- Speech involves the production of an airflow which gets obstructed in various ways in the vocal tract.
Articulation of Consonants
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One way of categorizing obstructions is to consider the place of articulation — where is the flow getting obstructed
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Bilabial - involves obstruction with both lips.
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Labiodental - articulated with lower lip and upper teeth
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Coronals - articulated with the front part of the tongue (the tip or blade).
- Interdental - made by placing the tongue between the teeth.
- Dental - articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth
- Alveolar - made by placing the tip of the tongue against the alveolar ridge (behind the top teeth)
- Postalveolar - articulated with the tongue blade slightly behind the alveolar ridge.
- Palatoalveolar - like postalveolar, except with articulated with a bunched up tongue.
- Retroflex - the tongue has a curled shaped and articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate.
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Guttural - articulated in the back part of the oral cavity.
- Palatal - articulated with the back of the tongue against the hard palate — behind the alveolar ridge where the mouth reaches its height.
- Velar - articulated with the back of the tongue against the soft palate, the back of the roof of the mouth.
- Uvular - articulated with the back of the tongue against the uvula.
- Pharyngeal - articulated primarily in the pharynx
- Glottal - articulated using the glottis (i.e., the vocal folds).
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Sounds can be voiced - where the vocal cords vibrate or voiceless - where the vocal cords do not vibrate.
- Aspirated - pertains to the strong burst of breath when articulating a sound. Aspirated sounds tend to be voiceless.
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Sounds can be categorized by the manner of articulation
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Obstruent - sound is created by blocking airflow in the oral cavity.
- Plosives - there is a blocking of the vocal tract and no nasal air flow so that the air stop completely.
- Fricative - there is noisy airflow at the place of articulation. Airflow is hindered by creating a small aperture.
- Sibilants - the airflow is guided by a groove in the tongue towards the teeth.
- Lateral Fricatives - the noisy airflow occurs on one or both sides of the edge of the tongue.
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Sonorant - there is no pressure building in the oral cavity, allowing air to pass through.
- Nasal - there is an occlusion of the vocal tract but air passes through the nose.
- Approximants - there is very little obstruction.
- Glide - an approximant pronounced like a vowel but with the tongue closer to the roof of the mouth.
- Lateral - approximants pronounced with the side of the tongue.
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Rhotics - the sound is articulated in an R-like manner where there are one or more brief occlusions in the sound. Together with Laterals, they form the liquids.
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Affricate - begins like a plosive, but releases into a fricative.
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Flap - a momentary closure of the oral cavity.
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Trill - the articulator is held in place and the air causes it to vibrate.
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Ejectives - airstream is powered by an upward movement of the glottis.
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Implosives - airstream is powered by a downward movement of the glottis.
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Clicks - the back of the tongue is used to create a vacuum in the mouth, causing air to rush in.
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Vowels
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Vowels can depend on the “height” of the mouth.
- Close - the tongue is positioned close to the mouth but not to the point of constriction
- Near-Close - the tongue is positioned close to the mouth but not as constricted as for a closed vowel.
- Close-Mid -
of the gap between closed to open - Mid -
of the gap between closed to open - Open-Mid -
of the gap between closed to open - Near-Open - the tongue is positioned similar to an open vowel but more constricted.
- Open - the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the tongue.
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Vowels are also specified by how far back from the mouth the tongue is placed.
- Front - the tongue is positioned far forward in the mouth without constriction. They tend to sound brighter
- Central - the tongue is positioned halfway between front and back .
- Back - the tongue is positioned relatively back in the mouth without creating constriction. They tend to sound darker.
- Raised - the tongue is raised upwards.
- Retracted - the tongue is pulled backwards and downward into the pharynx.
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A vowel can be rounded if the lips form a circular opening or unrounded if the lips are relaxed when pronouncing the vowel.
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A vowel can be tense — wherein it is pronounced less to the center, longer duration, and with a narrower mouth.
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A vowel can be lax — wherein it is pronounced more to the center, shorter duration, and with a wider mouth.
Phonemes
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Voice Onset Time - the duration between the release of a plosive and the beginning of a vocal fold vibration.
- We have an arbitrary dividing line in the continuum of VOT.
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Allophones - linguistically non-significant variants of each phoneme.
- Allophones cannot both appear in the same word of the language.
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The distribution of phonemes for a language can be defined to create phonetic rules on the sounds that are possible within the language.
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In fact, generalizations made by phonetic rules can cover for variations due to allomorphs.
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Moraic Structures - phonological time is broken into equal lengths, mora rather than into long and short syllables .