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A LITTLE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF PHONETICS

Peter Roach

Professor of Phonetics

University of Reading, UK.

email: p.j.roach@reading.ac.uk

Website: http://www.personal.reading.ac.uk/~llsroach/peter/

2002

This book is aimed at first-year students of Phonetics. It is based on a book I wrote which was

published in 1992. The book, which had the title Introducing Phonetics, has now been deleted from the

publisher's list. The title was misleading: this is not an introduction to Phonetics but a series of short

explanations of technical terms used in the subject. I have, in fact, written what I hope is a truly

introductory textbook on Phonetics for Oxford University Press in the series Oxford Introductions to

Language Study , edited by Henry Widdowson, which was published in 2001. Its title is Phonetics.

Many of the examples in this encyclopaedia are from English (as spoken in England). Although I

would have liked to use a lot more examples from other languages, English is relevant and familiar for

the majority of users of the book. For further detail of the phonetics of English, please see my English

Phonetics and Phonology (Cambridge University Press: 3 rd Edition, 2000). At the end, I have added a

list of recommended reading.

Since I feel that this little encyclopaedia still has some use, I have updated and rewritten the material

from the earlier book, and hope that it will be useful to students in getting to grips with terminology in

Phonetics. In keeping with the practice in the earlier book, I have printed in bold type words which

are defined elsewhere in the book.

I would be grateful for suggestions on how to improve it. The nice thing about books in electronic form

is that improvements and corrections can be made immediately.

Peter Roach

Symbols for English Transcription

(a) Vowels

British English (BBC accent) is generally described as having short vowels, long vowels and

diphthongs. There are said to be seven short vowels, five long ones and eight diphthongs.

• Short vowels:

p i t p e t p a t p u tt p o t p u t a noth er

ɪ e æ ʌ ɒ ʊ ǝ ǝ

• Long vowels: b ea n b ar n b or n b oo n b ur n

iː ɑː ɔː uː ɜː

• Diphthongs:

b ay b uy b oy n o n ow p eer p air p oor

eɪ ai ɔɪ ǝʊ aʊ ɪǝ eǝ ʊǝ

(b) Consonants

Plosives:

p b t d k g

Affricates:

ʧ ʤ

ch ain J ane

Fricatives:

f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ h

f ine v ine th ink th is s eal z eal sh eep mea s ure h ow

Nasals:

m n ŋ

su m su n su ng

Approximants:

l r w j

l ight r ight w et y et

p in b in t in d in k in g um

Peter Roach

See also the IPA Chart at the end of the book.

accent

This word is used (rather confusingly) in two different senses: (1) accent may refer to prominence

given to a syllable, usually by the use of pitch. For example, in the word 'potato' the middle syllable is

the most prominent; if you say the word on its own you will probably produce a fall in pitch on the

middle syllable, making that syllable accented. In this sense, accent is distinguished from the more

general term stress , which is more often used to refer to all sorts of prominence (including prominence

resulting from increased loudness, length or sound quality), or to refer to the effort made by the speaker

in producing a stressed syllable. (2) accent also refers to a particular way of pronouncing: for example,

you might find a number of English speakers who all share the same grammar and vocabulary, but

pronounce what they say with different accents such as Scots, Cockney or Received Pronunciation

(BBC accent) . The word accent in this sense is distinguished from dialect , which usually refers to a

variety of a language that differs from other varieties in grammar and/or vocabulary.

acoustic phonetics

An important part of phonetics is the study of the physics of the speech signal: when sound travels

through the air from the speaker's mouth to the hearer's ear it does so in the form of vibrations in the air.

It is possible to measure and analyse these vibrations by mathematical techniques, usually by using

specially-developed computer software to produce spectrograms . Acoustic phonetics also studies the

relationship between activity in the speaker's vocal tract and the resulting sounds. Analysis of speech by

acoustic phonetics is claimed to be more objective and scientific than the traditional auditory method

which depends on the reliability of the trained human ear.

active articulator

see articulation

affricate

An affricate is a type of consonant consisting of a plosive followed by a fricative with the same place of

articulation: examples are the / ʧ / and / ʤ / sounds at the beginning and end of the English words

'church' / ʧɜːʧ /, 'judge' / ʤʌʤ / (the first of these is voiceless, the second voiced). It is often difficult to

decide whether any particular combination of a plosive plus a fricative should be classed as a single

Peter Roach

affricate sound or as two separate sounds, and the question depends on whether these are to be regarded

as separate phonemes or not. It is usual to regard / ʧ / and / ʤ / as affricate phonemes in English (usually

symbolised č , j  by American writers); / ts , dz , tr , dr / also occur in English but are not usually regarded

as affricates. The two phrases 'why choose' / waɪ ʧuːz / and 'white shoes' / waɪt ʃuːz / are said to show

the difference between the / ʧ / affricate (in the first example) and separate / t / and / ʃ / (in the second).

air-stream

All speech sounds are made by making air move. Usually the air is moved outwards from the body,

creating an egressive airstream; more rarely speech sounds are made by drawing air into the body - an

ingressive airstream. The most common way of moving air is by compression of the lungs so that the air

is expelled through the vocal tract . This is called a pulmonic airstream (usually an egressive pulmonic

one, but occasionally speech is produced while breathing in). Others are the glottalic (produced by the

larynx, with closed vocal folds; it is moved up and down like the plunger of a bicycle pump) and the

velaric (where the back of the tongue is pressed against the soft palate, or velum, making an air-tight

seal, and then drawn backwards or forwards to produce an airstream). Ingressive glottalic consonants

(often called implosives ) and egressive ones ( ejectives ) are found in many non-European languages;

click sounds (ingressive velaric) are much rarer, but occur in a number of southern African languages

such as Hottentot, Xhosa and Zulu. Speakers of other languages, including English, use click sounds for

non-linguistic communication, as in the case of the "tut-tut" (American "tsk-tsk") sound of disapproval.

allophone

Central to the concept of the phoneme is the idea that it may be pronounced in many different ways. In

English (BBC) we take it for granted that the / r / sound in 'ray' and 'tray' are "the same sound" (i.e. the

same phoneme), but in reality the two sounds are very different - the / r/ in 'ray' is voiced and non-

fricative, while the / r / sound in 'tray' is voiceless and fricative. In phonemic transcription we use the

same symbol / r / for both (the slant brackets indicate that phonemic symbols are being used), but we

know that the allophones of / r / include the voiced non-fricative sound and the voiceless fricative one.

Using the square brackets that indicate phonetic (allophonic) symbols, the former is [  ̻ ] and the latter [  ].

In theory a phoneme can have an infinite number of allophones, but in practice for descriptive purposes

we tend to concentrate on the ones that occur most regularly.

Peter Roach

alveolar

Behind the upper front teeth there is a hard, bony ridge called the alveolar ridge ; the skin covering it is

corrugated with transverse wrinkles. The tongue comes into contact with this in some of the consonants

of English and many other languages; sounds such as [ t ], [ d ], [ s ], [ z ], [ n ], [ l ] are consonants with

alveolar place of articulation.

alveolo-palatal

When we look at the places of articulation used by different languages we find many differences in the

region between the upper teeth and the front part of the palate. It has been proposed that there is a

difference between alveolo-palatal and palato-alveolar that can be reliably distinguished, though others

argue that factors other than place of articulation are usually involved, and there is no longer an alveolo-

palatal column on the IPA Chart. The former place is further forward in the mouth than the latter: the

usual example given for alveolo-palatal consonants is that of Polish /  / and /  / as in 'Kasia' and 'kasza'.

In phonology it is sometimes necessary to distinguish the class of sounds that are articulated in the front

part of the mouth ( anterior sounds) from those articulated towards the back of the mouth. All sounds

forward of palato-alveolar are classed as anterior.

apical

Consonantal articulations made with the tip of the tongue are called apical ; this term is usually

contrasted with laminal , the adjective used to refer to tongue-blade articulations. It is said that English

/ s / is usually articulated with the tongue blade, but Spanish / s / (when it occurs before a vowel) and

Greek / s / are said to be apical, giving a different sound quality.

approximant

This is a phonetic term of comparatively recent origin. It is used to denote a consonant which makes

very little obstruction to the airflow. Traditionally these have been divided into two groups: semivowels

such as the / w / in English 'wet' and / j / in English 'yet', which are very similar to close vowels such as [ u ]

and [ i ] but are produced as a rapid glide, and liquids , sounds which have an identifiable constriction of

the airflow but not one that is sufficiently obstructive to produce fricative noise, compression or the

diversion of airflow through another part of the vocal tract as in nasals. This category includes laterals

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