Phonetics For Dummies E-Book

William F. Katz

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 559

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

The clear and easy way to get a handle on the science of speech The science of how people produce and perceive speech, phonetics has an array of real-world applications, from helping engineers create an authentic sounding Irish or Canadian accent for a GPS voice, to assisting forensics investigators identifying the person whose voice was caught on tape, to helping a film actor make the transition to the stage. Phonetics is a required course among students of speech pathology and linguistics, and it's a popular elective among students of telecommunications and forensics. The first popular guide to this fascinating discipline, Phonetics For Dummies is an excellent overview of the field for students enrolled in introductory phonetics courses and an ideal introduction for anyone with an interest in the field. Bonus instructional videos, video quizzes, and other content available online for download on the dummies.com product page for this book.

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Phonetics For Dummies®

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ISBN 978-1-118-50508-3 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-50509-0 (ebk); 978-1-118-50510-6 (ebk); 978-1-118-50511-3 (ebk)

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Phonetics For Dummies®

Visit www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/phonetics to view this book's cheat sheet.

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Book

Conventions Used in This Book

Foolish Assumptions

What You’re Not to Read

How This Book Is Organized

Part I: Getting Started with Phonetics

Part II: Speculating about English Speech Sounds

Part III: Having a Blast: Sound, Waveforms, and Speech Movement

Part IV: Going Global with Phonetics

Part V: The Part of Tens

Icons Used in This Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I: Getting Started with Phonetics

Chapter 1: Understanding the A-B-Cs of Phonetics

Speaking the Truth about Phonetics

Prescribing and Describing: A Modern Balance

Finding Phonetic Solutions to the Problems of the World

Chapter 2: The Lowdown on the Science of Speech Sounds

Defining Phonetics and Phonology

Sourcing and Filtering: How People Make Speech

Getting Acquainted with Your Speaking System

Powering up your lungs

Buzzing with the vocal folds in the larynx

Shaping the airflow

Producing Consonants

Getting to the right place

Nosing around when you need to

Minding your manners

Producing Vowels

To the front

To the back

In the middle: Mid-central vowels

Embarrassing ‘phthongs’?

Putting sounds together (suprasegmentals)

Emphasizing a syllable: Linguistic stress

Changing how low or high the sound is

Chapter 3: Meeting the IPA: Your New Secret Code

Eyeballing the Symbols

Latin alphabet symbols

Greek alphabet symbols

Made-up symbols

Tuning In to the IPA

Featuring the consonants

Accounting for clicks

Going round the vowel chart

Marking details with diacritics

Stressing and breaking up with suprasegmentals

Touching on tone languages

Sounding Out English in the IPA

Cruising the English consonants

Acing the alveolar symbols

Pulling back to the palate: Alveolars and palatals

Reaching way back to the velars and the glottis

Visualizing the GAE vowels

Why the IPA Trumps Spelling

Chapter 4: Producing Speech: The How-To

Focusing on the Source: The Vocal Folds

Identifying the attributes of folds

Pulsating: Vocal folds at work

Recognizing the Fixed Articulators

Chomping at the bit: The teeth

Making consonants: The alveolar ridge

Aiding eating and talking: The hard palate

Eyeing the Movable Articulators

Wagging: The tongue

More than just for licking: The lips

Clenching and releasing: The jaw

Eyeing the soft palate and uvula: The velum

Going for the grapes: The uvula

Pondering Speech Production with Models

Ordering sounds, from mind to mouth

Controlling degrees of freedom

Feeding forward, feeding back

Coming Up with Solutions and Explanations

Keeping a gestural score

Connecting with a DIVA

Chapter 5: Classifying Speech Sounds: Your Gateway to Phonology

Focusing on Features

Binary: You’re in or out!

Graded: All levels can apply

Articulatory: What your body does

Acoustic: The sounds themselves

Marking Strange Sounds

Introducing the Big Three

Moving to the Middle, Moving to the Sides

Sounding Out Vowels and Keeping Things Cardinal

Tackling Phonemes

Defining phonemes

Complementary distribution: Eyeing allophones

Sleuthing Some Test Cases

Comparing English with Thai and Spanish

Eyeing the Papago-Pima language

Part II: Speculating about English Speech Sounds

Chapter 6: Sounding Out English Consonants

Stopping Your Airflow

Huffing and puffing: Aspiration when you need it

Declaring victory with voicing

Glottal stopping on a dime

Doing the funky plosion: Nasal

Doing the funky plosion: Lateral

Tongue tapping, tongue flapping

Having a Hissy Fit

Going in Half and Half

Shaping Your Approximants

Exploring Coarticulation

Tackling some coarticulation basics

Anticipating: Anticipatory coarticulation

Preserving: Perseveratory coarticulation

Chapter 7: Sounding Out English Vowels

Cruising through the Vowel Quadrilateral

Sounding out front and back

Stressing out when needed

Coloring with an “r”

Neutralizing in the right places

Tensing up, laxing out

Sorting the Yanks from the Brits

Differentiating vowel sounds

Dropping your “r”s and finding them again

Noticing offglides and onglides

Doubling Down on Diphthongs

Lengthening and Shortening: The Rules

Chapter 8 : Getting Narrow with Phonology

Distinguishing Types of Transcription

Impressionistic versus systematic

Broad versus narrow

Capturing Universal Processes

Getting More Alike: Assimilation

Getting More Different: Dissimilation

Putting Stuff In and Out

Moving Things Around: Metathesis

Putting the Rules Together

Chapter 9: Perusing the Phonological Rules of English

Rule No. 1: Stop Consonant Aspiration

Rule No. 2: Aspiration Blocked by /s/

Rule No. 3: Approximant Partial Devoicing

Rule No. 4: Stops Are Unreleased before Stops

Rule No. 5: Glottal Stopping at Word Beginning

Rule No. 6: Glottal Stopping at Word End

Rule No. 7: Glottal Stopping before Nasals

Rule No. 8: Tapping Your Alveolars

Rule No. 9: Nasals Becoming Syllabic

Rule No. 10: Liquids Become Syllabic

Rule No. 11: Alveolars Become Dentalized before Dentals

Rule No. 12: Laterals Become Velarized

Rule No. 13: Vowels Become Nasalized before Nasals

Applying the Rules

Chapter 10: Grasping the Melody of Language

Joining Words with Juncture

Knowing what affects juncture

Transcribing juncture

Emphasizing Your Syllables

Stressing Stress

Eyeing the predictable cases

Identifying the shifty cases

Sticking to the Rhythm

Tuning Up with Intonation

Making simple declaratives

Answering yes-no questions

Focusing on “Wh” questions

Showing Your Emotion in Speech

Fine-Tuning Speech Melodies

Sonority: A general measure of sound

Prominence: Sticking out in unexpected ways

Chapter 11: Marking Melody in Your Transcription

Focusing on Stress

Recognizing factors that make connected speech hard to transcribe

Finding intonational phrases

Zeroing in on the tonic syllable

Seeing how phoneticians have reached these conclusions

Applying Intonational Phrase Analysis to Your Transcriptions

Tracing Contours: Continuation Rises and Tag Questions

Continuing phrases with a rise

Tagging along

Part III: Having a Blast: Sound, Waveforms, and Speech Movement

Chapter 12: Making Waves: An Overview of Sound

Defining Sound

Cruising with Waves

Sine waves

Complex waves

Measuring Waves

Frequency

Amplitude

Duration

Phase

Relating the physical to the psychological

Harmonizing with harmonics

Resonating (Ommmm)

Formalizing formants

Relating Sound to Mouth

The F1 rule: Tongue height

The F2 rule: Tongue fronting

The F3 rule: R-coloring

The F1–F3 lowering rule: Lip protrusion

Chapter 13: Reading a Sound Spectrogram

Grasping How a Spectrogram Is Made

Reading a Basic Spectrogram

Visualizing Vowels and Diphthongs

Checking Clues for Consonants

Stops (plosives)

Fricative findings

Affricates

Approximants

Nasals

Formant frequency transitions

Spotting the Harder Sounds

Aspirates, glottal stops, and taps

Cluing In on the Clinical: Displaying Key Patterns in Spectrograms

Working With the Tough Cases

Women and children

Speech in a noisy environment

Lombard effect

Cocktail party effect

Chapter 14 : Confirming That You Just Said What I Thought You Said

Staging Speech Perception Processes

Fixing the “lack of invariance”

Sizing up other changes

Taking Some Cues from Acoustics

Timing the onset of voicing

Bursting with excitement

Being redundant and trading

Categorizing Perception

Setting boundaries with graded perception

Understanding (sound) discrimination

Examining characteristics of categorical perception

Balancing Phonetic Forces

Examining ease of articulation

Focusing on perceptual distinctiveness

Part IV: Getting Global with Phonetics

Chapter 15 : Exploring Different Speech Sources

Figuring Out Language Families

Eyeing the World’s Airstreams

Going pulmonic: Lung business as usual

Considering ingressives: Yes or no?

Talking with Different Sources

Pushing and pulling with the glottis: Egressives and ingressives

Clicking with velarics

Putting Your Larynx in a State

Breathless in Seattle, breathy in Gujarat

Croaking and creaking

Toning It Up, Toning It Down

Register tones

Contour tones

Tracking Voice Onset Time

Long lag: /p/, /t/, and /k/

Short lag: /b/, /d/, and /ɡ/

Pre-voicing: Russian, anyone?

Chapter 16: Visiting Other Places, Other Manners

Twinning Your Phonemes

Visualizing vowel length

Tracking World Sounds: From the Lips to the Ridge (Alveolar, That Is)

Looking at the lips

Dusting up on your dentals

Assaying the alveolars

Flexing the Indian Way

Passing the Ridge and Cruising toward the Velum

Studying post — alveolars

Populating the palatals

(Re)Visiting the velars

Heading Way Back into the Throat

Uvulars: Up, up, and away

Pharyngeals: Sound from the back of the throat

Going toward the epiglottals

Working with Your Tongue

Going for Trills and Thrills

Prenasalizing your stops or prestopping your nasals

Rapping, tapping, and flapping

Classifying syllable-versus stress-timed languages

Making pairs (the PVI)

Chapter 17: Coming from the Mouths of Babes

Following the Stages of a Healthy Child’s Speech Development

Focusing on early sounds — 6 months

Babbling — 1 year

Forming early words — 18 months

Toddling and talking — 2 years

Knowing What to Expect

Eyeing the common phonological errors

Examining patterns more typical of children with phonological disorders

Transcribing Infants and Children: Tips of the Trade

Delving into diacritics

Study No. 1: Transcribing a child’s beginning words

Study No. 2: A child with a cochlear implant (CI)

Chapter 18: Accentuating Accents

Viewing Dialectology

Mapping Regional Vocabulary Differences

Transcribing North American

The West Coast: Dude, where’s my ride?

The South: Fixin’ to take y’all’s car

The Northeast: Yinzers and Swamp Yankees

The Midlands: Nobody home

Black English (AAVE)

Canadian: Vowel raising and cross-border shopping

Transcribing English of the United Kingdom and Ireland

England: Looking closer at Estuary

Talking Cockney

Wales: Wenglish for fun and profit

Scotland: From Aberdeen to Yell

Ireland: Hibernia or bust!

Transcribing Other Varieties

Australia: We aren’t British

New Zealand: Kiwis aren’t Australian

South Africa: Vowels on safari

West Indies: No weak vowels need apply

Chapter 19: Working with Broken Speech

Transcribing Aphasia

Broca’s: Dysfluent speech output

Wernicke’s: Fluent speech output

Dealing with phonemic misperception

Using Special IPA to Describe Disordered Speech

Referencing the VoQS: Voice Quality Symbols

Transcribing Apraxia of Speech (AOS)

Transcribing Dysarthria

Cerebral palsy

Parkinson’s disease

Ataxic dysarthria

Introducing Child Speech Disorders

Noting functional speech disorders

Examining childhood apraxia of speech

Part V: The Part of Tens

Chapter 20: Ten Common Mistakes That Beginning Phoneticians Make and How to Avoid Them

Distinguishing between /ɑ/ and /ɔ/

Getting Used to /ɪ/ for -ing spelled words

Staying Consistent When Marking /ɪ/ and /i/ in Unstressed Syllables

Knowing Your R-Coloring

Using Upside-Down /ɹ/ Instead of the Trilled /r/

Handling the Stressed and Unstressed Mid-Central Vowels

Forming Correct Stop-Glide Combinations

Remembering When to Use Light-l and Dark-l

Transcribing the English Tense Vowels as Single Phonemes or Diphthongs

Differentiating between Glottal-Stop and Tap

Chapter 21: Debunking Ten Myths about Various English Accents

Some People Have Unaccented English

Yankees Are Fast-Talkin’ and Southerners Are Slow Paced

British English Is More Sophisticated Than American English

Minnesotans Have Their Own Weird Accent

American English Is Taking Over Other English Accents around the World

People from the New York Area Pronounce New Jersey “New Joysey”

British English Is Older Than American English

The Strong Sun, Pollen, and Bugs Affected Australian English’s Start

Canadians Pronounce “Out” and “About” Weirdly

Everyone Can Speak a Standard American English

About the Author

Cheat Sheet

Connect with Dummies

End User License Agreement

Introduction

Welcome to the world of phonetics — the few, the bold, the chosen. You’re about to embark on a journey that will enable you to make sounds you never thought possible and to scribble characters in a secret language so that only fellow phoneticians can understand what you’re doing. This code, the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), is a standard among phoneticians, linguists, teachers, and clinicians worldwide.

Phonetics is the scientific study of the sounds of language. Phonetics includes how speech sounds are produced (articulatory phonetics), the physical nature of the sounds themselves (acoustic phonetics), and how speech is heard by listeners (perceptual/linguistic phonetics).

The information you can gain in an introductory college course on phonetics is essential if you’re interested in language learning or teaching. Understanding phonetic transcription (that special code language) is critical to anyone pursuing a career in speech language pathology or audiology.

Others can also benefit from studying phonetics. Actors and actresses can greatly improve the convincingness of the characters they portray by adding a basic knowledge of phonetic principles to their background and training. Doing so can make a portrayed accent much more consistent and believable. And if you’re a secret drama queen, you can enjoy the fun of trying very different language sounds by using principles of articulatory and acoustic phonetics. No matter what your final career, a basic phonetics class will help you understand how spoken languages work, letting you see the world of speech and language in a whole new light.

About This Book

Phonetics For Dummies gives you an introduction to the scientific study of speech sounds, which includes material from articulatory, acoustic, and perceptual phonetics.

I introduce the field of phonology (systems of sound rules in language) and explain how to classify speech sounds using the IPA. I provide examples from foreign accents, dialectology, communication disorders, and children’s speech.

I present all the material in a modular format, just like all the other For Dummies books, which means you can flip to any chapter or section and read just what you need without having to read anything else. You just need to adhere to some basic ground rules when reading this book and studying phonetics in your class. Here are the big three:

Study the facts and theory. Phonetics covers a broad range of topics, including physiology, acoustics, and perception, which means you need to familiarize yourself with a lot of new terminology. The more you study, the better you’ll become.

Practice speaking and listening. An equally important part of being successful is ear training and oral practice (like learning to speak a second language). To get really good at the practical part of the trade, focus on the speaking and listening exercises that I provide throughout the book.

Stay persistent and don’t give up. Some principles of phonetics are dead easy, whereas others are trickier. Also, many language sounds can be mastered on the first try, whereas others can even take expert phoneticians (such as Peter Ladefoged) up to 20 years to achieve. Keep at it and the payoff will be worth it!

You can only pack so much into a book nowadays, so I have also recommended many Internet websites that contain more information. These links can be especially helpful for phonetics because multimedia (sound and video) is a powerful tool for mastering speech.

Conventions Used in This Book

This book uses several symbols commonly employed by phoneticians worldwide. If they’re new to you, don’t worry. They were foreign to even the most expert phoneticians once. Check out these conventions to help you navigate your way through this book (and also in your application of phonetics):

//: Angle brackets (or slash marks) denote broad, phonemic (indicating only sounds that are meaningful in a language) transcription.

[]: Square brackets mark narrow, phonetic transcription. This more detailed representation captures language-particular rules that are part of a language’s phonology.

/kӕt/ or “cat”: This transcription is the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in action. The IPA is a system of notation designed to represent the sounds of the spoken languages of the world. I use the IPA in slash marks (broad transcription) for more general description of language sounds (/kӕt/), and the IPA in square brackets (narrow transcription) to capture greater detail ([kʰӕt]). I use quotation marks for spelled examples so you don’t mistake the letters for IPA symbols.

I use these additional conventions throughout this book. Some are consistent with other For Dummies books:

All Web addresses appear in monofont. If you've reading an ebook version, the URLs are live links.

Some academics seem to feel superior if they use big words that would leave a normal person with a throbbing headache. For example, anticipatory labial coarticulation or intra-oralarticulatory undershoot. Maybe academics just don’t get enough love as young children? At any rate, this shouldn’t be your problem! To spare you the worst of this verbiage, I use italics when I clearly define many terms to help you decipher concepts. I also use italics to emphasize stressed syllables or sounds in words, such as “big” or “pillow”.

I use quotation marks around words that I discuss in different situations, such as when I transcribe them or when I consider sounds. For example, “pillow” /ˈрɪlo/.

Bold is used to highlight the action parts of numbered steps and to emphasize keywords.

Foolish Assumptions

When writing this book, I assume that you’re like many of the phonetic students I’ve worked with for the past 20 years, and share the following traits:

You’re fascinated by language.

You look forward to discovering more about the speech sounds of the world, but perhaps you have a feeling of chilling dread upon hearing the word phonetics.

You want to be able to describe speech for professional reasons.

You enjoy hearing different versions of English and telling an Aussie from a Kiwi.

You’re taking an entry-level phonetics class and are completely new to the subject.

If so, then this book is for you. More than likely, you want an introduction to the world of phonetics in an easily accessible fashion that gives you just what you need to know.

What You’re Not to Read

Like all For Dummies books, this one is organized so that you can find the information that matters to you and ignore the stuff you don’t care about. You don’t even have to read the chapters in any particular order; each chapter contains the information you need for that chapter’s topic, and I provide cross-references if you want to read more about a specific subject. You don’t even have to read the entire book — but gosh, don’t you want to?

Occasionally, you’ll see sidebars, which are shaded boxes of text that go into detail on a particular topic. You don’t have to read them unless you’re interested; skipping them won’t hamper you in understanding the rest of the text. (But I think you’ll find them fascinating!)

You can also skip paragraphs marked with the Technical Stuff icon. This information is a tad more technical than what you really need to know to grasp the concept at hand.

How This Book Is Organized

This book is divided into five parts. Here is a rundown of these parts.

Part I: Getting Started with Phonetics

Part I starts with the source-filter model of speech production, describing how individual consonants and vowels are produced. You get to practice, feeling about in your mouth as you do so. I then show how speech sounds are classified using the IPA. This part of the book includes an introduction to phonology, the rules of how speech sounds combine.

Part II: Speculating about English Speech Sounds

Part II shows you further details of English sound production, including processes relevant to narrow transcription. This part focuses on concepts such as feature theory, phonemes, and allophones — all essential to understanding the relationship between phonetics and phonology. This part also includes information about melody in language, allowing you to analyze languages that sound very different than English and to include prosodic information in your transcriptions.

Part III: Having a Blast: Sound, Waveforms, and Speech Movement

Part III provides grounding in acoustic phonetics, the study of speech sounds themselves. In this part, I begin with sound itself, examining wave theory, sound properties of the vibrating vocal folds, and sound shaping by the lips, jaw, tongue, and velum. I also cover the practical skill of spectrogram reading. You can uncover ways in which speech sounds affect perception (such as voice onset time and formant frequency transitions).

Part IV: Going Global with Phonetics

Part IV branches out with information on languages other than English. These languages have different airstream mechanisms (such as sucking air in to make speech), different states of the voice box (such as making a creaking sound like a toad), and use phonemic tone (making high and low sounds to change word meaning). This part also has transcribing examples drawn from children’s speech, different varieties of English and productions by individuals with aphasia, dysarthria, and apraxia of speech. The goal is to provide you with a variety of real-world situations for a range of transcribing experiences.

Part V: The Part of Tens

This part seeks to set you straight with some standard lists of ten things. Here I include ten common mistakes that beginning transcribers often make and what you can do to avoid those mishaps. This part also seeks to dispel urban legends circulating among the phonetically non-initiated. You can also find a bonus chapter online at www.dummies.com/extras/phonetics for a look at phonetics of the phuture.

Icons Used in This Book

Every For Dummies book uses icons, which are small pictures in the margins, to help you enjoy your reading experience. Here are the icons that I use:

When I present helpful information that can make your life a bit easier when studying phonetics, I use this icon.

This icon highlights important pieces of information that I suggest you store away because you’ll probably use them on a regular basis.

The study of phonetics is very hands-on. This icon points out different steps and exercises you can do to see (and hear) firsthand phonetics in action. These exercises are fun and show you what your anatomy (your tongue, jaw, lips, and so on) does when making sounds and how you can produce different sounds.

Although everything I write is interesting, not all of it is essential to your understanding the ins and outs of phonetics. If something is nonessential, I use this icon.

This icon alerts you of a potential pitfall or danger.

Where to Go from Here

You don’t have to read this book in order — feel free to just flip around and focus in on whatever catches your interest. If you’re using this book as a way of catching up on a regular college course in phonetics, go to the table of contents or index, search for a topic that interests you, and start reading.

If you’d rather read from the beginning to the end, go for it. Just start with Chapter 1 and start reading. If you want a refresher on the IPA, start with Chapter 3, or if you need to strengthen your knowledge of phonological rules, Chapters 8 and 9 are a good place to begin. No matter where you start, you can find a plethora of valuable information to help with your future phonetic endeavors.

If you want more hands-on practice with your transcriptions, check out some extra multimedia material (located at www.dummies.com/go/phoneticsfd) that gives you some exercises and quizzes.

Part I

Getting Started with Phonetics

Visit www.dummies.com for more great Dummies content online.

In this part . . .

Get the complete lowdown on what phonetics is and why so many different fields study it.

Familiarize yourself with all the human anatomy that play important role in phonetics, including the lips, tongue, larynx, and vocal folds.

Understand how the different parts of anatomy work together to produce individual consonants, vowels, syllables, and words.

Examine the different parts of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to see how phoneticians use it to transcribe spoken speech and begin to make your own transcriptions.

Identify how different speech sounds are classified and the importance of voicing (whether the vocal folds are buzzing), places of articulation (the location in your mouth where consonants are formed), and manner of articulation (how consonants are formed).

See how sounds are broken down to the most basic level (phonemes) and how they work together to form words.

Chapter 1

Understanding the A-B-Cs of Phonetics

In This Chapter

Nurturing your inner phonetician

Embracing phonetics, not fearing it

Deciding to prescribe or describe

People talk all day long and never think about it until something goes wrong. For example, a person may suddenly say something completely pointless or embarrassing. A slip of the tongue can cause words or a phrase to come out wrong. Phonetics helps you appreciate many things about how speech is produced and how speech breaks down.

This chapter serves as a jumping-off point into the world of phonetics. Here you can see that phonetics can do the following:

Provide a systematic means for transcribing speech sounds by using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

Explain how healthy speech is produced, which is especially important for understanding the problems of people with neurological disorders, such as stroke, brain tumors, or head injury, who may end up with far more involved speech difficulties.

Help language learners and teachers, particularly instructors of English as a second language, better understand the sounds of foreign languages so they can be understood.

Give actors needing to portray different varieties of English (such as American, Australian, British, Caribbean, or New Zealand) the principles of how sounds are produced and how different English accents are characterized.

This chapter serves as a quick overview to your phonetics course. Use it to get your feet wet in phonetics and phonology, the way that sounds pattern systematically in language.

Speaking the Truth about Phonetics

“The history of phonetics — going back some 2.5 millennia — makes it perhaps the oldest of the behavioral sciences and, given the longevity and applicability of some of the early findings from these times, one of the most successful”

— Professor John Ohala, University of California, Berkeley

When I tell people that I’m a phonetician, they sometimes respond by saying a what? Once in a rare while, they know what phonetics is and tell me how much they enjoyed studying it in college. These people are typically language lovers — folks who enjoy studying foreign tongues, travelling, and experiencing different cultures.

Unfortunately, some people react negatively and share their horror stories of having taken a phonetics course during college. Despite its astounding success among the behavioral sciences, phonetics has received disdain from some students because of these reasons:

A lot of specialized jargon and technical terminology: In phonetics, you need to know some biology, including names for body parts and the physiology of speech. You also need to know some physics, such as the basics of acoustics and speech waveforms. In addition, phonetics involves many social and psychological words, for example when discussing speech perception (the study of how language sounds are heard and understood) and dialectology (the study of language regional differences). Having to master all this jargon can cause some students to feel that phonetics is hard and quickly become discouraged.

Speaking and ear training skills: When studying phonetics, you must practice speaking and listening to new sounds. For anyone who already experienced second language learning (or enjoys music or singing), doing so isn’t a big deal. However, if you’re caught off guard by this expectation from the get-go, you may underestimate the amount and type of work involved.

The stigma of being a phonetician: Phoneticians and linguists are often unfairly viewed as nit-picking types who enjoy bossing people around by telling them how to talk. With this kind of role model, working on phonetics can sometimes seems about as exciting as ironing or watching water boil.

I beg to differ with these reasons. Yes, phonetics does have a lot of technical terms, but hang in there and take the time to figure out what they mean because it will be worth your time. With phonetics, consider listening and speaking the different sounds as a fun activity. Working in the field of phonetics is actually an enjoyable and exciting one. Refer to the later section, “Finding Phonetic Solutions to the Problems of the World” and see what impact phonetics has in everyday speech.

Prescribing and Describing: A Modern Balance

This idea that linguists (those who study language) and phoneticians (those who work with speech sounds) are out to change your language comes from a tradition called prescriptivism, which means judging what is correct. Many of the founders of the field of modern phonetics, including Daniel Jones and Henry Sweet, have relied on this tradition. You may be familiar with phoneticians taking this position, for example, the character of Henry Higgins, in the play Pygmalion and the musical My Fair Lady, or Lionel Logue, as portrayed in the more recent film, The King’s Speech. At this time and place (England in early 1900s) phoneticians earned their keep mainly by teaching people how to speak “properly.”

However, much has changed since then. In general, linguistics (the study of language) has broadened to include not only studies close to literature and the humanities (called philology, or love of language), but also to disciplines within the cognitive sciences. Thus, linguistics is often taught not only in literature departments, but also in psychology and neural science groups.

These changes have also affected the field of phonetics. Overall, phoneticians have learned to listen more and correct less. Current phonetics is largely descriptive (observing how different languages and accents sound), instead of being prescriptive. Descriptive phoneticians are content to identify the factors responsible for spoken language variation (such as social or geographic differences) and to not necessarily translate this knowledge into scolding others as to how they should sound.

You can see evidence of this descriptive attitude in the term General American English (GAE), used throughout this book, when talking about American norms. (GAE basically means a major accent of American English, most similar to a generalized Midwestern accent; check out Chapter 18 for more information about it.) Although the difference may seem subtle, GAE has a very different flavor than a label such as Standard American English (SAE), used by some authors to refer to the same accent. After all, if someone is standard, what might that make you or me? Substandard? You can see how the idea of an accent standard carries the sense of prescription, making some folks uneasy.

Scientifically, descriptivism is the way to go. This viewpoint permits phoneticians to study language and speech without the baggage of having to tell people how they should sound. Other spokespeople in society may take a presciptivist position and recommend that certain words, pronunciations, or usages be promoted over others. This prescriptivism is generally based on the idea that language values should be preserved and that nobody wants to speak a language that doesn’t have correct forms.

Finding Phonetic Solutions to the Problems of the World

Phonetics can help a lot of problems related to speech. You may be surprised at how omnipresent phonetics is in everyday speech. If you’re taking a phonetics course or you’re reading to discover more about language and you come across a perplexing problem, the following can refer you to the chapter in this book where I address the solutions.

How does my body produce speech? Check out Chapter 2.

I have seen these symbols: /ʒ/,/ʧ/,/ə/,/θ/,/ɚ/,/ӕ/,/ŋ/,/ʌ/, and /ʊ/. What are they? Refer to Chapter 3.

Why do Chinese and Vietnamese people sound like their voices are going up and down when they speak? Head to Chapter 3.

What happens in my throat when I speak, whisper, or sing? Flip to Chapter 4.

How are speech sounds classified? Check out Chapter 5.

I have taken a phonetics course, but I still don’t understand the ideas of phoneme and allophone. What are they? Refer to Chapter 5.

What exactly is a glottal stop? Go to Chapter 6.

What is coarticulation? Does it always occur? Flip to Chapter 6.

How are vowels produced differently in British and American English? Check out Chapter 7.

Is it okay to drop my “R”s? Head to Chapter 7.

What exactly is phonology? Go to Chapter 8.

Do all people in the world have the same kind of sound changes in their languages? Check out Chapter 8.

How do I apply diacritics in transcription? Chapter 9 can help.

I need to know how to narrowly transcribe English. What do I do? Look in Chapter 9.

How do I transcribe speech that is all run together? Head to Chapter 10.

What role does melody play in speech? Go to Chapter 10.

How do I mark speech melody in my transcriptions? Check out Chapter 11.

How is speech described at the level of sound? Refer to Chapter 12.

How can I use computer programs to analyze speech? Look in Chapter 12.

My teacher asked me to decode a sound spectrogram, and I am stuck. What do I do? Chapter 13 can help.

How do people perceive speech? Refer to Chapter 14.

Why do speakers of different languages make those odd creaky and breathy sounds? Go to Chapter 15.

What is voice onset time (VOT)? Chapter 15 has what you need.

How do speakers of other languages make those peculiar r-like sounds? What about guttural sounds at the backs of their throats and clicks? Look in Chapter 16.

Are some consonants held longer than others? What about some vowels? Refer to Chapter 16.

How do I transcribe child language? Check out Chapter 17.

How can you tell normal child speech from child speech that is delayed or disordered? Go to Chapter 17.

What exactly are the differences between British, Australian, and New Zealand English? I just opened my mouth and inserted my foot. Chapter 18 can help ease your problems.

Can you show me some examples of aphasia, apraxia, and dysarthria transcribed? Head to Chapter 19.

I make mistakes when I transcribe. What can I do to improve? Chapter 20 discusses ten of the most common mistakes that people make when transcribing, and what you can do to avoid them.

How can I know when someone is telling an urban myth about English accents? Zip to Chapter 21.

Chapter 2

The Lowdown on the Science of Speech Sounds

In This Chapter

Spelling out what phonetics and phonology are

Understanding how speech sounds are made

Recognizing speech anatomy, up close and personal

Phonetics is centrally concerned with speech, a uniquely human behavior. Animals may bark, squeak, or meow to communicate. Parrots and mynah birds can imitate speech and even follow limited sets of human commands. However, only people naturally use speech to communicate. As the philosopher Bertrand Russell put it, “No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor, but honest.”

In this chapter, I introduce you to the basic way in which speech is produced. I explain the source-filter theory of speech production and the key parts of your anatomy responsible for carrying it out. I begin picking up key features that phoneticians use to describe speech sounds, such as voicing, place of articulation, and manner of articulation.

Phoneticians transcribe (write down) speech sounds of any language in the world using special symbols that are part of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Throughout this book, I walk you through more and more of these IPA symbols, until transcription becomes a cinch. For now, I am careful to indicate spelled words in quotes (such as “bee”) and their IPA symbols in slash marks, meaning broad transcription, such as /bi/. (Refer to Chapter 3 for in-depth information on the IPA.)

Defining Phonetics and Phonology

Phonetics is the scientific study of the sounds of language. You may recognize the root phon- meaning sound (as in “telephone”). However, phonetics doesn’t refer to just any sort of sound (such as a door slamming). Rather, it deals specifically with the sounds of spoken human language. As such, it’s part of the larger field of linguistics, the scientific study of language. (Check out Linguistics For Dummies by Rose-Marie Dechaine PhD, Strang Burton PhD, and Eric Vatikiotis-Bateson PhD [John Wiley & Sons, Inc.] for more information.)

Phonetics is closely related to phonology, the study of the sound systems and rules in language. The difference between phonetics and phonology can seem a bit tricky at first, but it’s actually pretty straightforward. Phonetics deals with the sounds themselves. The more complicated part is the rules and systems (phonology). All languages have sound rules. They’re not explicit (such as “Keep off the grass!”), but instead they’re implicit or effortlessly understood.

To get a basic idea of phonological rules, try a simple exercise. Fill in the opposite of these three English words. (I did the first one for you.)

tolerant

intolerant

consistent

______________

possible

_______________

You probably answered “inconsistent” and “impossible,” right? Here’s the issue. The prefix “in” means “not” (or opposite) in English, so why does the “in” change to “im” for “impossible?” It does so because of a sound rule. In this case, the phonological rule is known as assimilation (one sound becoming more like another). In this example, a key consonant changes from one made with the tongue (the “n” sound) to one made at the lips (the “m” sound) in order to match the “p” sound of “possible,” also produced at the lips. The effect of this phonological rule is to make speech easier to produce. To get a feel for this, try to say “in-possible” three times rapidly in succession. Now, try “impossible.” You can see that saying “impossible” is easier.

I focus more discussion on phonology in Chapters 8 and 9. Now you just need to know that phonological rules are an important part of all spoken languages. One of the key goals of phonology is to figure out which rules are language-specific (applying only to that language) and which are universal.

Phoneticians specialize in describing and understanding speech sounds. A phonetician typically has a good ear for hearing languages and accents, is skilled in the use of computer programs for speech analysis, can analyze speech movement or physiology, and can transcribe using the IPA.

Because phonetics and phonology are closely allied disciplines, a phonetician typically knows some phonology, and a phonologist is grounded in phonetics, even though their main objects of study are somewhat different.

Phonetics can tell people about what language sounds are, how language sounds are produced, and how to transcribe these sounds for many purposes. Phonetics is important for a wide variety of fields, including computer speech and language processing, speech and language pathology, language instruction, acting, voice-over coaching, dialectology, and forensics.

A big part of a person’s identity is how you sound when you speak — phonetics lets you understand this in a whole new way. And it’s true what the experts say: Phonetics is definitely helpful for anyone learning a new language.

Sourcing and Filtering: How People Make Speech

Scientists have long wondered exactly how speech is produced. Our current best explanation is called the source-filter theory, also known as the acoustic theory of speech production. The source-filter theory best explains how speech works.

The idea behind this theory is that speech begins with a breathy exhalation from the lungs, causing raw sound to be generated in the throat. This sound-generating activity is the source. The source may consist of buzzing of the vocal folds (also known as the vocal cords), which sounds like an ordinary voice. The source may also include hissing noise, which sounds like a whisper. The movement of the lips, tongue, and jaw (for oral sounds) and the use of the nose (for nasal sounds) shapes this raw sound and is the part of the system known as the filter.

The raw sound is filtered into something recognizable. A filter is anything that can selectively permit some things to pass through and block other things (kind of like what your coffee filter does). In this case, the filter allows some frequencies of sound to pass through, while blocking others.

After raw sound is created by a buzzing larynx and/or hissing noise, the sound is filtered by passing through differently shaped airway channels formed by the movement of the speech articulators (tongue, lips, jaw, and velum). This sound-shaping process results in fully formed speech (see Figure 2-1 for what this looks like).

Illustration by Wiley, Composition Services Graphics

Figure 2-1: The source-filter theory of speech production in action.

Let me give you an analogy to help you understand. The first part of the speaking process is like the mouthpiece of a wind instrument, converting air pressure into sound. The filter is the main part of a wind instrument; no one simply plays a mouthpiece. Some kind of instrument body (such as a saxophone or flute) must form the musical sound. Similarly, you start talking with a vibrating source (your vocal folds). You then shape the sound with the instrument of your moving articulators, as the filter.

Here are a few other important points to remember with the source-filter theory:

The source and filter are largely independent of each other. A talker can have problems with one part of the system, while the other part remains intact.

The voicing source can be affected by laryngitis (as in a common cold), more serious disease (such as cancers), injuries, or paralysis.

An alternative voicing source, such as an external artificial larynx, can provide voicing if the vocal folds are no longer able to function.

The sources and filters of men and women differ. Overall, men have lower voices (different source characteristics) and different filter shapes (created by the mouth and throat passageways) than women.

Thankfully, people never have to really think about making these shapes. If so, imagine how people would ever be able to talk. Nevertheless, this theory explains how humans do talk. It’s quite different than, say, rubbing a raspy limb across your body (like the katydid) or drumming your feet on the ground (like the prairie vole cricket) to communicate.

Gunnar Fant and the source-filter theory

The source-filter theory of speech production was the brainchild of Gunnar Fant (1919–2009), a pioneering Swedish professor of speech communication. After earning a master’s degree in engineering at Stockholm at the end of World War II, Fant began to apply this knowledge to analyze and synthesize speech sounds. His doctoral dissertation, the Acoustic Theory of Speech Production, soon became an international standard. Fant’s research led to the development of whole new technologies, including computer speech synthesis, and helped make phonetics more available to a variety of professions. At age 81, while still working actively on phonetics research, Fant wrote in “Half a Century in Phonetics and Speech Research,”:

“Mankind is making much progress in mapping the genetic code. We need some of the same patience and persistence in mapping the speech code.”

Getting Acquainted with Your Speaking System

Although most people speak all their lives without really thinking about how they do it, phonetics begins with a close analysis of the speaking system. This part of phonetics, called articulatory phonetics, deals with the movement and physiology of speech. However, don’t fear — you don’t need to be a master phonetician to get this part of the field. In fact, the best way is to pay close attention to your own tongue, lips, jaw, and velum when you speak. As you get better acquainted with your speaking system, the basics of articulatory phonetics should become clear.

Figure 2-2 shows the broad divisions of the speaking system. Researchers divide the system into three levels, separated at the larynx. The lungs, responsible for the breathy source, are below the larynx. The next division is the larynx itself. Buzzing at this part of the body causes voiced sounds, such as in the vowel “ah”’ of “hot” (written in IPA characters as /ɑ/) or the sound /z/ of “zip.” Finally, the parts of the body that shape sound (the tongue, lips, jaw, and velum) are located above the larynx and are therefore called supralaryngeal.

In the following sections, I delve deeper into the different parts of the speech production system and what those parts do to help in the creation of sound. I also walk you through some exercises so you can see by doing — feeling the motion of the lungs, vocal folds, tongue, lips, jaw, and velum, through speech examples.

Illustration by Wiley, Composition Services Graphics

Figure 2-2: The main components of the speech production system.

If you’re a shy person, you may want to close the door, because some of these exercises can sound, well, embarrassing. On the other hand, if you’re a more outgoing type, you can probably enjoy this opportunity to release your inner phonetician.

Powering up your lungs

Speech begins with your lungs. For anyone who has been asked to speak just after an exhausting physical event (say, a marathon), it should come as no surprise that it can be difficult to get words out.

Lung power is important in terms of studying speech sounds for several reasons: Individuals with weakened lungs have characteristic speech difficulties, which is an important part of the study of speech language pathology. Furthermore, as I discuss in Chapter 10, an important feature of speech called stress is controlled in large part by how loud a sound is — this, in turn, relates to how much air is puffed out by the lungs.

The role of the lungs in breathing and speech

Your lungs clearly aren’t designed to serve only speech. They’re part of the respiratory system, designed to bring in oxygen and remove carbon dioxide. Breathing typically begins with the nose, where air is filtered, warmed, and moistened. Air then moves to the pharynx, the part of the throat just behind the nose and into the trachea, the so-called windpipe that lies in front of the esophagus (or the food tube). From the trachea, the tubes split into two bronchi (left and right), then into many bronchioles (tiny bronchi), and finally ending up in tiny air sacs called alveoli. The gas exchange takes place in these sacs.

When you breathe for speaking, you go into a special mode that is very different than when you walk, run, or just sit around. Basically, speech breathing involves taking in a big breath, then holding back or checking the exhalation process so that enough pressure allows for buzzing at the larynx (also known as voicing). If you don’t have a steady flow of pressure at the level of the larynx, you can’t produce the voiced sounds, which include all the vowels and half of the consonants.

Young children take time to get the timing of this speech breathing right; think of how often you may have heard young kids say overly short breath-group phrases, such as this example:

“so like Joey got a . . . got a candy and a . . . nice picture from his uncle”

Here the child talker quite literally runs out of breath before finishing his thought.

Some interesting bits about the lungs can give you some more insight into these powerhouse organs:

They’re light and spongy, and they can float on water.

They contain about two liters (three quarts) of air, fully inflated.

Your left and right lungs aren’t exactly the same. The left lung is divided into two lobes, and the lung on your right side is divided into three. The left lung is also slightly smaller, allowing room for your heart.

When resting, the average adult breathes around 12 to 20 times a minute, which adds up to a total of about 11,000 liters (or 11,623 quarts) of air every day.

Testing your own lung power

You can test your lung power by producing a sustained vowel. To test your lung power, sit up, take a deep breath, and produce the vowel /ɑ/, as in the word “hot,” holding it as long as you can. The vowel /ɑ/ is part of the IPA, which I discuss in Chapter 3.

How did you do? Most healthy men can sustain a vowel for around 25 to 35 seconds, and women for 15 to 25 seconds. Next, try the same vowel exercise while lying flat on your back (called being supine). You probably can’t go on as long as you did when you were sitting up, and the task should be harder. Due to gravity and biomechanics, the lungs are simply more efficient in certain positions than others. The effect of body position on speech breathing is important to many medical fields, such as speech language pathology.

Buzzing with the vocal folds in the larynx

The larynx, a cartilaginous structure sometimes called the voice box, is the part of the body responsible for making all voiced sounds. The larynx is a series of cartilages held together by various ligaments and membranes, and also interwoven by a series of muscles. The most important muscles are the vocal folds, two muscular flaps that control the miraculous process of voicing.

Figure 2-3 shows a midsection image of the head. In this figure, you can see the positions of the nasal cavity, oral cavity, pharynx, and larynx. Look to see where the vocal folds and glottis are located. The vocal folds (also known as the vocal cords) are located in the larynx. You can find the larynx in the figure at the upper part of the air passage.

Illustration by Wiley, Composition Services Graphics

Figure 2-3: The midsagittal view of the vocal tract.

The following sections provide some examples you can do to help you get better acquainted with your larynx and glottis.

Getting a buzz from a different source

A common surgery used for the treatment of laryngeal cancer is laryngectomy, which is the complete or partial removal of the larynx and vocal folds. After such a surgery, several methods can be used to help a patient speak. One way is to train patients to use an electrolarynx, a mechanical (buzzing) device held against the throat to provide vibrations for speech. For laryngectomy patients, the electrolarynx has the advantage of being simple and accessible pre- and post-operation. However, a disadvantage is the rather mechanical voice that results (see www.youtube.com/watch?v=v55NAjqltEI).

For phonetics students, trying out an electrolarynx is a fun way to really get the idea of the independence of source and filter. See if you can borrow one from a nearby communication disorders group or clinic. To see how it works, follow these steps:

1. Place the vibrating membrane against the side of your Adam’s apple (laryngeal prominence).

2. Turn on the device and silently count to 10.

If you did it correctly, you’ll feel a pleasant buzzing on your neck while the device voices (phonates) for you. You may need to try several times to get the coupling just right, so that others can hear you.

Locating your larynx

You can easily find your own larynx. Lightly place your thumb and forefinger on the front of your throat and hold out a vowel. You should feel a buzzing. If you have correctly done it, you’re pressing down over the thyroidcartilage (refer to the larynx area shown in Figure 2-3) to sense the vibration of the vocal folds while you phonate. If you’re male, finding your vocal folds is even more obvious because of your Adam’s apple (more technically called the laryngeal prominence), which is more pronounced in men than women.

Are you happy with your buzzing? Now try saying something else, but this time, whisper. When whispering, switch from a voiced (phonated) sound to voiceless. Doing these exercises gives you a good idea of voicing, which is the first of three key features that phoneticians use to classify the speech sounds of the world. (Refer to Chapter 5 for these three key features.) Voicing is one of the most straightforward features for beginning phonetics students because you can always place your hand up to the throat to determine whether a sound is being produced with a voiced source or not.

Stopping with your glottis

Meanwhile, the glottis is the empty space between the two vocal folds when they’re held open for breathing or for speech. That is, it’s basically an empty hole. Your glottis is probably the most important open space in your body because it regulates air coming in and out of the lungs. Even if you’re otherwise able to breathe just fine, if your glottis is clamped shut, air can’t enter the lungs.

Clamping your glottis shut is a dangerous situation, so don’t try it for long. Nevertheless, it’s fun and instructive to try something called the glottal stop, /ʔ/, a temporary closing (also called an adduction) of the vocal folds that occurs commonly during speech. Are you ready? Stick to these steps as you try this exercise:

1. Say “uh-oh,” loudly and slowly several times.

Young children like saying this expression as they are about to drop something expensive (say, your new cell phone) on a cement floor.

2. Feel your vocal folds clamp shut at the end of “uh,” and then open again (the technical term is abduct) when you begin saying “oh.”

3. Try holding the closing gesture (the adduction) after the “uh.”

You should soon begin feeling uncomfortable and anoxic (which means without oxygen) because no air can get to your lungs.

4. Breathe again, please!

I need you alive and healthy to complete these exercises.

5. Practice by saying other sounds, such as “oh-oh,” “ah-ah,” and “eeh-eeh,” each time holding the glottal stop (at will) across the different vowels.

This skill comes in handy when I discuss more about glottal stops used in American English and in different English dialects worldwide in Chapter 18.

Shaping the airflow

Parts of the body filter sound by creating airway shapes above the larynx. Air flowing through differently shaped vessels produces changing speech sounds. Imagine blowing into variously shaped bottles; they don’t all sound the same, right? Or consider all the different sizes and shapes of instruments in an orchestra; different shapes lead to different sounds. For this reason, it’s important to understand how the movement of your body can shape the air passages in your throat, mouth, and nasal passages in order to produce understandable speech.

Air passages are shaped by the speech organs, also known as articulators. Phoneticians classify articulators as movable (such as the tongue, lips, jaw, and velum) and fixed (such as the teeth, alveolar ridge, and hard palate), according to their role in producing sound. Refer to Figures 2-2 and 2-3 to see where the articulators are located.

The movable articulators are as follows. Here you can find some helpful information to understand how each one works:

Tongue: The tongue is the most important articulator, similar in structure to an elephant’s trunk. The tongue is a muscular hydrostat, which means it’s a muscle with a constant volume. (This characteristic is important in the science of making sound because muscular hydrostats are physiologically complex, requiring muscles to work antagonistically, against each other, in order to stretch or bend. Such complexity appears necessary for the motor tasks of speech.) The tongue elongates when it extends and bunches up when it contracts. You never directly see the main part of the tongue (the body and root). You can only view the thinner sections (tip/blade/dorsum) when it’s extended for viewing. However, scientists can use imaging technologies such as ultrasound, videoflouroscopy, and magnetic resonance imaging to know what these tongue parts look like and how they behave.

Jaw: Although classified as a movable speech articulator, the jaw isn’t as important as the tongue. The jaw basically serves as a platform to position the tongue.

Lips: The lips are used mostly to lower vowel sounds through extension. The lip extension is also known as protrusion or rounding. The lips protrude approximately a quarter inch when rounded. English has two rounded vowels, /u/ (as in “boot”), and /ʊ/ (as in “book”). Other languages have more rounded sounds, such as Swedish, French, and German (refer to Chapter 15). These languages require more precise lip rounding than English.

Lips can also flare and spread (widen). This acts like the bell of a brass instrument to brighten up certain sounds (like /i/ in “bead”).

Velum: The velum, also known as the soft palate, is fleshy, moveable, and made of muscle. The velum regulates the nasality of speech sounds (for example, /d/ versus /n/, as in the words “dice” and “nice”). The velum makes up the rear third of the roof of the mouth and ends with a hanging body called the uvula, which means “bundle of grapes,” just in front of the throat.

Some parts of the body are more passive or static during sound production. These so-called fixed articulators are as follows:

Teeth: Your teeth are used to produce the “th” sounds in English, including the voiced consonant /ð/ (as in “those”) and the voiceless consonant /θ/ (as in “thick”). The consonants made here are called dental. Your teeth are helpful in making fricatives, hissy sounds in which air is forced through a narrow groove, especially /s/, /z/, /f/, and /v/ — like in the words “so,” “zip”, “feel,” and “vote”. Tooth loss can affect other speech sounds, including the affricates /tʃ/ (as in “chop”) and /dʒ/ (as in “Joe”).

Alveolar ridge: This is a pronounced body ridge located about a quarter of an inch behind your top teeth. Consonants made here are called alveolar.

You can easily feel the alveolar ridge with your tongue. Say “na-na” or “da-da,” and feel where your tongue touches on the roof of your mouth.

The alveolar ridge is particularly important for producing consonants, including /t/, /d/, /s/, /z/, /n/, /l/, and /ɹ/, as in the words “time,” “dime,” “sick,” “zoo,” “nice, “lice,” and “rice.” Many scientists think an exaggerated alveolar ridge has evolved in modern humans to support speech.

Hard palate: It continues just behind the alveolar ridge and makes up the first two-thirds of the roof of your mouth. It’s fixed and immovable because it’s backed by bone. Consonants made here are called palatal. The English consonant /j/ (as in “yellow”) is produced at the hard palate.

Producing Consonants

A consonant is a sound made by partially or totally blocking the vocal tract during speech production. Consonants are classified based on where they’re made in the articulatory system (place of articulation), how they are produced (manner of articulation), and whether they’re voiced