2.4 Classifying speech sounds

Articulatory phonetics explores how we produce speech sounds. It categorizes sounds based on how we shape our mouths and vocal tracts. This field helps us understand the mechanics behind our ability to communicate through spoken language.

Vowels and consonants are the building blocks of speech. By studying their unique characteristics and production methods, we gain insight into the intricate system of human speech and the diversity of sounds across languages.

Articulatory Phonetics

Vowels vs consonants

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• Vowels produced with open vocal tract allowing continuous airflow typically voiced (a, e, i, o, u)
• Vowels characterized by formants visible in spectrograms as horizontal bands
• Consonants produced with vocal tract obstruction restricting airflow (p, t, k, s, m)
• Consonants can be voiced or voiceless appearing as noise or silence in spectrograms

Classification of consonants

• Place of articulation refers to where in vocal tract sound is made (bilabial, labiodental, dental, alveolar, postalveolar, retroflex, palatal, velar, uvular, pharyngeal, glottal)
• Manner of articulation describes how airflow is modified (stops, fricatives, affricates, nasals, approximants, laterals)
• Voicing indicates whether vocal folds vibrate during production (voiced vs voiceless)

Categories of vowels

• Tongue height affects vertical position (high, mid, low)
• Tongue advancement describes horizontal position (front, central, back)
• Lip rounding involves lip shape (rounded, unrounded)
• Vowel chart visually represents vowel positions using cardinal vowels and IPA symbols

Advanced Phonetic Concepts

Types of non-pulmonic consonants

• Clicks use ingressive airstream found in some African languages (bilabial, dental, alveolar, lateral, palatal)
• Implosives produced with glottalic ingressive airstream lowering larynx (bilabial, alveolar, palatal)
• Ejectives use glottalic egressive airstream raising larynx (bilabial, alveolar, velar)

Role of suprasegmental features

• Stress gives prominence to syllables through loudness, pitch, duration (lexical stress vs sentential stress)
• Tone uses pitch to distinguish meaning in tonal languages (Mandarin, Thai, Yoruba)
• Intonation involves sentence-level pitch variations conveying emotion and distinguishing statements from questions