2 The production of speech sounds 21 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 Sr almost all speech sounds; muscles in the larynx produce many different modifications = the flow of air from the chest to the mouth. After passing through the larynx, the air gees through what we call the vocal tract, which ends at the mouth and nostrils we coll = 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 2 large and complex set of muscles that can produce changes in the shape of the vocal tract, and = order to learn how the sounds of speech are produced it is necessary to become Smeizer with the different parts of the vocal tract, These different parts are called articullaters aed the study of them is called articulatory phonetics. Fig. 1 is a diagram that is used frequently in the study of phonetics. Tt represents the human head, seen from the side, displayed as though it had been cut in half. You will seed to look at it carefully as the articulators are described, and you will find it useful t Rave = mirror and a good light placed so that you can look at the inside of your mouth. i) The pharynx is a tube which begins just above the larynx. It is about 7 ces lone in women and about 8 cm in men, and at its top end it is divided into Swe ome alveolar hard ridge pale \ nose ‘soft palate (velum) upper teeth upper lip Jowerlip ae lower teeth lseyns Fig. 1 The articulators. 8The production of speech sounds 9 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. ii) 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, 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, m) are called alveolar. v) The tongue is a very important articulator and it can be moved into many dif- ferent 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 (), 6, are called dental. 2 pe front bak ‘blade tip Fig.2 Subdivisions of the tongue10 English Phonetics and Phonology 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 im f, ©). or rounded to produce the lip-shape for vowels like u:. Sounds in which the Eps are in contact with each other are called bilabial, while those with lip-to-teet contact are called labiodental. The seven articulators described above are the main ones used in speech, but Shere are a few other things to remember. Firstly, the larynx (which will be studied im Chapter =) could also be described as an articulator — a very complex and independent one. Secomaip the jaws are sometimes called articulators; certainly we move the lower jaw 2 lot im speak ing, But the jaws are not articulators in the same way as the others, because they cannot themselves make contact with other articulators. Finally, although there is practically set ing active that we can do with the nose and the nasal cavity when speaking, they are 2 =p important part of our equipment for making sounds (which is sometimes called our wocal apparatus), particularly nasal consonants such as m, n. Again, we cannot really describe the nose and the nasal cavity as articulators in the same sense as (i) to (vil) bow 2.2 Vowel and consonant The words vowel and consonant are very familiar ones, but when we stady te sounds of speech scientifically we find that it is not easy to define exactly what they seas The most common view is that vowels are sounds in which there is no obstruction te t= flow of air as it passes from the larynx to the lips. A doctor who wants to look at the beck of a patient’s mouth often asks them to say “ah”; making this vowel sound is the best ey of presenting an unobstructed view. But if we make a sound like s, d it cam be early Se that we are making it difficult or impossible for the air to pass through the mouth. Mest people would have no doubt that sounds like s, cl should be called consonants Bowers there are many cases where the decision is not so easy to make. One problem is thet sss English sounds that we think of as consonants, such as the sounds at the beginaing of he words ‘hay’ and ‘way’, do not really obstruct the flow of air more than some vowels Ge Another problem is that different languages have different ways of dividing their send into vowels and consonants; for example, the usual sound produced at the bezinnane of the word ‘red’ is felt to be a consonant by most English speakers, but in some other See guages (e.g. Mandarin Chinese) the same sound is treated as one of the vowels. If we say that the difference between vowels and consonants is a difference im the xy that they are produced, there will inevitably be some cases of uncertainty or dssere=e== this is a problem that cannot be avoided. It is possible to establish two distinct groeps of sounds (vowels and consonants) in another way. Consider English words bezinains the sound h; what sounds can come next after this h? We find that most of the soumas we normally think of as vowels can follow (e.g. ¢ in the word ‘hen’), but practically seme of the sounds we class as consonants, with the possible exception of j in 2 word sac == ‘huge’ hjusds. Now think of English words beginning with the two sounds ©= == Sad many cases where a consonant can follow (eg. d in the word ‘bid’, or | im the wand Gall2 The production of speech sounds 11 practically no cases where a vowel may follow. What we are doing here is looking at different contexts and positions in which particular sounds can occur; this is the study the distribution of the sounds, and is of great importance in phonology. Study of the s found at the beginning and end of English words has shown that two groups of ids with quite different patterns of distribution can be identified, and these two groups those of vowel and consonant. If we look at the vowel-consonant distinction in this we must say that the most important difference between vowel and consonant is not way that they are made, but their different distributions. It is important to remember the distribution of vowels and consonants is different for each language. We begin the study of English sounds in this course by looking at vowels, and it necessary to say something about vowels in general before turning to the vowels of iglish. We need to know in what ways vowels differ from each other. The first matter to nsider is the shape and position of the tongue. It is usual to simplify the very complex sibilities by describing just two things: firstly, the vertical distance between the upper face of the tongue and the palate and, secondly, the part of the tongue, between front and back, which is raised highest. Let us look at some examples: i) Make a vowel like the i: in the English word ‘see’ and look in a mirrors if you tilt ‘your head back slightly you will be able to see that the tongue is held up close to the roof of the mouth. Now make an « vowel (as in the word ‘cat’) and notice how the distance between the surface of the tongue and the roof of the mouth is now much greater, The difference between i: and :e is a difference of tongue height, and we would describe i: as a relatively close vowel and «© as a relatively ‘open vowel. Tongue height can be changed by moving the tongue up or down, ‘or moving the lower jaw up or down. Usually we use some combination of the two sorts af movement, but when drawing side-of-the-head diagrams such as Fig, 1 and Fig, 2 it is usually found simpler to illustrate tongue shapes for vowels as if tongue height were altered by tongue movement alone, without any accom- panying jaw movement. So we would illustrate the tongue height difference between i: and w as in Fig. 3. Fig. 3 Tongue positions for i: and ze