| Phonetics dictionary |
| 1 | accent This word is used (rather confusingly) in two different senses: (1) accent may refer to prominence given to a syllable, usually by the use of pitch For example, in the word potato' the middle syllable is the most prominent; if you say the word on its own you will probably produce a fall in pitch on the middle syllable, making that syllable accented In this sense, accent is distinguished from the more general term stress, which is more often used to refer to all sorts of prominence (including prominence resulting from increased loudness, length or sound quality), or to refer to the effort made by the speaker in producing a stressed syllable (2) accent also refers to a particular way of pronouncing: for example, you might find a number of English speakers who all share the same grammar and vocabulary, but pronounce what they say with different accents such as Scots or Cockney, or BBC pronunciation The word accent in this sense is distinguished from dialect, which usually refers to a variety of a language that differs from other varieties in grammar and or vocabulary. |
| 2 | acoustic phonetics An important part of phonetics is the study of the physics of the speech signal: when sound travels through the air from the speaker's mouth to the hearer's ear it does so in the form of vibrations in the air It is possible to measure and analyse these vibrations by mathematical techniques, usually by using specially-developed computer software to produce spectrograms Acoustic phonetics also studies the relationship between activity in the speaker's vocal tract and the resulting sounds Analysis of speech by acoustic phonetics is claimed to be more objective and scientific than the traditional auditory method which depends on the reliability of the trained human ear. |
| 3 | Adam's Apple This is an informal term used to refer to the pointed part of the larynx that can be seen at the front of the throat It is most clearly visible in adult males Moving the larynx up and down (as in swallowing) causes visible movement of this point, which is in fact the highest point of the thyroid cartilage. affricate An affricate is a type of consonant consisting of a plosive followed by a fricative with the same place of articulation: examples are the t+0283 and d sounds at the beginning and end of the English words church' t+0283 t+0283, judge' d+0292 d+0292 (the first of these is voiceless, the second voiced) It is often difficult to decide whether any particular combination of a plosive plus a fricative should be classed as a single affricate sound or as two separate sounds, and the question depends on whether these are to regarded as separate phonemes or not It is usual to regard t+0283, d as affricate phonemes in English (usually symbolised+010d, +01f0 by American writers); ts, dz, tr, dr also occur in English but are not usually regarded as affricates The two phrases why choose' wai t+0283u z and white shoes' wait +0283u z are said to show the difference between the t+0283 affricate (in the first example) and separate t and +0283 (in the second). |
| 4 | airstream All speech sounds are made by making air move Usually the air is moved outwards from the body, creating an egressive airstream; more rarely, speech sounds are made by drawing air into the body – an ingressive airstream The most common way of moving air is by compression of the lungs so that the air is expelled through the vocal tract This is called a pulmonic airstream (usually an egressive pulmonic one, but occasionally speech is produced while breathing in) Others are the glottalic (produced by the larynx with closed vocal folds; it is moved up and down like the plunger of a bicycle pump) and the velaric (where the back of the tongue is pressed against the soft palate, or velum, making an air-tight seal, and then drawn backwards or forwards to produce an airstream) Ingressive glottalic consonants (often called implosives) and egressive ones (ejectives) are found in many non-European languages; click sounds (ingressive velaric) are much rarer, but occur in a number of southern African languages such as Nm, Xhosa and Zulu Speakers of other languages, including English, use click sounds for non-linguistic communication, as in the case of the "tut-tut" (American "tsk-tsk") sound of disapproval. |
| 5 | allophone Central to the concept of the phoneme is the idea that it may be pronounced in many different ways In English (BBC pronunciation) we take it for granted that the r sounds in ray' and tray' are "the same sound" (ie the same phoneme), but in reality the two sounds are very different – the r in ray' is voiced and non-fricative, while the r sound in tray' is voiceless and fricative In phonemic transcription we use the same symbol r for both, but we know that the allophones of r include the voiced non- fricative sound +0279 and the voiceless fricative one +0282 In theory a phoneme can have an infinite number of allophones, but in practice for descriptive purposes we tend to concentrate on a small number that occur most regularly. |
| 6 | alveolar Behind the upper front teeth there is a hard, bony ridge called the alveolar ridge; the skin covering it is corrugated with transverse wrinkles The tongue comes into contact with this in some of the consonants of English and many other languages; sounds such as t, d, s, z, n, l are consonants with alveolar place of articulation. alveolo-palatal When we look at the places of articulation used by different languages, we find many differences in the region between the upper teeth and the front part of the palate It has been proposed that there is difference between alveolo-palatal and palato-alveolar that can be reliably distinguished, though others argue that factors other than place of articulation are usually involved, and there is no longer an alveolo-palatal column on the IPA chart The former place is further forward in the mouth than the latter: the usual example given for a contrast between alveolo-palatal and palato-alveolar consonants is that of Polish +0255 and +0283 as in Kasia' ka +0255a and kasza' ka+0283a. |
| 7 | ambisyllabic We face various problems in attempting to decide on the division of English syllables: in a word like better' bet+0259 the division could be (using the symbol to mark syllable divisions) either bet+0259 or bet+0259, and we need a principle to base our decision on Some phonologists have suggested that in such a case we should say that the t consonant belongs to both syllables, and is therefore ambisyllabic; the analysis ofbetter' bet+0259 is then that it consists of the syllables bet and t+0259. |
| 8 | anterior In phonology it is sometimes necessary to distinguish the class of sounds that are articulated in the front part of the mouth (anterior sounds) from those articulated towards the back of the mouth All sounds forward of palato-alveolar are classed as anterior. apical Consonantal articulations made with the tip of the tongue are called apical; this term is usually contrasted with laminal, the adjective used to refer to tongue-blade articulations It is said that English s is usually articulated with the tongue blade, but Spanish s (when it occurs before a vowel) and Greek s are said to be apical, giving a different sound quality. |
| 9 | approximant This is a phonetic term of comparatively recent origin It is used to denote a consonant which makes very little obstruction to the airflow Traditionally these have been divided into two groups: "semivowels" such as the w in English wet' and j in English yet', which are very similar to close vowels such as u and i but are produced as a rapid glide; and "liquids", sounds which have an identifiable constriction of the airflow but not one that is sufficiently obstructive to produce fricative noise, compression or the diversion of airflow through another part of the vocal tract as in nasals This category includes laterals such as English l in lead' and non-fricative r (phonetically +0279) in read' Approximants therefore are never fricative and never contain interruptions to the flow of air. |
| 10 | articulatororyation active articulator The concept of the articulator is a very important one in phonetics We can only produce speech sound by moving parts of our body, and this is done by the contraction of muscles Most of the movements relevant to speech take place in the mouth and throat area (though we should not forget the activity in the chest for breath control), and the parts of the mouth and throat area that we move when speaking are called articulators The principal articulators are the tongue, the lips, the lower jaw and the teeth, the velum or soft palate, the uvula and the larynx It has been suggested that we should distinguish between active articulators (those which can be moved into contact with other articulators, such as the tongue) and passive articulators which are fixed in place (such as the teeth, the hard palate and the alveolar ridge) The branch of phonetics that studies articulators and their actions is called articulatory phonetics. |
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