Segmentals and Suprasegmentals The IPA 1 English letters

Segmentals and Suprasegmentals. The IPA 1. English letters and sounds. 2. Segmentals and Suprasegmentals. 3. The IPA.

Keywords: polyphonic, homophonic, segmental, suprasegmental, vowel, consonant, juncture, pitch, stress, intonation.

There are some myths about English pronunciation

1. English words are not pronounced as they are written.

2. There are no rules to English pronunciation

In fact, there are rules for pronunciation, but they are seldom taught. In an average text, more than 95% of words are pronounced as they are written. It is usually one syllable that is irregular.

In English there are only two letters that always represent the same sound: the letter V always corresponds to the sound V and the letter Q always corresponds to the sound K. Even in this case, the reverse is not true.

The sound V can be also represented by F in OF and the sound K - by C (coin), Q (queen), K (king).

Many words in English are polyphonic

There are several pronunciations for the same spelling: wind, wind lead, lead bow, bow read, read.

Many other words are homophonic – they are pronounced the same way despite their different spellings: rite, write, right.

Most of the time, if words are written similarly, they are pronounced the same way: lone, phone, cone, stone, but there are exceptions: one, phone, none.

The group OUGH produces most ambiguity

Natural language is digital so it can be decomposed into discrete units. These discrete sound units are called segmentals.

It is possible to decompose words into sound segments or segmental phonemes, in other words, in vowels and consonants.

A vowel is a speech sound in which the airstream from the lungs is not blocked in the pharynx or oral cavity. The different positions of the tongue do not cause any audible friction. English vowels are pronounced with vibration of the vocal cords.

A consonant is a speech sound where the airstream from the lungs is either completely blocked and then released (plosives), partially blocked (lateral), or where the opening is so narrow that the air escapes with the audible friction (fricatives).

In the case of nasals the air stream is blocked at different places in the mouth and released through the nose.

Besides them there are other oral characteristics that signal meaning during speech. They are suprasegmentals because they are vocal qualities that are superimposed over a string of phonetic segments.

These qualities are juncture, pitch, stress, intonation.

They are quite central in communication.

Juncture is a slight pause between elements – syllable, words, sentences.

E. g. It is a nice house. It is an ice house.

Juncture is indicated in writing by commas, periods, and punctuation in general.

Pitch results from the vibration of the vocal cords. The pitch is higher when the vocal cords are vibrating more rapidly. Pitch frequently results in the change of tone.

If we use a low pitch in the sentence He asked Mary, it would be understood as a statement. But if we use a rising pitch in the final syllables, the same statement becomes a question.

The stress is loudness or softness of an utterance. It is the amount of intensity given the vowel in a syllable. It is mostly responsible for noun-verb contrasts in English: conduct, import, permit.

The IPA

The International Phonetic Association was established in 1886 as a forum for teachers who were inspired by the idea of using phonetics to improve the teaching of the spoken language to foreign learners.

The Association only rarely holds official meetings, but contact among the members is maintained by the Association's Journal.

Since its beginning, the Association has taken the responsibility for maintaining a standard set of phonetic symbols for use in practical phonetics, presented in the form of a chart.

The set of symbols is usually known as the International Phonetic Alphabet.

The alphabet is revised from time to take account of new discoveries and changes in phonetic theory.

It presents all the sounds currently thought to be used in human speech.

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) includes 107 distinct phones listed and given distinct notation.

It is based primarily on the Latin and Greek alphabets.

IPA symbols are composed of one or more elements of two basic types, letters and diacritics.

The general principle of the IPA is to provide one letter for each distinctive sound.

Among the symbols of the IPA, 107 letters represent consonants and vowels, 31 diacritics are used to modify these, and 19 additional signs indicate suprasegmental qualities such as length, tone, stress, and intonation.

Many IPA letters are the same as those of the English alphabet, so we place IPA spellings in square brackets to indicate that they are phonetic spellings.

Note that many dictionaries give phonetic spellings as pronunciation guides, but not all dictionaries use the IPA.

Linguists in the United States do not always follow the accepted international standard.

The IPA is unique in that it is independent of any particular language and applicable to all languages.

Phonetic and phonemic (broad and narrow) Transcription

With the transcription dictionaries tell us about the pronunciation of words. The transcription is necessary, because the spelling of a word does not tell us how we should pronounce it.

For example, the transcription of no is [nəu], and the transcription of do is [du: ]. (In spelling, these words are similar. They both end in the letter o. But their phonetic transcriptions are different, because they are pronounced differently).

One of the most useful applications of phonetics is to provide transcription to indicate pronunciation

It is especially useful for languages like English or French, which have inconsistent spellings.

For instance, the sound [i: ] can be represented as

e (be), ee (bee), ea (sea), ie (believe), ei (receive).

We can distinguish between phonetic and phonemic transcription.

A phonetic transcription can indicate details of the articulation of any particular sound by the use of differently shaped symbols [ʰ], or by adding little marks (known as diacritics) to a symbol [ ].

In contrast, a phonemic transcription shows only the phoneme contrasts and does not tell us precisely what the realization of the phoneme is.

It tends to ignore the details and represent classes of sounds rather than sounds proper.

In transcribing the word tenth, we would transcribe it broadly (phonemic) as [tenθ], narrowly (phonetic) as [tʰenθ], showing the aspiration of t sound.

For instance, the words pat and spat would be transcribed, respectively, as /pᴂt/ and /spᴂt/.

A narrow transcription, in contrast, would capture the phonetic differences between the sounds in these words, specifically that in pat the /p/ is aspirated, as indicated by a superscript h following /pʰ/: [pʰᴂt].

There are two conventions for transcribing phonemes and allophones. Transcriptions of phonemes are placed within slashes: //.

Transcriptions of allophones of a phoneme are included within brackets: [ ].

Both phonetic and phonemic forms of transcription have their own specific uses. Phonemic transcription may at first sight appear less complex, but in reality it is a far more sophisticated system.

It eliminates superfluous details and retains only the information essential to meaning.

Even in a phonetic transcription we generally show only a small proportion of the phonetic variation that occurs, often only the most significant phonetic feature in a particular context.

The advantage of the narrow transcription is that it can help learners to get exactly the right sound, and allows linguists to make detailed analyses of language variation.

The disadvantage is that a narrow transcription is rarely representative of all speakers of a language.

Most Americans and Australians would pronounce the /t/ of little as a tap [ɾ].

Many people in England would say /t/ as [ʔ] (a glottal stop) and/or the sound /l/ as [w] or something similar.

Transcription is not only used to represent words in isolation but can also be employed for whole stretches of speech.

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