Hello everybody! Welcome! So today we're going to be talking a bit about articulatory phonetics, which is the study of how speech sounds are produced in the vocal tract.
We're going to be talking about three things in this video. First, we're going to be talking about some of the differences between consonant and vowel sounds and how linguists describe consonant and vowel sounds. Then we'll talk about the International Phonetic Alphabet and how you can navigate the IPA chart for consonants and for vowels.
And then after that, we'll do some brief practice with phonetic transcription to hopefully build your confidence in transcribing words to English and transcribing from the International Phonetic Alphabet. So first, we're going to talk about consonants and what's the difference between consonants and vowels, you might say. Well, it's basically this.
With consonants, there's some constriction of the airflow in the vocal tract, whereas with vowels, there is no constriction of airflow. Now, with consonant sounds, linguists use three criteria when we're describing that consonant sound. Voicing, place of articulation, and manner of articulation.
Let's talk about voicing first. So when we're talking about voicing for consonants, there's two types. They are either voiced or voiceless sounds. So these are often abbreviated in the literature as plus V, which means plus voicing, or minus V, minus. voicing.
So, what are voiced sounds? Voiced sounds are when air is passing through vibrating vocal folds. So the vocal folds are closed, but when air passes through them, it causes the sound to produce some vibration.
So this is in contrast to voiceless sounds where air is passing through open vocal folds. Now you can feel the difference when you're producing these two sounds, because when you go, for instance, by putting your hand over your Adam's apple for guys, or where your Adam's apple is, Apple would be for girls, zzz, you should feel some vibration there. But now produce its voiceless counterpart, sss. You shouldn't feel any vibration there.
If you feel any vibration when you go sss, you are not human and you should get that checked out. So that's the difference between voiced and voiceless sounds. It's going to be either one, but only with consonant sounds.
Now the next one is place of articulation. Place of articulation has to do with where in the vocal tract is the constriction of airflow taking place. And there are a number of these that we'll talk about. So when we're talking about place of articulation, we have several different places where that can happen.
And again, these are only with consonants. sounds. So, first we have bilabial sounds. Just like the term suggests, these are sounds that are produced with the two lips, like p, b, m. Next we have labiodental sounds.
Again, you can maybe guess by the word, but these are sounds that are produced with the teeth and the lips, the upper teeth and the lower lips, lower lip more specifically. So these are sounds like f. vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv the upper and lower teeth. For example, sounds like th, th. Those are dental or interdental sounds.
Next we have alveolar sounds. Alveolar sounds are produced at or near the alveolar ridge. The alveolar ridge is a pretty noticeable landmark in your mouth because if you start by putting your tongue right behind your front incisors here, right behind them, and then you move your tongue back, it's actually going to slide up and that's where that alveolar alveolar ridge is before you get to the roof of your mouth.
So alveolar sounds include t and d. Palatal sounds are basically sounds that are produced with the roof of your mouth. So these are sounds like y or sh. Zzzzshh. Palatal sounds.
Next we have velar sounds. Still moving back in the vocal tract. This is considered the hard palate, but the velum or velar sounds are produced at what is called the soft palate. So if you move your tongue further back in your mouth, past the hard palate, you'll notice that it gets soft tissue there.
That's the velum. Those are velar sounds like kuh or guh. And finally we have glottal sounds. These are sounds produced at the glottis. There's a couple of them that we use in English.
One of them is usually spelled with an H, and it's written with an H in the International Phonetic Alphabet, but also a glottal stop that we'll talk about in a moment. This is like in between Batman or Mountain, uh-oh, Hawaii. It's like a little catch in the throat where your vocal folds close and then open very quickly. These are the places of articulation that we're using in English.
Okay, so the third criterion that linguists use when they're talking about consonant sounds is the manner of articulation. This involves how the sound is produced in the vocal tract. So we're not talking about where things are happening now.
about how. How is that airflow being constricted when we're producing sounds? So first we have stops. Stop sounds involve a complete closure. It's a stoppage of the airflow followed by a release of that airflow.
So for example, sounds like p, b, t, k, g. Those are all stop sounds. Complete closure, then a release of that airflow.
Then we have fricative sounds. Maybe. Maybe you could use this as a mnemonic device because fricative sounds involve some friction. There's a kind of bottlenecking of the airflow around the place of articulation, wherever this is happening.
So fricative sounds, they have some friction in them. You could hear it. These are sounds like ss, zz, ff, vv, ff. All of those sounds have a bottlenecking of the airflow.
It's allowed to go through, but it's kind of restricted a little bit. Next, we have affricates. Affricates you could think of as a combination of stops and fricatives, or when stops and fricatives love each other very much, they form an affricate sound.
But affricates are not two sounds. They're actually one sound. For example, if you take the affricate ch that we use in English words like chair or church, it actually starts out with t and finishes with sh.
But you say them quickly enough, t-sh. tsh tsh tsh tsh tsh tsh tsh. Eventually they merge into one sound.
That's an affricate. The other one is j in English. We only use two in English. We also have nasals. Nasal sounds happen when the velum is lowered, and that allows air to go through the nasal cavity, and that's really important for producing sounds like m, n, n.
We only have three, really, in English. Next we have liquid sounds. Liquids and glides are also categorized variously under an approximate name.
This is something you might see in the literature as well. but a lot of textbooks use these terms and so we'll talk about them here that way. Liquids involve really kind of, well, liquidy tongue motion.
Your tongue can do a lot of different shapes when they're producing sounds like l or r. Those are both liquid sounds, l, r. Glides, you can think of in the same way.
It's kind of a dynamic sound. Your tongue is doing maybe a couple different things. But glides are much more vowel-like than liquid sounds are.
So we use two glide sounds in English. English we have wuh and yuh. If you say those sounds enough you'll either go crazy or you will realize that your tongue is actually moving a little bit, it's gliding if you will to produce those sounds. So again all of these are manners of articulation, how the sound is being produced in the vocal tract.
Okay, so we've covered these three criteria when linguists are describing consonant sounds. And when linguists do talk about consonant sounds, they talk about them in this order. First voicing, then place, and then manner of articulation. So for example, this sound, p, is a voiceless bilabial stop.
Whereas this is a voiced velar stop. So in that order is always how linguists describe consonant sounds.