Week 4, Phonetics Part 2 Flashcards
(15 cards)
Four features of vowels
- Tongue position
- Tongue height
- Tenseness
- Lip Rounding
Tongue Position
How far back in your mouth your tongue is articulating
(frontness/backness)
refer to image in notes
Tongue Height
what is the height of your tongue
(high/mid/low)
refer to image in notes
Tenseness
-is your tongue more tense or lax
-tense vowels are pronounced when muscles are tighter and the mouth is relatively narrow, while lax voewls are when muscles are relaxed
a way to remember this is that the tense vowels are the standard letter vowels we were taught in school (a,e,i,o,u)
Lip Rounding
are your lips rounded or unrounded
only 4 rounded vowels in English, but varies by language
Cot-caught merger
More people in the midwest and west have merged cot and caught
refer to notes for image
Diphthongs
These vowel sounds are different because they combine two vowels (or a vowel and a glide)
there are three dipthongs - refer to image in notes
Natural classes
groups of sounds can be identified by sharing particular features
When we group sounds according to natural class, we look for the feature or features they have in common
How are natural classes important for the study of linguistics?
Natural classes are useful in helping us to understand differences between dialects
Canadian Rising
the diphthongs pronounces as [aj] and [aw] in standard american english are raised to ^, but it does not happen in all cases
When does canadian raising occur?
before voiceless consonants
e.g. ice,, rice, scout, flight
Transcription
rendering words into IPA
Reverse Transcription
writing the word into IPA and fugiring out the English word
*Syllable nuclei in English
almost always vowels but occasionally we allow liquids and nasals to act as the nucleus
How are syllabic consonants marked?
With a diacritics, which as a short vertical line under the syllabic nasal or syllabic liquid
can also be represnted with a schwa (written as upside down e) + [l/r]m/n]
