r” sound of French and German is usually a voiced uvular fricative, [ʁ]. The nasal consonant that occurs at the end of many words in Japanese, transcribed here with [ŋ], is pronounced by many speakers as uvular [
N
].
Pharyngeal
sounds are made by moving the tongue body down and back into the pharynx. A voiceless pharyngeal fricative is transcribed [ħ]; it occurs for example in Arabic.
Glottal
sounds are made by moving the vocal cords close to one another. English has a voiceless glottal fricative [h].
1.4.4 Consonant chart
Table 1.1 reproduces the part of the official IPA chart covering consonants.
It can be seen that any consonant in the chart is describable with the terminology given in table 1.1, and that a fair number of sounds are listed that do not occur in English. Quite a few of these will come up in the chapters to follow.
The symbols for dentals, alveolars, and palato-alveolars are systematically ambiguous. Where it is important to make a distinction, it is possible to do so with diacritics:
[t̪] = voiceless dental stop
[t] = voiceless alveolar stop
[t] = voiceless palato-alveolar (= post-alveolar) stop
Affricates are formed by joining a stop and fricative symbol together, as in for instance [t͡ʃ], the first and last sound of church. The same ligature may be used for so-called “complex segments” such as labial-velar [k͡p], which are formed at two places of articulation simultaneously.
A subsidiary part of the IPA chart (table 1.2) covers consonants in which the airflow comes not from the lungs, but from motions of the larynx (implosives, with inward airflow, and ejectives, with outward), or of the tongue body (clicks).
Table 1.3 shows consonants that don’t fit into the main IPA chart.
Table 1.1The main portion of the IPA consonant chart. www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/IPA_chart_(c)2005.pdf
Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a voiced consonant. Shaded areas denote articulations judged impossible.
Table 1.2The IPA chart: non-pulmonic consonants. www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/IPA_chart_(c)2005.pdf
Table 1.3 The IPA chart: other consonants. www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/IPA_chart_(c)2005.pdf
Note:a Epiglottals are made by touching the upper edge of the epiglottis (see figure 1.3) to the rear wall of the pharynx.
ʍ
Voiceless labial-velar fricative
w
Voiced labial-velar approximant
ɥ
Voiced labial-palatal approximant
H
Voiceless epiglottal fricative
a
ʢ
Voiced epiglottal fricative
ʡ
Epiglottal plosive
ɕ ʑ
Alveolo-palatal fricatives
ɹ
Alveolar lateral flap
ɧ
Simultaneous ʃ and x
1.5 Vowels
Vowels differ from consonants in that they do not have “places of articulation,” that is, points of major constriction in the vocal tract. Rather, the vocal tract as a whole acts as a resonating chamber. Modifying the shape of this chamber using movements of the tongue, jaw, and lips causes different timbres to be imparted to the basic sound produced at the vocal cords.
There are three basic modifications that one can make to the shape of the vocal tract. Vowels are described by specifying each modification used.
1.5.1 Rounding
An obvious modification one can make to the shape of the vocal tract is to round the lips, thus narrowing the passage at the exit. This happens, for example, in the vowels that many English dialects have for boot [u], book [ʊ], and boat [o]. These are called rounded or simply round vowels. Other vowels, such as the [i] of beet or the [Λ] of cut, are called unrounded.
1.5.2 Height
Another modification one can make to the shape of the vocal tract is to make the passage through the mouth wider or narrower. Widening is accomplished by opening the jaw and/or lowering the body of the tongue towards the bottom of the mouth. Narrowing is accomplished by raising the jaw and/or raising the body of the tongue.
The terminology for describing these changes is based on the height of the tongue body, without regard to whether this is due to jaw movement or tongue movement. Vowels are classified as high, mid, or low. In effect, high vowels have a narrow passage for the air to pass through, and low vowels have a wide passage. Another terminology, which appears on the IPA chart, is to call the high vowels close and the low vowels open.
Examples of high vowels in English are [i], the vowel of beat, and [u], the vowel of boot (for some English speakers; see below). Examples of low vowels are [ɑ], the vowel of spa, and [æ], the vowel of bat. You can feel the oral passage widening and narrowing if you pronounce a sequence of vowels that alternates between high and low, such as [i æ i æ i æ i æ].
1.5.3 Backness
The third primary way of changing the vocal tract shape is to place the body of the tongue towards the front part of the mouth or towards the back. Vowels so made are called front and back vowels, respectively; and vowels that are neither front nor back are called central. For example, [i] (beat) is a high front unrounded vowel, and the [u] vowel that appears in many languages (e.g. Spanish, French, and Persian) is a high back rounded vowel: French [ʁuʒ] ‘red’.
[u] is often described as being the vowel of English words like boot. This is true, but only for certain dialects of English; other dialects have a vowel that is closer to central than back: [bʉt].
A way to feel backness, particularly if you know how to say a true [u] instead of [ʉ], is to say the sequence [i u i u i u i u . . .] and feel your tongue body sliding forward and backward along the roof of your mouth.
1.5.4 Describing vowels systematically
We now have three dimensions for classifying vowels, each based on a particular modification of the vocal tract shape: rounding, height, and backness. The three dimensions allow us to describe vowels clearly and to organize them in a chart.
The IPA chart for vowels is shown in figure 1.5:
Figure 1.5 The IPA chart for vowels. www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/IPA_chart_(c)2005.pdf
Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel.
For the use of these symbols in depicting the vowels of English, see p. 21.
An awkward problem with the IPA is that there is no symbol for the low central unrounded vowel, which appears to be the most common of all vowels in the world’s languages. Below, I will follow the practice of many other linguists in adapting the symbol [a], which strictly speaking designates a front vowel in IPA, to denote the central vowel; where it is crucial, I will state which vowel is being described.
The IPA chart is also a bit puzzling for offering vowel symbols that have no description in terms of categories; for instance [I] floats in the upper left part of the chart without any row or column label. We will remedy this below when we set up a system of features (chapter 4) to classify vowels; see p. 82.
1.5.5 Glide–vowel correspondences
Glides can be described in two ways, because they are essentially the non-syllabic equivalents of vowels (semivowels). Thus, [j] is in IPA terms a palatal central approximant, but it is also describable as a high front unrounded glide, and is thus the consonant counterpart of [i]. Likewise, [w] is a labial-velar central approximant, but it is also treatable as a high back rounded glide, the counterpart of [u].
1.5.6 Diphthongs
A diphthong
