Lecture 1

Phonetics
Lecture 1
Date: 21/3/2023
• An important purpose of this course is to explain
how English is pronounced in the accent normally
chosen as the standard for people learning the
English spoken in England.
• to present a general theory about speech sounds
and how they are used in language.
Definition of Phonetics
•Phonetics is the science of speech sounds, which aims to
provide the set of features or properties that can be used to
describe and distinguish all the sounds used in human
language (Peter Roach, 2000).

•The branch of linguistics concerned with the study of speech
sounds .
•The system of sounds of a particular language.
Phonemes: are the smallest units of sound
within a language. They are represented in
writing by symbols known as graphemes, and
they help us to distinguish one word from
another.
Grapheme
A grapheme is a letter, or group of letters, that acts as the
smallest unit in a written language. They’re used to represent
different sounds (called phonemes) in their written form. In
some cases, a single phoneme can be represented by more
than one grapheme.
for example, the vowels in the words ‘pin’ and ‘pen’ are
different phonemes, and so are the consonants at the
beginning of the words ‘pet’ and ‘bet’. Because of the
confusing nature of English spelling, it is particularly
important to learn to think of English pronunciation in terms
of phonemes rather than letters of the alphabet; one must be
aware, for example, that the word ‘enough’ begins with the
same vowel phoneme as that at the beginning of ‘inept’ and
ends with the same consonant as ‘stuff’. We often use special
symbols to represent speech sounds
Assignment ( 1)
1. What is the difference between accent and dialect?

2. Which word is used to refer to the relative strength
of a syllable?
3. How many sounds (phonemes) do you think there
are in the following words? a) love b) half c) wrist d)
shrink e) ought
•Articulatory phonetics: a subfield of phonetics that
studies articulation and ways that humans produce
speech.
• Organs of speech ( articulators)
•Articulators above the larynx
i) The pharynx : is a tube which begins just above the
larynx. 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.
ii) The soft palate or velum:
- Allows air to pass through the nose and through the mouth.
- It is often raised in speech so that air cannot escape through
the nose.
- 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.
iii) 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. Sounds made with the tongue touching here (such as t, d, n)
are called alveolar.
v) 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: tip, blade, front, back and root.
The teeth (upper and lower)
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 are called dental.
vii) 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.
2.2 Vowel and consonant
• The words vowel and consonant are very familiar ones, but when we
study the sounds of speech scientifically we find that it is not easy to
define exactly what they mean.
• 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.
• Most people would have no doubt that sounds like s, d should be called
consonants. However, there are many cases where the decision is not
so easy to make. One problem is that some English sounds that we
think of as consonants, such as the sounds at the beginning of the
words ‘hay’ and ‘way’, do not really obstruct the flow of air more than
some vowels do.
the most important difference between vowel and consonant is not
the way that they are made, but their different distributions.
In what ways do vowels differ from each other?
1. the shape and position of the tongue.
a) the vertical distance between the upper surface of the tongue and
the palate.
b) the part of the tongue, between front and back, which is raised
highest.
Examples:
The difference between i: and is a difference of tongue height,
and we would describe i: as a relatively close vowel and as a
relatively open vowel.
ii) In making the two vowels described above, it is the front part of the
tongue that is raised. We could therefore describe i: and ae as
comparatively front vowels. By changing the shape of the tongue we
can produce vowels in which a different part of the tongue is the
highest point. A vowel in which the back of the tongue is the highest
point is called a back vowel. If you make the vowel in the word ‘calm’,
which we write phonetically as a:, you can see that the back of the
tongue is raised. Compare this with ae in front of a mirror; as is a front
vowel and a: is a back vowel. The vowel in ‘too’ (u:) is also a
comparatively back vowel, but compared with a: it is close.

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Phonetics

1. What is the difference between accent and dialect?

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