Linguistics 110 Zhang/Öztürk/Quinn

Class 5 (10/2/02)

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

(0) Homework: Fromkin p.480—11.1, 11.2; p.485—11.5; p.492—11.7, 11.8, 11.9;

p.514—11.16. Due 10/7 (Mon) in class.

(0)’ • Section classroom move: Boylston 104 → Boylston 103

• Need volunteers to go to the Robinson 107 section.

(1) Spelling and speech:

• Did he believe that Caesar could see the people seize the seas?
The silly amoeba stole the key to the machine.

• though, tough, bought, cough, through, bough

George Bernard Shaw’s joke about ghoti.

• A combination of letters may represent a single sound:

shoot character Thomas physics
either deal rough nation
coat glacial theater plain

• Some letters have no sound in certain words:

mnemonic whole resign ghost
pterodactyl write hole could
psychology sword debt gnaw
bough lamb island knot

• We are concerned with pronunciation, not orthography!

We need a system for writing the pronunciation—transcription.
—IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet)

(2) Purposes of IPA:

• show pronunciation in a dictionary;
• record a language in linguistic fieldwork;
• form the basis of a writing system for a language.

(3) Principles of IPA:

• a set of symbols for representing all the possible distinctive sounds in the
world’s languages; (about 90 consonants and 26 vowels)
• one symbol ⇔ one sound;
• use ordinary Roman letters as much as possible;
• use of diacritics for suprasegmentals, minute shades of a sound.
→ economy of the system

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(4) Some IPA symbols for non-English sounds
• Stops: p’, t’, k’ (ejectives)
∫, Î, ƒ (implosives)
• Trills: ı, R
• Clicks: >, ˘, <, ¯, ≤
• Vowels: y, P, {, ¨, Ø

(5) Some useful IPA diacritics

• aspirated Ó noise in the glottis, especially at end of consonant ([pÓ])
• nasalized ) air flows through nose as well as through mouth ([a)])
• long … longer duration ([a…])
• voiceless 9 partial or no vocal cord vibration in an otherwise voiced
sound ([l9])
• unreleased } release of consonant as mouth opens not heard ([d}])
• rhoticity ± r-coloring ([„])
• dental 1 upper teeth used as passive articulator ([d1])
• syllabic ` a syllable without a vowel ([®`]).

(6) Suprasegmentals and how they are marked in IPA

• Stress:
"permit per"mit
"pervert per"vert
"subject sub"ject
"content con"tent
ÆAppa"lachian, ÆMissi"ssippi, ob"streperous, ÆonoÆmato"poetically

• Tone:
Mandarin: ßoUâ ‘to collect’
ßoUü ‘ripe’
ßoUÄ ‘hand’
ßoUë ‘thin’

• Intonation:
à ã
That’s a cat. That’s a cat?

a. ‘Who’s over there?’

‘Laura.’
b. Question = ‘Did you say Laura?’
c. Calling Laura’s name when she’s far away.
d. Reprimand: ‘How could you have done that?’

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 Laboratory Studies of Phonetics

ARTICULATORY INFORMATION FROM THE LAB

(7) Static Palatography:

• Purpose: to study the region of upper surface of vocal tract or tongue contacted
for a certain speech sound.
• Method: paint palate OR tongue with mixture of charcoal and olive oil. When
tongue touches palate, the coated surface transfers coating to the other surface.
• Palatogram: paint tongue, data from palate. Need mirror.
• Linguogram: paint palate, data from tongue.
• Any precautions?
a. If you are interested in the difference in place of articulation between [s] and
[S] in English, should you use sop-shop or sot-shot?
b. Anything about the vowel contexts?

(8) Dynamic Palatography—Electropalatography (EPG)

• Subject wears a custom-made pseudo-palate that has electrodes embedded in its
surface.
• When an electrode is contacted, a circuit is completed, current flows, and the
contact is recorded.
• The information is sampled over time (typically 40-200Hz, i.e., every 25-5 msecs)
• Advantages over static palatography: quantitative, time-varying information.
• Disadvantages: expensive (around $1,300 per speaker), pseudo palate might alter
speech.

(9) Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA)

• Purpose: to track articulator movements over time during speech production using
alternating electromagnetic fields.
• Physical principle the device is based on: the electromagnetic field strength in a
receiver is inversely proportional to the cube of its distance from a transmitter.
• Method:
a. Three transmitter coils placed equidistant from one another so that they
generate a radially symmetric alternating electromagnetic field at different
frequencies.
b. A number of receiver coils (sensors) placed on the subject’s articulators
(tongue, jaw, lips and teeth) along the midsagittal plane.
c. The induced voltages on receiver coils are sampled at a high frequency.
d. These voltages provide a measure of each receiver’s distance from each
transmitter.

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 e. The Cartesian coordinates of each receiver can be calculated as the point
where the radii of three circles from the three transmitters intersect.

(10) Other means of studying the vocal tract:

• X-ray.
• Ultrasound.
• Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).

(11) Articulatory study of the larynx.

• Fiberscopic laryngoscope.

• Electroglottography (EGG).
a. Purpose: to study vocal fold behavior such as f0, closed and open quotients,
non-invasive.
b. Method: place a set of skin electrodes on both sides of the larynx; glottis open
→ increased impedance; glottis closed → decreased impedance.

AERODYNAMIC INFORMATION FROM THE LAB

(12) Using flow masks to collect aerodynamic data:

• Purpose: to study timing, magnitude or aspiration, nasalization, frication, etc. To
infer articulatory information when such information is hard to collect (e.g.,
movement of velum).
• Method: flow masks (separate masks for oral and nasal, or one mask with split
channels). A pressure transducer translates pressure to electrical volt.

ACOUSTIC INFORMATION FROM THE LAB

(13) Source and filter:

• Source: vocal fold vibration—f0 and high frequencies that are multiples of f0.
• Filter: vocal tract—amplifies certain frequency components and weakens others
depending on its configuration.

(14) Spectrogram and waveform:

• A spectrogram is a graph representation showing frequency, amplitude and time
information.
• A waveform is a graph showing the amplitude of variation of air pressure of a
specific point in a time course.