ARTICULATORY, ACOUSTIC AND AUDITORY

PHONETICS. PHONOLOGY

Phonetics and phonology

Two terms are (often loosely) used to refer to linguistic disciplines studying that part of the
linguistic sign which de Saussure called the acoustic image: phonetics and phonology.

Phonetics will be almost unanimously acknowledged to be the linguistic science which

studies speech sounds: the way in which they are produced (uttered, articulated), the way in
which they are perceived, their physical characteristics, etc. Therefore, it is these more
palpable, measurable aspects of the phonic aspects of language that constitute the domain
of phonetics.

phonetics: the physical manifestation of language in sound waves; how these sounds
are articulated and perceived

Different languages operate different distinctions and structure in different ways the more or
less common stock of sounds that can be found in various idioms. It is precisely this aspect
of sounds that is of interest for phonology, which is thus understood to study not so much
the sounds as such, but rather
classes of sounds that have a certain function in the structure of a given language.

phonology: the mental representation of sounds as part of a symbolic cognitive

system; how abstract sound categories are manipulated in the processing of language

Articulatory phonetics

Articulatory phonetics is a branch of phonetics which is largely based on data provided by

other sciences, among which the most important are human anatomy and physiology. This is
a result of the fact that human beings do not possess organs that are exclusively used to
produce speech sounds, all organs involved in the uttering of sounds having in fact,
primarily, other functions: digestive, respiratory, etc.

Fundamental physiological processes like those mentioned above take place simultaneously
or alternatively with the production of speech sounds. We can hardly think of speaking as
being separated from the activity of breathing, as the air that is breathed in and out of the
lungs has a crucial role in the process of uttering sounds.

Breathing is a rhythmic process including two successive stages: inspiration and expiration.
It is during the latter phase that speech production takes place in most languages. Because
we speak while we expel the air from our lungs, the sounds that we produce are called
egressive. The continuous alternation between inspiration and expiration fundamentally
shapes the rhythmicity of our speech.
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This diagram includes many detailed anatomical features that you certainly don't need to
learn, but it should give you an idea of the complex context in which speech sounds are
articulated.

Here is a less detailed diagram showing the most important parts of the vocal tract.

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 Trachea Esophagus

The initial moment of this rather complex process is the expelling of the air from our lungs.
The lungs can therefore be considered the very place where speech production originates.
The airstream follows a road that is called the vocal tract. We will follow this tract of the air
that is expelled from the lungs out of the body.

The lungs are pair organs, situated inside the thoracic cavity (the chest). The capacity of
the lungs (that is the total amount of air that they can contain is of about 4500-5000 cm
(4.5-5 litres) in an adult person. The so-called vital capacity (that is the maximal amount of
air that can be exchanged with the environment during breathing is of about 3500-4000 cm.
In other words, we can never completely empty our lungs of air during expiration. During
normal breathing, however, only about 10-15% of the vital capacity is used. The act of
speaking requires a greater respiratory effort and consequently the amount of air increases to
up to 30-80% of the vital capacity (30-40% during expiration and 45-80% during
inspiration).

From each of the lungs a bronchial tube starts. At one end, the ramifications of these tubes
spread inside the spongy mass of the pulmonic lobes. They are called bronchioles and their
role is to distribute and collect the air into and from the innermost recesses of the lungs.
These exchanges are made at the level of small air sacs called alveoli and represent the
ultimate ramifications of the bronchioles. At the other end, the two bronchial tubes are
joined at the basis of the trachea, or the windpipe. The windpipe has a tubular cartilaginous

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structure (its components are a number of cartilages held together by membranous tissue)
and is about 10 cm long and 2.5 cm in diametre.

As we continue our journey we come across another organ that has a crucial role in the
process of speaking: the larynx. The latter is a cartilaginous pyramidal organ characterized
by a remarkable structural complexity and situated at the top of the trachea. As all speech
organs, it primarily performs a vital role, namely it acts as a valve that closes, thus blocking
the entrance to the windpipe and preventing food or drink from entering the respiratory ducts
while we are eating.

The larynx is the first speech organ proper along the tract that we are following, as it
interferes with the outgoing stream of air (which, so far, has followed its way rather
unimpededly) and establishes some of the essential features of the sounds that we produce.
However, it is not the larynx proper (that is the organ in its entirety) that performs this
important role within the speech mechanism, but two muscular folds inside it, called the
vocal cords. The vocal cords are each made of a so-called vocal ligament and a vocal
muscle. They are covered in mucous membranes or skin folds also known as the vocal folds.

During breathing, the two folds part, letting the air come into the larynx or go out. During
phonation they come closer, having an important role in establishing some of the main
characteristics of the sounds we articulate They thus interfere to various extents with the
outgoing airstream. They can obstruct the passage completely, as in the case of the so-called
glottal stop (see below, when a detailed description of consonants is given), or their
participation in the uttering of a given sound can be minimal (as in the case of many hissing
sounds).

Here are the vocal cords seen when they are open to allow free passage of air. The front of
the body is toward the top of the photo; we're looking down into the dark trachea.

From the Ultimate Visual Dictionary, p. 245

The rapid and intermittent opening and closing of the vocal cords, which results in the
vibration of the two organs, plays a key role in one of the most important phonetic processes,
that of voicing. Thus, vowels and vowel-like sounds, as well as a number of consonants, are
produced with the vibration of the cords and are consequently voiced. The absence of
vibration in the vocal cords is characteristic for voiceless obstruents.

The amplitude of the vibration is also essential for the degree of loudness of the voice: thus
the intensity of the sound that is uttered depends on the pressure of the air that is expelled.

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The rate at which the vocal cords vibrate has also important consequences as far as the pitch
of the voice is concerned; this is closely linked to the pressure exerted on the vocal cords.

The next stop on our way along the vocal tract is the pharynx, an organ situated at a kind of
crossroads along the above-mentioned tract. It doesnt play an active part in the articulation
of sounds its main role being to link the larynx and the rest of the lower respiratory system to
its upper part, thus functioning as an air passage during breathing. The pharynx branches
into two cavities that act as resonators for the air stream that the vocal cords make vibrate:
the nasal cavity and the oral cavity.

Before discussing the two respective cavities, it is important to mention the role played
during articulation by the velum or the soft palate. The velum is the continuation of the roof
of the mouth also called the palate. The harder, bony structure situated towards the exterior
of the mouth continues with the velum into the rear part of the mouth. The latters position at
the back of the mouth can allow the airstream to go out through either the mouth or the nose
or through both at the same time.
Thus, if the velum is raised, blocking the nasal cavity, the air is directed out through the
mouth and the sounds thus produced will be oral sounds. If the velum is lowered, we can
articulate either nasal sounds, if the air is expelled exclusively via the nasal cavity, or
nasalized sounds if, in spite of the lowered position of the velum, the air is still allowed to
go out through the mouth as well as through the nose.The distinction nasal/oral is essential in
all languages and it will further be discussed when a detailed analysis of both English
consonants and vowels is given.

We have mentioned above the oral cavity as one of the two possible outlets for the airstream
that is expelled by our respiratory system.

The oral cavity plays an essential role in phonation as it is here that the main features of the
sounds that we articulate are uttered. The cavity itself acts as a resonator, and we can modify
its shape and volume, thus modifying the acoustic features of the sounds we produce, while
various organs that delimit the oral cavity or are included in it (the tongue) are active or
passive participants in the act of phonation.
If we follow the airstream out through the mouth (oral cavity) we can easily notice the
above-mentioned organs that play an important role in the process of sound articulation.

Undoubtedly, the most important of all is the tongue, which plays a crucial role in
oral communication. The tongue is actually involved in the articulation of most speech
sounds, either through an active or a comparatively more passive participation. It is a
muscular, extremely mobile and versatile organ (by far the most dynamic of all speech
organs) and it plays an essential role in the producing of consonants, while its position in the
mouth is also very important for differentiating among various classes of vowels. When an
articulatory classification of speech sounds is given below, the upper surface of the tongue
will be divided, for practical and didactic purposes, into several parts:
a) its fore part, made up of the tip (apex) and the blade;
b) the front, and back part (the dorsum) the label dorsum is often applied to front and back
together and
c) the root (radix) of the tongue (the rearmost and lowest part of the organ, situated in front
of the laryngo-pharynx and the epiglottis. The sides or rims of the tongue also play an
important role in the uttering of certain sounds.

The various parts of the tongue lend their names to the sounds they help produce:

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thus, sounds uttered with the participation of the tip of the tongue will be called apical (from
the Latin word apex, meaning top or extremity);
those in the production of which the blade is involved will be called laminal (from the Latin
word lamina having the same meaning);
while the back part of the body of the tongue, the dorsum, will give its name to dorsal
sounds, produced in the velar region.).

The tongue is a mobile articulator (the term active is usually used) that influences the way in
which sounds are produced. But more often than not it does that with the help of other
articulators (fixed or mobile i.e. passive or active) as well, like the roof of the mouth (the
palate), the lips or the teeth.

The palate essentially consists of two parts: the hard palate and the soft palate or the velum.
We have shown the important role played by the velum in differentiating between the
articulation of oral and nasal sounds. The hard palate in front of it functions as a fixed
(passive) articulator.

Not less important are, at the other end of the mouth, the teeth and the lips. Just behind the
teeth we can notice the alveolar ridge (the ridge of the gums of the upper teeth). While the
upper teeth are fixed, the lower jaw (the mandible) is mobile and its constant moving
permanently modifies the size and shape of the oral aperture.

The lips also play an important role in the articulation of some consonants by interacting
with each other or with the upper teeth and their position ( rounded or spread) is also
relevant for differentiating between two major classes of vowels. They are pretty mobile
articulators, though far less so than the tongue. Just like the tongue, they can yield a variety
of configurations. The lower lip can cooperate with the upper teeth to produce labio-dental
sounds, the two lips can interact to articulate bilabial sounds, while lip position (rounded or
spread) is essential in determining one of the basic configurations of vowels.
To summarize:
Vocal tract anatomy

The vocal tract is what we use to articulate sounds. It includes the oral cavity (essentially
the mouth), the nasal cavity (inside the nose), and the pharyngeal cavity (in the throat,
behind the tongue). For most speech sounds, the airstream that passes through this tract is
generated by the lungs.A number of anatomical features of humans that originated for quite
different functions have been recruited to serve the purposes of language. Many of these
same recruitments have been made by other animals for vocalization.

Organ Survival function Speech function

Lungs exhange oxygen and carbon dioxide supply airstream

Vocal prevent food and liquids from entering the produce vibration in resonating cavity
cords lungs

Tongue move food within the mouth articulate sounds

Teeth break up food provide passive articulator and acoustic

baffle

Lips seal oral cavity articulate sounds

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Auditory phonetics

If articulatory phonetics studies the way in which speech sounds are produced, auditory
phonetics focuses on the perception of sounds or the way in which sounds are heard and
interpreted. Having in mind the division of linguistic communication into several stages of a
process unfolding between two parties, the sender of the message and its addressee, we may
say that while articulatory phonetics is mainly concerned with the speaker, auditory
phonetics deals with the other important participant in verbal communication, the listener.

Acoustic phonetics

The branch of phonetics that studies the physical parametres of speech sounds is called
acoustic phonetics. It is the most technical of all disciplines that are concerned with the
study of verbal communication. The data it handles are the most concrete, palpable, easily
measurable ones that can be encountered in the domain of phonetics in general.
The most important principle of physics on which verbal communication is based is that
vibrating bodies send waves that are propagated in the environment. Our articulatory organs
produce a number of vibrations; these vibrations need a medium to be transmitted through.

Fricative sounds are generated by constricting the vocal tract at some point along the
vocal tract and forcing the air stream to flow through at a high enough velocity to
produce turbulence. This turbulent air sounds like a hiss e.g. /hh/ or /s/.

Formant frequencies are displayed by horizontal bars in the spectrogram while the
vertical lines there indicate the pitch period (i.e. the inverse of the fundamental
frequency).

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Articulatory Phonetics

How do people use their mouths, lungs and other parts of their bodies to make the sounds of
speech? How are the motions or positions of the tongue and other parts of the mouth
different when we pronounce, say, the t in toe and the d in doe?

1. The constriction dimension -- Vowels vs Consonants

The most basic dimension that organizes speech sounds has to do with the presence
of some sort of constriction in the mouth. Some sounds are made with the mouth
fully open in a way that allows air to flow freely out. The vowel sounds we produce
in the middle of words like keep, cop and coop are like this. Notice that if you leave
off the consonants at the beginnings and ends of these words you can sing or sustain
the vowel sounds by themselves for as long as you have enough breath to continue.
Other sounds, however, cannot be sustained at all. The k sound at the beginning of
these three words is not sustainable (notice it is the same sound despite its being
represented in writing by k in one word and by c in the other two). You also cannot
sustain p and t sounds. This fact is illustrated in Figure 1, which shows a recording of
the word apple. Notice that there is a silent interval in the middle that coincides with
articulation of the (single) p sound in the middle of this word.

Figure 1: Recording of apple.

Thus, the most basic way to organize speech sounds is to separate them into two
groups according to whether or not they involve significant constriction of the vocal
tract. Vowels are those sounds that have little or no constriction, while consonants
are all those that involve some degree of constriction, from total to moderate.

If you consider some of the other consonant sounds, you will quickly see that
constriction is a matter of degree, not either/or. Producing the s in aspire involves
much more constriction of the vocal tract than is found in vowels, but less than
occurs in sounds like p, t, and k. Even though the tongue mostly blocks the flow of
air while producing an s sound, still the sound can be sustained, which shows that the
blockage is not total. Sounds such as the r in raw involve still less constriction, even
though this degree of constriction is still greater than that for vowels.

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2. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

Unfortunately, the standard spellings of English words are often rather indirect and
inconsistent indicators of the typical sounds of those words. For example, the ph in
phonetic denotes the same sound as the f in foam and the gh in enough. The ti in
national is associated with the same sound as the sh in show. The letter e may
indicate no sound at all, as in indicate, and the letter a in this same word may
represent the same sound as the ei in freight (which happens to rhyme with bait) or
the very different vowel in cat. In fact, the playwright George Bernard Shaw once
noticed that there is a very common English word in which o denotes the same vowel
sound as appears in bit, which led him to suggest that a possible spelling of fish in
English might be ghoti.

These issues obviously arise in English, but there are similar problems that bear on
writing systems generally. The most important difficulty is simply that the different
symbols are often used to represent the same sound across different languages and
there are also many cases where the same symbol represents two or more different
sounds across different languages. There are also many languages that have no
official writing system at all.

In order for scholars and researchers to study and compare sounds in the worlds
languages it is essential that there be a single standardized way of representing
sounds. The most widely used system is called the International Phonetic
Alphabet. We will use this system, the IPA, in this course, though we will make
some minor amendments that are commonly used to make the system more
convenient for representing English sounds.

By far the most important requirement for the IPA is that there is a one-for-one
relationship between sounds and symbols. Thus, if we were to decide that the symbol
for the vowel sound in the name Kate were to be , then we would use this same
symbol wherever a word used that sound. Following this strategy, we might write the
words Kate, freight, and bait as Kt, frt and bt. (We drop the e from Kate because
there is no such thing as a silent symbol when we are insisting on a one-for-one
relation between sounds and symbols. No sound, no symbol.)

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3. Distinguishing consonants

A pulmonic consonant is a consonant made by obstructing the glottis or oral cavity

and either simultaneously or subsequently letting out air from the lungs. Pulmonic
consonants make up the majority of consonants in the IPA, as well as in human
language. All consonants in the English language fall into this category.

Non-pulmonic consonants are sounds which are made without the lungs. These
include clicks (found in the Khoisan languages of Africa) and implosives (found in
languages such as Swahili).

Consonants can be differentiated in any language by reference to three parameters;

place of articulation, manner of articulation, and voicing. Other parameters will also
be relevant in some languages. We will apply this principle here to the description
and differentiation of English consonants.

A. Place of Articulation

The place of articulation for a consonant is the point in the vocal tract where the
constriction for that consonant is formed. For each of the places of articulation listed
below, consider what other consonants there might be (other than those used as
examples below) that use the same place of articulation.

1. Bilabial

A bilabial place of articulation is used for the first sound in words like pin
and bin. Notice that in saying these words you begin by bringing your lips
together.

2. Labiodental

Words like fin begin with a labiodental articulation in which the upper teeth
contact or approach the lower lip.

3. Dental

Dental articulations are those like the first consonant in thin that involve the
tongue touching or approaching the back of the teeth.

4. Alveolar

The front of the tongue touches or approaches the alveolar ridge in forming
consonants such at those at the beginning of tin and den.

5. Palatal

Notice that the first sounds in chump and jump also involve the front of the
tongue touching the roof of the mouth, but a bit further back than with the
alveolar examples above. This more back point of contact is the (hard)
palate. Though most palatal sounds use the front of the tongue, there is one
in English that uses the back of the tongue; this is the first sound in yet.

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 6. Velar

In the first sounds in cow and gout, the back of the tongue rises high enough
to touch the velum, making a closure there.

7. Glottal

Sometimes the vocal folds are drawn close enough together to produce a
slight hissing or whispering sound. This is called a glottal place of
articulation and occurs in the first sound of words like how and who in
English.

B. Manner of Articulation

Obviously, there must be some further way to differentiate consonants

because in English there are two or more consonants that are produced at
each of the places of articulation described above (except for glottals). The
next basic distinction has to do with how much the flow of air is constricted
in the vocal tract. Tack and sack both begin with alveolar sounds, but they are
not identical. What distinguishes them is the extent to which a constriction is
made at the alveolar ridge in these two cases.

1. Stop

Tack begins with what is known as a stop consonant. Stop consonants

are those where there is a momentary complete closure of the vocal
tract. Notice that while making the first sound in tack you cannot hum
or breathe. If you were to start to say tack very slowly and a little
loudly (as though you were trying very hard to be clear in a noisy
environment), and you then were to freeze at the moment when the
tongue touches the alveolar ridge, your vocal tract would be
completely closed, with no air able to enter or leave through your
mouth or nose. You cant hum through stop consonants because
humming requires moving air through the vocal folds, which you
cant do when the vocal tract is completely blocked higher up. Such a
complete blockage is characteristic of consonants that have the stop

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 manner of articulation. The constriction that characterizes the
consonant is made by briefly completely stopping the flow of air. In
normal fast speech, however, this interruption of the flow of air can be
extremely brief, sometimes only a few milliseconds (thousandths of a
second).

2. Fricative

Another way to interrupt the flow of air out of the mouth occurs in the
first sound in sack. Here the tongue approaches the alveolar ridge, but
allows a small channel to form between the tongue and the roof of the
mouth. Air rushing through this small channel becomes very turbulent
and produces the hissing sound that is characteristic of this sort of
consonant. Notice that the first sound in sack can be sustained. You
can take a deep breath and make the s in ssssssssack last as long as
your air holds out.

3. Affricate

Affricates combine the stop and fricative manners of articulation into

a single new type. In words like chat the first sound begins with a
palatal stop, but then very quickly moves into a fricative at the same
point of articulation.

4. Nasal

The first sound in Macintosh is a nasal, a sound where the flow of air
is blocked in the mouth but allowed to flow freely through the nasal
cavity. Nasals involve an articulation inside the oral cavity that
corresponds to some stop. Thus, the first sounds in Mack and back are
both stop consonants in so far as the activity of the lips is concerned
(closing off the airstream altogether). However, youll notice that you
can hum through the first sound in Mack, but not the first sound in
back. The reason for this is that we produce nasals by lowering the
velum to allow air to pass from the pharynx into the nasal cavity and
out the nose.

5. Liquid

Liquids are somewhat vowel-like articulations that allow quite free

passage of air around an obstruction. The air may flow freely around
the sides of the tongue, as in the first sound in lake, or it may flow
over a curled back tongue, as in the first sound in rake.

6. Glide

The first sounds in we and yes are called glides, which are the most
vowel-like of the consonants. In these sounds the air flow is quite free.
Notice that the first sound in we is very similar to the first sound in
oops, and the first sound in yes is quite similar to the first sound in
eat.

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 C. Voicing

Overlaid on top of the two dimensions of place of articulation and manner of

articulation there is a third dimension, that of voicing. As we will see, there
are pairs of consonants that have the same place and manner of articulation,
but different voicing properties.

If you were to watch a slow motion video of someone saying sap and zap it
would be difficult to impossible to tell which was which without the sound
because the motions in the mouth for these two consonants are identical.
Nevertheless, you can not only hear but also feel a difference between these
two. To make the difference clear, place your fingers on your adams apple
and produce a long hissing sound that alternates between being an s or z
sound, like this: ssssszzzzzssssszzzzzssssszzzzzssssszzzzz. You should feel a
slight buzzing sensation in your fingers on the z sounds (but not on the s
sounds). The source of this buzzing sensation is vibration of the vocal folds.
During the z articulation, the vocal folds are drawn close together and air is
forced between them, which causes them to vibrate. During the s
articulations, the folds are held apart and air flows freely through the glottis
(the opening between the vocal folds). Thus, we say that zap begins with a
voiced consonant while sap begins with a voiceless consonant.

This contrast is used widely in English. In each of the following pairs there
are two consonants of the same place and manner of articulation that are
distinguished in terms of voicing: pat and bat, fat and vat, thin and then, and
cot and got.

4. Distinguishing vowels

Vowels are voiced and vowel articulations involve little constriction of the vocal
tract. Thus, vowels are distinguished by way of different timbres or qualities in the
sound that are produced by giving the inside of the mouth different shapes. You may
have noticed that if you speak or sing into a large barrel or a length of large-diameter
pipe, your voice suddenly sounds very different. In fact, it will sound noticeably
different in different diameters and lengths of pipe. The vocal tract takes advantage
of the same acoustical principles that produce these differences to produce the
acoustical qualities of different vowels.

This is achieved largely by shifting the tongue into different postures. By raising the
tongue high into the forward part of the mouth (and enlarging the spaces at the back
of the mouth) we produce the vowel quality in words like bee and key. By pulling the
tongue down and somewhat back toward the back wall of the pharynx we produce
sounds like the vowels in cot and pot. The vowels in loot and coot are produced by
raising the back of the tongue toward the velum, but not getting it close enough to
produce any constriction or noise.

These differences in tongue posture can be described in terms of two parameters,

those of tongue height and backness. Thus, the vowel in key is a high front vowel,
the first one in father is a low back vowel and the one in coot is a high back vowel.
Another important factor in the differentiation of vowels is lip rounding. The vowels
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 in keep and coop are different in two respects. The first is high front and the second
high back, but you will notice that if you switch back and forth between these
vowels, you will purse your lips somewhat on the vowel in coop, but not on the
vowel in keep. This drawing together of the lips is called rounding and it plays a role
in a number of back vowels in English.

5. Consonant and vowel charts

The various ways of distinguishing consonants and vowels that we have discussed
above are used in the two charts shown below. These charts illustrate how the
consonants and vowels of English can be distinguished by reference to the several
parameters we have discussed above. An IPA symbol is given for each sound in each
table, along with a common English word that uses the sound.

A. English Consonants

/p/: pit //: thin

/b/: bit //: then
/t/: tin /s/: sap
/d/: din /z/: zap
/k/: cut //: she
/
/: gut //: measure
/t/: cheap /x/: loch, Chanukah (often replaced by /-k/ and /h-/,
/d/: jeep respectively)
/m/: map /h/: ham
/n/: nap //: whine (also written /hw/)
//: bang /w/: we
/f/: fat //: run (often written /r/ in broad transcription)
/v/: vat /j/: yes
/l/: left

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 B. English Vowels

//: bid /i/: bead

//: good /u/: booed
//: bed (sometimes transcribed /e/) /
/: bird (sometimes transcribed //)
//: bud //: bought, board
//: bat (sometimes transcribed /a/) //: father, bard
/ /: pot

Diphtongs

/e/: bay //: beer

//: boy //: boor (falling out of use in British English; often
//: toe replaced by //)
/a/: buy (sometimes //: bear (sometimes transcribed //)
transcribed //)
/a/: cow

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Diacritics

Diacritics are small markings which are placed around the IPA letter in order to show a
certain alteration in the letter's pronunciation. Sub-diacritics (markings normally placed
below a letter or symbol) may be placed above a symbol with a descender (informally called
a tail), i.e. .

Suprasegmentals

These symbols describe the suprasegmental features of a language, collectively known as a

language's prosody. These symbols show the length, stress, pitch, and rhythm of a language.
Many suprasegmentals are often reserved for very specific transcriptions intended to convey
the differences in speech between individuals or dialects. They are usually used to indicate a
word's stress and length of vowels and consonants. The IPA also has a series of
suprasegmentals which are used to indicate intonation in language. Certain languages, such
as Japanese and Norwegian, possess intonation. IPA allows for the use of either tone
diacritics or tone letters to indicate tones. These are used in tonal languages such as Chinese.

Symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet as used for English.

While the slashes and brackets around IPA symbols are not part of the IPA itself, language
professionals have adopted them to distinguish between two main types of transcription, phonemic
and phonetic. In phonemic transcriptions, the observer uses slashes to record the phonemes speakers
target when they pronounce a word. For example, a phonemic transcription of pit is /pt/. Because
there are often a number of ways in which phonemes are produced in speech, observers use brackets
to record the sounds that speakers actually produce, the allophones of the phonemes. For example,
because English speakers typically aspirate a word-initial /p/ and sometimes do not release a word-
final /t/, a phonetic transcription of this pit may look like this: [pt].

The brackets and slashes also clarify that their contents are not normal text, but a transcription.
Because some IPA transcriptions can look like another word, the distinction is important. For
example, an IPA transcription for bean could be /bin/.

Compiled from the following websites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet, last accessed on 2006.10.16

http://people.umass.edu/neb/ArticPhonetics.html, last accessed on 2006.10.16

http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Summer_2004/ling001/lecture2.html, last accessed on 2006.10.16

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 IPA symbols for English vowels
The IPA vowel symbols are typically more difficult than consonants for speakers of English to learn, since they
seldom represent the sounds that the corresponding English letters (usually) do. The major vowel symbols, ,
[e], [i], [o], and [u], represent the sounds that the corresponding letters do in the spelling systems of many
European languages, such as Spanish and Italian or, to a lesser extent, French or German. (The symbols also
correspond fairly closely to the way the letters were originally used in English orthography. But five hundred
years ago in a major historical change, the Great English Vowel Shift, English speakers changed the way they
pronounced many words without at the same time changing their conventional spelling.)

In order to represent all the vowels of English, we need more symbols than the five vowel
letters of the Roman alphabet. The conventional names for these symbols are:

small capital I
epsilon -- a Greek letter
sometimes called upsilon
digraph a-e -- usually just "digraph"
script A
open O
caret

THE VOWELS
machine
heed
beet, beat
sneak
bit
miss
hid
pass
bait
hayed
make
steak
head
bet
many %
had
bat
father
bought %
cot, caught %
law %

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 hoed
boat
low
beau
put
hood
book
blue
who'd
boot
drew
but
cup
double
I, eye
fly
bite
hide
night
cow
bout
how'd
toy
Boyd
noise
banana
enough
Manitoba
bird
fur, fir
heard, herd

http://www.umanitoba.ca/linguistics/russell/138/2001/trans/vowels-new.html, last accessed on 2006.10.19

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 Click to hear BBC English Vowels

http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/vowels/chapter3/bbcenglish.html, last accessed on 2006.10.19.

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