Phonetics Around the World

1. Phonetics Around the World Most of the sound files for this lecture can be found online at: http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/index/sounds.html October 22, 2012

2. Fun Stuff • Voiceless [w] and Cool Whip. • Some sound inventories: Piraha and Jhu|hoasi. • 3. Burmese voiceless nasals.

3. Pirahã is a rather exotic language spoken in the Amazon basin, in Brazil. • It has either 10 or 11 phonemes, depending on who’s counting. Pirahã • Pirahã is a controversial language because so many wild claims have been made about it… • And it is hard to verify them, due to a lack of research.

4. Jhu|’hoansi • Jhu|’hoansi is a Khoisan language spoken by about 30,000 people in southwestern Africa. • Mostly in Namibia and Botswana. • Jhu|’hoansi has only five vowels: [i], [e], [u], [o], [a]. • But it has a lot of consonants!

5. Jhu|’hoansi • Jhu|’hoansi was (famously) featured in a movie called The Gods Must Be Crazy. • My friend Amanda Miller learned the language during a stint with the Peace Corps back in the ‘90s. • She currently does research on the phonetics of the language… • She just appeared on the show “Daily Planet” last week! • http://watch.discoverychannel.ca/daily-planet/october-2012/daily-planet---october-18-2012/#clip787438

6. Phonetics Review • Last time, we discussed how vowels are articulated along four different dimensions: • Height (of tongue) high, mid, low • Front/backness (of tongue) front, central, back • Rounding (of lips) rounded, unrounded • Tenseness tense vs. lax

7. Consonants • Consonants are produced with more obstruction of the airflow through the vocal tract than vowels • They are characterized by a different set of attributes: • Voicing • vocal fold position and movement • Place of Articulation • location of constriction in the vocal tract • Manner of Articulation • type of constriction made in the vocal tract

8. Moving on… • The big picture point for today is: • languages can combine a relatively small number of articulatory gestures to make a very large number of different sounds.

9. English Consonant Chart

10. Yes and No • Here’s the complete chart of consonants: • Some combinations are unattested • Some combinations are impossible • Many of these combinations are not found in English

11. Meanwhile… • There are also combinations of gestures for vowels that English doesn’t use note: close = high, open = low, etc...

12. Front + Round • Dutch has vowels that are both front and rounded

13. Back + Unrounded • Vietnamese has vowels that are back and unrounded.

14. Nasalized Vowels • Air can flow through the nose during a vowel, too. • Examples from French:

15. Different Consonant Combos • English has bilabial stops, but not bilabial fricatives. • Bilabial fricatives exist in languages like Spanish and Ewe, which is spoken in West Africa.

16. Different Consonant Combos • Fricative sounds can also be made at the palate and the velum. • Examples from Greek:

17. English Velar Fricatives • There is no velar fricative in English... • but there used to be. • Examples: German • night [naɪt] Nacht [naxt] • light [laɪt] Licht [lɪçt] • high [haɪ] hoch [hɔx] • thought [θat] dachte [daxtə] • tough [tʌf]

18. Uvular

19. Pharyngeal

20. Other Places of Articulation • One dialect of Hebrew has uvular and pharyngeal fricatives

21. Voiceless Nasals • Nasalization is disastrous for fricatives. • There are no (uncontroversial) nasal fricatives in the languages of the world. • There are, however, voiceless nasals in a few languages. • Examples from Burmese:

22. Another Manner: Trills • Trills are made when the flow of air through the mouth rapidly forces two articulators to open and close against each other. • Kele has both bilabial and alveolar trills. Kele is spoken on the island of Manus, which is north of New Guinea.

23. Other Airstream Mechanisms • Some sounds are made without air flowing out of the lungs. • For example, hold your breath and try making the stop sounds [p], [t], and [k]. • You can force air out of your mouth with your closed glottis. • These sounds are called ejectives. • They are symbolized with a ‘ after a stop: [p’], [t’], [k’]

24. Quechua Ejectives • Quechua is spoken in South America

25. Implosives • Sounds can also be made when air rushes into the mouth. • One way to do this involves dropping a closed glottis while making a stop. • Sounds made in this way are called implosives. • Examples from Sindhi (spoken in India):

26. Velaric Ingressive Sounds • A very interesting effect can occur when certain articulations are combined with a velar stop closure • Can you differentiate between these sounds? • These “click” sounds are from the language Xhosa, which is spoken in southwestern Africa.

27. What’s going on here? • Click sounds are by made by the sound of air rushing intothe mouth. • How to make a click (step 1): • Make a velar stop and another stop in front of the velum. Air will get trapped in between the two closures.

28. What’s going on here? • How to make a click (part 2): • Drop the tongue down to expand the chamber of air trapped in the mouth. The air pressure in the chamber will decrease.

29. What’s going on here? • How to make a click (part 3): • Release the forward closure. Air rushes into the low pressure area, from outside the mouth.

30. What’s going on here? • How to make a click (part 4): • Release the velar closure to make a velar stop sound.

31. Clicks in connected speech • Listen to clicks as they are produced in a long sequence of connected speech. You may experience a phenomenon known as perceptual streaming. • Sound file source: http://www.rdg.ac.uk/%7Ellsroach/fue/