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Linguistics 1: Phonetics by Rachael-Anne Knight Summary
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A summary for the course Linguistics 1 of the coursebook on Phonetics by Rachael-Anne Knight. Covers unit 1 and 2, aka chapter 1-14.
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Phonetics, A Coursebook - Rachael Anne KnightUnit 1
§1 The difference between speech and writing
Phonetics is the study of speech sounds. This means that throughout this book we will be
thinking about the way humans produce speech, and what speech sounds like, rather than the
written form of language.
Different languages use different form of writing. The system of Egyptian hieroglyphics was based
on using a picture or symbol to represent most words, also know as ideogram/pictogram/
logogram. They look like the object represented, but do not give any clues to the pronunciation.
In contrast, sound-based or alphabetic writing systems do try to represent the pronunciation of
each words. However, some languages represent sounds more consistently in their spelling
systems than others. For example, the English language has many inconsistencies, because it has
been influenced by many other languages throughout its history.
Note: <> angled brackets surround letters
What I learned from the exercises is that there are many sounds to one letter, but also many letters
to one sound. (eg. I and eye) There even are letters that you don’t pronounce like silent letters or
double letters.
One of the key skills for a phonetician, which is a person who knows about and uses phonetics,
is to divide a word into its individual sounds. These are also referred to as segments.
Speech is a continuous and dynamic process, but, for convenience, we can think about splitting it
up into smaller sections consisting of individual sounds. As we have just seen in the previous
section, however, spelling can be misleading, as there is not always a simple match between
sounds and letters.
One of the key skills of a phonetician is transcription. Transcription provides us with a shared
system of symbols that only ever refer to one sound and that allows us to write down
pronunciation clearly and consistently.
For now, we’ll just talk about vowels and consonants, but not the ones we use in spelling. In brief,
spoken consonants are sounds made with a lot of constriction in the mouth and they tend to
occur at the start or and of a word. Vowels, on the other hand, are sounds made with the mouth
quite open and they occur in the middle of syllables.
We can begin to think about transcription by noting down the sounds in a word as either C for
consonant and V for vowel.
Note: the sounds not the spelling !!
As we discovered before, letters and sounds do not always match. This is why we can think of
them as two separate levels for analysis. The technical term for the level of spelling is the
orthographic level and for the sound level it is phonetic or phonemic.
An example of how the orthographic and the sound levels are separate comes from the existence
of homographs and homophones. Homographs are words that sound different but are spelt the
same, like polish and Polish. Homophones, on the other hand, are words that sound the same
but are spelt differently, such as dough and doe.
Note: homo = the same, graph = writing, phone = sound
It is important to note that the way a person pronounces a word will vary according to where they
were born, grew up and live, as well as their ‘social class’. Their age may also be an important
factor, as might the situation in which they are speaking.
For example, some people pronounce an ‘r’ sound at the end of words like ‘robber’, and some
speakers do not. Speakers who do pronounce an ‘r’ in this position are called rhotic speakers
and will always pronounce an ‘r’ at the end of a word. Speakers who do not, are called non-
rhotic speakers.
In past times, all speakers in England would have been rhotic and it is this pronunciation that was
taken to America on the Mayflower. However, the rhotic pronunciation was lost in most of England
and therefore was not taken to Australia with the colonists.
, §2 Consonant voicing
There are a large number of body parts involved in speaking. Aside from
anything else, we need our brain to plan words and sentences and to
send appropriate signals to the rest of our body.
In producing most speech sounds, the air we use comes from our lungs.
This air travels up from the lungs, passing through the trachea (windpipe),
until it reaches the larynx, where it might be set into vibration. The larynx
is more commonly known as the voice box. From the larynx the air passes
through the vocal tract, which is the air passages of the head and neck.
Inside of your larynx, lie your vocal folds. A person can either keep the
vocal folds wide apart (abducted) or shut them down completely
(adducted). The first one happens when you’re breathing normally, but
the second one is when you are coughing. When they are shut, they
block the flow of air from the lungs, as happens when we hold our breath.
During speech the folds can be kept far apart, or narrowed so that they
vibrate when air passes through them.
Note: the muscles do not open/close the folds but narrow them just the
right amount
In the most basic terms, a sound produced while the vocal cords are vibrating is called a voiced
sound. A sound produced while the vocal cords are not vibrating is called a voiceless sound. All
vowels are voiced, but not all consonants are.
How you can tell if a sound is voiced is by feeling the larynx for vibrations or by covering you ears
and listening for a buzz.
Phoneticians have an array of special symbols with which they can write down, or transcribe, the
pronunciation of words and sounds.
Note: this schedule is in my PDFs
§3 Consonant place of articulation
In the previous unit we saw that the vocal tract refers to all the passageways above the larynx
through which air can flow when we produce speech. An articulator is the name given to a part of
the vocal tract that can be used to form a constriction. When we describe consonant production
and place of articulation (PAO) in phonetics, we think about the place in the vocal tract where
there is maximum constriction to airflow. There are always two articulators involved in making this
max. constriction.
Many of the articulators will be familiar to you, while others might be new to
you. The alveolar ridge is the prominent ridge of hard bone behind the
upper teeth. The palate is the hard, bony surface further back than the
alveolar ridge and the velum is the soft palate even further in the mouth.
The uvula is the piece of flesh that hangs down from the back of the velum
and the space between the vocal folds is the glottis.
The tongue is also an articulator and is involved in the majority of the
sounds present in English and other languages. But when talking
articulation, we need to label the parts of the tongue separate.
When we produce consonants we constrict air, which is usually flowing up from the lungs. To
conform a constriction we use two
articulators. One that’s called the
active articulator, one that’s the
passive articulator. When we refer to
the place of articulation of
consonants, we are describing the
place in the vocal tract where there is
the most constriction of airflow.
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