The relationship between phonetics and linguistics

Linguistics – the scientific study of language and its structure, including the study of
grammar, syntax, and phonetics.
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics.

The relationship between phonetics and phonology

Phonetics is the study of speech sounds as physical entities (their articulation, acoustic
properties, and how they are perceived), and phonology is the study of the organization and
function of speech sounds as part of the grammar of a language. Basically, phonetics is broader
and deals with the physical aspect of sounds more, while phonology studies different patterns of
sounds in different languages.

Branches of phonetics
• Articulatory phonetics – describes how the speech organs/vocal organs (also
known as articulators) are used to produce speech sounds
• Acoustic phonetics – covers the field of physical properties of speech sounds
(physics stuff – frequencies, amplitudes)
• Auditory phonetics – study of hearing and the perception of speech sounds

The organs of speech

 The mechanism of speech
1. The stream of air is produced by the lungs
2. The air goes into the trachea
3. The air goes into the larynx, in which the vocal cords are situated
4. When the vocal cords vibrate, the sounds produced are voiced, when they don’t
vibrate, the sounds are voiceless
5. The air goes into the pharynx
6. If the velum is lowered = the sound produced is nasal, if the velum is raised = the
sound is oral
7. The air goes into the oral cavity
8. The tongue can articulate with the hard palate, the teeth, the alveolar ridge, or
the soft palate
9. The sound can be modified by the lips

Approaches to the stream of speech segmentation

• The parametric approach – each component of vocal performance is treated as
a parameter whose value is in a state of constant potential change
• The serial/linear approach – the time-continuum of speech is divided without
residue into abutting units of varying duration. In more human words: the
sounds are divided
Basically? The parametric approach uses soundwaves graphs and shit, so the possibilities of a
unit/sound changing are practically endless, but the linear approach uses more limited, easier,
arbitrary descriptions, so it’s easier to understand and talk about, even though it limits the
analysis of a sound a bit.

The structure of segment

A segment – any discrete unit that can be identified, either physically or auditorily, in
the stream of speech. I don’t really get the question, though.

The classification of segments:

Resonants – the air flows without friction
/r/ voiced post-alveolar resonant
Vocal cords vibrate. Soft palate is raised. The tip of the tongue makes a narrowing with the
back of the alveolar ridge. The air flows without friction.
/l/ voiced alveolar resonant
Vocal cords vibrate. Soft palate is raised. The tip of the tongue makes a partial closure with
the alveolar ridge. The air flows without friction.
/j/ voiced palatal resonant
Vocal cords vibrate. Soft palate is raised. The front of the tongue forms a narrowing with the
hard palate. The air flows without friction.
/w/ voiced labio-velar resonant
Vocal cords vibrate. Soft palate is raised. The back of the tongue is raised towards the soft
palate. The lips are rounded. The air flows without friction.

Stops – the air is stopped and suddenly released

/b/ voiced bilabial plosive
Vocal folds vibrate. Soft palate is raised. The sound is articulated with both lips. The air is
stopped and suddenly released.
/p/ voiceless bilabial plosive
Vocal folds don’t vibrate. Soft palate is raised. The sound is articulated with both lips. The air is
stopped and suddenly released
/d/ voiced alveolar plosive
Vocal folds vibrate. Soft palate is raised. The tip of the tongue forms a complete closure with the
alveolar ridge. The air is stopped and suddenly released.
/t/ voiceless alveolar plosive
Vocal don’t folds vibrate. Soft palate is raised. The tip of the tongue forms a complete
closure with the alveolar ridge. The air is stopped and suddenly released.
/g/ voiced velar plosive
The vocal folds vibrate. The soft palate is raised. The back of the tongue forms a complete
closure with the soft palate. The air is stopped and suddenly released.
/k/ voiceless velar plosive
The vocal folds don’t vibrate. The soft palate is raised. The back of the tongue forms a
complete closure with the soft palate. The air is stopped and suddenly released.
/m/ voiced bilabial nasal stop
The vocal folds vibrate. The soft palate is lowered. The lips are closed. The air escapes
exclusively through the nose.
/n/ voiced alveolar nasal stop
The vocal folds vibrate. The soft palate is lowered. The tip of the tongue forms a closure
with the alveolar ridge. The air escapes exclusively through the nose.
/ŋ/ voiced velar nasal stop
The vocal folds vibrate. The soft palate is lowered. The back of the tongue forms a closure
with the soft palate. The air escapes exclusively through the nose.

Affricates – the air is stopped and released with friction

/dʒ/ voiced palato-alveolar affricate
The vocal folds vibrate. The soft palate is raised. The tip of the tongue forms a complete
closure with the alveolar ridge. The air is released with friction.
/tʃ/ voiceless palato-alveolar affricate
The vocal folds don’t vibrate. The soft palate is raised. The tip of the tongue forms a
complete closure with the alveolar ridge. The air is released with friction.

Fricatives – the air flows with friction

/v/ voiced labiodental fricative
The vocal folds vibrate. The soft palate is raised. The lower lip forms a narrowing with the
upper teeth. The air flows with friction.
/f/ voiceless labiodental fricative
The vocal folds don’t vibrate. The soft palate is raised. The lower lip forms a narrowing with
the upper teeth. The air flows with friction.
/ð/ voiced dental fricative
The vocal folds vibrate. The soft palate is raised. The tip of the tongue articulates with the
upper teeth. The air flows with friction.
/θ/ voiceless dental fricative
The vocal folds don’t vibrate. The soft palate is raised. The tip of the tongue articulates with
the upper teeth. The air flows with friction.
/z/ voiced alveolar fricative
The vocal folds vibrate. The soft palate is raised. The tip of the tongue articulates with the
alveolar ridge. The air flows with friction.
/s/ voiceless alveolar fricative
The vocal folds don’t vibrate. The soft palate is raised. The tip of the tongue articulates with
the alveolar ridge. The air flows with friction.
/ʒ/ voiced palato-alveolar fricative
The vocal folds vibrate. The soft palate is raised. The tip of the tongue forms a narrowing with the
alveolar ridge. The front of the tongue is raised towards the hard palate. The narrowing is released
slowly and the air flows with friction.
/ʃ/ voiceless palato-alveolar fricative
The vocal folds don’t vibrate. The soft palate is raised. The tip of the tongue forms a
narrowing with the alveolar ridge. The front of the tongue is raised towards the hard palate. The
narrowing is released slowly and the air flows with friction
Initiation (airstream mechanism, airflow direction)
The airstream mechanism is the method by which the air is created by the vocal tract. The
airstream can be initiated by:
• the diaphragm together with the ribs and lungs (pulmonic mechanisms)
• the glottis (glottalic mechanisms)
• the tongue (lingual or "velaric" mechanisms)
The airflow can be:
• Egressive – outwards
• Ingressive – inwards

Phonation
A harder word for “is that sound voiced or not”

Articulation (place of articulation, degree of stricture, aspect of articulation)

• Place of articulation – basically where the sound is made.
• Degree of stricture – how close is the active articulator to the passive
articulator. There can be three degrees of that: total closure, close approximation
and open approximation
• Manner of articulation – how the articulators produce the sound
• Aspect of articulation – don’t know what the deal is with that one. I’ve got two
theories: either she wants “manner of articulation” or the three aspects of
articulation: voicing, place of articulation and manner of articulation.

Co-ordination (devoicing process, stop release modes, aspiration, affrication)

• Devoicing
o complete vs. partial
o initial vs. final
• Stop release modes
o released
o incomplete (lacking one of their marginal phases)
o unreleased (oral stops lacking an audible explosion at the release phase)
o central vs. lateral release
▪ Lateral release happens when a segment is followed by a lateral – the
only lateral in English is /l/
o oral vs. nasal release.
▪ Nasal release happens when a segment is followed by a nasal stop
• Aspiration – It is a property of the relationship between two segments in a sequence
and involves an audible delay in the onset of voicing for the second segment after the
release of the first segment. The second segment is always more open than the first.
There are three cases in which aspiration may occur:
o voiceless stop + vocoid (syllable-nuclear)
o voiceless stop + resonant (syllable-marginal)
o voiceless fricative + vocoid.
• Affrication – a phonetic process of making the overlap phase between the stop and the
following articulation audibly and momentarily fricative. Friction is of necessity
homorganic with the place of articulation of the stop. Affrication is a co-ordinatory
property of a relationship either between two segments, or between a segment and
utterance final silence. The first element in both cases must be an oral stop. If another
full segment follows, then it must be a resonant (it must involve open approximation so
that close approximation was only momentary). The momentary audibility of the friction
in utterance-final affrication is terminated by the articulators rapidly relaxing to a
position of open approximation. (I copied that from the handout. It’s just so clear and
understandable, you know? /s)

Vocoids, contoids and approximants

The explanation’s below, I’m not doing these in order
Minimal pair of words
A minimal pair is two words that vary by only a single sound, for example: pat/bat, need/deed,
lie/die, ball/tall

Phonological context: structural and environmental

Structural context – the structural position in which the unit can occur
Environmental context – the identity of elements adjacent to the phonological unit

The structure of syllable

Onset – a consonant or consonant cluster

Rhyme (core) – usually the portion of a syllable from the
first vowel to the end
Peak (nucleus) – the first vowel
Coda – an optional final consonant

Vowels and consonants vs. vocoids, contoids and approximants

• Vowels = vocoids
• Consonants = contoids
• Approximants = /w/, /r/, /l/, /j/
They’re basically the same thing, but the ones on the left are used in phonology (it’s the
one that studies a specific language) and the ones on the right in phonetics (the one that studies
sounds in general). So overcomplicated.

Phonological distribution
Phonological distribution - range of permitted locations of a vowel or a consonant.
Every consonant or vowel can occur in different locations – the range of possible locations is
constrained by the phonology of the language.
The distributions of two consonants or two vowels can be;
• Parallel – when two consonants or vowels share the exact phonotactic range
• Overlapping – when the two sounds share some contexts
• Complementary – when two sounds share no locations in the phonotactic range
Phonotactic range – The distributional range of contextual occurrences of a given
consonant or vowel in an accent

Free variation
Free variation – the phenomenon of two (or more) sounds or forms appearing in the
same environment without a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect by
native speakers. For example, either can be pronounced /naɪðə/ or /niːðə/ no prob, so it’s an
example of free variation

Phone, phoneme, allophone

• Phone – any distinct speech sound or gesture, regardless of whether the exact sound is
critical to the meanings of words
• Phoneme – a unit of phone that can distinguish one word from another in a particular
language, for example sin /sɪn/ and sing /siŋ/ are distinguished by the phonemes n and
ŋ
• Allophone – is one of multiple possible spoken sounds (phones) used to pronounce a
single phoneme in a particular language. For example, [tʰ] (aspirated [t]) is an allophone
of the phoneme [t]. It doesn’t change the meaning of the word.

The classification of vocoids

Vocoid/ vowel space (cardinal vowel diagram)
It’s below, just scroll.
Dimensions of classification (of vocoids)
• the part of the tongue being raised (front — back)
 • the degree to which the tongue is raised (high — low)
• the degree of the opening of the mouth (close — open)
• the shape of the lips (spread — neutral — rounded)
• nasalisation
• length
• ATR
• retroflection
• transitional aspect (monophthongs — diphthongs — triphthongs)
Cardinal vowels (primary and secondary)
Cardinal vowels are vowel sounds produced when the tongue is in an extreme position,
either front or back, high or low. See the chart below for primary and secondary cardinal vowels,
aight?

Co-articulation and assimilation

Co-articulation – adjacent segments exercise their mutual accommodatory influence on
articulatory features, thus reflecting inherent principles of strategic neuromuscular control. In
co-articulation segments involved are more similar to each other than they are in other contexts.
In simpler words, sounds change depending on the sounds around them.
Assimilation – An optional process consisting of one segment exercising a modifying
influence on the articulatory or phonatory characteristics of another segment across a word
boundary or across the boundary between the components of a compound word. The fact of
assimilation is established by comparison with the form of the word when pronounced in
isolation. Assimilations are the outcome of optional phonological processes. Assimilation
patterns are accent- and language-specific.
Types of co-articulation
• Accommodation of place and aspect of articulation
• advancement vs. retraction, palatalisation, retroflection
• Lip rounding (labialisation)
• Velic position (nasalisation)
Types of assimilation
The segments can be made more similar in terms of:
• phonation type;
• place of articulation;
• nasal aspect of articulation;
• degree of stricture.
In coalescence (i.e., coalescent assimilation) both segments change their characteristics under
their mutual influence across the word boundary.
Direction of co-articulation and assimilation
• anticipatory (regressive, right-to-left) — stronger
• perseverative (progressive, left-to-right, carry-over, retention)
Differences between co-articulation and assimilation
Don’t care tbh
Guess assimilation happens across word boundary and co-articulation just happens whenever?
The notion of sonority
Sonority – loudness of a segment relative to that of other sounds with the same length,
stress and pitch.

Sonority scale and sonority principle

Sonority scale (from most sonorous to the least sonorous)
• vowels
o low
o mid
o high
• glides
• liquids
• nasals
• obstruents
o fricatives
o affricates
o stops
Sonority principle:
1. The segmental material in the onset of the syllable must be arranged in a linear order
of increasing sonority from the beginning of the syllable to the nucleus of the syllable
2. conversely, the segmental material in the rhyme of the syllable must be arranged in
the linear order of descending sonority from the nuclear vowel of the syllable to the
final segment of the syllable
Basically, the sonority increases from the beginning of the syllable to the 1st vowel and
then decreases

Sonority and syllabicity of a segment

The more sonority a segment has, the more syllabic it is, pretty much

Counting syllables and dividing into syllables

Uhh idk

Phonetic and phonological syllable

The concept of the phonological syllable is adopted as a construct helpful for organising and
explaining of rhythmic and prosodic facts at levels above the segment, and as a convenient
domain for expressing the mutual distribution of phonemic segments.

Prominence of syllables
The prominence of syllables is differentiated through:
• the degree of stress
• syllable weight
• the sonority characteristics of the individual segmental members of the syllable

Perceptual correlates of stress: pitch, loudness, duration, quality

• pitch – the higher it is, the more stressed a syllable is
• duration – the longer it is, the more stressed a syllable is
• intensity – the greater it is… you get the drill
• segmental quality (stress correlated with a more peripheral location in the vocoid
space)

Syllable weight
• light (weak) syllable — one whose rhyme is made up of a nucleus consisting of a
short vowel, followed by a maximum of one short consonant;
• heavy (strong) syllable has:
o a long vowel with or without a coda of any sort;
o a short vowel with a coda made up of two or more consonants;
o a short vowel followed by at least one long consonant.
Types of transcription
Phonetic vs. phonological transcription
• Phonetic transcription
o Observation of phonetic performance, as communicated in general phonetic
transcription, is supposedly free of phonological motivation (as language-
neutral as possible).
o General phonetic transcription is especially suitable for occasion-specific
observations of the speech of a particular speaker, where a commentary on
phonetic performance at high resolution may be important.
o Sometimes called a narrow transcription, because it makes a more or less
narrowly specific comment on phonetic details of pronunciation
o Uses […] brackets, it’s the one we did on the kolokwium with Słoń
• Phonological transcription
o Phonological transcriptions (both phonemic and allophonic) constitute
generalized, abstract statements about the pronunciatory behaviour which
typifies a given accent
o Can be called a systemic transcription, because both phonemic and allophonic
transcriptions make explicit observations on rule-based generalizations about
regular, patterned activities in the accent concerned
Phonemic vs. allophonic transcription
• Phonemic transcription
o makes explicit observations on rule-based generalizations about regular,
patterned activities in the accent concerned.
o limited to one symbol per phoneme
o broad transcription – the objective is to provide a unique identification for
each separate linguistic unit of the language that is phonemically differentiated
by the accent in question
• Allophonic transcription
o makes explicit observations on rule-based generalizations about regular,
patterned activities in the accent concerned.
o any transcription that represents the occurrences of even a single phoneme by
different symbols when the phoneme appears in different structural or
environmental contexts (the little symbols above the letters)

General issues
Differences between phonology and morphology
Phonology – has to do with sounds, studies how languages or dialects systematically organize
their phones
Morphology – the study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in
the same language
One has to do with sounds of a language, and the other with words of a language

The term “morphology”

Above.

Problems with the term “word”

What is a ‘word’ differs from language to language. In short a word is what native speakers think
a word is. The problem is that however the term ‘word’ is defined, there are some items in some
languages which speakers of those languages call ‘words’ but which are not covered by the
definition.
The terms: lexeme, word-form, citation form
• Lexeme – used when referring to sense; it refers not to the particular shape that a word
has on a particular occasion, but to all the possible shapes that the word can have.
• Word-form – the particular shape that a word has on a particular occasion; has a
phonological or orthographic shape
• Citation form – a word-form used as headword of a dictionary entry
Classification of languages according to their morphological structure
Analytic (isolating) languages; root languages
• They are made up of sequences of free morphemes
• Each word consists of a single morpheme
• They do not use affixes or change of form

Synthetic languages
o Affixes or bound morphemes are attached to other morphemes, so that a word
may be made up of several meaningful elements.
• Agglutinating (agglutinative) languages
o The morphemes are relatively ‘loosely’ joined together (it is usually easy to
determine where the boundaries between morphemes are)
o Each bound morpheme caries (ordinarily) only one meaning
Languages such as Hungarian, Swahili, Turkish, Finnish, Japanese
• Fusional languages
o The affixes may not be easy to separate from the stem (it is often rather hard to
tell where one morpheme ends and the next begins)
o The affixes are characteristically fused with the stem (phonological alternations)
o In fusional languages a single affix may convey several meanings
Languages such as Spanish, Russian, Latin, Greek, Arabic
• Polysynthetic (incorporating) languages
o Highly complex words may be formed by combining several stems and affixes
o This is usually a matter of making nouns into parts of the verb forms
o The incorporated form of the noun is not necessarily identical to its free form
o The verb alone expresses what seems to be an equivalent of a whole sentence
Australian languages, Eskimo

The terms: root, stem, base

• Root – a form which is no further analysable, either in terms of derivational or
inflectional morphology. It is that part of a word-form that remains when all inflectional
and derivational affixes have been removed.
• Stem – the part of the word-form which remains when all inflectional affixes have been
removed.
• Base – any form to which affixes of any kind can be added.
Simplex, complex and compound forms

The terms: creativity and productivity

• Creativity — the native speaker’s ability to extend the language system in a motivated,
but unpredictable way;
• Productivity — a property of language (system) which allows a native speaker to
produce new forms (according to some rules); a process is said to be productive if it can
be used synchronically in the production of new forms.

Morphemes
The terms: morph, morpheme, allomorph
• Morph – a phonological string (of phonemes) that cannot be broken down into smaller
constituents that have a lexicogrammatical function
• Morpheme – the smallest meaningful unit in the language; the basic unit of analysis
recognised in morphology
• Allomorph – a phonetically (phonologically), lexically or grammatically
(morphologically) conditioned member of a set of morphs representing a particular
morpheme
Classifications of morphemes

Conditioning of allomorphs
• Phonological conditioning – when the allomorphs of a specific morpheme are selected
according to the phonological environment (the preceding or the following sounds)
o The -s (plural) morpheme has 3 phonemic variations - /t/, /d/ and /ɪd/, and
their usage depends on the sounds preceding the morpheme
• Morphological conditioning – refers to the environment in which the selection of
allomorphs is determined by identifying specific morphemes.
o The (–s pl) morpheme has further allomorphs which are not phonologically
conditioned, and therefore are morphologically conditioned.
▪ ox - oxen (-en pl)
▪ child - children (-en pl)
▪ Sheep - sheep (Ø pl)
▪ deer - deer (Ø pl)
▪ Foot - feet (replacive allomorph)

Affixation
Words, affixes and clitics
Words:
• A word can stand alone as an independent utterance.
• Words may be stressed.
• Words possess a fair degree of phonological invariance. Word stress is comparatively
stable.
• Words are unselective with regard to the kinds of items to which they may be adjacent.
• Words can be moved or deleted.
Affixes:
• Affixes cannot occur independently of the stems to which they attach
• Affixes are generally unstressable.
• Affixes are generally integrated into the phonological shape of the word of which they
are part.
 Clitic – a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a word, but depends phonologically on
another word or phrase. For example, “ ‘s “ is “What’s up” or “it’s” or “she’s” is a clitic. It stands
for a word, but cannot be used on its own.

Inflection vs. derivation

Inflection Derivation
Produces word-forms of a single lexeme Produces new lexemes
Involves few variables in a closed set May involve many variables in an open system
Marks agreement Does not mark agreement
Marked further from the root Marked closer to the root
Cannot be typically replaced by a simple root May be replaced by a simple root
Typically does not show gaps in the paradigm Typically shows gaps in the paradigm
Typically semantically regular Typically semantically irregular

Inflectional paradigms
Inflectional paradigm – a pattern (usually a set of inflectional endings), where a class of words
follow the same pattern.

Types of affixes

Word formation
Classification of word-formation processes and word manufacturing
The file from intro to linguistics is awesome on this, go check it out instead