Vowels and Consonants E-Book

Peter Ladefoged

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

Seitenzahl: 426

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

This popular and accessible introduction to phonetics has been fully updated for its third edition, and now includes an accompanying website with sound files, and expanded coverage of topics such as speech technology.

• Describes how languages use a variety of different sounds, many of them quite unlike any that occur in well-known languages
• Written by the late Peter Ladefoged, one of the world's leading phoneticians, with updates by renowned forensic linguist, Sandra Ferrari Disner
• Includes numerous revisions to the discussion of speech technology and additional updates throughout the book
• Explores the acoustic, articulatory, and perceptual components of speech, demonstrates speech synthesis, and explains how speech recognition systems work
• Supported by an accompanying website at www.vowelsandconsonants3e.com featuring additional data and recordings of the sounds of a wide variety of languages, to reinforce learning and bring the descriptions to life

Leseprobe

Contents

Table of Web Content

Author’s Preface from the First Edition

Preface to the Third Edition

Acknowledgments from the Previous Editions

Sources

The International Phonetic Alphabet

1 Sounds and Languages

1.1 Languages Come and Go

1.2 The Evolving Sounds of Languages

1.3 Language and Speech

1.4 Describing Speech Sounds

1.5 Summary

2 Pitch and Loudness

2.1 Tones

2.2 English Intonation

2.3 The Vocal Folds

2.4 Loudness Differences

2.5 Summary

3 Vowel Contrasts

3.1 Sets of Vowels and Standard Forms of a Language

3.2 English Vowels

3.3 Summary

4 The Sounds of Vowels

4.1 Acoustic Structure of Vowels

4.2 The Acoustic Vowel Space

4.3 Spectrographic Displays

4.4 Summary

5 Charting Vowels

5.1 Formants One and Two

5.2 Accents of English

5.3 Formant Three

5.4 Summary

6 The Sounds of Consonants

6.1 Consonant Contrasts

6.2 Stop Consonants

6.3 Approximants

6.4 Nasals

6.5 Fricatives

6.6 Summary

7 Acoustic Components of Speech

7.1 The Principal Acoustic Components

7.2 Synthesizing Speech

7.3 Summary

8 Talking Computers

8.1 Words in Context

8.2 Our Implicit Knowledge

8.3 Synthesizing Sounds from a Phonetic Transcription

8.4 Applications

8.5 Summary

9 Listening Computers

9.1 Patterns of Sound

9.2 The Basis of Computer Speech Recognition

9.3 Special Context Speech Recognizers

9.4 Recognizing Running Speech

9.5 Different Accents and Different Voices

9.6 More for the Computationally Curious

9.7 Summary

10 How We Listen to Speech

10.1 Confusable Sounds

10.2 Sound Prototypes

10.3 Tackling the Problem

10.4 Finding Words

10.5 Social Interactions

10.6 Summary

10.7 Further Reading and Sources

11 Making English Consonants

11.1 Acoustics and Articulation

11.2 The Vocal Organs

11.3 Places and Manners of Articulation

11.4 Describing Consonants

11.5 Summary

12 Making English Vowels

12.1 Movements of the Tongue and Lips for Vowels

12.2 Muscles Controlling the Tongue and Lips

12.3 Traditional Descriptions of Vowels

12.4 Summary

13 Actions of the Larynx

13.1 The Larynx

13.2 Voiced and Voiceless Sounds

13.3 Voicing and Aspiration

13.4 Glottal Stops

13.5 Breathy Voice

13.6 Creaky Voice

13.7 Further Differences in Vocal Fold Vibrations

13.8 Ejectives

13.9 Implosives

13.10 Recording Data from the Larynx

13.11 Summary

14 Consonants Around the World

14.1 Phonetic Fieldwork

14.2 Well-Known Consonants

14.3 More Places of Articulation

14.4 More Manners of Articulation

14.5 Clicks

14.6 Summary

15 Vowels Around the World

15.1 Types of Vowels

15.2 Lip Rounding

15.3 Nasalized Vowels

15.4 Voice Quality

15.5 Summary

16 Putting Vowels and Consonants Together

16.1 The Speed of Speech

16.2 Slips of the Tongue

16.3 The Alphabet

16.4 The International Phonetic Alphabet

16.5 Contrasting Sounds

16.6 Features that Matter within a Language

16.7 Summary

Glossary

Further Reading

Index

This book is for Jenny Ladefoged, although a major portion of it already belongs to her. Many of the sentences are hers, and she compiled almost all the sound files.It also honors the memory of Eliot Disner.

This third edition first published 2012© 2012 Peter Ladefoged and Sandra Ferrari Disner

Edition History: Blackwell Publishing Ltd (1e, 2001 and 2e, 2005)

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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For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell.

The right of Peter Ladefoged and Sandra Ferrari Disner to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ladefoged, Peter.Vowels and consonants / by Peter Ladefoged ; revised by Sandra Ferrari Disner. – 3rd ed.p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4443-3429-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)1. Phonetics. I. Disner, Sandra Ferrari. II. Title.P221.L244 2012414–dc23

2011029136

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Table of Web Content

The following recordings, color figures, and videos are on the Vowels and Consonants website, www.wiley.com/go/ladefoged. Headphone prompts in the margin indicate where sound files are available to support the text. A list of the materials and their descriptions is provided below. You will find SciconWeb, a new browser, available on the website. This will not only play each recording when you open it, leaving the text visible during the audio portion, but also bring up a menu that allows you to make spectrograms and a pitch track of the sound that has been played, as well as other helpful options.

Users are reminded that all this material is copyright. Instructions whereby institutions can obtain similar material are available at:

www.linguistics.ucla.edu/faciliti/sales/software.htm.

Recording 1.1

Sounds illustrating the IPA symbols

Recording 2.1

The tones of Standard Chinese (table 2.1)

Recording 2.2

The tones of Cantonese (table 2.2)

Recording 2.3

I’m going away said as a normal unemphatic statement

Recording 2.4

Where are you going? said as a normal unemphatic question

Recording 2.5

Are you going home? said as a regular question

Recording 2.6

Where are you going? said with a rising pitch

Recording 2.7

Are you going away? said with some alarm

Recording 2.8

When danger threatens your children, call the police

Recording 2.9

When danger threatens, your children call the police

Recording 2.10

Jenny gave Peterinstructionsto follow

Recording 2.11

Jenny gave Peter instructions tofollow

Recording 2.12

An utterance in which there are no words, but in which the speaker sounds contented

Recording 2.13

An utterance in which there are no words, but in which the speaker sounds upset or angry

Also in chapter 2:

Video of the vibrating vocal folds

Photographs of the vocal folds producing a sound at three different pitches

Recording 3.1

Spanish vowels

Recording 3.2

Hawaiian vowels

Recording 3.3

Swahili vowels

Recording 3.4

Japanese vowels

Recording 3.5

General American vowels

Recording 3.6

BBC English vowels

Recording 4.1

Whispered heed, hid, head, had, hod, hawed

Recording 4.2

The words had, head, hid, heed spoken in a creaky voice

[There are no recordings for chapter 5.]

Recording 6.1

English consonants

Recording 7.1

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush (synthesized)

Recording 7.2

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush (F1)

Recording 7.3

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush (F2)

Recording 7.4

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush (F3)

Recording 7.5

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush (F1, F2, F3)

Recording 7.6

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush (F1, F2, F3 plus fixed resonances)

Recording 7.7

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush (fricative and burst noises)

Recording 7.8

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush (F1, F2, F3 plus fixed resonances plus fricative noises)

Recording 7.9

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush (fully synthesized)

Recording 8.1

The words leaf and feel, recorded forwards and backwards

Recording 8.2

High-quality speech synthesis: AT&T “Mike”

Recording 8.3

High-quality speech synthesis: AT&T “Crystal”

Recording 8.4

High-quality speech synthesis: Nuance “Tom”

Recording 8.5

High-quality speech synthesis: Nuance “Samantha”

Recording 8.5a

A single synthesized phrase

Recording 8.6

High-quality speech synthesis: Cereproc “William”

Recording 8.7

High-quality speech synthesis: Cereproc “Heather”

Also in chapter 8:

Links to the demos of some commercial text-to-speech systems

[There are no recordings for chapter 9.]

Recording 10.1

A continuum going from bad to bat

Recording 10.2

A randomly ordered set of words in the bad–bet continuum

Recording 10.3

Another randomly ordered set of words in the bad–bet continuum

Recording 10.4

A set of pairs of adjacent words in the bad–bet continuum

Recording 10.5

Another set of pairs of adjacent words in the bad–bet continuum

Recording 10.6

A continuum going from slash to splash

Recording 10.7

A recording of There was once a young rat named Arthur, who could never take the trouble to make up his mind with the word dot superimposed on it

Recording 10.8

A recording of They thought it was Jane who could be brave and in the team with s superimposed on it

Recording 10.9

Two complex sounds, each made up of two components, a buzzing noise and a hissing noise, in the midst of a sequence of other sounds

[There are no recordings for chapters 11 and 12.]

In chapter 12:

Videos of the articulations of vowels: tongue, jaw, and larynx

Recording 13.1

Burmese nasals

Recording 13.2

A comparison of English b, p and Spanish b, p

Recording 13.3

Thai stops

Recording 13.4

Hawaiian consonants

Recording 13.5

Hindi stops

Recording 13.6

Breathy-voiced vowels in Gujarati

Recording 13.7

San Juan Cajones Zapotec vowels

Recording 13.8

Voice qualities and tones in Mpi

Recording 13.9

Quechua stops

Recording 13.10

Sindhi stops

Recording 13.11

Owerri Igbo stops

Also in chapter 13:

Photographs of the vocal folds producing breathy voice and creaky voice

Recording 14.1

Ewe fricatives

Recording 14.2

Wubuy dental and alveolar stops

Recording 14.3

Hungarian palatals

Recording 14.4

Malayalam nasals

Recording 14.5

Aleut stops

Recording 14.6

Kele and Titan bilabial and alveolar trills

Recording 14.7

Southern Swedish uvular trills

Recording 14.8

Polish sibilants

Recording 14.9

Toda sibilants

Recording 14.10

Melpa laterals

Recording 14.11

Zulu laterals

Recording 14.12

Nama clicks

Also in chapter 14:

X-ray of a click

Recording 15.1

Some of the French vowels

Recording 15.2

Swedish vowels

Recording 15.3

German vowels

Recording 15.4

Scottish Gaelic long vowels

Recording 15.5

French oral and nasal vowels

Recording 15.6

!Xóõ vowels

Also in chapter 15:

Video of nasalized vowels

Recording 16.1

She sells seashells on the seashore and the seashells that she sells are seashells I’m sure

Recording 16.2

Oro Win labial trills

Author’s Preface from the First Edition

This book is about the sounds of languages. There are thousands of distinct languages in the world, many of them with sounds that are wildly different from any that you will hear in an English sentence. People trill their lips and click their tongues when talking, sometimes in ways that are surprising to those of us who speak English. Of course, some of the things that we do, such as hearing a difference between fin and thin, or producing the vowel that most Americans have in bird, are fairly amazing to speakers of other languages, as we will see.

There are about 200 different vowels in the world’s languages and more than 600 different consonants. There is no way that I can discuss all these sounds in an introductory book. I’ve just tried to give you some idea of what happens when people talk, explaining most of the well-known sounds, and giving you a glimpse of some of the more obscure sounds. If you want a fuller, more systematic, account of phonetics, there are many textbooks available, including one of my own.

Many of the sounds discussed are reproduced on the Vowels and Consonants website, www.wiley.com/go/ladefoged. If possible, you should listen to the sounds while you read. I hope you will be entertained by what you hear and read here, and will look at the suggestions for further reading at the end of the book. I’ve been thrilled by a lifetime chasing ideas in phonetics. Who knows, perhaps you, too, will go on to become a phonetician. Enjoy.

P.L.

Preface to the Third Edition

Work on this third edition of Vowels and Consonants began shortly after the death of Peter Ladefoged. His eightieth birthday party had been celebrated just months earlier, at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America to which his students, colleagues and admirers had flocked from all over the US and around the world. His last days had been spent in fine health and spirits, engaged in his favorite pursuit, fieldwork, this time among the Toda people of Southern India. With his data gathered, he boarded a plane bound for home, and, en route, fell ill. His life of distinguished teaching, of scholarship and linguistic inquiry, and of great conviviality ended at Heathrow, just 15 miles from his birthplace. But in between those endpoints, he had spent a career teaching in the United States and doing fieldwork here and in Nigeria, Namibia, Sudan, Kenya, Botswana, Ghana, Congo, Uganda, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Senegal, South Africa, Yemen, India, Nepal, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, China, Korea, Brazil, Mexico, and Scotland, to international acclaim.

A third edition of Vowels and Consonants was prompted by the need for regular updates to any chapters on speech technology and perception that appear in a twenty-first-century textbook, and informed by margin notes left by Professor Ladefoged in his desk copy.

The CD that had accompanied the previous editions has been replaced with a more readily accessible web-based collection of language files. These may be accessed on the Vowels and Consonants website, www.wiley.com/go/ladefoged.

The greatest help in producing this edition of Vowels and Consonants was provided by Jenny Ladefoged, to whom this book was, and shall always be, dedicated. Other commentators who gave generously of their time and expertise this time around were (in alphabetical order): Elaine Andersen, Sharon Ash, Roy Becker, Catherine Best, Tim Bunnell, Dani Byrd, Christina Esposito, Sean Fulop, Louis Goldstein, Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, Sarah Hawkins, Bruce Hayes, Caroline Henton, Fang-Ying Hsieh, Keith Johnson, Sun-Ah Jun, Patricia Keating, Jody Kreiman, Mona Lindau, Ian Maddieson, Bathsheba Malsheen, Maricruz Martinez, Shri Narayanan, Ann Syrdal, Henry Tehrani, Laura Tejada, and Eric Zee. Any faults in the book must be attributed to the second author. The editors of this book, Julia Kirk and Danielle Descoteaux, provided thoughtful guidance. And the faculty and students of the USC Department of Linguistics – where Peter Ladefoged spent the final years of his academic career and Sandra Disner currently teaches general and forensic linguistics – provided inspiration, valuable insights and camaraderie to both authors.

Acknowledgments from the Previous Editions

Many people have contributed wonderful ideas and comments for this book. Foremost among them is my colleague Pat Keating, who offered nuggets of teaching wisdom that I have incorporated, and suggested corrections for numerous errors (but don’t blame her for those I have added since she read the draft version). Other helpful commentators include (in alphabetical order): Vicki Fromkin, Yoshinari Fujino, Tony Harper and his colleagues and students at New Trier High School, Bjorn Jernudd, Sun-Ah Jun, Olle Kjellin, Jody Kreiman, Peggy MacEachern, Yoshiro Masuya, Pam Munro, Peter Roach, Janet Stack, and Jie Zhang. I am indebted to Caroline Henton for comments on speech synthesis and speech recognition, and to Mark Hasegawa-Johnson for making me restructure the speech recognition chapter. Victoria Anderson let me use her palatography pictures, Didier Demolin gave me the MRI pictures, and Bruce Gerratt took the photographs of the larynx; many thanks to all of them. I am also very grateful to the many people from all over the world who kindly made recordings for me. Special thanks to Jean Acevedo, who encouraged me to write a book of this kind.

For the second edition, additional thanks are due to the numerous students and instructors who commented on the first edition, notably Coleen Anderson, Karen Chung, Susan Guion, and Jennifer Smith. The chapter on speech perception benefited from comments by Sarah Hawkins. Eric Zee helped with Chinese material. Siri Tuttle kindly allowed me to use her anatomical sketches. The CD accompanying the second edition was considerably improved by the weekly luncheon meetings in the UCLA Phonetics Lab, in which the faculty and graduate students went through the recordings and transcriptions of many languages and made numerous critical comments and suggestions. (Some of these suggestions have not been implemented due to my inability to obtain the relevant data, and all faults remain mine.) I am also grateful to Pat Keating and other members of the UCLA Phonetics Lab for allowing me to include on the CD many more items from the UCLA Phonetic Data archive.

Sources

Data on the numbers of languages and speakers in the world come mainly from Ethnologue (SIL International www.ethnologue.com).

The sources for the speech perception experiments in Chapter 10 are listed at the end of that chapter.

The data on the vowels of different dialects are from the following sources:

General American English: Peterson, G. E., and Barney, H. L. (1952). Control methods used in a study of the vowels. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 24: 175–184.

Californian English: Hagiwara, R. E. (1995). Acoustic realizations of American English /r/ as produced by women and men. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics, 90: 1–187.

Northern Cities (US): Hillenbrand, J., Getty, L. A., Clark, M. J., and Wheeler, K. (1995). Acoustic characteristics of American English vowels. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 97(5): 3099–3111.

BBC English: Deterding, D. (1997). The formants of monophthong vowels in standard Southern British English pronunciation. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 27: 47–55.

The mean tongue positions in chapter 12 are based on data and factor analyses reported in Harshman, R. A., Ladefoged, P., and Goldstein, L. M. (1977). Factor analysis of tongue shapes. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 62: 693–707.

The IPA chart on the following page has been reproduced with permission from the International Phonetic Association, www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/. Inquiries concerning membership in the Association should be addressed to the Secretary, Dr. Katerina Nicolaidis, Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki 54124, Greece, email: [email protected].