PHONOLOGY

provides objective ways of describing and analyzing the range of sounds humans use in their languages

phonetics

identifies precisely which speech organs and muscles are involved in producing the different sounds of the world’s languages

articulatory phonetics

focuses on the physics of speech as it travels through the air in the form of sound waves

acoustic phonetics

focuses on the effect those waves have on a hearer’s ears and brain

auditory phonetics

the sound patterns of particular languages, and in what speakers and hearers need to know, and children need to learn, to be speakers of those languages: in that sense, it is close to psychology

phonology

the realizations of an abstract unit, appears between slash brackets, and is conventionally represented by IPA symbols, in (e.x. /k/)

phoneme

the sound the speaker is producing - phonetic representation of a phoneme

phone

their distribution must be predictable, and, if one phone is exceptionally substituted for the other in the same context, that substitution must not correspond to a meaning difference.

allophone

- a current of lung air set in motion by the respiratory muscles in the production of speech.

pulmonic airstream

the direction of airflow is inwards

ingressive airstream

the direction of airflow is outwards

egressive airstream

any speech sound produced by pushing air up from the lungs and out through the mouth and/or nose, they are usually classified according to place of articulation, the manner of articulation and the presence or absence of voicing.

consonants

the sound in which the air comes out without any friction, they are mainly divided into two parts - monophthongs and

vowels

the vibration of the vocal cords during the production of a sound

voicing

the noise that is made when air escapes after a plosive consonant sound. In English, aspiration is an important feature in whether we hear a sound as /p/ or /b/ at the beginning of a word.

aspiration

a mark near or through an orthographic or phonetic character or combination of characters indicating a phonetic value different from that given the unmarked or otherwise marked element

diacritics

determined by the physical place of articulators within the mouth where a speech sound is made.

place of articulation

the active articulator is the bottom lip, and the passive articulator is the top lip

bilabial sounds

the active articulator is again the bottom lip, but this time it moves up to the top front teeth

labiodental sounds

passive articulator is the top front teeth; the active articulator is the tip of the tongue

dental sounds

produced by the tip or blade of the tongue moving up towards the alveolar ridge

alveolar sounds

are produced with the blade of the tongue as the active articulator, and the adjoining parts of the alveolar ridge and the hard palate as the passive one

postalveolar sounds

are produced by the front of the tongue, which moves up towards the hard palate

palatal sounds

the active articulator is the back of the tongue, and the passive articulator is the velum, or soft palate

velar sounds

they do not involve the tongue: instead, the articulators are the vocal folds, which constitute a place of articulation as well as having a crucial role in voicing

glottal sounds

determined by how close the active and passive articulators get

manner of articulation

- the sound articulated if the active and passive articulators actually touch, stopping airflow through the oral cavity completely for a brief period of time

stop sounds

during their production the active and passive articulators are brought close together, but not near enough to totally block the oral cavity

fricative sounds

the subclass that consists of sounds which start as stops and end up as fricatives

affricate sounds

the active and passive articulator never become sufficiently close to create audible friction. Instead, the open approximation of the articulators alters the shape of the oral cavity, and leads to the production of a particular sound quality.

approximant sounds

the velum is raised and pushed against the back wall of the pharynx, cutting off access to the nose

oral sounds

are produced with air only passing through the nasal cavity for at least part of their production

nasal sounds

binary feature that describes vowels which are produced with the front of the tongue raised towards the hard palate

frontness

binary feature that describes vowels that have the tongue raised most towards the roof of the mouth

height

vowels may be either rounded, where the lips are protruded forwards, or unrounded, where the lips may be either in a neutral position, or sometimes slightly spread

rounding

they change in quality during their production, and are typically transcribed with one starting point, and a quite different end point; they are typically long vowels.

diphthong

diphthongs that have the first element as longer and more prominent than the second

falling diphthongs

they all have the mid central vowel schwa as the second element

centring diphthongs

where the second element is more close than the first, this includes all the diphthongs ending in /ɪ/ and /ʊ/

closing diphthongs

the perceived number of syllables corresponds to the number of peaks in a sonority profile, assuming the sonority scale.

sonority principle

the consonants that are preceding the peak (they are not obligatory in a making of a syllable)

onset

contains the ‘syllabic’ element, the segment that is more sonorous than both its neighbors (typically a vowel)

nucleus

resulting unit of grouping the peak and the coda together, it plays an important role in the rhyming conventions of poetry

rhyme

consonants that follow the peak (they are not obligatory in a making of a syllable)

coda

the aspect of phonology that answers the questions about the syllable: any constraints on possible clusters and sequences hold within the syllable rather than the word.

phonotactics

a group of consonants that appear together in a word without any vowels between them

consonant cluster

principle states that consonants should be assigned to the syllable onset rather than the syllable coda

maximal onset principle

it has a ‘syllabic’ segment (the peak), single, unbroken sound of spoken or written word

syllable

- occurs when a vowel is at the end of the syllable, resulting in the long vowel sound (words are not closed by a consonant) - CV

open syllable

occurs when a syllable ends with a consonant, resulting in a short vowel sound - CVC, VC

closed syllable

consists only of a nucleus, as in the English words "eye" or "owe"

minimal syllable

a syllable that has a single-X rhyme - unstressed syllable are light

light syllable

a syllable that has a two-X rhyme - stressed syllables are heavy

heavy syllable

consonants that belong to both the preceding and the following syllable - they are syllabified ambiguously

ambisyllabic consonant

a consonant that forms a syllable on its own (a syllable where there’s no vowel) ex. button, bottle, sudden, history, widen

syllabic consonant