Phonetics Final Exam

What is the IPA?

International Phonetic Alphabet
-Each sounds has different symbol
-Allows us to transcribe any sound of any language

What is linguistics?

Scientific study of language

What is phonetics?

Branch of linguistics
-It is the scientific study of speech sounds

What are the 4 types of phonetics?

1. Articulatory phonetics- How speech sounds are articulated -->Description and classification of speech sounds
2. Acoustic phonetics- How speech sounds are generated and transmitted-->The relationship between articulation and acoustic output.
3. Auditory

What is phonology?

-How speech sounds are used in language.
-The study of systems of speech sounds and the rules which govern them.

What is sound?

Consists of variations in air pressure creating longitudinal waves. The waves occur very rapidly one after another.

What is a phone?

Individual sound of speech; elementary sound unit

What is a phoneme?

Smallest sound unit in a language that distinguishes word meaning -eme= systematic unit

What is an allophone?

A variant of a phoneme.
The allophones of a phoneme form a set of sounds that do not change the meaning of a word.
13 phonological rules

What do the phonological rules explain?

Allophones

What is a minimal pair?

Two words that have the same phonemes except one

Minimal pairs are useful for determining which sounds are ______________ in a language.

Phonemes

What is the source-filter theory?

A theory in which energy from a source is modified by a set of filters.
Source--> The basic source of power for speech is the respiratory system pushing air out of the lungs. Filter--> The larynx, pharynx, nasal cavity, and oral cavity (= supralaryngeal v

What are tense vowels vs. lax vowels?

Tense vowel: Occur in words with a final so-called silent "e" in the spelling (e.g., "mate", "mete", "kite", and "cute").
-These vowels CAN occur in open syllables
Lax vowel: Occur in the words without a "silent e" such as "mat", "met", "kit" and "cut".
-

What is a monophthong?

A vowel in which there is no appreciable change in quality during a syllable, as in "father.

What is a diphthong?
How are they different from other vowels?

A vowel in which there is a change in quality during a single syllable, as in "high"
A change in vowel quality within one vowel segment.

What is a syllable?

-A unit of speech consisting of either a single vowel (or a syllabic consonant) or a vowel and one or more consonants associated with it.
-The syllable is often used to describe patterns of stress and timing in speech

What is stress?

The use of extra respiratory energy during a syllable. Usually LOUDER, LONGER, HIGHER (in pitch).

What are the feature theories?

VPM (Binary vs graded)

What is a binary feature?

Either on or off (voiceless or voiced)

What is a graded feature?

Like prosody (the melody of language), it cannot be explained by clear-cut binary features

What is homorganic?

Two sounds that have the same place of articulation.
For example, /d/ and /n/, as in English "hand," are homorganic. They are both articulated on the alveolar ridge.

What is markedness?

We mark only unusual cases (or features)

What are natural classes?

A group of segments which are phonetically similar and which occur frequently as the input, output or environment of phonological rules

What are sibilants and frication?

Sibilants- A speech sound in which there is high-pitched, turbulent noise ( it is a type of frication

Types of transcription

Broad and narrow

What is citation form?

Single words pronounced by themselves

What is connected speech?

The way we speak daily because we do not separate each individual word

What is vowel reduction?

The replacement of a vowel by schwa or by a vowel closer to schwa, usually triggered by the unstressed nature of the syllable concerned. More likely to occur in spontaneous speech than in citation form "photographer" and "photograph

What is coarticulation? What are the 2 types?

Anticipatory- "shoe" Future sounds influence the present sound Perseverative- "toots" Previous sound influences present sound

What are diacritics?

A small mark that can be used to distinguish different values of an IPA symbol.

What is sentence level intonation?

Tone group and tonic syllable

What is tone group?

A group of words which constitutes one complete intonational pattern. Also known as an "intonational phrase.

What is a tonic syllable?

The syllable within a tone group that stands out because it carries the major stress

What are suprasegmentals?

Phonetic features which are not properties of single consonants or vowels. -Stress -Length -Tone -Intonation

What is sonority?

The loudness of a sound relative to that of other sounds with the same length, stress, and pitch. Low vowel /a/ is louder (has greater sonority) than /i, u/.

What is prominence?

The extent to which a sound stands out from others because of its sonority, length, stress, and pitch.

What are strong and weak forms of words?

Strong form The form in which a word is pronounced when it is stressed.
This term is usually applied only to words that normally occur unstressed and with a weak form, such as "to" and "a."
Weak form The unstressed form of any word, such as "but" or "as,

What is the difference between stress-timed/syllable-time languages?

Stress-timed: stress is placed at irregular intervals and is generally located on "heavy" syllables -English and German
Syllable-timed: stress is placed more regularly on syllables that have roughly equal structure (e.g., CV) -Japanese

What is tone?

A pitch that conveys part of the meaning a word.
In Mandarin (Chinese), for example, /ma/ pronounced with a high-level tone means "mother" and with a high falling tone means "scold.

What is register and contour?

Register tone = set levels Contour tone = may include e.g. rise/fall (tone shapes)

What are some register languages?

Bantu, Ewe, Yoruba, Hausa

What are some contour languages?

Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese

What is a geminate?

Long consonants that can be analyzed as "double" "roommate

What are the airstream mechanisms?

The manner in which an airstream is set in motion for the purposes of speech (egressive vs ingressive)

What's the difference between ejective and implosive sounds?

Ejective- A stop made with an egressive glottalic airstream, such as Hausa
Implosive- A stop made with an ingressive glottalic airstream, such as Sindhi

What's the difference between breathy and creaky voice?

Breathy (murmur)- The vocal folds are only slightly apart so that they vibrate while allowing a high rate of airflow through the glottis, as in Hindi
Creaky (laryngealization)- the arytenoid cartilages hold the posterior end of the vocal folds together so

Give examples of plosives, ejectives, implosives, and clicks?

Plosives- GAE stops Ejectives- Lakota, Hausa Implosives- Sindhi Clicks- !Xhosa, Zulu

What is pre voicing?

The onset of voicing before the appearance of a supraglottal articulatory event; for example, for stops, prevoicing means that voicing precedes the stop release.

What is assimilation?

Refers to the change of one sound into another sound because of the influence of neighboring sounds as in the change of underlying [n] to [m] in "input

What is dissimilation?

A phonological process whereby segments become less similar to one another. One good example is the process which changed one of two r segments within a word into an l in the development of Latin into modern-day Romance languages. Thus, Latin arbor (tree)

What is a palatography?

a technique used to identify which parts of the mouth are used when making different sounds

What are the Pros and Cons of Palatography?

Disadvantage:
-provides information on only one component of the vocal tract event.
-EPG provides info only when the tongue touches the palate.
-less useful when the jaw lowers the tongue away from the domain of the palate.
Advantage: EPG can be used in c

What is the wave theory?

Different linguistic changes spread

What is bandwidth?

-Bandwidth is a measure of the frequency band of a sound.
-Bandwidth is determined at the half-power (3 db down) points of the frequency response curve.
-Both the lower and higher frequencies that define the bandwidth are 3 db less intense than the peak e

What is phase?

-The relative timing of two or more components of a complex periodic waveform.
-Phase is measured in degrees.

What is amplitude?

-The magnitude of displacement for a sound wave. -General speaking, amplitude of sound determines the perceived loudness of the sound.

What is frequency?

The rate of vibration of a periodic event.
For example, a periodic sound has a frequency measured as the number of cycles of vibration per second (Hz).
Frequency = Cycles Per Second (CPS) = Hz

What is the range of frequencies for humans?

20-20,000 Hz

What is wavelength?

The distance that a periodic signal travels in one complete cycle of vibration.
Wavelength = speed of sound / frequency

What is fundamental frequency?

In speech, the fundamental frequency refers to the first harmonic of the voice.

What is harmonics?

-Energy at integer multiples of the fundamental frequency in voiced sounds.
-Ideally, the voice source can be conceptualized as a line spectrum in which energy appears as a series of harmonics.

What is a formant?

-Formants are a product of vocal tract resonances. -Vowels are characterized chiefly by the frequencies of the first three formants (F1, F2, and F3).

What are the rules relating to formants and articulatory positions?

The formants that characterize different vowels are the result of different shapes of the vocal tract
-F1 rule: inversely related to tongue height. As the jaw goes down, F1 goes up.
-F2 rule: directly related to tongue fronting. As the tongue moves forwar

What is a spectrogram?

A graphic representation of sounds in terms of their component frequencies:
-time is shown on the horizontal axis
-frequency is shown on the vertical axis
-intensity is shown by the darkness of the mark (of each frequency at each moment in time)