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English Phonetics and Phonology - Peter Roach

GLOSSARY A LITTLE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF Phonetics This reference material has had a varied life. It first appeared as one volume of a series of little books edited by David Crystal and published by Penguin; all the book titles began with Introducing .. , so this one was Introducing Phonetics . It was published in 1992, but not long afterwards Penguin killed off the series. I claimed the copyright, and after revising the text I put it on my personal web-site at the University of Reading for general access and gave it the title A Little Encyclopaedia of Phonetics this pretentious title with its archaic ae spelling of Encyclopaedia was intended as a joke.

the website for the Fourth Edition of my English Phonetics and Phonology was being constructed, my editorial colleagues at Cambridge University Press and I decided that an improved version of the Encyclopaedia would be a useful addition as a glossary of technical terms, and we now refer to the work as the Glossary. Anna Linthe of CUP

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Transcription of English Phonetics and Phonology - Peter Roach

1 GLOSSARY A LITTLE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF Phonetics This reference material has had a varied life. It first appeared as one volume of a series of little books edited by David Crystal and published by Penguin; all the book titles began with Introducing .. , so this one was Introducing Phonetics . It was published in 1992, but not long afterwards Penguin killed off the series. I claimed the copyright, and after revising the text I put it on my personal web-site at the University of Reading for general access and gave it the title A Little Encyclopaedia of Phonetics this pretentious title with its archaic ae spelling of Encyclopaedia was intended as a joke.

2 Many people told me they used the book, but it was not easy to move from place to place in the text. When the website for the Fourth Edition of my English Phonetics and Phonology was being constructed, my editorial colleagues at Cambridge University Press and I decided that an improved version of the Encyclopaedia would be a useful addition as a glossary of technical terms, and we now refer to the work as the Glossary. Anna Linthe of CUP converted the HTML text that I had prepared into PDF form and made cross-referencing much easier. This became available to the public in 2009.

3 More recently Ma gorzata Dero (Pozna ) kindly offered to put the Glossary into a more up-to-date format using Adobe Flash, and at the same time proposed many improvements which I have been glad to welcome. I am very grateful to her for all the work she has put in, and I feel the Glossary now looks and feels much better. I don t know where this resource will go next. Some readers have asked if I would put in a more comprehensive coverage of theoretical Phonology , but this field has never really been an interest of mine and I would not be competent to attempt it. I would be very pleased to receive suggestions for new items if anyone would like to send them to me.

4 Peter Roach 2 English Phonetics and Phonology 2011 Peter Roach A accent ks nt 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.

5 (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 or Cockney, or BBC pronunciation. 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 ku st k f net ks 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.

6 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 kt v t kj le t See articulator. A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X AB C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Glossary 3 2011 Peter Roach Adam s apple d mz p l This is an informal term used to refer to the pointed part of the larynx that can be seen at the front of the throat.

7 It is most clearly visible in adult males. Moving the larynx up and down (as in swallowing) causes visible movement of this point, which is in fact the highest point of the thyroid cartilage. advanced d v ntst The International Phonetic Alphabet gives a diacritic [ ] for advanced , which makes it possible to indicate that a vowel is produced with the tongue further forward in the mouth than another vowel with which it may be compared. Thus [ ] indicates an advanced open vowel that is further forward than [ ]. The term advanced is also used of the position of the tongue root: in a number of the world s languages there are pairs or sets of vowels which are said to differ from each other in that one vowel has the tongue root advanced (that is, moved forward) in relation to another vowel.

8 Such a vowel is said to have the feature Advanced Tongue Root (ATR). This is difficult to establish, and we have to use special equipment to demonstrate it. affricate fr k t An affricate is a type of consonant consisting of a plosive followed by a fricative with the same place of articulation: examples are the and sounds at the beginning and end of the English words church , judge (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 affricate sound or as two separate sounds, and the question depends on whether these are to be regarded as separate phonemes or not.

9 It is usual to regard , as affricate phonemes in English (usually symbolised , by American writers); ts, dz, tr, dr also occur in English but are not usually regarded as affricates. The two phrases why choose wa u z and white shoes wa t u z are said to show the difference between the affricate (in the first example) and separate t and (in the second). airflow e fl See airstream. A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X AB C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X 4 English Phonetics and Phonology 2011 Peter Roach airstream e stri m All speech sounds are made by making air move.

10 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).


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