Glossonomia: Recent Episodes
Eric Armstrong & Phil Thompson
Glossonomia, Conversations on the Sounds of Speech is a podcast by Eric Armstrong and Phil Thompson. Each week we talk about a different vowel or consonant sound in English.
In Part Two of this series on Diacritics, Phil Thompson and Eric Armstrong discuss the intricacies of diacritic symbols and what they mean when applied to vowel and consonant symbols of the IPA. The guys follow along with the list of diacritic marks on the Wikipedia page for the International Phonetic Alphabet. The episode begins at laminal diacritic, which Wikipedia classifies as part of the “articulation diacritics”, and continue on to discuss “co-articulation diacritics” and “suprasegmentals”.
Though Phil and Eric had intended to cover all the diacritical marks in the IPA in this podcast, they just couldn’t do it. In fact, Eric’s recorder stopped recording after 45 minutes, though they kept talking for 15 more minutes... so this is merely an introduction to diacritics, not an exhaustive review of all of them. For reference, the boys work their way through the symbols following the order that the wikipedia article on the International Phonetic Alphabet’s section on diacritics takes, so you might want to follow along.
In this episode, Phil and Eric tackle two of the “centering diphthongs” (aka the r-colored diphthongs in rhotic accents), square and start. Much of the episode is spent tackling the very subtle possibilities of vowel quality where these lexical sets might be realized, and the fun that one can have tweaking those possibilities—smoothing, breaking, more or less rhoticity, more open vs. more close nuclei or codas. FUN!
This week we delve deeper into the topic of weaken vowels that behave similarly to schwa /ə/, namely the weakened forms of the /i/ and /u/ vowels [usually realized as somewhere in the range of [i̽] or [ɨ], [ʊ] or perhaps [ɵ], sometimes known—controversially—as “schwee” and “schwoo.” We even chat about weakened diphthongs and what that might mean for speakers (“schwoe” and “schwhy,” anyone?). Phil and Eric also chat for quite some time about Geoff Lindsay’s blog post on the topic of “Schwee”.
We’re tackling strings of consonants in this episode! Phil and Eric talk about clusters of consonants and how they “work” for us. Eric refers to J.C. Catford’s book A Practical Introduction to Phonetics quite a bit!
Phil and Eric managed to do an episode on the Lexical Set choice this week, in spite of Phil’s never-ending cold and Eric’s dogs (who wanted to go out when they were in, and in when they were out...) Phil talks a bit about the history of the set, we talk about its representation in the IPA and we tackle odd variations, including the classic New York choice - nurse (near) merger.
We tackle the consonants that don’t conveniently fit within the Pulmonic Consonant chart of the IPA — the Non-pulmonics and the so-called “Other Symbols” area. Many of these consonants are a review of things we’ve covered elsewhere in the podcast series, but it’s always nice to tidy things up, to pick up the leftovers.
Phil and Eric tackle the mouth lexical set, and compare it, briefly to the price set. We reference Robbie Burns’ To a Mouse, and talk about how it evolved through the Great Vowel Shift from an /u/ vowel, to its present location, in the range of /æʊ/—/aʊ/—/ɑʊ/. Eric touches on Canadian Raising, and the two glossonomians explore the range of articulations, modulating the initial component of the “vector”, and then the final component.
Eric and Phil tackle the entire Pulmonic Chart of the IPA, focusing on the Non-English sounds. We move quickly, and don’t focus on what languages you might here these consonants. Instead we focus on how to make them and points to remember when teaching them.
If you do want to know what language you want to hear a certain consonant in, please refer to Wikipedia. The best method is to search for the consonant that you’re interested in, for example, the voiceless velar fricative /x/, which would take you here. In this case, /x/ occurs in languages literally from A-Z, Abaza to Zapotec.
After a YEAR on hiatus, Phil and Eric return to Glossonomia with an episode about the lexical set price. We cover the history of the /aɪ/ sound, how it evolved from the /i/ sound we hear in fleece words today. We also dig deep into concepts such as smoothing, Canadian Raising, price allophony, and other variations of the set, such as we hear in the South of the United States, in Scotland or Ireland.
Hosts Phil Thompson and Eric Armstrong work their way across the Pulmonic Consonant Chart, focusing in on the Fricative row. Though they do cover English fricatives [θ ð f v s z ʃ ʒ], they go into much greater depth on the non-English sounds [ɸ β ʂ ʐ ç ʝ x ɣ χ ʁ ħ ʕ ʜ ʢ h ɦ ]. (note that they follow the IPA chart on the wikipedia page, which sort of blends the very back fricatives with the approximants.)
Today, Phil and Eric finish off our four part trifecta on R, with a deep discussion of linking r, instrusive r, triphthongs and other R-ful tidbits to delight and enthral you.
In this Episode, Phil and Eric talk about the consonant sounds known as Affricates. The sounds, which begin with a stop and release into a fricative, are important in English, as there are two affricates we use on a regular basis: /tʃ/ and /dʒ/.
Phil and Eric also discuss non-English affricates, the difference between an affricate and a stop-affricate pair (as in the difference between ratchet and rat-shit, which exemplify both).
In this episode, Phil and Eric start to unpack the overstuffed suitcase known as rhotic vowels, or r-colored vowels. They cover things like what a rhotic vowel is, the possible use of syllabic consonant R [ɹ̩] rather than using vowel r’s, the difference between rhotic-schwa (aka “schwar,” “r-colored schwa,” or even “flying-schwa”) and rhotic-turned-epsilon (aka “rhotic-3” or “flying-3”). That’s ɚ or ɝ. There is also discussion of the possibility of other rhotic vowels, such as ɑ˞ or ɔ˞. Phil and Eric leave plenty of room for further discussion on future episodes on R-vowels!
After our overview episode last week, Phil and Eric look in greater detail at the full range of R consonant variation. We follow the Rhotic Consonants page on wikipedia as a means of tracking the various possible articulations. You can follow along, too!
We cover:
• Trills
• Alveolar [r]
• Uvular [ʀ]
• Retroflex [ɽ]
• Taps and flaps
• Alveolar tap [ɾ]
• Alveolar lateral flap [ɺ]
• Retroflex flap [ɽ]
• Labiodental flap (perceived as non-rhotic) [ⱱ]
• Alveolar approximant [ɹ]
• Molar approximant (aka “braced” /r/) -- see John Wells’s phonetic blog on the VASTA discussion and Erik Singer’s “anchor” []
• Retroflex approximant [ɻ]
• Uvular fricative [ʁ]
We’ve been moaning about this one, and now we have to face it: we’re tackling the category of sounds that have an R quality, and this episode gets Phil and Eric talking about vowel and consonant R, similarities to semi-vowels, trills, taps, fricatives, approximants, and even the lowered third formant associated with the acoustic qualities of R-ish-ness. We talk about the history of the letter shape, rhotic and non-rhotic accents, and much more.
We’ve also added a Facebook group! Won’t you come join us there? And, as always, you can contact us via our email address: glossonomia@gmail.com
We’re going to get your goat with this episode: Phil and Eric tackle the lexical set goat, that mirrors the set in last episode, face. They discuss the sound of the diphthong and monophthong versions and the history of both the phone and even the letter shape.
Phil and Eric face the music on this one: they tackle the ticklishly intriguing face lexical set, and discuss diphthongs, monophthongs and other phthings, er, things related to the set! And Eric manages to avoid making his lame joke about dip-thongs (something about small European bathing suits...)
In the course of things, they discuss the chart on wikipedia that lays out the sound changes of the Great Vowel Change. Follow along with the chart while listening!
They also discuss the breve (which wikipedia says is pronounced [bɹiv] though we say [bɹɛv] through the whole episode) and the nonsyllabic diacritics, which look like this respectively (though I can’t seem to get them to line up with the small cap i symbol...):
eɪ̆ and eɪ̯
Dark and Light (or is it “clear”?) /l/ forms the core of this episode, where Phil and Eric tackle all the elements of the “el” sounds in English and the world’s languages.
In our silver anniversary episode, Phil and Eric talk about the lexical set dress, and all the various vowels that are associated with it. That includes [e] or is it [ɛ]? The guys try to uncover the history behind the choice to use [e], and advocate pretty hard for their preference, [ɛ].
Show Notes:
We referred to these as we chatted, but wandered all over the place, so we probably don’t get to most of them...
DRESS
Open-mid front unrounded vowel
Notice that it isn’t mid. We don’t have a symbol there at mid.
It’s front , though we can feel how much more front /i/ is. The chart reflects this
It’s unrounded, but that doesn’t necessarily mean spread.
It’s a short vowel
It’s a checked vowel
Cardinal vowel #3 – Daniel Jones /ɛ/
Cardinal vowel #2 – Daniel Jones /e/
“Cardinal vowels (2), (3), and (4) are defined as front vowels that form a series of auditorily equidistant steps between cardinal vowels (1) and (5)” -Ladefoged
Jones also makes a tense/lax distinction
In The Pronunciation of English:
We distinguish two intermediate positions, half-closed and half-open, in which the tongue is lowered from the closed position to about one-third, and two-thirds, of the total distance from the closed position to the open position Examples of …, halfclosed, half-open, … vowels are
e (pen, pen), ɛ (pair, pɛə),
e: the half-closed front tense unrounded vowel
ɛ: a lengthened ɛ
e Half-closed front lax unrounded. Examples: pen, pen, head, hed. In L this vowel is often replaced by i, e.g. git, indʒin for get (get), endʒin (engine). In many dialects it is replaced by the opener ɛ , thus, pɛn, hɛd. Besides occurring independently, the sound e occurs in StP as the first element of the diphthong ei, e.g. day, dei. With many speakers, especially in N.Eng. this diphthong is tense, i.e. the two elements are the tense vowels corresponding to the lax e, i. In Sc the diphthong is not generally used, a pure tense vowel (phonetic symbol e:) being substituted (de:). In L the first element of the diphthong ei is much opener than in StP, becoming ɛ, æ, a, or even ɑ, thus dɛi, dæi, dai, dɑi. In L e sometimes occurs instead of ʌ Note the faulty pronunciation of aerate (StP eiəreit or eəreit) as ɛəreit or iəreit. The words again, always are often pronounced agen, ɔ:lwiz, ɔ:lwəz, but the forms agein, ɔ:lweiz are preferable. Half-open front unrounded. This sound only occurs in StP in the diphthong ɛə. Examples there, their, ðɛə. See also the previous section. In the pronunciation of many S.Eng. speakers, the first element of this diphthong is more open than ɛ, being in fact practically æ (ðæə). The form ɛə is preferable. In L the first element of this diphthong is the half-closed tense vowel e: (ðeə)
“The standard lexical set DRESS is defined as comprising those words whose citation form in RP has the stressed vowel /e/ and in GenAm /ɛ/” -Wells
step, bet, neck, fetch, Jeff, mess, mesh, ebb, bed, egg, edge, rev, fez, hem, pen, bell, shelf, hemp, tent, theft, best, sex, next, effort, method, terror, tenor, jelly, centre/center, pester, threat, sweat, deaf, death, bread, dead, head, health, realm, meant, breast, ready, jealous, pleasant, weather, treacherous, any, many, Thames, friend, says, said, Leicester, bury.
These words are mostly spelled with “e” or “ea”. These two spellings represent two sources in Middle English: “short e” and “long ɛ”
Those spelled with “e” have stayed somewhere close to [ɛ] while those spelled “ea” were originally pronounced [e]. – Falstaff, for example, rhymes “raisins” with “reasons”.
This pronunciation remains in some accents.
Breaking and shading effects are possible with DRESS as they are with KIT. In some accents the vowel is raised toward /ɪ/ in environments where it is followed by a nasal, making the words “pin” and “pen” homophones.
Breaking is the diphthongization of monophthongs.
Shading is the development of different allophones conditioned by the place of articulation of the following consonant.
With DRESS in the South, shading seems to occur in Southern American accents when /ɛ/ is followed by /d/, /m/, /l/ or /ʤ/.
When followed by /ɡ/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, or /ʒ/, the effect can be so strong as to shift the vowel all the way to the diphthong /eɪ /.
SQUARE and MERRY/MARRY/MARY in a future show!
Swedish makes a distinction between monophthongal /eː/ /ɛː/ and /ɛ/
but when I listen to the samples there is more of a difference in quality than quantity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_phonology#Vowels
French contrasts /eː/ /ɛː/ /ɛ/ and /ɛ̃/
So saith Wikipedia. Is that really true? Sort of...
German seems to exhibit a 4 way contrast of /eː/ /e/ /ɛː/ and /ɛ/
But the Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_phonology also expresses some doubts about the factuality of this distinction.
Further Notes from various blogs etc.
Jack Windsor Lewis: 'When it comes to a snappy name for [ɛ] I shd prefer 'Greek e' to epsilon (whether as /epsaɪlən/ or /epsɪlən/). '
ɛə becominɡ monophthonɡal ɛː— JWL: All three of the GB centring diphthongs are very commonly he·rd with monophthongal allophones. Traditionally these wd not be used before breaks ie at the ends of rhythm units. However, the case of /ɛə/ is different. The use of a strest unit-final [ɛː] wd indicate that the speaker must be categorised as possessing a phoneme /ɛː/ replacing the traditional /ɛə/. This was at one time distinctly a minority usage: Daniel Jones in 1958 only sed "[o]ccasionally one hears [it]". However, it's now for sev·ral decades become less and less so.
John Wells: A Red Dress -- Northern Cities Shift, DRESS is mid-centralizing ɛ → ɐ
In Canada, it's just becoming more open: DRESS is shifting ɛ → æ
John Wells: Antipodean (i.e. Australian vs. New Zealand) "While both Australians and New Zealanders — but particularly the latter — can give the rest of us the impression that they are pronouncing DRESS words with the KIT vowel (Rebekah → Ribikah) and TRAP words with the DRESS vowel (shag → sheg), it is only New Zealanders whose KIT vowel is so centralized as to lead us to perceive it as the STRUT vowel. Australians, on the other hand, make it closer and fronter than in many other accents, nearer to [i]. "
Wells, in response to Upton's changes for OED:
Bet. In some languages, notably French and German, one needs to distinguish two e-type vowels, a closer one (IPA [e]) and an opener one (IPA [ɛ]). The English bet vowel lies between them, but is more similar to [ɛ], which is why Upton prefers that symbol. However, from the point of view of an EFL learner whose native language is, say, Japanese or Greek -- languages that have no such distinction -- it is quite unnecessary to distinguish the "[e]" at the starting point of the face diphthong from the "[ɛ]" of bet. And following IPA principles, if we are to choose just one of the two symbols we should prefer the simpler one.
http://phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/2009/03/e-and.html
-
Although I usually use e for the English vowel of DRESS, there is nothing incorrect or unscientific about using ɛ instead. This is the symbol used in the Kenyon-Knott system, still in use among American dialectologists and speech people (who just call this notation “IPA”), and also for EFL in Taiwan (but as far as I know, virtually only in Taiwan). Ladefoged used it in earlier editions of his Course in Phonetics, before switching to e.
-
An important principle of good phonetic transcription is simplicity. As Ladefoged formulates it,
"A simple phonemic transcription uses the smallest possible number of different letters." [D. Abercrombie, 1964, English Phonetic Texts, London: Faber & Faber, page 19.]
Since the DRESS vowel can be unambiguously written e, an English transcription with the symbol e is simpler than one with ɛ. The same applies in those languages that have just five vowels (or just five peripheral vowels), e.g. Modern Greek, Serbian, Polish, Czech, Japanese. In these languages the mid front vowel is best, and most simply, written e. Whether its quality is closer to that of cardinal 2 [e] or cardinal 3 [ɛ] is irrelevant. On the other hand, in languages that have a close-mid front vowel in contrast to an open-mid one (e.g. French, German, a Scottish accent of English), the two symbols e and ɛ must both be used; and that means ɛ for French même, German Bett, and Scottish dress.
http://phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/2009/03/more-about-e-and.html
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The vowel of English DRESS varies considerably. A former RP quality, now obsolete, was very close to cardinal 2 [e]: a similarly close-mid quality is to be heard in Australian English, and in New Zealand it is often even closer. The current British average quality is somewhere between cardinal 2 [e] and cardinal 3 [ɛ]. There are also local varieties in which it is fully open-mid. In American English it can be open-mid and considerably centred. If we want to symbolize all of these possibilities in a single symbol, the phonetic case for [e] is not much different from the case for [ɛ].
-
The choice of symbol for DRESS is bound up with the question of the choice of symbol for FACE. In accents where the FACE vowel is monophthongal and not distinctively long (e.g. Scottish English, perhaps some northern AmE) we must write face as fes and dress as drɛs. In all other varieties of English, where FACE is either a long monophthong or a diphthong, there will be no confusion in writing DRESS with e as long as FACE is written correspondingly as eː or eɪ (or, with Trager and Smith, as ey, or with Chomsky and Halle as ēy).
-
Furthermore, there are many accents in which the diphthong of FACE starts more open than the height of DRESS: for example, popular London and SE England (“Estuary English”) and Australian and New Zealand speech. (It was phonetically perverse of the Macquarie dictionary of Australian English to write FACE as eɪ and DRESS as ɛ.)
-
Consider now the position, say, of Japanese learners of English. In their own language they have just a single mid front vowel, ェ e. It is (in my view) entirely satisfactory for them to use this sound for the English DRESS vowel, and as the first part of an eɪ diphthong for English FACE. If we were to write DRESS as drɛs we would be implying that they need to learn to use a special (non-Japanese) quality for DRESS, different from the starting point of FACE feɪs. And instead of occasional emails from Europe asking why I don’t use ɛ, I would be faced with hundreds of emails from Japan asking me to explain why I use a funny symbol ɛ. (My readers will correct me if I am wrong, but — as far as I know — Japanese, Korean and Chinese dictionaries of English, except in Taiwan, all transcribe the DRESS vowel as e.)
-
Lastly, the tradition in English pronouncing dictionaries ever since they first appearance of EPD nearly a century ago has been to write DRESS as e. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Wells' "Lexical Sets" [http://phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/2010/02/lexical-sets.html] The choice of the keyword DRESS has proved awkward for people dealing with New Zealand English, where the upward shifting of the vowel in question has led them to have to refer to DRESS Raising.
Newfoundland English by Sandra Clark from A Handbook of Varieties of English: Phonology vol 1 ed Edgar W. Schneider,
DRESS
For most speakers, the DRESS vowel is realized as standard lax low-mid [ɛ]. On the Irish Avalon, conservative rural speakers display variable and conditioned raising of this vowel to [ɪ] in the environment of a following stop or affricate, e.g. pension, get, connected. As noted above, the same phenomenon may be observed among conservative speakers in rural English-settled areas of the province, where raising to [ɪ] occurs before a following non-velar stop or affricate, as in head, hedge, engine, bench. Before /l/ or a voiceless velar, however (e.g. yellow, wreak, breakfast), lowering to an [æ]-like articulation may occur in English-settled areas. In addition, [ɛ] before a voiced velar may be tensed and diphthongized in a stressed syllable, as in keg pronounced [kʰeiɡ] (e.g. Noseworthy 1971.)
A similar lowered and somewhat retracted pronunciation of [ɛ] for words in the DRESS set is beginning to make inroads, in a broad set of phonetic environments, in the speech of upwardly mobile young urban Newfoundlanders. This reflects the influence of the innovative CanE tendency described as the "Canadian Shift" by Clarke, Elms and Youssef (1995), in which lax front vowels are lowered and retracted.
CAMEROON English by Augustin Simo Bobda from A Handbook of Varieties of English: Phonology vol 1 ed Edgar W. Schneider,
paintEd with [ɛ] , with words in -ess (actress, princess), -less, -ness, -men. and villAge, with [e], with words in -ace, -ain, -ate, -ein sets in Cameroon English
The regular realizations of the DRESS vowel are /ɛ/ and /e/, which are in complementary distribution in some cases; /ɛ/ occurs in final syllables as in pen, rest, breast, while /e/ occurs before one and only one medial consonant, and before Cj, Cw, and Cr sequences as in element, medical, special, educate, equity, equalize, metric, retrograde. The tensing of /ɛ/ to /e/ in this context is known in the literature as the E-Tensing Rule. /e/ frther occurs frequently before the sequences of mC and nC as in embassy, emperor, member, centre, mention. /e/ finally occurs with the common word says, as a result of the local restructuring of the FACE vowel induced by the analogy with say and other words in orthographic ay.
new stuff added today
NZE by Laurie Bower and Paul Warren in A Handbook of Varieties of English: Phonology vol 1 ed Edgar W. Schneider,
The DRESS vowel is close in New Zealand, even by Australian standards, and may overlap with the FLEECE vowel in terms of its formant structure, although more central variants are also common.
There is neutralization with SQUARE before /r/ (making ferry and fairy homophonous) and neutralization with TRAP before /l/ (as in Ellen and Alan).
If vowels are to be paired in terms of length/tension, then in NZE the DRESS vowel should be paired with the FLEECE vowel, as being the closest long vowel in terms of quality.
FIJI English
DRESS and TRAP are, essentially, merged. So words like paddle/peddle, lag/leg, tampered/tempered are homophonous.
Recorded at the 2011 VASTA Conference in Chicago IL at Roosevelt University, Phil and Eric take the show to their audience. It’s a “show about the show” where we talk about the magic behind the curtain, topic choices, and we take questions from our studio audience. Though we don’t spend much time on the sounds of speech, we do have a great time taking “calls” from our friends. In the second half we spend quite a lot of time on the subject of GenAm, Standard speech and Neutral speech, whatever they may be...
Topics include: The impetus for the show; the set up for the show; recording, editing, planning; audio sync issues; lo-fi recording strategies; So-Called-General-American (SCGA); Standard accents; separating phonetics, phonology, prescription; “sounds are not good, they are good for...;” our response to a ‘neutral’ accent.
Glossonnnnnnommmmmia is comin’ through the nose this week: we’re talking about Nasals, both consonants and vowels – nasalized vowels, that is. Hosts Phil Thompson and Eric Armstrong discuss not only English’s 3 nasal consonants, but all the nasals the human mouth can utter. [note: Phil’s recording starts to sound echoey in the second half. That’s my fault for not editing it well. Sorry! Hope it isn’t too annoying!]
Show Notes
Velo-Pharyngeal Port
- lifting and lowering the soft palate
- ban vs. band as a way of feeling the action of the lifting of the soft palate
- perhaps more noticeable on sing vs. sink
Sonorant vs. Obstruent (both)
- Sonorant is without turbulence or obstruction, generally a vowel or nasals, or L, approximants, like r, or glides/semivowels like w/j
- Obstruent has an obstructed airflow; nasals are technically stops with a dropped velum soft palate
- Nasal Consonants
- in English
- m
- n
- n̪ dentalized n before θ as in "tenth"
- or in accents where the placement of alveolars is
on the back of the teeth...
- ŋ velar nasal – only final or intervocalic, never initial
- ɲ palatal nasal "nya nya nya" teasing, some accented versions
of /nj/ as in "onion"
- ɱ – labiovelar: assimilation, usually n/m before v as in "invest,
invert, invent, inventory" or f "symphony, camphor,
influence, unfit"; may cause epenthetic dental p e.g.
symphony [sɪɱp̚fənɨ]
Syllabic Consonants
- a consonant which forms a syllable on its own or forms the nucleus of the syllable (taking the place of a vowel, usually schwa) e.g. ambition, bacon, ship 'em or happen (with assimilation, as [hæpm̩] ) – immediately after an obstruent, as in leaden or chasm
Nasal Plosion
- The release of a plosive by lowering the soft palate so that air escapes through the nose
- Hidden, sadden, sudden, leaden
- e.g. on Ladefoged's site for A Course in Phonetics http://tinyurl.com/3r8yd6b
- International
- ɳ – vd. retroflex nasal in Indic languages e.g. Hindi,
but also Norwegian, Swedish and Vietnamese (generally an
assimilation of /r+n/ - ɲ – vd. palatal nasal, in Spanish (eñe), lots of other
languages incl. French, Italian, Greek, - ŋ – vd. velar nasal, in some languages at the beginning
of syllables, like Vietnamese, Thai, Shona, note
Samoyedic group of Uralic language family, Nganasan
language (only 1000 speakers in 1989, ethnologue says
500) it is in its name! - initial velar nasal in 146 languages
- no initial velar in 88 languages
- no velar nasal in 235 languages
- ɴ – vd. uvular nasal, e.g. Japanese final /n/ as in Nihon
- Nasalized Vowels
- example languages: French, Portuguese, Breton, Polish
- In French they developed from Assimilation (the vowels took
on nasality from the following nasal consonant which was then
dropped. ) Some accents of French still have final /n/, as in
Marseilles, where "accent" might be pronounced [aksaɲ]
Example: Odette does her poem about her accent: http://tinyurl.com/3r6w9uq - Languages without Nasals
- fewer the 2.3% of languages lack nasals
- e.g. Puget sound native languages lack them
- "The only other places in the world where this occurs is in a
dialect of the Rotokas language of Papua New Guinea, where
nasal stops are used only when imitating foreign accents (a
second dialect does have nasal stops), and in some of the
Lakes Plain languages of West Papua." - Denasal consonants
- pathological (usually a cold) where m=b, n=d, ŋ=k
In their third and final episode on lot, cloth and thought, co-hosts Eric Armstrong and Phil Thompson not only think about, but actually talk about the thought lexical set. What it is, how to identify it, and its relationship to cloth, lot, and, tangentially, palm.
Show Notes
At the end of the show, Phil and Eric talk through the following sentence in their own accents (such as they are), with Phil’s cloth – thought, merger and Eric’s Canadian cloth–lot–palm merger.
LOT CLOTH THOUGHT
The officer, and the constable talked to my daughter a lot. They said it was not at all optimal to go on a long cross country obstacle course from Ottawa to Montreal . Obviously, Chicago to Boston was also off, being far too costly in a borrowed automobile.
Hosts Eric Armstrong and Phil Thompson focus on lot-cloth mergers in this unusually short episode. [Recorded in March but not published until May, this (hopefully) marks the end of a long hiaitus!] Often we have either lot-cloth separate from thought, or we have cloth-thought separate from lot. Phil outlines some history of back vowels, and the spelling (usually with A’s and O’s).
Short /o/—in spelling, lot words like “clock, chop, hot” the vowel is short and checked by the short voiceless stop. Meanwhile, cloth words like “cough, cross, coffee” and “gone,” the vowel is also short and the following consonant is a voiceless fricative.
From The Atlas of North American English
/o/ “short-o”, [aka ɒ] derived primarily from M.E. open o or ɔ in cot, rot, odd, Tom, hotter, etc. In most British dialects, this is the short back rounded vowel realized on a non-peripheral track (see below). In most North American dialects, it was unrounded and lowered to [ɑ] by the nineteenth century (Barton 1832). It was then merged with the small sub-class of words with /a/ after initial /w/ (watch, wander, warrant) and generally with the /ah/ class (balm = bomb, see below). In Eastern New England, Pittsburgh and some Canadian communities, /o/ remained as a rounded vowel, and merged with /oh/ [aka ɔ]. /o/ does not remain in its original back rounded position as a separate phoneme in any North American dialect.
In those dialects that retained the opposition between /o/ and /oh/, a large
number of /o/ words shifted to the /oh/ class, before back nasals, as in strong,
song, long, wrong, etc.; before voiceless fricatives (in loss, cloth, off, etc.), and irregularly before /g/, as in log, hog, dog, fog, etc. This process occurred by lexical diffusion, leaving many less common words in the /o/ class, such as King Kong, Goth, doff, etc.
Peculiarities of lot - cloth mergers in New York City and Boston.
In Boston, lot - cloth vowels are supposedly merged, while in NYC, cloth-thought are merged. However, Phil isn’t necessarily convinced!
Great Scott! Hosts Phil & Eric think awfully hard on the sounds of the lexical sets lot, cloth, thought. A set up for the trifecta (tetrafecta?) of our next few shows, in this episode we talk through the sounds typically associated with these lexical sets, particularly in “standard” accents like Received Pronunciation, so-called General American, Canadian, and the tendency for cloth to merge with either lot or thought.
Typical Sounds encountered in these lexical sets range from
a type a
ɑ script a
ɒ turned script a
ɔ open o
Diacritics discussed:
o̞ lowered
o̝ raised
o̘ Advanced Tongue Root (forward)
o̙ Retracted Tongue Root (back)
o̟ Advanced
o̠ retracted
o̽ mid-centralized
ö centralized
o̹ rounded
o̜ unrounded
In thish show, Phil and Eric talk their way around the shounds of "sh" and "zh", [ʃ] and [ʒ], post-alveolar fricatives. This pair of consonants provide ample room for discussion of how the sounds are made, compared to similar sounds in the mouth.
Show Notes:
- compared to /s/ and /z/, the airflow of /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ goes through a wider aperture
- /ʃ/is very broad spectrum, which makes it an effective "shusher"
- these sounds include a lip-rounding component
- /ʒ/ Phil uses less lip-rounding (lip corner advancement) than /ʃ/, while Eric is unaware of such a difference.
- [Phil mentioned the Heisenberg Uncertainly Principle, which states that "the more precisely one property is measured, the less precisely the other can be measured." I'm not sure that this is what he meant—Eric]
- wikipedia has a list of languages that feature /ʃ/and /ʒ/.
- yogh ȝ is not the symbol you are looking for—note the curved top on the yogh (pronounced [jɒɡ, joʊɡ, joʊk, joʊx] )
- the symbols were invented by Pittman (the shorthand guy)
- š and ž : with a caron or haček
- Ж Cyrillic "zhe"
-
ろ in Japanese looks like /ʒ/, but it is not the same
-
yod coalescence turns /sju/ into /ʃu/
- Phil gives us a lecture on the history of /sh/ and /zh/ in English
- synchronic (a process/pressure on articulation at one time) and diachronic (over time) change e.g. Pressure—diachronic change that has already happened vs. Presh yer face against the glass—synchronic yod coalescence happening in real time
- Phil refers to Shakespeare's Pronunciation by Helge Kökeritz
- note that in our discussion of /ʒ/, Phil suggests that no one would say beige with an affricate ending, that is [beɪdʒ]. Wells does say that that pronunciation is possible.
- /s/ in sport or strasse in German is ʃ
- omniglot.com, a great place to learn about the spelling conventions of a language
- Alveolo-palatal fricatives ɕ (voiceless) ʑ (voiced)
- Retroflex fricatives ʂ (voiceless) and ʐ (voiced)
In this Episode, hosts Phil and Eric dig down deep into the sound of the palm lexical set. After a LOOOONG Hiatus, we're back, and exploring the sound of the ɑː vowel.
Phil and Eric are in fine form in this third (but, not final, alas...) part of their trilogy on the three lexical sets known as trap, bath & palm.
We set out to do three things: correct an error regarding bath "prime," discuss features of trap, most notably the feature called "Asc Tensing" (sounds like something Richard Simmons would have you do for a firmer butt), and to dig deeper into the palm set. Alas, we don't get to the third objective, though we did try.
Show Notes:
Phil explains how he mixed up bath (c) with bath "prime", the group of words that are least likely to be said with /æ/ in the UK today.
bath (c) calf, half, calve, halve, rather, Slav,
shan't, can't,
Iraq, corral, morale, Iran, Sudan, banana.
bath "prime:"
chaff, graph, alas, hasp, Basque, masque,
plastic, drastic, elastic, gymnastic, (Cornish) pasty, en-
thusiastic, bastard, paschal, pastoral, masculine, mas-
querade, exasperate, blasphemy, masturbate, Glasgow,
lather, stance, askance, circumstantial, intransigent, substantial, transit, transport, transfer, transform, transitory, transient, transept, and other words in trans-;
contralto, alto, plaque, Cleopatra.
æ tensing
Phil and Eric talk about Asc Tensing, whereby the vowel gets more close, and so it begins to move into the territory of dress. (Eric confuses things by talking about Asc Tensing and Breaking at the same time.) Here's the chart the guys refer to:
Northern Breaking
Northern Breaking is whereby the trap sound breaks into a centering diphthong. In the course of things, Eric reveals his ignorance (yet again) in imagining that it is an onglide (rather than an offglide), as Phil so wisely demonstrates with a slowed-down pronunciation.
æ raising before nasals
This map from the Atlas of North American English (Labov et al), shows the distribution of this feature. The red dots show places where trap before nasals is much more tense that other trap words.
Eric and Phil also briefly touched on in Hiberno (Irish English) and reference Raymond Hickey's IERC Irish English Resource Centre. They also discussed something that Jack Windsor Lewis mentioned on his site, Changes in British English pronunciation during the twentieth century,
here.
More next time!
We're back at it, back in the bath lexical set, exploring the realm of trap, bath and palm. Hosts Phil Thompson and Eric Armstrong continue on from Episode 15 with more on these lexical sets.
Show Notes:
• a quick review of what a Lexical Set is
• how to recognize words in the bath lexical set
From J.C.Wells' Accents of English:
- BATH
Typical Spellings: (a)aff, ath (voiceless), ass, aft, asp, ast, ask, augh; (b) ance, ant, anch, CVCand, ample; (c) alf, alv, an’t + many unpredictable, e.g. trans- SEE “ASK LIST”
(a) staff, giraffe,
path, lath,
brass, class, glass, grass, pass,
raft, craft, graft, daft, shaft, aft, haft, draft,
clasp, grasp, rasp, gasp,
blast, cast, fast, mast, aghast, last, past, contrast, vast, avast,
ask, bask, mask, flask, cask, task,
after, rafter, Shaftesbury,
master, plaster, disaster, castor, pastor, nasty, disastrous,
basket, casket, rascal,
fasten, raspberry, ghastly, castle,
laugh, laughter, draught;
(b) dance, advance, chance, France, lance, glance, enhance,
prance, trance, entrance v.,
grant, slant, aunt, chant, plant, advantage, vantage,
chantry, supplant, enchant,
branch, blanch, ranch, stanch, stanchion,
demand, command, remand, slander, chandler,
commando, Alexander, Sandra, Flanders,
example, sample,
chancel, chancellor, Frances, Francis, lancet, answer
(c) calf, half, calve, halve, rather, Slav,
shan't, can't,
Iraq, corral, morale, Iran, Sudan, banana.
chaff, graph, alas, hasp, Basque, masque,
plastic, drastic, elastic, gymnastic, (Cornish) pasty, en-
thusiastic, bastard, paschal, pastoral, masculine, mas-
querade, exasperate, blasphemy, masturbate, Glasgow,
lather, stance, askance, circumstantial, intransigent, substantial, transit, transport, transfer, transform, transitory, transient, transept, and other words in trans-;
contralto, alto, plaque, Cleopatra.
• Recommendations on what to do if you don't know
• How to identify bath words in a modern, up-to-date pronouncing dictionary, or the online version of the OED.
• howjsay online pronunciation resource
• The Ask List: included in Skinner's Speak with Distinction
• discussion on the merits (or lack thereof) of teaching and using the Ask List
We're starting Season Two off with a bang! After a season away (i.e. summer), we're diving into the vowels found in the three lexical sets known as trap, bath & palm. The vowels associated with these sets, frequently /æ/, /a/ and /ɑ/, are explored fairly briefly... ok briefly FOR US... and we set ourselves up to dig deeper in Episode 16.
Show Notes:
Lexical Sets are: categories of words that tend to share the same vowel quality.
…and we can go into greater detail than that, of course.
Phonetic Landscape:
Before we get into these particular sets and how they’re realized in various accents, let’s look at the sounds themselves
ɑ Open back unrounded vowel
the most cupped (open) back position for the tongue. Some would say the most open jaw position. Some would also say that there is, necessarily a retraction of the tongue root.
a Open front unrounded vowel
the most cupped (open) front tongue position.
æ Near-open front unrounded vowel halfway between ɛ and a
short and checked [this is a phonological observation..]
æ can be unchecked in Jalapa Mazatec and Vietnamese http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/vowels/chapter12/mazatec.html
PHONETIC NOTATION:
ɑ script (cursive) a (single story lowercase)
a print or type a (double story lowercase)
æ ash/asc (a - e digraph)
HISTORY of SPELLING:
Wikipedia has some very interesting stuff on the letter's history and development.
What’s interesting is that this symbol originated to describe the glottal stop and came to represent, over time, the open vowel that followed.
So, zis iz eet! Our show about those two hissy consonants, /s/ and /z/. Phil and Eric chat their way through a discussion of sibilance, and spend a lot of time talking about so-called-gay-speech, and other aspects of what may be perceived as the continuum of masculinity/femininity in speakers, regardless of gender, sexual orientation or affectional preferences.
Show Notes:
Voiced/ Voiceless Apical/Laminal Alveolar Fricative (sibilant)
Formation
Either tongue tip up or down, narrowing behind the upper front teeth; groove down the center of the tongue; pulmonic air pressure
Sibilants, sibilance, hyper-sibilant, hypo-sibilant
Dentalization
Jaw thrust
How to explore/modify degree of sibilance
Garden Hose metaphor:
like putting your thumb over the end of the hose
adjust:
• the size of the hose (make the groove wider, relax your tongue)
• your thumb position (aim the air stream more/less at your teeth or gum ridge; explore laminal or apical articulation; check jaw position)
• turn the water down (less air pressure)
Story of teacher who told me to say "'even 'wan' 'wam 'wiftly and 'ilently".
Symbols s/z
Diacritics:
dental (subscript bridge: a little tooth-like staple shape)
apical (subscript turned bridge)
laminal (subscript box)
Symbol History:
Proto-semitic: bum shape; Phoenician shin: W; Etruscan S, angular 3 shape; Greek Sigma Σ;
The minuscule form of s was ſ, called the long s, up to the fifteenth century or so, and the form 'S' was used then only as upper case, just like 'G' and 'A' were only upper case. With the introduction of printing, the modern form s began to be used at the end of words by some printers. Later, it was used everywhere and eventually spread to manuscript letters as well. For example, "sinfulness" would be rendered as "ſinfulneſſ" in all medieval hands, later it was "ſinfulneſs" in some blackletter hands and in print. The modern usage "sinfulness" didn't become widespread in print until the beginning of the 19th century, largely to prevent confusion of 'ſ' with the lower case f in typefaces which had a very short horizontal stroke in their lowercase 'f'. The ligature of ſs (or ſz) became the German ess-tsett, ß.
Occurrence
-s plurals: when ending is after a voiceless consonant, (or, arguably, at the end of an utterance)
-z plurals: when end is after a voiced consonant or a vowel
-es plurals: Words Ending in 'sh', 'ch', 's', 'x', and 'z'
Pathology: lisps
Laterial Lisp: substitutes voiceless ɬ and voiced ɮ for s and z
Interdental Lisp: substitutes voiceless θ and voiced ð for s and z
Palatal Lisp: substitutes voiceless ç and voiced ʝ for s and z
Whistle /s/: gopher from Winnie the Pooh
So-called-Gay-Lisp
Wikipedia: Two studies (Linville, 1998; Munson et al., 2006) did find that a subset of gay men produce /s/ distinctively; however, the way in which /s/ was pronounced—with a high peak frequency and a highly negatively skewed spectrum—made it more distinctive from other similar sounds, rather than less. That is, this was arguably a hyper-correct /s/.[5][6]
Rogers et al found that what people perceived as "gayer sounding" was longer duration /s/ and /z/ and higher peak frequencies for s,z. He also found that their vowels tended to be more "Distinct", that is, more spread out on the vowel chart.
Gender difference around /s/ pitch exercise
Korean /s/ tense and lax?
Dutch /s/
Sean Connery
RSC /s/
Goodness! It's our lucky thirteenth episode, and Phil and Eric tackle the /ʊ/ vowel and the lexical set foot. We talk about symbols used to represent it in phonetic notation, spellings of the sound, the history of the sound, splits and mergers in various accents of English, and interesting "goodies" about the sound represented by upsilon .
Show Notes:
Description
“short oo”
near-close near-back rounded vowel
Formation
Do it like this: [slide between /u/ and schwa?] Handbook of the IPA defines this as a 'mid-centralization of /u/'.
Phonetic Symbol
Turned omega ʊ [wiki: "horseshoe u"]
closed omega ɷ was voted off the island in1989 called
“In Americanist phonetic notation, the symbol [ᴜ] (a small capital U) is used” --- -Wikipedia
After Jones: /u/ /u:/ Phil feel that this confuses quality and quantity but it has continued as the practice in the UK for a long time
[Therefore: /ʊ/ is not a Cardinal Vowel]
• Vowel Reduction of /u/, especially /ju/ as in stimulus vs. stimulate
Occurrence (from Wikipedia)
In the following transcriptions, an unrounded vowel is represented by the "less-rounded" diacritic [ʊ̜]:
Language Word IPA Meaning Notes
Arabic كتب [ˈkʊtʊb] 'books' See Arabic phonology
Chinese Cantonese 紅 [hʊ̜ŋ] 'red' See Cantonese phonology
Mandarin 紅 [xʊ̜ŋ˧˥] 'red' May be only slightly rounded. See Mandarin phonology
English hook [hʊk] 'hook' May be only slightly rounded. See English phonology
Faroese hvalur [kvɛalʊɹ] 'whale'
French Quebec foule [fʊl] 'crowd' See French phonology
German Schutz [ʃʊts] 'protection' See German phonology
Mongolian[1] өлгий [ʊɮɣiː] 'cradle'
Portuguese European[2] pegar [pʊ̜ˈɡaɾ] 'to hold' Unstressed vowel. See Portuguese phonology
Brazilian[3] saco [ˈsakʊ] 'bag'
Russian[4] сухой [sʊˈxo̞j] 'dry' Unstressed allophone of /u/. See Russian phonology
Swedish ort
[ʊʈ] (help·info) '(geographic) place' Exolabial (compressed). See Swedish phonology
Vietnamese thu [tʰʊw] 'autumn' See Vietnamese phonology
History of English Spelling and Development of pronunciation
foot O.E. fot c.1300
put O.E. putung c.1300
puss O.E. 1530
bush O.E. bysc
full O.E. full
pudding O.E. puduc c.1300
bull O.E. bula
good O.E. god
stood O.E. stod c.1300
wood O.E. wudu
hood O.E. hod
hook O.E. hoc
hoof O.E. hof
cook O.E. coc
nook noke c.1300
rook O.E. hroc (crow)
look O.E. locian
wool O.E. wull
wolf O.E. wulf
roof O.E. hrof
soot O.E. sot
bosom O.E. bosm
could O.E. cuðe pt. of cunnan
should O.E. sceolde c.1200
would O.E. wolde
shook O.E. sceacan (scoc)
push O.Fr. poulser c.1300
cuckoo O.Fr. cucu c.1240
butcher O.Fr boucher c.1300
cushion O.Fr. coissin c.1300
rook O.Fr. roc c.1300 (chess piece)
sugar O.Fr. sucre c.1289
bullet M.Fr. boulette 1550s
woman late O.E wifman
root late O.E. rot
jook Gullah joog 1937 (wicked, disorderly)
took late O.E. toc
Buddha Pali budh 1680s related to Skt. bodhati
Muslim Arabic muslim 1615
Jack Windsor Lewis:
•This is usually spelt u or oo but corresponds to the spelling o only in bosom, wolf, woman and worsted. Cf courier / `kʊriə/ and the place name Worcester. The suffix -ful has this vowel in nouns eg boxful, mouthful, spoonful but not in adjectives eg useful, beautiful, hopeful which instead have either /ə/ or more usually no vowel.
• Elisions due to speeded articulation from increased familiarity: actually/-ʧʊəli→-ʧəli/ , manufacture /-njʊf→nəf-/ , particularly /-kjʊləli→/-kjəli//, usually /juːʒʊəli→/juːʒli/
• The beginning of /ʊɚ/ & the end of /aʊ/ /oʊ/ diphthongs
Mergers and Splits
foot/strut Historic split. Some areas don’t do this split
foot/goose Scottish merger (realization may be fronter)
foot/nurse Not really a merger, but in many US accents midcentralization and unrounding bring the two closer.
“cook” /u/ in Ireland and North England - According to Wells
Post vocalic /l/ can “reverse” the foot/strut merger, making “culture” into [kʊlʧɚ]
Sultan – vulnerable – culture – culture – multi -
Ashton Kutcher: /u/ or /ʊ/?
Some plurals reverse the vowel shift, moving from /ʊ/ to /u/
hoof/hooves roof/rooves?
“jukebox “This is a newishword which reversed the shift/ʊ/ to /u/
oops whoops zhoozh
What the...??? Is it an episode dedicated to all thing dubya? Why yes: in this wepisode, we, Phiw and Ewic, wallow in what is well-know to be one the the most wonderful consonants in English, nay, in the world. We tackle such topics as Voiced Approximants and Voiceless Fricatives, especially labio-velar ones. Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, Eric's recording stopped half-way through, and so we had to re-record the end of the show. This proved to be a good thing, we believe, making the show about 20 minutes shorter, and far more concise (never hard for us to be more concise)!
Show notes:
w = Voiced Labio-Velar Approximant
ʍ = Voiceless Labio-Velar Fricative
Note that some people transcribe the Voiceless Labio-Velar Fricative as /hw/.
About Approximants: Peter Ladefoged in Vowels and Consonants
compares "wet, yet, let, ret(ch)"
w- rising 2nd formant (so it's like /u/ )
j - falling 2nd formant (so it's like /i/ )
l- minimized 2nd and 3rd formant, sudden switch to the vowel
r - lowered 3rd formant (similar to /w/, otherwise)
r, w and j are syllable-initial only (assuming that /r/ at the end of syllables is vowel! )
/hw/ dropping is called "Glide Cluster Reduction" Wells p. 228, differentiated from h-dropping
2 ways of looking at it: Phonotactic change (reducing the cluster from /hw/ to w) as opposed to a systemic change (losing the phoneme ʍ).
Wikipedia: Phonotactics defines permissible syllable structure, consonant clusters, and vowel sequences by means of phonotactical constraints.
Note the h-dropping on liquid u as in human, humanity (as we discussed in Episode 10) is also a form of Glide Cluster Reduction. Also note that it is argued that humour [jumə] based on its French roots is archaic, and different from others.
Approximants are "the opposite of stop consonants in that they do not involve any kind of closure of the vocal tract. Instead, there is simply a narrowing at some point. For /w/, the lips are close together and the back of the tongue is raised, but air still flows freely out of the mouth." p. 52, Ladefoged Vowels and Consonants.
Semivowel is a momentary approximant--J.C. Catford's A Practical Introduction To Phonetics p. 67
When preceded by a voiceless stop, you can get ʍ, more or less...
pw- puissant, puissance, pueblo
tw- twill, twilight, twin, twain,
kw- quit, quite, quaff, quail
skw- squeak, squeal, squeeze, squib, squint, squirrel
Non-ʍ "wh" spellings:
who, whom, whosoever, whomever, whole, wholesome, wholly, whore, whooping, whose
/hw/ often dropped in weak forms of which, when, why
Ooooo! It's the goosonomia episoode! Yes, in the eleventh instalment of Glossonomia, Phil and Eric talk for a very long time (1:36) about the [u] vowel. In it, we talk about the evolution of the /u/ sound, and how historical /u/ turned into /aʊ/(as in "house"), while historical /oː/ turned into /u/ (as in "room").
We also discuss:
• goose fronting, especially in California, but also in South Africa
• yod, and its use in /ju/ and /jʊ/
• yod dropping after coronals, as in "tune, duke, nuke, Luke, suit"
• yod coalescence in accents like Cockney (/tju/ becomes [tʃu] for example)
• yod rhoticization in AAVE
• the "yew-hew" merger in places like NYC, Philly and Cork, Ireland
Articles referred to in our conversation:
• Changes in Progress in Canadian English: Yod Dropping
• A Majority Sound Change in a Minority Community: /u/ Fronting in Chicano English by Carmen Fought
• Socio-phonetics and social change: Deracialisation of the GOOSE vowel in South African English by Rajend Mesthrie
The Great Vowel Push Chain Shift, from J.C. Wells' Accents of English
Diagram showing how, when /o/ is fronting in RP, /ɔ/ rises and /u/ is fronted, also from Accents of English.
This is our "Fava" episode: great with a nice Chianti (you can leave the liver out, Dr. Lecter...) Hosts Phil Thompson and Eric Armstrong talk their way through the sounds /f/ and /v/ in this episode. As it is our first episode dealing with fricative sounds, we spend quite a while talking through their nature.
Show Notes
[Don't have any time to go through the show this week and edit the show notes. These are the things Phil and I collected before we began recording; it's a bit messy, but may be helpful when listening along.—Eric]
Fricatives: A sound being made by air being pushed through a narrow constriction in the vocal tract, making a turbulent airstream.
e.g. f θ ʃ s
Most common consonant manner in the world's languages : Fricatives
FORMATION: voiced/unvoiced labiodental fricatives
SPELLING:
/f/
pretty darned simple, f
calf calves, calved
loaf loaves
half halves, halved
knife knives ( but knifed)
wife wives
"ff" off, offal
"gh" cough, draught, enough, laugh, laughter, rough, tough, trough, whooping cough
"ph" alphabet, amphibious, apostrophe, diphthong, nephew, philosophy, phlegm, phonetic,
photo, photograph, pteriodophyte, sphere, sphinx, telephone
"v" Chekov, Krushchev, Nabokov, Godunov, Romanov, Molotiv, Rimsky-Korsakov,
Ustinov,
/v/
"f" of
"ph" Stephen
"v" Vacate, vaccine, vacuum, vain, vale, valentine, Valkyrie, value, Vancouver, vane,
variation, varsity, vein, vengeance, have, hive, live, love, mauve, driving, living, Steven,
stevedore.
"vv" savvy
HISTORY:
of the letters:
FROM WIKIPEDIA:
F The Phoenician form of the letter was adopted into Greek as a vowel, upsilon (which resembled its descendant, ‹Y›, but was also ancestor to Roman letters ‹U›, ‹V›, and ‹W›); and with another form, as a consonant, digamma, which resembled ‹F›, but indicated the pronunciation /w/, as in Phoenician. (Later on, /w/ disappeared from Greek, resulting in digamma being used as a numeral only.)
In Etruscan, ‹F› also represented /w/; however, they formed the digraph ‹FH› to represent /f/; when the Romans picked up, the letter, they had already borrowed ‹U› from Greek upsilon to stand for /w/. At the this time, the Greek letter phi ‹Φ› represented an aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive, /pʰ/ though it has now come to approximate the sound of /f/ in Modern Greek.
The lower case ‹f› is not related to the visually similar long s, ‹ſ›. The use of the long s largely died out by the beginning of the 19th century, mostly to prevent confusion with ‹f›.
FROM WIKIPEDIA:
The letter V ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw, as do the modern letters F, U, W, and Y. See F for details.
In Greek, the letter upsilon ‹Υ› was adapted from waw to represent, at first, the vowel /u/ as in "moon". This was later fronted to /y/, the vowel spelled ‹ü› in German.
In Latin, a stemless variant shape of the upsilon was borrowed in early times as V—either directly from the Western Greek alphabet or from the Etruscan alphabet as a middle man—to represent the same /u/ sound, as well as the consonantal /w/. Thus, num — originally spelled ‹NVM› — was pronounced /nuːm/ and via was pronounced /wiːa/. From the first century A.D. on, depending on Vulgar Latin dialect, consonantal /w/ developed into /β/, then later to /v/.
In Roman numerals, the letter V is used to represent the number 5. It was used because it resembled the convention of counting by notches carved in wood, with every fifth notch double-cut to form a "V".
During the late Middle Ages, two forms of ‹v› developed, which were both used for modern ‹u› and ‹v›. The pointed form ‹v› was written at the beginning of a word, while a rounded form ‹u› was used in the middle or end, regardless of sound. So whereas valor and excuse appeared as in modern printing, have and upon were printed ‹haue› and ‹vpon›. The first distinction between the letters ‹u› and ‹v› is recorded in a Gothic alphabet from 1386, where ‹v› preceded ‹u›. By the mid-1500s, the ‹v› form was used to represent the consonant and ‹u› the vowel sound, giving us the modern letter ‹u›. Capital ‹U› was not accepted as a distinct letter until many years later.[2]
PHONETIC NOTATION: represented by lower case f and v
Similar sounds in IPA:
labiodental approximant ʋ
labiodental nasal ɱ
bilabial fricatives ɸ β
using f or v in place of th sounds "th fronting" in Southern England working class accents, like Cockney
using labiodental place on preceding nasals, e.g. invest, infer, emphasis, emphysema, lymph with ɱ
VARIATIONS
use of bilabial fricative in its place ʋ
Challenge for Dutch/German article: Voiced labiodental fricatives or glides - all the same to Germans? by Silke Hamann* & Anke Sennema‡
List of languages that have f and ʋ
Language f v ʋ ɸ β
Danish f Ø ʋ Ø Ø three-way distinction
Dutch fits oːvən ʋɑŋ Ø in some Belgian dialects the /ʋ/ phoneme is realized as [β] three-way distinction
English f v 'red' Ø Ø two-way distinction –
( Wikipedia entry claims labialized /r/)
Finnish f Ø ʋ Ø Ø two-way distinction
German f
“fau”
v
“we”
Ø Ø Ø two-way distinction –
approximant allophone of /v/ in Southern varieties
Hawaiian Ø Ø ʋ Ø Ø May also be realized as [w] or [v].
Hindi f Ø ʋ Ø Ø two-way distinction –
Serbo-Croatian f Ø ʋ Ø Ø May also be realized as [v], depending on the speaker's dialect.
Norwegian f Ø ʋ Ø Ø
Japanese Ø Ø Ø ɸ β these are considered weak forms of /p/ and /b/
Ewe f͈ v͈ Ø ɸ β Ewe is one of the few languages known to contrast [f] vs. [ɸ] and [v] vs. [β]. The f and v are stronger than in most languages, [f͈] and [v͈], and thus more distinctive from the rather weak [ɸ] and [β].
Japanese: e.g. Mt. Fuji is said with ɸɯdʑi or "furigana" sounds more like "hurigana" to most English speakers, almost ʍ
Hindi-English: very well with ʋ
devoicing of final voiced labiodental fricative /v/ becomes /f/
Old fashioned Cockney "a wery fine vife". Is it labiodental approximant ʋ?
Shaw: thought it was fictional until he heard someone actually said it
The Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language
Traditional West Country /v/ for /f/ in Lear "varmer" for "farmer" and "volk" for "folk"
Use of /b/ in place of /v/ in Spanish: On the Labiodental Pronunciation of Spanish /b/ among Teachers of Spanish as a Second
Language Author(s): John J. Stevens
Source: Hispania, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Mar., 2000), pp. 139-149
"phonic variants to the Modern Spanish voiced bilabialphoneme /b/, orthographically b or v: a voiced bilabial stop [b], which
is said to occur after a pause or a nasal; and a voiced bilabial fricative which occurs [β], elsewhere (Alarcos 1994; D'Introno, Del
Teso, and Weston 1995; Real Academia Españiola 1992). The voiced labiodental [v], if mentioned at all, is not generally considered to form part of the Spanish allophonic inventory (Barrutia and Schwegler 1994).
Pedantic /v/, hypercorrect, used to demonstrate orthographic differences, which has been part of Spanish teaching until mid-20th century when it was abandoned by the Real Academia Españiola
- "So, you teach 'boice'?" story
Our email: glossonomia@gmail.com
Word! Shut. Up. This week, Phil and Eric explore the mid-central vowel space, including [ɘ, ɵ, ə, ɜ, ɞ, ɐ] and even discuss the (completely theoretical at this point) new symbol [a]. Yes, we do explore the strut and nurse lexical sets, too.
Show Notes:
Phonemes are “the idea of a sound”, the building blocks we have in our minds that help us construct words. One can say they are the smallest segment of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between words. Phones, on the other hand, is the physical and acoustic realization of that phoneme, “what comes out your mouth.” Different accents can have different phones to represent the same phoneme.
Allophones are variants of a phoneme, based on the context where the phoneme occurs. So there are different allophones of /t/ initially or following /s/: initial /t/ is aspirated [tʰ], while /t/ following /s/ is unaspirated [st=].
Examples of unstressed vs. stressed mid-vowels: about vs. love, probably [əˈbaʊt] vs. [lʌv], depending on your accent.
Vowel quality: “The articulatory features that distinguish different vowel sounds are said to determine the vowel's quality. Daniel Jones developed the cardinal vowel system to describe vowels in terms of the common features height (vertical dimension), backness (horizontal dimension) and roundedness (lip position). There are however still more possible features of vowel quality, such as the velum position (nasality), type of vocal fold vibration (phonation), and tongue root position.”—Wikipedia
Daniel Jones’ map of the Cardinal Vowels, compared to his realization of his RP vowels, marked in red.
The official IPA Vowel Chart, showing the central vowels down the centre line. The newly recommended symbol, small cap A would be placed in the middle between [a] and [ɑ].
Phil’s journey of the central vowels:
ə → ɨ
ɘ → ɤ
Eric’s close-mid exploration (Front-central-back): e → ɘ → ɤ
ə → ɜ
Phil’s open-mid exploration (Front-central-back): ɛ → ɜ → ʌ
Phil’s unrounding of the open-mid vowel (staying back): ɔ → ʌ
Phil’s comparison of the open-mid unrounded vowel with and without tongue root retraction: ʌ → ʌ̙ →ʌ →ʌ̙
[ Phil and Eric then get confused, or at least Eric confuses matters because he thinks Phil is discussing /ɐ/, while Phil means to discuss /a/. ]
Eric thinks that a (aka “type A” for Eric, “print A” for Phil) looks like a typewriter. The top part of it, the hook, looks like the carriage return, while the bowl of the glyph looks like the body of the character. Phil described the hook as like a partridge’s crest. ( I think he was think of the bird, not Danny...)
He thinks ɐ (aka “turned type/print A”) looks like an italic e with a little hook or crest on the upper left.
ə → ɜ → ɐ
Eric thinks of how to find ɐ as a backed version of æ
æ → ɐ
Another variable: lip rounding.
Unrounded vs. Rounded
(barred i) ɨ - ʉ (barred u)
(reversed e) ɘ - ɵ (Brigitte barred-O)
(schwa) ə - ə̹ (schwa with lip rounding)
ɜ - ɞ (“the sideways butt”)
(turned type A) ɐ - ɐ̹ (turned type A with lip rounding)
Discussion of the proposed vowel [a], as an open central vowel.
Phil: “The tension between the phonetic reality and the phonemic reality is a very fraught one.”
From Wikipedia: In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that certain pairs of physical properties, like position and momentum, cannot both be known to arbitrary precision. That is, the more precisely one property is known, the less precisely the other can be known.
comma and strut
n.b. We’re focusing on the non-rhotic (r-less) version of the lexical sets at this point.
nurse and strut
“Winnie ther Pooh” vs. “Winnie thuh Pooh”, i.e. probably perceived as a nurse vowel rather than as a strut vowel, as Phil might imagine “the” as when in stressed form.
strut Spelling conventions:
cup, cut, suck, much, snuff, fuss, rush,
rub, bud, jug, budge, buzz,
hum, run, lung, dull,
pulse, bulge, punch, lump, hunt, trunk,
butter, study, punish, number, mustn't, Guthrie,…;
done, come, love, mother, stomach,
monk, tongue, onion, money, front,…;
touch, enough, young, double, southern, country,…;
blood, flood.
—J.C. Wells’ Lexical Sets from Accents of English, vol. 1, Ch. 2
“oo” and “ou” would have been more /u/ or /ʊ/-like, similar to what we get in the Midlands of the UK today.
Phil calls the symbol ʌ, turned-v, while Eric calls it hut.
nurse Spelling conventions:
Typical Spellings: -ur, -or, -ir, -er, -earC
usurp, hurt, lurk, church, turf, purse
curb, curd, urge, curve, furze,
turn, curl, spur, occurred,
burnt, burst, murder, further,
shirt, irk, birch, birth, bird, dirge
firm, girl, fir, stirred, first, circus, virtue,…;
myrrh, myrtle, Byrne;
twerp, assert, jerk, perch, serf, berth, terse,
verb, erg, emerge, nerve,
term, stern, deter, err,' preferred
certain, person, immersion, emergency, kernel
Earp, earth, dearth, hearse, rehearse, search
heard1 earn, yearn, earl, pearl,
rehearsal, early, earnest;
wort, work, worth, worse, word, worm, whorl,
worst, Worthing, worthy, whortleberry;
scourge, adjourn, courteous,2 journal, journalist, journey;
attorney, colonel, liqueur, masseur, connoisseur.
—J.C. Wells’ Lexical Sets from Accents of English, vol. 1, Ch. 2
Discussion of [ʌ] for strut and other options.
This chart is something Eric whipped up for a class showing possible ranges where his (Canadian) students might expect to find their own realization of the vowels. You can see how the [ʌ] takes up more “turf” on the chart than any other symbol, hence it is the largest state in the contiguous united states of the Glossonomia.
Phil’s joke re Oklahoma didn’t elicit much laughter from Eric because his knowledge of US geography sucks. This picture did draw forth a smile as he finally got what Phil was talking about...
Then we go on to listen to a sample collected by Peter Trudgill, comparing putt and bird, which are good examples of strut and nurse.
Phil keeps referring to the Phonetic Symbol Guide by William A. Ladusaw and Geoffrey K. Pullum. He also mentioned the famed phoneticians Daniel Jones and Henry Sweet at other points in the show.
Eric whips out his copy of Speak with Distinction and lists off information about how Edith Skinner described /ɜ / as higher than both schwa and /ʌ /.
Eric and Phil discuss the cognitive dissonance that arises from students rejecting the IPA when it isn't neat and easy. It's a good thing when it happens with students, figuring stuff out in class; it's not so much good when working with clients on a show!
Variations/Realizations in Various Accents:
strut: Phil takes us through a few variations from [stɹʊt stɹɒt stɹət stɹɘt stɹat]
Phil discusses Phonology & Orthoepy by Albert Salisbury, and how he guided pronunciations for the strut and nurse sets (scans at right taken from Google Books).
We then go on to talk about other variations of the nurse set, to talk about the New York and Louisiana sound of [ɒɪ ʌɪ].
Eric talks about nurse in African Englishes trading phones with dress lexical set.
Phil mentions that nurse keeps its rhoticity in "otherwise completely rhotic" accents, such as many Southern US accents, NYC and Boston, and Eric brings up New England English, with its non-rhotic nurse vowel, a la Mayor Quimby.
Our email: glossonomia@gmail.com
Seeing how his daughter, Maja, was studying Spanish and knew a lot more about seseo/ceceo/distinción than we did, Phil chose to interview her for a short briefing on the ins and outs of the “th” sound ipa [θ] in Spanish.
Think about this: hosts Phil Thompson and Eric Armstrong are delving into the sounds represented by the spelling “th” this week. In the course of it, they’ll chat about how the sound is rare in the world’s languages, how it’s formed in various varieties of English around the world, and its use in Spanish.
Show Notes:
The show starts with an Audio Comment from Erik Singer re barred i and they guys’ response.
"th" sounds
In the world's languages, they are fairly rare. 40 languages appear on the WALS "Presence of Uncomon Consonants" map for the /th/ sounds.
Dental, interdental, variability in amount of tongue. Culturally different. Maddieson & Ladefoged in "The Sounds of the World's Languages" studied Americans and Brits, and 90% of the US speakers made interdental articulations, while 90% of the British speakers made dental articulations. Jespersen suggests (in Maddieson/Ladefoged) that articulations are dictated partly by dentition: if you have gaps in your teeth (or none) you may articulate differently.
• "showing the tongue" to aid lip reading in emphatic speech.
IPA Symbol ð:
Eth is used in Old English, Icelandic, Faroese, and Elfdalian. In most languages it represents the voiced dental fricative. Symbol is called [ɛð], while Eth [ɛθ] is a woman's name.
Voicing: voiced
Place: Dental or Interdental
Manner: Fricative
Occurrence: is far more common in English, due to the high frequency of function words with ð sounds in English, such as then, the, they, their, those, etc.
IPA Symbol θ:
Theta symbol is the lowercase Greek letter, which represents the voiceless dental fricative in Greek.
Voicing: voiceless
Place: Dental or Interdental
Manner: Fricative
History: Though the sounds are Germanic in their "roots", almost all Germanic languages have lost /th/ sounds. Only English and Icelandic retain it.
/th/ is part of Castilian Spanish. Known as "Ceceo" [θeθeo] it contrasts with "seseo" . Urban Legend of "Prestige Borrowing"; however, it's not true, as the person credited with documenting the lisp wrote about it 200 years before the use of /θ/ began.
la casa "the house" la caza "the hunt"
distinción /la ˈkasa/ /la ˈkaθa/
ceceo /la ˈkaθa/ /la ˈkaθa/
seseo /la ˈkasa/ /la ˈkasa/
Variations
th-Fronting /f/ and /v/ like in Cockney and other working class accents of Southern English English, AAVE finally
th-Alveolarization /s/ and /z/ like in Parisian French English, African Englishes,
Th-debuccalization /h/ in Scots English (mainly in Glasgow) "three" becomes "hree"
Th-stopping /t/ and /d/ like in Quebecois English, Caribbean English, Nigerian English, and Liberian English, AAVE initially
BUT NOT really in Hiberno-English, some Newfoundland English, NY/NJ English, Indian English, where /th/ becomes more dentalized, so "den/then" aren't homophones.
Icelandic and Danish have lamino-alveolar non-sibilant fricative allophones with teeth fairly far apart. (Sibilance is created "downstream" of the constriction where the turbulence strikes structures beyond the point constriction (e.g. the gum ridge and/or teeth). IPA θ̠ ð̠
Speech Disorders:
Dental/interdental Lisp, as an allophone of /s/ and /z/. "Ethel Thayer; thounds like I'm lithping" —On Golden Pond.
It’s the “Schwapisode” this week! Hosts Phil Thompson and Eric Armstrong get right into the middle of things (or at least, into the middle of the vowel space) to talk about the mid-central vowel, the most popular vowel in the English language.
Show Notes:
Schwa, the term: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa#The_term " The word schwa is from the Hebrew word shva (שְׁוָא shewa’, /ʃəˈwa/, modern pronunciation: shva /ʃva/), which designates the Hebrew niqqud vowel sign shva,” “that in modern Hebrew indicates either the phoneme /e/ or the complete absence of a vowel. Also the Hebrew shva is sometimes represented by the upside-down e symbol for Schwa, a misleading transliteration, since the Schwa vowel is not representative of modern Hebrew pronunciation of shva and is not characteristic of earlier pronunciations either (see Tiberian vocalization → Mobile Shwa = Shwa na'). The spelling "schwa" is German in origin."
From the online etymology dictionary: lit. "emptiness."
Schwa is [uh] the [uh] sound that many [uh] English speakers use as a [uh] filler sound. (In other cases, North American speakers use something in the range of [ʌ] or [ɐ]).
SPELLING:
Can be represented by every vowel in the English alphabet.
• like the in about
• like the
• like the in pencil
• like the
• like the in supply
• like the
Scadoosh and the case of the Schwa—the story of the word used by Jack Black in Kung Fu Panda— by Benjamin Zimmer on Language Log http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=288 (How do we spell this new word? Skidoosh, skudoosh, skedoosh, skadoosh?)
*Digression: Rhotic vs. Non-rhotic accents
"rhotic schwa" aka "schwer" or "flying schwa"
In non-rhotic accents, letter and comma share the vowel schwa on sounds spelled as
• -er in letter
• -or in actor
• -o(u)r in colo(u)r
• -yr in martyr
• -ure in figure
CONTRAST "stressed schwa" (in some accents NURSE, in others STRUT) with "unstressed schwa"
Schwa in "centering diphthongs"
- When the schwa is at the end of a diphthong
near, square, cure, [ north/force, start ]
*Digression: smoothing of square, (near), north/force, start
- Strong forms and weak forms
to before vowels.
Can, from, of, what, want to
photography
Syllabic Consonants -tion -dl
Lenin/Lenon
Rosa's roses
From Fleming & Johnson's Rosa’s roses: reduced vowels in American English in JIPA Journal of the International Phonetic Association (April 2007), 37 (1), pg. 83-9
Ultimately: word-final schwa is much more mid-central, while reduced vowels are generally high.
Jack Windsor Lewis http://www.yek.me.uk/spellings.html English Spellings vis a vis Phonemes has loads of examples of schwa in different contexts, including the exceptions that aren’t schwa.
For example (these should be said with schwa on the -man ending):
barman, chairman, churchman, clergyman, dairyman, dustman, fireman, foreman, Frenchman, freshman, frogman, gentleman, horseman, henchman, infantryman, madman, milkman, penman, ploughman, policeman, salesman, seaman, spokesman, statesman, tradesman, Walkman, woodman
Exceptions with /ӕ/: caveman, chessman, conman, gasman, handyman, jazzman, Kingsman, middleman, snowman, superman, whiteman
Schwa epenthesis : inserting a schwa where there “isn’t one” in the orthography. Examples:
fillum for film
were-unt [wɝ.ɹənt] for weren't
Growen [ˈɡɹoʊ.ən] for grown, knowen [ˈnoʊ.ən] for known
From wikipedia: An example in an English song is "The Umbrella Man", where the meter requires "umbrella" to be pronounced with four syllables, um-buh-rel-la
Other Examples:
Dwight [dəˈwaɪt]
realtor [ˈɹilətɚ]
Yogi Bear says "pic-a-nic basket" for "picnic basket."
ath-e-lete [ˈæθəˌlit]
triath-a-lon [tɹaɪˈæθəˌlɒn]
VARIATIONS:
• final schwa more "hut" like [ʌ] in North America
• in New Zealand, KIT is schwa "fush and chups"
• "New Zealand Sucks" vs. "Australia Sivern"
• final -ow in "window, tomato, potato, fellow" as schwa
Episode 6 sees Eric and Phil dissecting the final pair of stop/plosive sounds in English: /k/ and /ɡ/. As always, we work our way around the task of describing the sounds, their history, and usage in the course of about an hour and 10 minutes.
Show Notes:
Correction: Phil referred to "Findlay" as derived from Finn's Lea, but it turns out that it's from Gaelic, and that means Fionnlagh – "fair warrior." Bradley would have been a much better example: Brad=broad and Lea=meadow.
voiceless/voiced velar plosive: co-articulation, double action of closing the mouth with the back of the tongue at the soft palate, and closing off the nasal passage by lifting the soft palate at the velo-pharyngeal port.
Let’s take a tour of the anatomy. This will help us to deal with the idea that /t/ is apico alveolar but /k/ is dorsovelar
The Roof of the Mouth
Tectal: an adjective derived from the anatomical term "tectum," a roof-like structure.
Labia/labial: the lips; bilabial with both lips, labio-dental with lower lip and upper teeth, as in /f/ and /v/. (For people with an extreme overbite, one might make a dento-labial sound (upper lip and lower teeth.)
Dental: the teeth (as heard in the “th” sounds, /θ/ & /ð/ )
Alveolar ridge/alveolar: the gum ridge, behind the upper front teeth
Palate/palatal: the hard palate, rising up behind the alveolar ridge. Phil describes a small hole in his palate; Eric, in searching the net for information on this, could only find stuff about "Jacobsen's Organ" aka Vomeronasal organ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vomeronasal_organ, an auxiliary olfactory sense organ; it's thoroughly debatable whether it exists in humans at all. Who knows what Phil has? (apparently, he hasn't had any of this since college days...)
Velum/velar: the soft palate, behind the hard palate
Uvula/uvular: the "small grape"-like structure that hangs down from the arch of the soft palate
Pharynx/pharyngeal: the column or space behind the tongue, the "chimney" that goes from the larynx up to the nose
Epiglottis/epiglottal: the flap-like value that protects the larynx during swallowing
Glottis/glottal: the vocal folds (technically the SPACE between the vocal folds, which disappears every time the vocal folds vibrate
Ari-Epiglottal/ False Vocal Folds: [there was some debate between Phil and Eric how Dudley Do-Right sounded, and whether it was ari-epiglottal tension or velar tension...
The Parts of the Tongue
Tip or Apex/apical: front edge of the tongue, the 'rim' of the tongue
Blade or Lamina/laminal: the front part of the tongue, the top surface
Back or Dorsum/dorsal: the back of the tongue, which is subdivided into:
Front, Middle, Back, or, Front and Back —antero-dorsal or postero-dorsal
Root or Radix/radical: the root of the tongue
/k/ and /ɡ/ are different from other plosives because it is made on the back of the tongue, which works in a more gross manner
can be made further forward /ki/ or further back /kɑ/.
Challenge of learning /k/ and /ɡ/ for children because they are made further back in the mouth
The McGurk Effect
Experiment: Can you identify Phil's 3 sounds?
World Atlas of Language Structures: http://wals.info/
WALS shows 2,650 languages and notes 32 missing / ɡ /
Languages that are missing /ɡ/ but not /k/
From Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_velar_plosive ] "Of the six plosives that would be expected from the most common pattern world-wide—that is, three places of articulation plus voicing ([p b, t d, k ɡ])—[p] and [ɡ] are the most frequently missing, being absent in about 10% of languages that otherwise have this pattern.[...] It seems that [ɡ] is somewhat more difficult to articulate than the other basic plosives.
"Ian Maddieson speculates that this may be due to a physical difficulty in voicing velars: Voicing requires that air flow into the mouth cavity, and the relatively small space allowed by the position of velar consonants means that it will fill up with air quickly, making voicing difficult to maintain in [ɡ] for as long as it is in [d] or [b]."
HISTORY OF THE LETTERS:
In Greek the symbol of the K (Kappa) turned the "right way" (the way it is in our writing), prior to this it was facing the other direction. Gamma was brought into Latin to represent the C. C had a line added to it to indicate the voiced version, G.
SPELLINGS:
k “key, keep, koala, kangaroo” “mask, make, pink, walk”
c “cat, cost, cut” (contrast “cease, ace, ,macerate ”) Hard/soft
cc “accuse, stucco”
ck “pick, stock”
ch “charisma, Christ, choir, ache”
Shakespeare's "Petruchio" probably should be [pəʼtɹu.tʃo] not [pəʼtɹu.ki.oʊ]
g “game, gate, bag, agony” (contrast “gem, badge,magical ”) Hard/soft
gg “egg, dagger”
gh “ghost, ghetto” (contrast “night, ought”)
gu “guide, guest, guerrilla” foreign origin
ckg blackguard
x “examine, exhaust”
Note that "x" can be /ks/ or /gz/ depending on the word, e.g. /ks/ "excellent" , /gz/ "exist".
Soft G is the affricate /dʒ/, while Soft C is /s/.
PHONETIC NOTATION: represented by lower case k and ɡ
IPA symbol for /ɡ/ is the "single-story" version of the g lowercase with an open tail, rather than a looptail.
VARIATIONS:
Not a lot of variations: mostly to do with voice onset time
Variation: final /k/ becoming fricative in Liverpool
week [wiç], like [laiç], back [bax], dock [dɒχ]
John Maidment, commenting on JC Wells' blog post on "VOT is more":
"One might also like to add that VOT is sensitive to place of articulation. Other things being equal, the VOT of posterior articulations, velar and uvular, are considerably longer, at least for native English speakers, than articulations further forward in the vocal tract. A typical VOT for stressed syllable initial [k] in English is in the region of 120ms, while that for an equivalent [p]is only 60-70ms. I am pretty sure that this difference is an important secondary cue for the perception of place in voiceless plosives and one which, as far as I know, has not been properly investigated."
Non-English Stop plosives
Palatalized stops (often heard in Russian, [tʲ] [dʲ] vs. Palatal stop [c] or [ɟ]
Uvular stop, as in Arabic pronunciation of Qatar or Iraq [q].
Though it's unlikely that a character will do a sound substitution on stop-plosives, however, characters might speak foreign language work, or say words within the text, such as place names or character names.
Original Pronunciation: David Crystal is the leading proponent of this type of pronunciation, especially at the Globe Shakespeare Company in London. http://www.davidcrystal.com/DC_articles/Shakespeare11.pdf
Eric Armstrong and Phil Thompson whistle a happy tune: this week, we’re exploring the vowel sound found at the end of words like "happy."
Show Notes:
• for some this is perceived as being an /i/ sound, for others an /ɪ/ sound, and for many (especially around where I live) a sound that is neither of those. What's going on here?
• FORMATION: Weak Close-ish Front-ish Unrounded Vowel
• SPELLING: Group A "y" (itchy, angry, silly etc.), "ie" (sortie, boogie, movie), "i" ( Fettucini, linguine, martini, bikini). Historical (especially in verse) price [əi]; Group B "-ee", "-ey", "-ea" Historical face, [e]
• HISTORY: Group A (sunny, taxi, prairie) was [əi] or [e] (coffee, honey, Chelsea) in Middle English. More recent load words are spelled 'i'.
‣ -y endings and -ie and -ies endings
‣ -ier (happier), -iest (happiest), -ying (hurrying)
‣ prefixes before a vowel re- (react), pre- (preoccupied), de- (deactivate), semi/demi- (demigod)
‣ -iate and -ious when they have 2 syllables (appreciate, hilarious)
‣ weak form "he, she, we, me, be," (and archaic "thee"?)
• Some people argue that it's heard in weak "-ing" (gerund/present participle) endings [we disagree, generally]
• In some dialects, days of the week (e.g. "Monday, Tuesday, etc.), though this is now becoming at best "conservative" speech.
• Piers Messum at UCL coined the term "Schwi" (for happy) and "Schwu" (for inflUence) which, I believe, he's no longer advocating.
• 3 way contrast:
‣ Rosa's, roses, Rosie's
‣ [ɹoʊzəz, ɹoʊzɪz, ɹoʊziz]
(schwa, weak /ɪ/, happY)
• Note that there are weak final /i/ vowels that aren't reduced, e.g. "manatee"
• Distribution: both Checked and Free syllables — apart from schwa, only Free weak vowel in English (which may be why some people use [i] )
• Review: checked? free?
PHONETIC NOTATION: It Depends. Either represented "as it's said" (narrow phonetic transcription, so i & ɪ are used with diacritic marks), or with lower case i without a length mark (a phonemic transcription, like one finds in LPD); sometimes represented with barred-i [ɨ], though that's not canonical. So it doesn't have a cardinal number, really. (If one used barred-i, I suppose you could argue that it's Cardinal 17 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_central_unrounded_vowel )
Quite a lot of variation (in accents): Onglides fairly common [əi] or [əɪ]; more conservative (English and US Southern) accents use /ɪ/ , parts of Scotland use [e], Nottingham goes all the way to [ɛ] though this appears to be changing toward [i]. When this change towards [i] occurs, linguists say that the phoneme is getting more "tense" , so it's a case of “happy-tensing”.
• Happy-Tensing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_high_front_vowels#Happy_tensing
Queen's speech is undergoing happy tensing, though a study of her Xmas broadcasts (1957 » 2009) shows that her kit vowel has changed more significantly than her happy vowel, though most people don't seem to notice the difference in her kit sound!
We’re digging into /t/ and /d/ on Glossonomia this week. Hosts Phil Thompson and Eric Armstrong discuss how we make this cognate pair of consonants, voiceless and voiced alveolar stop/plosives.
Today’s Topics include:
• the concept of Lenition (softening), in particular, the terms Fortis vs. Lenis.
• Voice Onset Time (VOT): when does the voicing begin? Normally, /t/ in English is aspirated at the beginning of stressed syllables. In English, initial /d/ in stressed syllables is, essentially voiceless but unaspirated, whereas intervocalic (between two vowels).
• In Phonecian, the word for the letter D was, in fact “door”—daleth.
• T comes from Greek Tau, and Semitic Tav, which resembled a simple cross.
• Spellings: t (Ted, atop, get), th (Thames, Thomas, thyme), pt- (ptarmigan, pterodactyl, pterigoid)
• Wikipedia has a paragraph on the origins of the name Thames, and its Greek influenced Th- spelling
• IPA [th] for aspiration, [t=] for unaspirated; [d]
• There is no perfect phonetic way to notate things; there are many ways to heaven in the phonetic realm
• Apart from English, there are many languages where /t/ is not aspirated
• “Cool” words of the week—prevocalic: before a vowel; postvocalic: after a vowel; intervocalic: between 2 vowels.
• No audible release of final /t/ “but, not, that” IPA [ bʌt ̚ nɒt ̚ ðæt ̚ ]
• devoicing of consonant clusters tr-, -tl, tw-,
• preceding /s/, as in steam, “deaspirates” the /t/, and may reduce the devoicing in stream.
• past-participles: -ed endings following a voiceless consonant are /t/ e.g. hoped is pronounced [ hoʊpt ], following a voiced consonant or vowel are pronounced /d/
• Orthoepy: the “correct” pronunciation of a language, or a tradition of pronouncing words as they are spelled; e.g. often with a /t/ or not
• Intervocalic /t/: In North America typically a voiced tap [ɾ] or [ t̬ ]
• Sound Patterns of Spoken English by Lynda Shockey
• Glottaling, using the glottal stop, as it “Hit me, baby, one more time”
• Assimilation, where the sound is moved to the place of the following consonant
• Glottal reinforcement: /t/ supported by closure in the glottis
• Ejectives: non-pulmonic is “not from the lungs” IPA [ t’ ]: the glottis is closed and the larynx rises to pressurize the [ t’ ] behind the closure at the gum ridge
• geminate or twinned consonants, e.g. hit Ted, either the first is unreleased, or we may use “double tapping” (to release both /t/ sounds)
• Raymond Hickey Irish English Resource Centre slit /t/ and in Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand; Kath & Kim’s grayshsh; JIPA: The acoustic character of fricated /t/ in Australian English: A comparison with /s/ and /ʃ/ by Mark J. Jones and Kirsty McDougall
• Palatal versions of /t/ and /d/ (IPA [c] and [ɟ] )
• Back of tongue sloppiness vs. Front of tongue agility; greater phonetic variation with tongue tip
• /t/ epenthesis, e.g. Prince vs. prints; tense vs. tents; sense vs. cents
• Prescriptions: watch out for [ts] in initial settings “splashy /t/”; skills to be able to do unaspirated /t/ or to have an early voice onset on /d/ (I’d probaby notate that as [d̬]
“Some of the things we’re talking about are questions of precision. ‘Inappropriate Precision’ is what robots do. What dancers do is ‘appropriate precision,’ we hope. And so, dancers of the mouth ought to be equivalently curious about, and in love with, the possibility of precision but only as it achieves the gracefulness, or expressiveness, or wildness that’s required of the artistic endeavour in front of them.”
Next week we’re on to the vowel sound happY.
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This is it. Hosts Phil Thompson and Eric Armstrong chat about the phoneme /ɪ/ and the lexical set ‘kit’. On the way, they discuss the history of the vowel, compare it to the /i/ ‘fleece’ vowel, and /ə/ ‘schwa,’ delve into accent variations of ‘kit’, pin/pen in the American South, and the traditional usage of the terms “dialect” and “acccent” in North American theatre.
Phil, at one point says that “language is a dialect with a navy.” He was, of course, referring to the famous Yiddish quote from Max Weinreich: "A shprakh iz a diyalekt mit an armey un a flot" —'A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.'
In this episode, we talk about the stop plosive consonant pair [p] and [b], also known as bilabial plosives, “exploding” consonants made with both lips. In the course of our chat, we talk about twinned or “geminate” consonants, vowels vs. consonants, “the river of speech,” voice onset time (VOT), aspiration, and other topics!
In this episode of Glossonomia, Phil and Eric introduce the new podcast and talk through the “ee” vowel (IPA [i]), found in the lexical set word fleece. We cover the history of the sound and its spellings, how the symbol appears in the IPA, and variations commonly heard. The vowel is also known as “Cardinal 1”, hence the picture of the lip-position from Daniel Jones. You can hear Jones speak the vowel himself on the site of the Phonetics Group of the Universiteit Utrecht.
[This episode was our first, and so the audio quality is not as good as it could be! Please be patient with the echo quality. Hopefully future episodes will sound much better...]