Basic Phonology
Phonology is concerned about the way human sounds are made or articulated. The apparatus is made up of the organs of the body (such as diaphragm, lungs, windpipe, vocalchords, mouth cavity, the tongue, nasal cavity, lips) that are required to make speech. The sounds are often caused by an airstream mechanism which is the flow of air in or out of the body. Along the way, the air is impeded which gives rise to articulation.
Air which originates in the lungs is known as pulmonic and its directions out of the body cavity is known as egressive, therefore in normal speech, the airstream mechanism is pulmonic-egressive. Air which comes into the body to make a sound is in known as an ingressive airstream.
There is also an oral airstream mechanism which uses air within the oral cavity to produce sounds. This can be done by closing the back of the throat, and moving the tongue against the palate or roof of the mouth with some suction, to form a type of a click.
Organs of Speech
The main organs of speech are located in the head and neck. Below is a diagram locating the various parts.
Often used terms
- Labial refers to the lips.
- Dental refers to the teeth.
- Nasal refers to the nasal region.
- Oral refers to the mouth cavity.
- Alveolar refers to the ridge behind the top teeth in the mouth cavity.
- Palatal refers to the hard palate, or roof of the mouth.
- Velar refers to the soft palate or velum.
- Pharyngeal refers to the back of the throat, or throat cavity.
- Glottal refers to the glottis, the structure which closes and opens the vocal tract.
- Trachea is the windpipe.
- Oesophagus leads to the stomach.
Sounds depend on the place of articulation and manner of articulation. Another important factor in the sounds we make is voicing. This is the due to the vibration of the vocal chords. If the vocal chords do not vibrate during the production of the sound, it is known as unvoiced, likewise, if the vocal chords do vibrate, it is known as voiced
I.P.A.
The International Phonetic Alphabet enables us to transcribe the sounds of any human language in a systematic way. It is independent of the quirks of local spelling or orthographic conventions.
Here, we shall concern ourselves with the description of the consonants and vowels, as they are the basic elements of any language.
Below are the definitions of each place and manner of articulation, with relation to a table of IPA symbols.
Place of Articulation
Bilabial
Articulated by the two lips.
( IPA )
Labiodental
Articulated using the top lip against the lower teeth.
( IPA )
Dental
Articulated using the tip of the tongue against the upper teeth.
( IPA )
Alveolar
Articulated using the tip or blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge, (also known as the teeth ridge).
( IPA )
Retroflex
Articulated by the tip of the tongue against the hard palate.
( IPA )
Postalveolar
Articulated by the tip of the tongue against the back part of the teeth ridge.
( IPA )
Palatal
Articulated by the "front" (not the blade or tip) of the tongue against the hard palate.
( IPA )
Velar
Articulated by the back of the tongue against the central and forward part of the soft palate.
( IPA )
Uvula
Articulated by the back of the tongue against the extremity of the soft palate.
( IPA )
Pharyngeal
Articulated by the constriction of the pharynx between the root of the tongue and the wall of the pharynx.
( IPA )
Glottal (or Laryngeal)
Articulated in the glottis - e.g. the glottal stop.
( IPA )
Manner of Articulation
Plosive
Formed by complete closure of the air-assage during an appreciable time; the air is compressed (generally by the action of the lungs) amd on release of the closure issues suddenly, making an explosive sound or plosion.
( IPA )
Nasal
Formed as a complete closure in the mouth, the soft palate being, however, lowered so that the air is free to pass through the nose.
( IPA )
Trill
Also called Rolled, formed by a rapid succession of taps of some elastic organ
( IPA )
Tap or Flap
Formed by the ingle tap of some elastic organ; the position of contact is not maintained for any appreciable time.
( IPA )
Fricative
Formed by narrowing the air-passageto such an extent that the air in escaping produces audible friction (i.e. some kind of hissing sound).
( IPA )
Lateral Fricative
Formed by placing an obstacle in the centre of the air-channel but leaving a free passage for air on one or both sides of the obstacle, and narrowing the air passage to the extent of producing audible friction, (i.e. hissing with a blocking of the middle of the air-passage).
( IPA )
Approximant
Also known as a Frictionless Continuant, made with the organic position of a fricative consonant, but pronounced with weak breath-force so that no friction is heard. (The palatal and velar frictionless continyants have the organic positions of close (as in near) vowels. They are, however, uttered with very little breath-force as compared with the normally pronounced vowels which adjoin them in connected speech. These frictionless continuants are to be considered as consonants on account of their consequent lack of prominence as compared with the adjoining vowels.)
( IPA )
Lateral Approximant
Formed by the Lateral and Approximant manners of articulation, ie, made by an obstruction in the air-passage, and produced with no friction, with a weak breath force.
( IPA )
Affricate
Formed by as plosive consonants, but with slower separation of the articulating organs, so thatthe corresponding fricative is audible as the separation takes place.
( IPA )
Lateral
Formed by placing an obstacle in the centre of the air-channel, but leaving a free passage forthe air on one or both sides of the obstacle.
( IPA )
Semi-Vowel
Also known as a Glide, a voiced gliding sound in which the speech organs atart producing a wakly articulated vowel of comparatively small inherent sonority and immediately changed to antother sound of equal or greater prominence.
( IPA )
Liquids
Consonants which can be held on continuously without change of quality are sometimes classed together as contunatives or continuantsl they include nasal, lateral, rolled, fricative consonants and frictionless sounds. Nasal lateral and rolled consonants are sometimes classed together under the not very satisfactiory name Liquids. (Some authors do no include nasal consonants among "liquids".)
( IPA )
Consonants
There are of course sounds which can have components of more than one type of articulation.
| Other Sounds and Symbols |
|---|
| Alveolo-Palatal Fricatives |  |
 |
|---|
| Alveolar-Lateral Flap |  |
|---|
| Voiced Bilabial-palatal Approximant |  |
|---|
Simultaneous  and  |  |
|---|
| Voiceless Bilabial Velar Fricative | |
|---|
| Voices Bilabial Velar Approximant |  |
|---|
| Affricates |  |   |  |  |
|---|
| Post Alveolar Affricates |  | |
|---|
Vowels
Vowels are articulated by moving the tongue in the mouth cavity. You can see this by holding your jaws static and moving only the tongue whilst making a sound. The /a/ sound is made by fully opening the mouth, so that the tongue is as low as possible. By moving the tongue upwards, you progress to /i/ eventually, when the tongue is quite high, or close to the roof of the mouth.
Notice that 'close' in this case has the sense of 'being near to'.
| |
# |
Front |
Central |
Back |
# |
|
C
l
o
s
e |
1 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
8 |
H
i
g
h |
| |
  |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
 |
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
M
i
d |
2 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
7 |
M
i
d |
| |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
| 3 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
6 |
O
p
e
n |
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
L
o
w |
| 4 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
 |
5 |
| |
|
Unrounded |
Rounded |
Unrounded |
Half Rounded |
Rounded |
Unrounded |
Rounded |
|
|
The height of the tongue is often graded into levels such as high, high middle, middle, low middle, and low. Notice that close and high are synonymous with each other, as is, open and low, when talking about tongue height.
The formation of the vowel is also dependent on how the lips are shaped. As the word suggests, rounded means that the lips are rounded. Unrounded means that the lips are relaxed, and this can involve some measure of lip spreading.
The vowels that are pronounced depend of the position of the tongue, unsurprisingly. The tongue can be pushed forward, and this gives rise to a front vowel. By drawing it back a little, it becomes a central and when fully retracted inside the mouth, a back vowel results.
Compare English words "peat" [pi:t] and "boot" [bu:t]. The symbol : refers to a prolonging of the sound immediately before it. Both [i] and [u] are high vowels, their difference lies in two propertiess, front/back and open/closed.
[i] is a high front unrounded vowel.
[u] is a high back rounded vowel.
There are some vowels in this table which are not represented in standard IPA charts. However, there are also symbols which have not been included in the above charts which are in IPA.
The numbers besides eight of the vowels are to indicate the Cardinal Vowels. These correspond to English recieved pronunciation (RP) in the following table. (We ignore the suprasegmentals indicating aspiration and vowel length in the IPA transcription in the following table.)
| FRONT | | BACK |
|---|
| Cardinal Vowel | Word | RP | Tongue Height | Cardinal Vowel | Word | RP |
|---|
| 1 | | peat | 
| Close / High |
8 | | boot | 
|
|---|
| 2 | | date |
| Half Close / Mid High |
7 | | boat |
|
|---|
| 3 | | pet |
| Half Open / Mid Low |
6 | | bought |
|
|---|
| 4 | | pat |
| Open / Low |
5 | | pot |
|
|---|
The ones listed 1 through to 4 are all unrounded vowels, that is the corners of the mouth are relatively wide. Those listed 5 to 8 are all rounded vowels, that is, the corners of the mouth are brought together making the lips rounded.
Other Symbols
IPA symbols include a number of marks which indicate different properties which affect the pronunciation of the sound. However, to list them all in detail is outside the scope of this introduction. There are some often used symbols which may be useful to show here.
| Symbols and Diacritics |
|---|
| Property | Symbol | Example | Meaning |
|---|
| Aspiration |
 |
|
English verb 'kick' |
 |
|
| Nasalisation |
 |
|
French noun 'vent' noun meaning 'wind'. |
| Vowel Elongation |
 |
|
English word 'bee'. |
IPA and ASCII IPA
More charts of IPA symbols can be found at http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/fullchart.html. Descriptions about their use can be found in any good book on phonology. I recommend
Phonology
An introduction to basic concepts
Roger Lass
Cambridge Textboos in Linguistics,
1989. ISBN 0-521-281-83-0.
An Outline of English Phonetics
Daniel Jones
Ninth Edition, Heffer & Sons, Cambridge. 1969
SBN 85270-028-8
Practical Phonetics
J.C. Wells & Greta Colson
Pitman Publishing 1987
ISBN 0-273-01681-4
For newsgroups which deal with language issues, the limited number of keyboard characters has been inconvenient. An ASCII version of the IPA can be found in Evan Kirschenbaum's article, "FAQ: Representaing IPA Phonetics in ASCII".
