LINGUIS 101 1st Edition Lecture 6 Phonetics 4 Loudness no language is known to use loudness alone to signal word meaning contrasts o but loudness may be used as one component of indicating stressed versus unstressed syllables Stress is perceived prominence of a syllable in a multi syllable word o Phonetic correlates higher pitch longer duration louder volume and more peripheral vowel quality English uses all four But Greek only uses pitch and loudness o More peripheral vowel quality means towards the edges either very high or very back etc Phonetics 5 Auditory process we have mostly been talking about how sounds are produced in isolation but in the real world sounds are not articulated in isolation Speech production o Two conflicting pressures on speech production Ease of articulation speaker tries to maximize ease od production Sounds may become more like neighboring sounds as a result Ease of perception speaker maximizes distinctiveness of segments in order to communicate clearly Puts some breaks on ease of articulation As a result the articulation of a segment often changes in the environment of neighboring sounds 6 basic types o Assimilation becomes more like its neighbors o Dissimilation when a sound becomes more distinct from those around it o Deletion a sound used to be there and is no longer there o Insertion a sound gets inserted o Metathesis changing the order of things o Vowel reduction moving it more towards the center vowel space away from the periphery Assimilation o One segment becomes more like a neighboring segment Progressive a feature spreads forward xy Liquids in English become voiceless when they follow a voiceless stop The voiced liquid is assimilating in voicing to the preceding voiceless stop Regressive a feature spreads backward xy Vowels in English often become nasalized when they precede a nasal consonant The oral vowel is assimilating in nasality to the following nasal Intervocalic interconsonantal a segment picks up a feature of surrounding Vs or Cs VCV or CVC In English t often becomes a flap between vowels when not at the beginning of a stressed syllable This is assimilation in both voicing t is becoming voiced and manner t becomes a more open liquid Voicing nasality manner articulation can all change one or more of the features may change to match the sound Dissimilation o When one segment becomes less like a neighbor Deletion o Schwa in English is often deleted when the following syllable is stressed o Another example with multiple deletions plus assimilation
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