THE VOCAL TRACT`S ROLE IN ARTICULATION

THE VOCAL TRACT`S ROLE IN ARTICULATION

Languages can basically be thought of as systems - highly complicated ones - which enable us to express our
thoughts by means of “vocal noises”, and to extract meaning from the “noises” (speech sounds from now on!) that are made by other people. Linguistics is the study of the nature and properties of these systems, and its various branches focus on different aspects of the communication process.

Phonetics is the branch concerned with human speech sounds, and itself has three different aspects:

• Articulatory Phonetics (the most anatomical and physiological division) describes how vowels
and consonants are produced or “articulated” in various parts of the mouth and throat.

• Acoustic Phonetics (the branch that has the closest afnities with physics) studies the sound
waves that transmit the vowels and consonants through the air from the speaker to the hearer

• Auditory Phonetics (the branch of most interest to psychologists) looks at the way in which the hearer’s
brain decodes the sound waves back into the vowels and consonants originally intended by the speaker.
Closely associated with Phonetics is another branch of linguistics known as Phonology. This focuses on the way languages use differences between sounds in order to convey differences of meaning between words, and how each language has its own unique sound pattern. Phonology is really the link between Phonetics and the rest of Linguistics.

In the Phonetics component of ML109 you’ll be concentrating on Articulatory Phonetics, and thinking about the physical basis of speech sounds.

Warning. The word phonetics is often incorrectly used to refer to the symbols of the International Phonetic
Alphabet (the IPA). So people say: “How is this written in phonetics?”, “It was all in phonetics, so I couldn’t
understand it”, or “Dictionaries use phonetics to show pronunciation”. This isn’t how the term should be used. As has been explained, Phonetics is a branch of Linguistics, not an alphabet. So the right thing to say is: “How is this written in phonetic script?”, “It was all in phonetic transcription”, or “Dictionaries show pronunciation by using the phonetic alphabet”.You will of course be introduced to the IPA
Its symbols are identied by square brackets: [p], [u], [ð], etc. Ordinary letters and spellings, on the other hand, will always
be given in italics. As you see, some of the phonetic symbols are the same as ordinary letters, but others will benew to you.

Speaking and breathing

All speech sounds in all languages are produced by modifying ordinary respiration. In quiet breathing, air enters and leaves the lungs without any obstruction, passing freely through the throat and mouth (or nose). If, however, the tongue or some other organ is placed in the path of the airstream, this free passage of air is disturbed; the air from the lungs may be set into vibration or the flow momentarily interrupted. For example, the lips close and briefly cut off the airstream for [p] and [b]. Any such disturbance generates a sound wave - a ripple effect that travels through the air between speaker and hearer(s) and is then interpreted as a particular speech sound. Articulatory phonetics studies the variousways in which airstreams can be “interfered wit ”.
First, we normally speak only while breathing out. It’s also quite possible to speak while breathing in
(for example when counting and not wishing to pause to draw breath), but this is an inefficient, awkward way of making sounds and therefore not a regular feature of any language. In some speech-communities, though, people use “ingressive air” as a conventional means of disguising their voices.

Second, there are various ways of making speech sounds with air that doesn’t originate in the lungs. The disapproving noise conventionally represented as tut tut! is an example. Some languages make regular use of “click” sounds like this one, as well as other “non-pulmonic” sounds that from our point of view seem even more exotic.

Third, if we used the same breathing rhythm for talking as for just breathing quietly, we’d have to pause for breath every couple of words. (Try it and see.) In speech, quite complex adjustments of the chest muscles and diaphragm are constantly being made in order to slow down the airstream and hold it back as it leaves the lungs.