Phonetics

• In this class you will be expected to: Attend regularly (max. 3 classes can be missed), Be on time, Participate actively, Do homework each week, Take notes, review them (pop quizzes!), Use Google Classroom to follow the class and submit assignments
• For the signature, you need to meet attendance requirements and turn in most of the homework. For the final mark, quizzes count for 10%, three written tests make up 40% of the mark, and your performance on homework assignments (worksheets and recorded assignments) counts for 50%. You need 60% or more to pass the class.
• Course objectives


  To acquire basic knowledge of how speech sounds are produced, To examine the sounds and sound system of English, To learn the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) symbols used to describe them, To become more aware of pronunciation features, options, and issues
• Phonetics


  The science of the sounds of human speech, the study of the physical sounds of human speech, concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds (phones), and the processes of their physiological production, auditory reception, and neurophysiological perception, and their representation by written symbols
• Phonology


  Deals with the sound system of a language, the study of how sounds are organized and used in natural languages, including possible sound combinations, what happens in connected speech, intonation, rhythm, tone, etc. The phonological system of a language includes an inventory of sounds and their features, and rules that specify how sounds interact with each other
• Orthography


  Deals with how a language is written, a shallow orthography has close correspondence between sound and spelling, a deep orthography has irregular or inconsistent correspondences between spelling and pronunciation
• Phonetic and phonological awareness requires training to recognize different features of speech sounds and connected speech, ignoring spelling which can be misleading, and using your ears rather than eyes
• A diphthong is a single speech sound that starts and ends with a different vowel sound and moves smoothly from one to the other, it counts as one speech sound, a vowel
• Vowel sounds


  Described by factors like front/back, open/close, rounded/unrounded
• Producing speech sounds involves using the body, especially the lips, teeth, tongue and jaw, which need to be trained and developed, especially for a second language
• Syllables


  Words consist of syllables, which usually have a vowel, and can be shown in different ways like CV, VC, CVC
• Word stress shows the syllable that gets primary stress, and there is also sentence stress where certain words receive emphasis, which changes the length, loudness, pitch and clarity of the syllable
• Articulatory organs


  The parts of the body that help shape air into speech sounds, like the lips, teeth, tongue, and voice box
• Voicing


  Whether a sound is produced with or without vibration in the voice box
• Rhoticity


  Refers to the pronunciation of the 'r' sound, which varies between accents
• Articulation


  The process of producing speech sounds. The articulatory organs are those parts of the body that help us shape air into speech sounds.
• The articulatory organs help us shape air into speech sounds
• The position of the articulatory organs is the same for /s/ and /z/, the only difference is whether there is vibration in the voice box
• Voicing


  A sound with vibration is voiced, a sound without it is unvoiced or voiceless
• Rhoticity


  Whether people pronounce all of their 'r's or not
• Rhotic varieties of English preserve the historical English /r/ sound in all pronunciation contexts, while non-rhotic varieties no longer pronounce /r/ in postvocalic environments
• Linking R


  An 'r' that links two words, separating vowels, as English prefers not to have two vowels together in the same syllable
• The letter 'c' is pronounced either as /k/ or /s/ depending on the following vowel
• The dark L in English occurs at the end of words, after vowels, with the blade of the tongue touching more and the back of the tongue rising
• Glottal stop


  The air is cut off by the vocal folds in the glottis and then released, creating a short pause and released air
• Stress-timed language


  The stressed words act like a frame or structure, with the unstressed words filling in the space between them
• Syllable-timed language


  Each syllable gets basically the same amount of time, so adding more syllables takes more time to say the utterance
• Hungarian is a syllable-timed language, which can create difficulties for some learners of English
• The use of circles, underlining, or capitalizing can visually express which syllable is stressed in a word
• The transcription provided is non-rhotic, meaning /r/ is not pronounced in postvocalic environments
• Stressed words in English are pronounced more clearly, loudly, and with a bit more time, while unstressed words are reduced and may have sounds changed to fit the sounds around them
• st mæn huː tʌʧt hɪz lɛg: '"əʊ, nəʊ! ɪt ɪz laɪk ə rəʊp," ˈ'
• ˈsɛkənd ˈ: '"əʊ, nəʊ! ɪt ɪz laɪk ə θɪk brɑːnʧ ɒv ə triː," ðə θɜːd mæn spaʊtɪd ˈ'
• ˈtʌʧɪŋ ðə trʌŋk: '"ɪt ɪz laɪk ə bɪg hænd fæn" sɛd ðə fɔːθ mæn ˈfiːlɪŋ ði ɪə'
• ˈbɛli: '"ɪt ɪz laɪk ə ˈsɒlɪd paɪp," sɛd ðə sɪksθ mæn wɪð ðə tʌsk ɪn hɪz hænd'
• The next task was related to connected speech and stressed and unstressed words
• In the second version, words in smaller font are unstressed, and word stress is shown in red
• Finally, we took a quick look at how information on the consonant inventory of English is organized and described
• We looked especially at the top row, the six stops (also called plosives)
• You will need to know this table very well by the end of the semester