The production of speech sounds- Articulators above the larynx

All the sounds we make when we speak are the result of muscles
contracting. The muscles in the chest that we use for breathing produce the
flow of air that is needed for almost all speech sounds.

Muscles in the larynx produce many different modifications in the flow of

air from the chest to the mouth.

After passing through the larynx, the air goes through what we call the
vocal tract, which ends at the mouth and nostrils; we call the part
comprising the mouth the oral cavity and the part that leads to the nostrils
the nasal cavity.

Here the air from the lungs escapes into the atmosphere. We have a large
and complex set of muscles that can produce changes in the shape of the
vocal tract, and in order to learn how the sounds of speech are produced it is
necessary to become familiar with the different parts of the vocal tract.
These different parts are called articulators, and the study of them is called
articulatory phonetics.

The pharynx is a tube which begins just above the larynx. It is about 7 cm
long in women and about 8 cm in men, and at its top end it is divided into
two, one part being the back of the oral cavity and the other being the
beginning of the way through the nasal cavity. If you look in your mirror
with your mouth open, you can see the back of the pharynx.

The soft palate or velum is seen in the diagram in a position that allows air
to pass through the nose and through the mouth. Yours is probably in that
position now, but often in speech it is raised so that air cannot escape
through the nose. The other important thing about the soft palate is that it
is one of the articulators that can be touched by the tongue. When we make
the sounds k, g the tongue is in contact with the lower side of the soft palate,
and we call these velar consonants.

The hard palate is often called the "roof of the mouth". You can feel its
smooth curved surface with your tongue. A consonant made with the tongue
close to the hard palate is called palatal. The sound j in 'yes' is
palatal.
The alveolar ridge is between the top front teeth and the hard palate. You
can feel its shape with your tongue. Its surface is really much rougher than
it feels, and is covered with little ridges. You can only see these if you have a
mirror small enough to go inside your mouth, such as those used by
dentists. Sounds made with the tongue touching here (such as t, d, n) are
called alveolar.

The tongue is a very important articulator and it can be moved into many
different places and different shapes. It is usual to divide the tongue into
different parts, though there are no clear dividing lines within its structure.
Fig. 2 shows the tongue on a larger scale with these parts shown: tip, blade,
front, back and root. (This use of the word "front" often seems rather
strange at first.)

The teeth (upper and lower) are usually shown in diagrams like Fig. 1 only at
the front of the mouth, immediately behind the lips. This is for the sake of a
simple diagram, and you should remember that most speakers have teeth to
the sides of their mouths, back almost to the soft palate. The tongue is in
contact with the upper side teeth for most speech sounds. Sounds made with
the tongue touching the front teeth, such as English T, D, are called dental.

The lips are important in speech. They can be pressed together (when we
produce the sounds p, b), brought into contact with the teeth (as in f, v), or
rounded to produce the lip-shape for vowels like u:. Sounds in which the
lips are in contact with each other are called bilabial, while those with lip-
to-teeth contact are called labiodental.

1. The larynx could be also be described as articulator (very complex an

independent one)
2. The jaws are sometimes called articulator (but not make contact with
other articulator)
3. we cannot really describe the nose and the nasal activity as articulators in
the same sense as lips or the
pharynx.
vowel and consonant

The most common view is that vowels are sounds in which there is no
obstruction to the flow of air as it passes from the larynx to the lips.
However, this definition is quite contradictory because there are some
consonant sounds that apply to this definition (h, w). If we say that the
difference between vowels and consonants is a difference in the way that
they are produced, there will inevitably be some cases of uncertainty or
disagreement. It is possible to establish two distinct groups of sounds
(vowels and
consonants) by looking at the different contexts and positions in which
particular sounds can occur; this is the study of the distribution of the
sounds.

To know in which way vowels differ from each other we have to consider the
shape and position of the tongue.
Firstly, the vertical distance between the upper surface of the tongue and
the palate and, secondly, the part of the tongue, between front and back,
which is raised highest.

VC -----> PHONETICAL
how sounds are produced. Production.

V: NO OBSTRUCTION TO THE FLOW OF AIR

C: OBSTRUCTION OF FLOW OF AIR

PHONOLOGICAL how phonemes relate to each other/how they behave

DISTRIBUTION: onset, peak , coda

The Cardinal vowel system

Phoneticians need a very accurate way of classifying vowels, and have
developed a set of vowels which are arranged in a close-open, front-back
diagram similar to the one above but which are not the vowels
of any particular language. These cardinal vowels are a standard reference
system, and people being trained in phonetics at an advanced level have to
learn to make them accurately and recognise them correctly. If you learn
the cardinal vowels, you are not learning to make English sounds, but you
are learning about the range of vowels that the human vocal apparatus can
make, and also learning a useful way of describing, classifying and
comparing vowels.

Manner of articulation
Manner of articulation is the way the air stream is affected as it flows from
the lungs out of the vocal tract (plosive, fricative, affricate, nasal,
approximant and lateral approximant).

Plosive: they are produce by forming a complete obstruction to the flow of

air out of the mouth and nose, and normally this results in a buil-up of
compressed air inside the chamber formed by the closure /p/

Fricative: this type of consonant is made by forcing air through a narrow

gap so that a hissing noise is generated /s/

Affricate: an affricate is a type of consonant consisting of a plosive followed

by a fricative with the same place of articulation.

Nasal: a nasal consonant is one in which the air escapes only through the
nose.

Approximant: it is used to denote a consonant which makes very little

obstruction to the airflow.

Lateral: a consonant is lateral if there is obstruction to the passage of air in

the centre (mid-line) of the air-passage and the air flows to the side of the
obstruction.

MANNER OF ARTICULATION ------> REFERS TO THE WAY IN

WHICH THE AIRFLOW IS OBSTRUCTED AND RELEASED
VOICING -----------> WHEN THE VOCAL FOLDS VIBRATE IN
THE ARTICULATION OF A CONSONANT WE SAY THAT IT IS
‘VOICED”. WHEN THEY DON ́T IT IS ‘VOICELESS’

PLACE OF ARTICULATION -----> REFERS TO THE

ARTICULATORS THAT MOVE IN ORDER TO
PRODUCE THE OBSTRUCTION TO THE FLOW OF AIR AND THE
PLACE WHERE THE STRICTURE IN
THE VOCAL TRACT TAKES PLACE

Place of articulation

Place of articulation is where the constrictions and obstructions occur

(Bilabial, labiodental, dental, alveolar, post alveolar, palatal, velar and
glottal). (Quality is the combination of tongue and lip position in
the production of vowel sounds).

Bilabial: a sound made with both lips /b p/

Labiodental: a consonant articulated with contact between one or both of

the lips and the teeth. /f v/

Dental: a dental sound is one in which there is approximation or contact

between the teeth and some other articulator.

Alveolar : the tongue comes into contact with alveolar ridge in some of the
consonants of English are consonants with alveolar place of articulation /t
d/

Post-alveolar: are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching

the back of the alveolar ridge.

Velar: the back of the tongue is pressed against the area where the hard
palate end and soft palate begins
/k g/
Glottal: the opening between the vocal folds.
THE PHONETIC VALUE OF “ED” SUFFIXES
Regular verbs form their past simple and past participle forms by adding a
“-d / -ed” suffix. This suffix is also used to form certain adjectives.
Although there are a few exceptions, in most cases it is very simple
to decide what the pronunciation of this suffix is. There are three
possibilities, depending on the last sound of the base form:

a)When the last sound of the base form is a voiceless consonant, the “-d /
-ed” suffix is generally pronounced / t /.

b)When the last sound of the base form is a voiced consonant or a vowel, the
“-d / -ed” suffix is generally pronounced / d /.

c) When the last sound of the base form is either / t / or / d /, the “-d / -ed”
suffix is commonly pronounced / ɪd /. As you may have noticed, in this case
we add a syllable.

d)The English language contains plenty of exceptions to general rules.

When we study the pronunciation of the “-d / -ed” suffix we should bear in
mind some notable exceptions to the principles stated here. Some adjectives
we have to pay special attention to can be: blessed, wicked, ragged, crooked,
naked, aged, learned. The word “use” can be classified as a noun, adjective
or verb. It can also be part of the idiom “used to”. In each case, the
pronunciation varies.
ENGLISH SHORT VOWELS
English vowel #2 /I/:
1. it is a short vowel
2.it is in the close-front area, but is more open and nearer in to the centre
than English vowel #1
3.the lips are slightly spread
4.’fish’ , ‘pin, lip’

English vowel #3 /e/:

1.it is a short vowel
2.it is fully front and it’s between cardinal vowel #2 and cardinal vowel #3
the lips are slightly spread
3.‘get’ ‘men’ ‘yes’

English vowel #4 /æ/:

1.it is short vowel
2.It is nearly front and open,but not as open or as front as cardinal vowel #4
3.The lips are slightly spread
4. ‘bat’‘man’‘apple’

English vowel #6/ɒ/:

1. it is a short vowel
2. It is nearly back and between open and open-mid
3. The lips are slightly rounded
4. ‘pot’ ‘top’ ‘box’

English vowel #8 /ʊ /:
1.it is a short vowel
2.It is not as close or as back as English vowel #8
3.The lips are rounded
4.‘book’ ‘put’ ‘pull’

English vowel #10 /ʌ /:

1.it is a short vowel
2. It is central, between open and open-mid, but nearer to open-mid
3.The lips are neutral
4.‘cut ‘ ‘young’ ‘come’

English vowel # 12:

1. it is a short vowel
2.It is central, between close-mid and open-mid, but it is nearer to
open-mid
3.The lips are neutral
4. ‘mother’ ‘brother’ ‘father’