2.2.1 Modality

The major components of communication

An act of communication between two people typically begins with one person constructing some intended message in their mind (step ❶ in Figure 11). This person can then give that message physical reality through various movements and configurations of their body parts, called articulation (step ❷). The resulting physical linguistic signal (step ❸) can come in various forms, such as sound waves (for spoken languages) or light waves (for signed languages). The linguistic signal is then received, sensed, and processed by another person’s perception (step ❹), allowing them to reconstruct the intended message (step ❺). The entire chain of physical reality in steps ❷ through ❹, from articulation to perception, is called the modality of the language.

2.2.2 Speech articulators

Overview of the vocal tract

Spoken language is articulated by manipulating parts of the body inside the vocal tract, such as the lips, tongue, and other parts of the mouth and throat. The vocal tract is often depicted in a midsagittal diagram, a special kind of diagram that represents the inside of the head as if it were split down the middle between the eyes. Midsagittal diagrams are conventionally oriented as in Figure 12, with the nostrils and lips on the left and the back of the head on the right, so that we are viewing the inside of the human head from its left side. The main regions and individual articulators of the vocal tract labelled in Figure 12 are defined and described in more detail in the rest of this section and the following sections.

This video provides a great visual of relating the movements and coordination of the anatomical components of the articulatory system to the production of various speech sounds.

^{Simone articulation system by Speech Graphics} 

Open spaces in the vocal tract

There are three important open regions of the vocal tract, coloured in Figure 12. The oral cavity (red) is the main interior of the mouth, taking up space horizontally from the lips backward. The pharynx (blue) is behind the oral cavity and tongue, forming the upper part of what we normally think of as the throat. Finally, the nasal cavity (green) is the open interior of the head above the oral cavity and pharynx, from the nostrils backward and down to the pharynx. Note that the boundaries between these regions are not precisely defined.

The bottom of the pharynx splits into two tubes: the trachea (also known as the windpipe), which leads down to the lungs, and the esophagus, which leads down to the stomach. The esophagus is not normally relevant for phonetics, but the trachea is important, since the vast majority of spoken language is articulated with air coming from the lungs and there are ways we can manipulate that airflow when it passes from the trachea to the pharynx.

2.2.3 Phonemes and allophones

Phones (phonemes) as a basic unit of speech

The pieces of the vocal tract can be articulated in various ways to create and manipulate a wide range of sounds. In the phonetics of spoken languages, we are primarily interested in studying units of speech called phones (phonemes) or speech sounds. A phoneme in a spoken language is a linguistically significant sound, which means that can be used as part of an ordinary word in that language. For example, the ordinary English words spill, slip, lisp, and lips each contain four phonemes; in fact, these words have the same four phonemes, just in different orders (with some slight variation in how they are pronounced).

A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in speech that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. Phonemes don’t carry meaning by themselves but are the building blocks of words. For example, changing one phoneme in a word can result in a completely different word, such as changing the /b/ sound in “bat” to /k/ to make the word “cat.”

Each language has its own set of phonemes. In English, for example, there are about 44 phonemes, though the exact number can vary slightly depending on the dialect.  One of the most fundamental distinctions between phonemes is whether they are consonants or vowels.  Phonemes can be represented by the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) (more on this in section 2.1.4 below), which provides a standardised way to represent speech sounds. Here are a few examples to clarify your understanding of phonemes (these are represented using IPA symbols):

2.2.4 The international phonetic alphabet (IPA)

Segmentation

Note that we have been talking about phones as if it were obvious what they are, but this is not always the case. It is sometimes easy to find a clear separation between the phones in a given word, that is, to segment the word into its component phones, but sometimes, it can be very difficult. We can see this difference by looking at waveforms, which are special pictures that graphically represent the air vibrations of sound waves. The two waveforms in Figure 13 show a notable difference in how easy it is to segment the English words nab and wool. The waveform for nab contains abrupt transitions between three very different regions, corresponding to three phones. In comparison, the waveform for wool has smooth transitions from beginning to end, with no obvious divisions between phones.

Transcription

When we can identify the individual phones in a word, we want to have a suitable way to notate them that can be easily and consistently understood, so that the relevant information about the pronunciation can be conveyed in an unambiguous way to others. Such notation is called a transcription, which may be very broad (phonemic transcription – giving only the minimal information needed to contrast one word with another), or it may be very narrow (phonetic transcription – giving a large amount of fine-grained phonetic detail), or somewhere in between. For broad or phonemic transcription, we use the slant symbols / /.  For example, the consonant at the beginning of the English word nab could be transcribed as /n/, with the understanding that the symbol /n/ is intended to represent a voiced alveolar nasal stop.

For narrow or phonetic transcription, we use the square brackets [ ]. For example, if we were to transcribe the English word phonetics, the phonetic transcription would look something like this: [fə̃ˈneˌtɪks].  Note there are additional symbols, or diacritics, that have been used in this transcription.  These symbols indicate precisely how the phonemes were articulated.  Diacritics, which are special marks like [  ̪  ] and [ʰ] that are placed above, below, through, or next to a symbol to give it a slightly different meaning.

As speech pathologists, you may be working with clients who do not share the same language as you.  Therefore, we ideally want to use a transcription system that can be used for all possible phones in any spoken language. This means we cannot simply use one existing language’s writing system, because it would be optimized for representing the phones of that language and would not have easy ways to represent phones from other languages.

In addition, many writing systems are filled with inconsistencies and irregularities that make them unsuitable for any kind of rigorous and unambiguous transcription, even for their associated spoken language. For example, the letter <a> in the English writing system is used to represent different phones, such as the low front unrounded vowel in nab, the low back unrounded vowel in father, the mid front tense unrounded vowel in halo, and the mid central unrounded vowel in diva. Conversely, the high front unrounded tense vowel in English can be represented by different letters and letter combinations: <i> in diva, <ee> in meet, <ea> in meat, <e> in me, and <y> in mummy. That is, then English writing system does not have a one-to-one relationship between phones and letters.

The International Phonetic Alphabet

To avoid these problems, linguists have devised more suitable transcription systems for spoken languages, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. In this textbook, we will use a widespread standard transcription system called the International Phonetic Alphabet (abbreviated IPA). The IPA was created by the International Phonetic Association (unhelpfully also abbreviated IPA). The IPA organization was founded in 1886, and the first version of their transcription system was published shortly after. Since then, the IPA transcription system has undergone many revisions as our understanding of the world’s spoken languages has evolved. The most recent symbol was added to the IPA in 2005: [ⱱ] for the labiodental tap, a phone found in many languages of central Africa, such as Mono (a Central Banda language of the Ubangian family, spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; Olson and Hajek 1999).

For reference, the full chart for the IPA is given in Figure 14. This chart is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License, by the International Phonetic Association. It is also available online at IPA’s homepage, and there are also some online versions that are accessible for screen readers, such as the one created by Weston Ruter.

Learning the IPA takes a lot of time, practice, and guidance, and it is not just about memorising symbols. The underlying structure and principles behind the organization of the table are what really matter. In this way, the IPA is like the periodic table of elements in chemistry. So, while it is helpful to know that Na is the chemical symbol for the element sodium with atomic number 11 and that [m] is the IPA symbol for a voiced bilabial nasal stop, it is much more important to know what these concepts are and what those terms mean. What is sodium? What does it mean for an element to have an atomic number of 11? What does it mean for a phone to be voiced? How is the vocal tract configured for a bilabial nasal stop?

This is why this book focuses on defining concepts, so that you can build a solid foundation in understanding how phones are articulated.

Transcribing English with the IPA

Since this textbook is presented in English, English is a good starting point to give you something concrete in which to ground your understanding of how to do transcription. However, there is much dialectal variation in English, so the transcriptions offered here are very general and may differ from the varieties of English you are familiar with.

You may find this resource useful in your learning and practice: AusE IPA symbols in word version. This document provides you with the symbols for all of the consonant and vowel phonemes of Australian English, including a description of these (more on this below).

There are also a range of useful online resources you can access for free to help with your understanding of using the IPA and practice.  These include:

• Macquarie University: Australian English Pronunciation and Transcription pages
• Interactive IPA chart (International Phonetic Association)
• Seeing Speech

2.2.5 Describing consonants

We describe consonants by the following three parameters:

1. Place of articulation.
2. Manner of articulation.
3. Voicing.

To be able to describe consonants, it is important that you have a good understanding of the vocal tract anatomy and the movement of the articulators to create constrictions in the vocal tract to form different speech sounds.

Consonants as constrictions

Consonants are phones that are created with relatively narrow constrictions somewhere in the vocal tract. These constrictions are usually made by moving at least one part of the vocal tract towards another, so that they are touching or very close together. The moving part is called the active or lower articulator, and its target is called the passive or upper articulator. Vowels have wider openings than consonants, so they are not usually described with the terms used here; more appropriate terminology for vowel articulation is discussed in Section 2.1.6.

Active articulators

The active articulators we find in phones across the world’s spoken languages are listed below, in order from front to back. They are also labelled in the midsagittal diagram in Figure 15.

1. 1. the lower lip, which is used for the consonants at the beginning of the English words pin and fin.
   2. the tongue tip (the frontest part of the tongue; also called the apex), which is used for the consonants at the beginning of the English words tin and sin.
   3. the tongue blade (the region just behind the tongue tip; also called the lamina), which is used for the consonants at the beginning of the English words thin and chin.
   4. the tongue front (the tip and blade together as a unit, also called the corona); it is useful to have a unified term for the tip and blade together, since they are so small and so close, and languages, and even individual speakers of the same language, may vary in which articulator is used for similar phones.
   5. the tongue back (the upper portion of the tongue, excluding the front; also called the dorsum), which is used for the consonants at the beginning of the English words kin and gone.
   6. the tongue root (the lower portion of the tongue in the pharynx; also called the radix), which is not used for consonants in English but is used for consonants in some languages, such as Nuu-chah-nulth (a.k.a. Nootka, an endangered language of the Wakashan family, spoken in British Columbia; Kim 2003)
   7. the epiglottis (the large flap at the bottom of the pharynx that can cover the trachea to block food from entering the lungs, forcing it to go into the esophagus instead), which is not used for consonants in English but is used in for consonants in some languages, such as Alutor (a Chukotkan language of the Chukotko-Kamchatkan, spoken in Russia; Sylak-Glassman 2014).

Passive articulators

The passive articulators we find in phones across the world’s spoken languages are listed below, in order from front to back. They are also labelled in the midsagittal diagram in Figure 16.

1. the upper lip, which is used for the consonants at the beginning of the English words pin and bin
2. the upper teeth, which are used for the consonants at the beginning of the English words fin and thin
3. the alveolar ridge (the firm part of the gums that extends just behind the upper teeth, recognizable as the part of the mouth that often gets burned from eating hot food), which is used for the consonants at the beginning of the English words tin and sin (though some speakers may use the upper teeth instead or in addition)
4. the postalveolar region (the back wall of the alveolar ridge), which is used for the consonants at the beginning of the English words shin and chin
5. the hard palate (the hard part of the roof of the mouth; sometimes called the palate for short), which is used for the consonant at the beginning of the English word yawn
6. the velum (the softer part of the roof of the mouth; also called the soft palate), which is used for the consonants at the beginning of the English words kin and gone
7. the uvula (the fleshy blob that hangs down from the velum), which is not used for consonants in English but is used for consonants in some languages, such as Uspanteko (an endangered Greater Quichean language of the Mayan family, spoken in Guatemala; Bennett et al. 2022)
8. the pharyngeal wall (the back wall of the pharynx), which is not used for consonants in English but is used in languages that have consonants with the tongue root or epiglottis as an active articulator (such as Nuu-chah-nulth and Archi mentioned earlier)

Each of the passive articulators has a corresponding adjective to describe phones with that passive articulator. These adjectives are given in the list below, again from front to back:

1. labial (articulated at the upper lip)
2. dental (articulated at the upper teeth)
3. alveolar (articulated at the alveolar ridge)
4. postalveolar (articulated at the back wall of the alveolar ridge)
5. palatal (articulated at the palate)
6. velar (articulated at the velum)
7. uvular (articulated at the uvula)
8. pharyngeal (articulated at the pharyngeal wall)

Thus, we could say that the English words tin and sin begin with alveolar consonants, while kin and gone begin with velar consonants.

Place of articulation

The overall combination of an active articulator and a passive articulator is called a consonant’s place of articulation, or simply place for short. Places of articulation may be described with a compound adjective that refers to both articulators, with the adjective for the active articulator first (without the –al ending), then a linking –o-, followed by the adjective for the passive articulator. For example, the consonant at the beginning of the English word fin is a labiodental consonant, because it is articulated with the lower lip (labi-) at the upper teeth (-dental).  However, some places of articulation may be described only by one articulator.  For example, the consonant at the beginning of the English word dog is an alveolar consonant, because it is articulated by raising the tongue tip to touch the alveolar ridge briefly.

A full table of the places of articulation is provided in Figure 17, showing the usual shortened adjective, plus the active and passive articulators (with none given for glottal, since neither of the vocal folds has a privileged status over the other).

Manner of articulation

Consonant phones can also be categorized by their manner of articulation, which is how air flows through the vocal tract, based on the size and shape of the constriction between the articulators.

Stops (includes both plosives and nasals)

The most basic manner of articulation is stop, in which the active articulator presses firmly against the passive articulator to make a complete closure, blocking all airflow at that point. The most common type of oral stops are plosives, which have airflow from the lungs that gets trapped behind the stop closure, until the air can be quickly released in an explosive burst. Bilabial oral stop closures are shown in the midsagittal diagrams in Figure 18. There are many kinds of stops across the world’s spoken languages. One important distinction for stops is based on the position of the velum. The velum may be raised against the upper pharynx to block off access to the nasal cavity, as indicated by the dotted circle in the midsagittal diagram on the left in Figure 18. This forces all airflow (blue arrow) to go into the oral cavity only, as indicated by the arrow in Figure 18. Such a stop with a raised velum and oral airflow only is called an oral stop. The English words pet and get both begin and end with oral stops. If instead a stop is articulated with a lowered velum, as indicated by the dotted circle in the midsagittal diagram on the right in Figure 18, this allows air to flow into both the oral and nasal cavities. Such a stop with a lowered velum and both oral and nasal airflow is called a nasal stop, or sometimes just a nasal for short. The English words met and net both begin with nasal stops.

Fricatives

If the active and passive articulators are very close but not touching, creating a narrow constriction, airflow through this constriction becomes very turbulent, resulting in highly random noisy airflow called frication, which sounds like hissing or buzzing. A phone articulated this way is called a fricative. The English words set and vet begin with fricatives.

Approximants

If the active and passive articulators are not touching and are spaced far enough apart to create little or no frication in the airflow, then the resulting phone is called an approximant. Most approximants have relatively unrestricted airflow through the middle of the oral cavity and are called central approximants. However, during the articulation of an approximant, part of the tongue may instead make full contact with an upper articulator, causing the airflow to be diverted along one or both sides of the tongue, but still without frication. Such an approximant is called a lateral approximant. The English words yet and wet begin with central approximants, while the English word let begins with a lateral approximant.

Affricates

Normally, the stop closure for a plosive is released relatively quickly, allowing the air to begin flowing almost immediately. However, it is also possible to release the closure slowly, so that a very brief fricative-like sound is created, causing the release of the plosive to have some frication, in which case, we say that it has a fricated release. A plosive with such a fricated release is often referred to as an affricate, which is a fifth kind of manner of articulation. The English word jet begins with an affricate /dʒ/.

Other manners of articulation

There are many other manners of articulation that are beyond the scope of this textbook. The two most notable ones are taps (also called flaps) and trills. Taps are like stops, except that the closure is so short that airflow is barely interrupted. The consonant in the middle of the English word atom is articulated as a tap for most North American speakers.

Voicing

In addition to acting as a place of articulation for some consonants in some languages, the vocal folds are also used to regulate airflow through the vocal tract for most consonants and vowels in all spoken languages. In particular, when the vocal folds are configured in the right way, airflow through the glottis will cause the vocal folds to vibrate.

You can feel this vibration by placing your fingers on the front of your throat where the larynx is, while making the sound of a bee buzzing, like the sound of the consonant at the end of the English word buzz. If instead you make the sound of a snake hissing, like the sound of the consonant at the end of the English word bus, you should feel that there is no vocal fold vibration. Switch between buzzing and hissing to feel the change in the presence versus absence of vibration: zzzzz-sssss-zzzzz-sssss-zzzzz-sssss.

Vocal fold vibration is often called voicing, and a phoneme with vocal fold vibration is called voiced, while a phone without it is called voiceless or unvoiced. When viewing the IPA chart, if a pair of IPA symbols is written at a place and/or manner of articulation, the symbol on the right indicates a voiced phoneme.  For example, the phonemes /p/ and /b/ are both bilabial plosive consonants;  /p/ is unvoiced, whilst /b/ is voiced.

2.2.6 Describing vowels

Many vowels of the world’s spoken languages have a relatively stable pronunciation from beginning to end. These kinds of stable vowel phones are called monophthongs. However, just as there are dynamic consonant phones (affricates), vowel phones may also change their articulation from beginning to end. Most of these are diphthongs, which begin with one specific articulation and shift quickly into another, as with the vowel in the English word toy, which begins with a mid back round quality but ends high, front, and unrounded.

We describe vowels by the following four parameters:

1. Tongue (vowel) height.
2. Tongue fronting/backing.
3. Lip rounding.
4. Vowel length.

Tongue (vowel height) and tongue fronting/backing concepts are represented on the vowel quadrilateral.  Tongue height is represented by the terms high, mid, low on the left side of the diagram.  Tongue fronting/backing is represented by the terms front, central, back at the top of the diagram.

Tongue (vowel) Height

Vowels are articulated with a larger opening in the oral cavity than consonants are, requiring the tongue to move farther down than for approximants. This is typically facilitated by also moving the jaw down to allow the tongue to move even lower. The height of the tongue during the articulation of a vowel is called vowel height, or simply height for short.

A vowel with a very high tongue position, as in the English word beat, is called a high vowel. This may also be known as a close vowel. A vowel with a very low tongue position, as in the English word bat, is called a low vowel. This may also be known as an open vowel. Low vowels have the largest oral cavity opening of any phone, whether vowel or consonant.

A vowel with an intermediate tongue position between high and low, as in the English word bet, is called a mid vowel. The differences in vertical tongue position for these three categories of vowel height are shown in Figure 19, from highest on the left (as in beat) to lowest on the right (as in bat). Note how the jaw also lowers along with the tongue in these diagrams.

Tongue Fronting/backing

The horizontal position of the tongue, known as its fronting or backing, also affects vowel quality. If the tongue is positioned in the front of the oral cavity, so that the highest point of the tongue is under the front of the hard palate, as for the vowel in the English word beat, the vowel is called a front vowel.  If the tongue is positioned farther back in the oral cavity, so that the highest point of the tongue is under the back part of the hard palate or under the velum, as in the English word boot, the vowel is called a back vowel.

If the tongue is positioned in the centre of the oral cavity, so that the highest point of the tongue is roughly under the centre of the hard palate, in between the positions for front and back vowels, as for the English word but, the vowel is called a central vowel. The differences in horizontal tongue position for these three categories of vowel backness are shown in Figure 20 from frontest on the left (as in beat) to backest on the right (as in boot).

Lip Rounding

Vowel quality also depends on the shape of the lips, generally referred to as the vowel’s rounding. If the corners of the mouth are pulled together so that the lips are compressed and protruded to form a circular shape, as for the vowel in the English word boot in many dialects, the lips are said to be rounded and the corresponding vowel is called a round or rounded vowel. If the corners of the mouth are pulled apart and upward so that the lips are thinly stretched into a shape like a smile, as for the vowel in the English word beat, the lips are spread and therefore, an unrounded or non-rounded vowel.

The lips may also be in an intermediate configuration, neither rounded nor spread, as for the vowel in the English word but, in which case, the lips are said to be neutral. Spread and neutral vowels are collectively referred to as unrounded or non-rounded vowels, because the distinction between spread and neutral lips seems almost never to be needed in any spoken language, whereas the distinction between rounded and unrounded frequently is needed. The differences in lip shape for these three categories of vowel rounding are shown in Figure 21.

vowel Length

In addition to differences in vowel quality, vowels may also differ from each other in length, which is a way of categorising them based on their duration. In most spoken languages where vowel length matters, there is just a two-way distinction between long vowels and short vowels, with long vowels having a longer duration than their short counterparts. In some languages, vowel length is used to distinguish words with completely different meanings (e.g. Japanese). This does not occur as frequently in English.  However, English vowels can still differ in vowel length in some circumstances. For example, English vowels are often pronounced a bit longer before voiced consonants than before voiceless consonants. Thus, the vowel in the English word bead is usually pronounced longer than the vowel in the word beat, even they both have the same vowel quality: high front unrounded.

Chapter Attribution

This chapter has been adapted in parts from:

Essentials of Linguistics (2nd edition) by Anderson et al. (2022). Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.