Linguistics - Phonetics

Refactored from Linguistics Notes Meta

• Phonetics studies the sound of a language
• Linguistics use the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to write down sounds precisely
  • here’s a clickable IPA chart
• The part of the body that move to make language are referred to as articulators
• consonants that involves closing the vocal track; think staccato
  • The IPA lists all the consonants found in spoken languages
    [^https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet]
• vowels are made with the vocal track open; think sustains
  • Vowel sound is a continuum, which means that changing the mouth shape can gradually change the sound. This depend on:
    • How open the mouth is
    • How high the tongue is
    • How rounded the lip is
  • The vowel space on IPA is a chart that plots these parameters
  • A continuous transition between two vowels is called a diphthong and this is found in English and some other languages
  • The vowel inventory refers to all the vowel sounds in a language
  • Vowel decorations to further change a vowel’s sound
    • Length as in [i:]
    • Naselisation as in [bɔ̃]
    • Tone as in Chinese
• Phonology is the study of how different variations of language pronounce things differently
  • phones are different sounds that are distinct
  • phoneme are the individual sounds in a language that make words distinguishable from each other
  • Technically different sounds for a phoneme that are treated the same in a language are called allophones
    • For example, the [t] sound in team and steam use different amount of air but they are treated as the same phoneme
    • Usually, there are patterns for which allophone is used depending on the word
  • Sometimes people change the sound altogether to make saying a word easier, for example library
• Interesting phonetic phenomenons to help with Solving Linguistic Problems (in no particular order)
  1. “t” insertion between vowels
     • Some languages like everything to sound connected so they insert extra consonants
     • Example: French “a il” –> “a-t-il”

References