Announcements

Homework 1 is due on Sunday at

5:00pm ON THE BUTTON DOT (NOSE)
The late policy includes: NO LATE
HOMEWORK
(A few slides from the end of the last
lecture)
A bit more about consonants
How to categorize vowels
And some more practice!

IPA Symbols for English

Consonants
Unfamiliar IPA symbols, for English
consonants:
[] thought theta
[] though
[] shot
[] vision
[] ring
[j] yes

edh
esh
ezh
engma
yod

[t] chop
[d] jot
[] uh-oh
[ww ] or [] whale
(vs. wail)
[] rot

A Note on the Glottal stop

[] voiceless, glottal, stop.
Uh-oh
Common in many languages as a normal
consonant (Hawaiian, Arabic, etc.)
In English it occurs less frequently, and it
may not be contrastive with other sounds
mitten might be pronounced [mn] or
[mtn]
The apple [ pl]

Important for distinguishing different

dialects!

A note on [w] and [ww ]

[w] is the voiced consonant in words like wail
and weather
[ww ] or [] represents the voiceless equivalent
Test your dialect:
whale / wail
whether / weather
which / witch

Do you pronounce the first word in the pair

differently?

The source of sound

Air passes through the
larynx

And then is shaped by the vocal tract in

some way.

Demonstration with
vowels!
Were
going to use a duck call to simulate the
buzzing of the vocal folds, and filter the sound with
differently shaped plastic tubes.

duck call is
placed here

http://www.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/vocal_vowels/vocal_vowels.html

Another View

[i]

[a]

Vowels

Vowels are described in terms of

Tongue height (high, mid, low)
Tongue frontness/backness (front, central, back)
Lip roundedness (rounded, unrounded)
This 5-vowel system is common to many languages.
12

Vowels
In languages with
larger vowel
inventories, additional
distinctions are made:
Tense (outer)/lax
(inner)
diphthongs/monophth
ongs

Blue circles: tense/lax pairs

Red box: all lax vowels (tense
vowels are outside the box)
13

English Vowels (monophthongs)

Front

Central

Back

High

i (heat)
(hit)

u (hoot)
(foot)

Mid

e (hate)
(bet)
(sofa)
(hut)
(hat)

o (boat)

(caught)
(hot)

Low

14
14

About [e, o]
Some transcriptions use [e] and [o] for the vowels in
English wait, boat, but these vowels are more
accurately described as diphthongs. We will use the
following transcription in this class:

[ e

o ]

Monophthong [e] and [o] are common in many other

languages.

Diphthongs
Two-part vowel sounds consisting of a transition from one
vowel to the other in the same syllable.

[e] hey
[] buy
[] toy
[] cow
[o] low

Learning the IPA vowels

a e i o u

normal letters used

for English tense
vowels

weird symbols,
used for English
lax vowels

17

iClicker: IPA Practice

Choose the IPA character that corresponds to
the first sound in each word.

a. [] b. []

c. [] d. [i]

e. []

iClicker: IPA Practice

Choose the IPA character that corresponds to
the first sound in each word.

a. [] b. []

c. [] d. [i]

e. []

iClicker: IPA Practice

Choose the IPA character that corresponds to
the first sound in each word.

a. [] b. []

c. [] d. [i]

e. []

iClicker: IPA Practice

Choose the IPA character that corresponds to
the first sound in each word.

a. [] b. []

c. [] d. [i]

e. []

iClicker: IPA Practice

Choose the IPA character that corresponds to
the first sound in each word.

a. [] b. []

c. [] d. [i]

e. []

English Orthography
(spelling)
Mostly terrible at representing
vowels.
Artifacts of history
Too few letters for all our vowel sounds

The team activities today will get

you to concentrate on sounds
rather than letters.