Lecture 1 Phonetics as a Linguistic Science Plan

Frequency is the number of vibrations per second generated by the vocal cords. Frequency produced by the vibration of the vocal cords over their whole length is the fundamental frequency. It determines the musical pitch of the tone and forms an acoustic basis of speech melody.

Frequency is measured in hers or cycles per second (ops).

Intensity of speech sounds depends on the amplitude of vibrations. Changes in intensity are associated with stress in those languages which have force stress, or dynamic stress.

Intensity is measured in decibels (dbs).

Like any other form of matter, sound exists and moves in time. Any sound has a certain duration. The duration of a sound is the quantity of time during which the same pattern of vibration is maintained. For this reason the duration of a sound is often referred to as its quantity. The duration of speech sounds is usually measured in milliseconds (msec.).

I t has already been mentioned that the vocal tone is the result of complex vibrations. The whole length of the vocal cords vibrates to produce the fundamental tone (see Fig.1). In addition, each part of the vocal cords vibrates simultaneously to produce partial tones (overtones or harmonics, see Fig.2).

The frequency of the overtones is higher than that of the fundamental tone. Complex vibrations resulting from the superposition of the fundamental and partial vibrations can be presented in the following way.

The complex tone is modified in the resonance chambers (the pharyngial, oral and nasal cavities). These chambers can assume an infinite number of shapes, each of which has a characteristic vibrating resonance of its own. Those overtones of the complex tone which coincide with the chamber’s own vibrating resonance are considerably intensified. Thus, certain bands of strongly intensified overtones are characteristic of a particular shape, size and volume of the resonator which produces a certain vowel sound. These bands of frequencies are intensified whatever the fundamental frequency. The vowel /ɑ:/, for instance, has one such characteristic band of energy in the region of 800 cps and another at about 1,100 cps; the vowel /i:/ has bands of energy at about 280 cps and 2,500 cps, irrespective of the pitch of the voice.

The complex range of frequencies of varying intensity which form the quality of a sound is known as the acoustic spectrum. The bands of energy in the spectrum which are characteristic of a particular sound are known as the sounds formants. Thus formants of /ɑ:/ occur in the region 800 and 1,100cps; the formants of /i:/ occur in

the region of 280 and 2500 cps. It is known that vowel sounds have at least two formats –F1 and F2, which are responsible for the particular quality (timbre) of each vowel type. F1 is characterized by lower frequencies than F2. The format of the fundamental tone (marked by F0) is irrelevant to vowel differentiation. F0 is present in the spectra of vowels, sonants and voiced consonants because these sounds are formed with voice. It is absent in the spectra of voiceless consonants.

The spectra of consonants have no sharply defined formant structure. There are concentrations of energy at high frequencies or no energy, at a low, fundamental frequency.

The auditory (sound-perception) aspect Every act of oral communication presupposes the presence of at least two persons: the speaker and the hearer. The former produces speech sounds, the latter perceives them. Thus speech sounds may also be analysed from the point of view of perception.

The perception of speech sounds involves the activity of our hearing mechanism, which can be viewed in two ways.

On the one hand, it is a physiological mechanism which reacts to acoustic stimuli. The human ear transforms mechanical vibrations of the air into nervous stimuli and transmits them to the brain.

On the other hand, it is also a psychological mechanism which selects from the great amount of acoustic information only that which is linguistically significant. The human brain interprets acoustic phenomena in terms of a given language system. In this way, different acoustic stimuli may be interpreted as being the same sound unit. Thus for an Englishman the soft /l/ as in “let” and the hard / ł / as in “tell” are one and same unit, as the difference between them is not significant in distinguishing words or grammatical forms in English. A Russian would consider these sounds as different units, since in the Russian language the soft /л’/ as in “мель” and the hard /л/ as in ‘мел” serve to differentiate words. A listener’s reactions are conditioned by his experience of handling his own language.

In what way does the human ear perceive and interpret the acoustic properties of speech sounds-frequencies, intensity, duration?

The same frequency of vibrations is always perceived as the same pitch regardless of the other qualities of the vibrating body. The greater the frequency, the higher is the pitch of the voice and vice-versa. Our perception of the pitch of the voice depends largely (but not solely) on the fundamental frequency carried by vowels and other voiced sounds. Impressions of a change of pitch may be induced by variations of intensity on the same frequency. Our perception goes further than the limits of fundamental frequency (the total range of a speaking voice being as extensive as 80-350 cps). The human ear perceives frequencies from 16 cps to about 20,000 cps.

Formant frequencies, which are much higher than the fundamental frequency, determine our identification of different qualities of speech sounds.

Changes in intensity are perceived by our ear as variations in the loudness of a sound. The greater the intensity of a sound, the louder the sound. But our perception of loudness does not depend on intensity alone. A sound or a syllable may be perceived as louder, in comparison with neighboring sounds or syllables, because there is a marked pitch change on it or because it is longer than the others.

Furthermore, some sounds, owing to their nature, are louder or more sonorous than others. This /ɑ:/ is more powerful than /i:/, and vowels generally have more carrying power than consonants.

Our judgments relating to loudness are not as fine as those relating to either quality or pitch.

Different duration of speech sounds is perceived as a difference in their length. The time necessary for the recognition of a sound depends on the nature of the sound and the pitch. The minimum duration of a vowel to be recognized may be 4 msec. But our perception of length does not always correspond to the actual duration of speech sounds or other units. Thus the length of rhythmic groups in an English utterance is considered to be approximately the same since it is a characteristic feature of English rhythm that stressed syllables occur at more or less equal intervals of time. But the actual duration of rhythmic groups is far from being equal. This is an example of how our brain interprets from the acoustic material only that which is linguistically significant.

Our hearing mechanism plays an important role in controlling our own speech. The control of our sound production is complementary to our articulatory habits. The process of communication would be impossible if the speaker himself did not perceive the sounds he pronounces. If this control is disturbed, disturbances in the production or speech sounds are likely to appear.

The linguistic aspect. Speech sounds and prosodic features are linguistic phenomena. They are realizations of language units-phonemes and prosodies. Representing language units in actual speech, speech and prosodic features (pitch, stress, temporal characteristics etc.) perform certain linguistic functions. They constitute meaningful units-morphemes, words, word forms, utterances. All the words of a language consist of speech sounds and have stress. All the utterances consist of words, and, consequently, of sounds; they are characterized by certain pitch-and-stress patterns, temporal features, rhythm.

Speech sounds and prosodic features serve to differentiate the units they form. Communication by means of language is possible only because speech sounds (and prosodic features) can be opposed to one another for purposes of differentiating words, wordforms, and communicative units-utterances.

Simultaneously all the sound phenomena provide a basis for the hearer to identify them as concrete words, word forms or utterances.

Thus, speech sounds and prosodic features of speech perform constitutive, distinctive and identificatory functions.

The linguistic aspect of speech sounds is also called the function or social aspect, because of the role which sound matter plays in the functioning of language as a social phenomenon. Thus, speech sounds and prosodic features are functional and significant phenomena of language.

Depending on which of the aspects of speech sounds is studied, phonetics is subdivided into the following branches.

Physiological phonetics is concerned with the study of speech sounds as physiological phenomena. It deals with our voice-producing mechanism and the way we produce sounds, stress, intonation. It studies respiration, phonation (voice- production), articulation and also the mental processes necessary for the mastery of a phonetic system. Since sounds of speech are no only produced but are also perceived by the listener and the speaker himself, physiological phonetics is also concerned with man’s perception of sounds, pitch variation, loudness and length. In fact, physiological phonetics can be subdivided into articulatory and auditory (perceptual) phonetics.

Methods employed in physiological phonetics are experimental. They involve palatography, laryngoscopy, photography, cinematography, X-ray photography, X-ray cinematography, electromyography and various kinds of technique to study sound-perception.

Acoustic phonetics is concerned with the acoustic aspect of speech sounds. It studies speech sounds with the help of experimental (instrumental) methods. Various kinds of apparatus are applied for analyzing sounds, stress, intonation and other phonetic phenomena. For example, we use spectrographs to analyse the acoustic spectra of sound, oscillographs and intonographs to analyse frequency, intensity and duration. With the help of an electro-acoustic synthesizer synthetic speech is produced which is a good means of testing the results of the electro-acoustic analysis.

Because of the methods used acoustic phonetics is often called experimental phonetics.

Besides these objective methods physiological phonetics uses its oldest subjective method-the method of direct observation. This method involves observation of the movements of speech organs when pronouncing sounds and analysis of one’s muscular sensations during the articulation of speech sounds.

Phonology, or function phonetics, is a purely linguistic branch of phonetics. It deals with the functional aspect of speech sounds. Phonology sets out to determine the phonetic distinctions which have a differential value in a language is as to establish the system of phonemes and prosodemes.

The basis of phonology is the phoneme theory, created in Russia by I.A.Baudonin de Courtenay (1845-1929) and developed by his pupils and followers L.V.Shcherba, N.V.Krushevsky and later by other Russian and foreign linguists. Phonology was founded in Prague by a group of linguists (Trubetskoy, Jacobson and others).

The methods employed by phonology are linguistic.

All the above branches of phonetics are closely connected since the object of their study-speech sounds-is a close unity of acoustic, physiological and linguistic aspects. But not all linguists are of the opinion that phonology is an integral part of phonetics.

N.S.Trubetzkoy claims that phonology should be separated from phonetics. According to the Prague School phonetics and phonology are independent sciences: phonetics is a biological science and is concerned with physical and physiological characteristics of speech sounds, phonology is a linguistic science and is concerned with the social function of phonetic phenomena. This point of view is supported by the Danish linguist L.Hjelmslev who advocates total separation of phonetics and phonology. But the vast majority of Russian phoneticians do not consider it logical to separate function from form and thereby completely exclude phonetics from the linguistic sciences. A great number of phoneticians abroad adhere to the same point of view. For instance, B. Malmberg, a Swedish phonetician, writes as follows:

“It was a grave error on the part of the Prague School to want to establish a strict separation between phonetics and phonology”. “The two types of studies are interdependent and condition each other. Consequently it seems preferable to group them together under the traditional general heading of phonetics”.