The mechanisms of vowel production as different from those of consonant production

Semi-vowels

English sounds /w, j, l, r, h/ are called semi-vowels or approximants, also termed as “liquids” /l, r/ and “glides” /w, j/ in American phonetics. In their articulation one articulator is close to another, the vocal tract is narrowed but not to such an extent that a turbulent airstream is produced. They are more like vowels in the quality of the sound but phonologically approximants behave like consonants: they cannot be syllabic as they do not appear in the centre of the syllable (“nucleus”), most of the time being marginal in the syllable (they occur either in the initial position called “onset” or in the final position called “coda”). /w/ and /h/ appear only in the initial position before a vowel, as in water, hay; /r/ has been vocalized in the final position after a vowel in southern British English, as in a car, father, and /l/ is also being vocalized in tell, belt, in present-day Southern British English. However there is one position which makes it possible for /l, r/ to become syllabic and central in the syllable: after a consonant, like in table, little, where /l/ forms a syllable.

When /r/ is produced, the tip of the tongue is curled behind the back slope of the teethridge (post-alveolar position). The air passes out of the mouth cavity through the median line: along the lowered front and the bunched-up back of the tongue, then through the narrowing formed by the tip and the back slope of the teethridge. This passage is rather wide so voice prevails over noise and the sound produced is sonorant. The body of the tongue has lateral bunching: the sides of the tongue are in close contact with the back teeth and the palate

In the articulation of /j/ the front part of the tongue is raised to the hard palate but not so high as to produce much friction. The tip of the tongue is lowered. The air passes out of the mouth cavity along the central part of the tongue, the sides of the tongue are raised.

When /w/ is pronounced, the lips are protruded and rounded. The back part of the tongue is raised to the soft palate. The flow of air passes out of the mouth cavity without any friction along the medium line of the tongue, it’s sides being raised, and through the round narrowing formed by the protruded lips. The vocal cords vibrate.

In the articulation of /l/ the tip with the blade of the tongue is pressed against the teethridge to form an obstruction. The air escapes rather freely along the sides of the tongue, which are lowered. (lateral articulation)

4. SONORITY AS A SYLLABIC QUALITY AND A VOCALIC FEATURE.
Q.4.

Sonorants are /m, l, n, N/

They have more noise in them than semi-vowels, though there's more tone. Sonorants are the same as semi-vowels in articulation, but professor Vasiljev says for sonorants there's an additional outlet for the air stream: /m, l/ - sides of the tongue /n, N/ - nasal cavity ( as another resonator)

The articulatory boundary between vowels and consonants is not well marked. There exist speech sounds that occupy an intermediate position between vowels and consonants and have common features with both the vowels and consonants. These are sonorants /m, n, N, j, l, w, r/. There is an obstruction in their articulation and the muscular tension is concentrated at the place of obstruction as in the production of consonants, like vowels they are largely based on voice. The air passage in their production is rather wide and the force of the air is weak as in the case of vowels. The wide passage for the air stream in the articulation of sonorants means that the oral and nasal cavities are active. It results in greater audibility (sonority, carrying power, or perceptibility) of the sounds - a feature characteristic of vowels. Because of their strong vocalic characteristics sonorants /w, j, r/ are often referred to as semi-vowels. Due to their great sonority some sonorants can be syllabic in some particular positions (table, garden). But generally sonorants do not perform the function of syllable formation. That is why they are attributed to consonants.

From the acoustic point of view sonorants are predominantly sounds of tone with an admixture of noise.

The auditory effect is tone, not noise. The peculiarity of articulation makes sonorants sound more like vowels than consonants.

Sonority - is a quality, belonging to the sound, which has tone. It's characterized by sound's ability to form a syllable. There's a sonority theory of syllable division (Jesperssen, Jones), which states that there are as many syllables in a word as there are peaks of prominence or sonority.

Speech sounds are pronounced with uniform force, length and pitch, differ in inherent prominence or sonority. For example, when the Russian vowels /а, о, э, у, и/ are pronounced on one and the same level, their acoustic intensity, or sonority is different: the strongest is /а/, then go /о, э, у, и/.

O.Jesperson established the scale of sonority of sounds, that is, the scale of their inherent prominence. According to this scale the most sonorous are back vowels (low, mid, high), then go semi-vowels and sonorants, then - voiced and voiceless consonants.

Scale of sonority

1. low vowels /R, L, P, x/
2. mid vowels /e, W, q, A/
3. high vowels /J, I, H, u/
4. semi-vowels /w, j/
5. sonorants /l, r, m, n, N/
6. voiced constrictive consonants /v, z, Z, D/
7. voiced plosive consonants /b, d, g/
8. voiceless constrictive consonants and affricates /S, C, G, f, s, h, T/
9. voiceless plosive consonants /p, t, k/

Sounds are grouped around the most sonorous ones, which form the peaks of sonority in a syllable. Two points of lower sonority constitute the beginning and the end of one syllable.

Compare melt and metal, in the 1^st word /e/ is the most sonorous sound, the only peak of sonority, it is a one syllable word. In the word metal there are two peaks of sonority /e/ and /l/, it is a two-syllable word.

In the word sudden the most sonorous is the vowel /A/, then goes the nasal sonorant /n/ which forms the 2^nd peak of prominence, /s/ and /d/ are sounds of low sonority, they cannot be considered as syllable forming sounds.

The sonority theory helps to establish the number of syllables in a word, but fails to explain the mechanism of syllable division because it does not state to which syllable the weak sound at the boundary of two syllables belongs.

The mechanisms of vowel production as different from those of consonant production

The mechanisms of speech sound production make vowels different from consonants. Three mechanisms take part in the production of vowels; four mechanisms take part in the production of consonants. In the production of vowels the leading mechanism is the resonator mechanism. In the production of consonants the leading mechanism is the obstructer mechanism.

The power mechanism fills in three resonators with air when vowels are produced and four resonators when consonants are produced. The power mechanism regulates the force of exhalation for tense and lax vowels; it regulates the force of exhalation for fortis and lenis consonants, also sonorants and semi-vowels. No vowel needs an additional puff of air which is aspiration, but English consonants need an additional puff of air, because they are aspirated. The force of exhalation is greater in the production of consonants than in that of vowels, because in the former case the stream of air has to either overcome an obstruction or break it. So the power mechanism works more energetically in the production of consonants. The power mechanism keeps the vocal cords apart when voiceless consonants are produced.

The vibrator mechanism produces vibration that is voice for all vowels. The vibrator mechanism produces vibrations; that is voice only for consonants containing voice that is voiced consonants, sonorants and semi-vowels. The vibrator mechanism doesn’t work for voiceless consonants. The vibrator mechanism regulates the duration of vibration for long and short vowels. The vibrator mechanism regulates the duration of vibration for voiceless consonants (zero vibration), voiced consonants (normal vibration), also sonorants and semi-vowels (prolonged vibration). It is also responsible for aspiration in the production of aspirated consonants. Aspiration suggests postponed vibration of the vocal cords. The vocal cords are also responsible for the production of glottalized consonants. For glottalization the vocal cords block the air stream completely.

In the production of vowels the resonator mechanism creates different resonators. In the production of consonants the resonator mechanism creates a place of obstruction. At that three resonators take part in the production of vowels and four resonators take part in the production of consonants. The obstructer mechanism doesn’t take part in the production of vowels, but takes part in the production of consonants. The work of the obstructer mechanism is based on 3 factors of obstruction.

1. the place of obstruction
2. the active organ of articulation, which creates the obstruction
3. the type of obstruction

Phoneme vs. Sound

A Phoneme - is the shortest functional unit of language. Each phoneme exists in the form of mutually non-distinctive speech sounds, its allophones.
A sound - is a material unit, produced by speech organs. A sound can be viewed from the articulatory, acoustic, auditory and functional points of view. Each speech sound is an allophone of some phoneme.
Phonetics studies sounds as articulatory and acoustic unit, phonology investigates sounds as units which serve communicative purposes. The unit of phonetics is a speech sound. The unit of phonology is a phoneme. Phonemes can be discovered by the method of minimal pairs, which consists in finding pairs of words which differ in 1 phoneme:
Can -can ban - Ben
Fan - ban bad - bat
Foot - root sit - sing
Meet - feet late - hate
The phonemes of a language form a system of oppositions, in which any one phoneme is usually opposed to any other phoneme in at least 1 position in at least 1 lexical or grammatical minimal pair.

Типы оппозиции, методы коммутации, дистрибуции. Дефиниции из лекций. Johnes

The phoneme theory was developed by Scherba ( the head of the Leningrad Phonological School) who stated, that in actual speech we utter a much greater variety of sounds than we are aware of. These sounds are united in a comparatively small member of sound types, which are capable of distinguishing the meaning and the form of words (= they serve the purpose of soicial intercommunication). These sound types should be included into the classification of phonemes and studied as unit of language. The actually pronounced speech sounds are variants or allophones of phonemes. They are realized in concrete words. They have phonetic similarity: their acoustic and articulatory features have much incommon. And at the same time they differ in some degree and are incapable of differentiating words. E.g.: the sound type or the vowel phoneme /i:/ , which is defined as 'unrounded' , fully front, high, narrow, tense, long, fill, is more back in 'key' than in 'eat' under the influence of the backlingual /k/, it's longer before a voices lenis consonant, than before a voiceless fortis one: seed - seat
greed - greet
The number of phonemes is much smaller than the number of sounds actually pronounced.
The Leningrad Phonological School defined phoneme as a real independent distinctive unit capable of differentiating meaning, which manifests itself in the form of allophones.
According to Vasiljev (who developed Shcherba's theory ) a phoneme is a unity of 3 aspects:
1) it's material, real and objective (because it really exists in the material form of speech sounds, allophones)
2) it's abstractional, generalized (bcos we make it abstract from concrete realization)
3) it's functional ( its function's to make one word of its grammatical form distinct from the other)
Moscow - Jakovlev, Kuznetsov, Sidorov consider a phoneme to be a part of morpheme. It's a dependent unit and it's true manifests itself in a morpheme. A phoneme has many allophones, depending upon the position of a phoneme in the sound chain (final, mid, initial, before/after this or that vowel/consonant).

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