In phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds (phones): their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory perception, and neurophysiological status. Phonology, on the other hand, is concerned with abstract, grammatical, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the lips Lips are a visible body part at the mouth of humans and many animals. Lips are soft, movable, and serve as the opening for food intake and in the articulation of sound and speech. Human lips are a tactile sensory organ, and can be erogenous when used in kissing and other acts of intimacy during the articulation of a vowel In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! [ɑː] or oh! [oʊ], pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! [ʃː], where there is a constriction or closure at some point along the vocal tract. A. That is, it is vocalic labialization Labialisation is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialised sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels involve the lips, they are called rounded. When pronouncing a rounded vowel, the lips form a circular opening, while unrounded vowels (also called spread vowels) are pronounced with the lips relaxed. In most languages, front vowels A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also called bright vowels because they are perceived as tend to be unrounded, while back vowels A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark vowels because they are perceived as sounding tend to be rounded. But some languages, such as French French is a Romance language spoken as a first language by about 136 million people worldwide. Around 190 million people speak French as a second language, and an additional 200 million speak it as an acquired foreign language. French speaking communities are present in 57 countries and territories. Most native speakers of the language live in and German German (Deutsch, [ˈdɔʏtʃ] ) is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Globally, German is spoken by approximately 120 million native speakers and also by about 80 million non-native speakers, distinguish rounded and unrounded front vowels of the same height In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! [ɑː] or oh! [oʊ], pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! [ʃː], where there is a constriction or closure at some point along the vocal tract. A, while, for example, Vietnamese Vietnamese , is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant distinguishes rounded and unrounded back vowels of the same height.
In the International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet [note 1] is a system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic Association as a standardized representation of the sounds of spoken language. The IPA is used by foreign language students and teachers, linguists, speech pathologists and therapists, singers, vowel chart, rounded vowels are the ones that occur on the right in each pair of vowels. There are also diacritics, respectively ɔ̹ ɔ̜, to indicate greater or lesser degrees of rounding. The 'more' and 'less rounded' diacritics are sometimes also used with consonants to indicate degrees of labialization. (See relative articulation In descriptions of phonetics and phonology, the manner and place of articulation of a speech sound may be specified relative to some point of comparison. For example, the English consonant /k/ is fronted before the vowel /iː/, compared to the articulation of /k/ before other vowels, and in many places, the vowel /uː/ is fronted.)
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Types of rounding
Compressed rounding (example 1) Compressed rounding (example 2) Protruded rounding (example 1) Protruded rounding (example 2)There are two types of vowel rounding: protruded and compressed.[1] In protruded rounding, the corners of the mouth are drawn together and the lips protrude like a tube, with their inner surface visible. In compressed rounding, the corners of the mouth are drawn together, but the lips are also drawn together horizontally ("compressed") and do not protrude, with only their outer surface visible. That is, in protruded vowels the inner surfaces of the lips form the opening (thus the alternate term endolabial), while in compressed vowels it is the margins of the lips which form the opening (thus exolabial). Catford (1982:172) observes that back and central rounded vowels, such as German /o/ and /u/, are typically protruded, while front rounded vowels such as German /ø/ and /y/ are typically compressed. Back or central compressed vowels and front protruded vowels are uncommon,[2] and a contrast between the two types has been found to be phonemic in only one instance.[3] There are no dedicated IPA diacritics to represent the distinction.
Roundedness and labialization
(Protrusion) roundedness is the vocalic equivalent of consonantal labialization Labialisation is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialised sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels involve the lips, they are called rounded. As such, rounded vowels and labialized consonants affect each other through phonetic assimilation Assimilation is a common phonological process by which the phonetics of a speech segment becomes more like that of another segment in a word . A common example of assimilation would be "don't be silly" where the /n/ and /t/ in "don't" are assimilated to /m/ and /p/ by the following /b/, where said naturally in many accents and: Rounded vowels labialize consonants, and labialized consonants round vowels.
In many languages such effects are minor phonetic detail, but in some cases they become significant. For example, in Mandarin Chinese Standard Mandarin, or Standard Chinese, known by various names to native speakers, is the official modern Chinese spoken language used in mainland China and Taiwan, and is one of the four official languages of Singapore, the unrounded vowel /ɤ/ is pronounced [o] after labial consonants[citation needed], an allophonic effect salient enough to be encoded in pinyin Pinyin , or more formally Hanyu Pinyin (汉语拼音 / 漢語拼音), is currently the most commonly used romanization system for Standard Mandarin (标准普通话 / 標準普通話). Hànyǔ (汉语 / 漢語) means the Chinese language, and pīnyīn (拼音) means "phonetics", or more literally, "spelling sound" or " transliteration: velar /xɤ/ he vs. labial /pɤ/ bo. In Vietnamese Vietnamese , is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam. It is part of the Austroasiatic language family, of which it has the most speakers by a significant, the opposite assimilation takes place: velar codas /k/ and /ŋ/ are pronounced as labialized [kʷ] and [ŋʷ], or even labial-velar Labial-velar consonants are doubly articulated at the velum and the lips. They are sometimes called "labiovelar consonants", a term that can also refer to labialized velars, such as [kʷ] and the approximant [w] [kp] and [ŋm], after the rounded vowels /u/ and /o/[citation needed]. In the Northwest Caucasian languages of the Caucasus and the Sepik languages of Papua New Guinea, historically rounded vowels have become unrounded, with the rounding being taken up by the consonant, so that, for example, Sepik [ku] and [ko] are phonemically /kwɨ/ and /kwə/[citation needed]; similarly, Ubykh Ubykh, a North-West Caucasian language, has the largest consonant inventory of all documented languages which do not use clicks, and also has the most disproportional ratio of phonemic consonants to vowels. It also possesses consonants at at least eight, perhaps nine, basic places of articulation. Ubykh has 29 distinct fricative phonemes, 27 [ku] and [ko] are phonemically /kʷə/ and /kʷa/[citation needed].
Notes
- ^ Endolabial: also called protruded, lip-pouting, horizontal lip-rounding, outrounding, and inner rounding (Trask 1996:180) Exolabial: also called compressed, pursed, vertical lip-rounding, inrounding, or outer rounding[Meaning? verification needed] (Trask 1996:252) Henry Sweet Henry Sweet was an English philologist, phonetician and grammarian noted in 1890 that "the term 'inner rounding' derives from the use of the inner surfaces of the lips; the synonymous 'outrounding' derives from the forward projection of the lips. Both terms are justifiable, but their coexistence is likely to lead to serious confusion." (Trask 1996:180.)
- ^ Henry Sweet (A handbook of phonetics, 1877) noted that they are less distinctive from unrounded vowels than their counterparts.
- ^ Japanese Japanese (日本語, Nihongo?, [nihoŋɡo] ) is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic (or Japanese-Ryukyuan) language family. There are a number of proposed relationships with other languages, but none of them has gained unanimous acceptance. Japanese is an has a back compressed vowel (Okada 1999:118); Swedish Swedish ( svenska ) is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the coast and on the Åland islands. It is to a considerable extent mutually intelligible with Norwegian and to a lesser extent with Danish (see especially "Classification"). Along has a back compressed vowel <o> and both a front compressed <u> and a front protruded vowel <y> (Engstrand 1999:141); the front rounded vowels contrast in ryta 'roar' and ruta 'window pane' (Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996:295).
References
- Catford, J. C. (1982) Fundamental Problems in Phonetics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
- Engstrand, O. (1999). Illustrations of the IPA: Swedish in IPA (1999).
- IPA - The International Phonetic Association (1999). Handbook of the International Phonetic Association. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Ladefoged, P. & Maddieson, I. (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19814-8.
- Okada, H. (1999). Illustrations of the IPA: Japanese in IPA (1999).
- Trask, R. L. (1996). A dictionary of phonetics and phonology. Routledge: London & New York.
See also
- List of phonetics topics
- Close front compressed vowel
- Close central compressed vowel
- Close back compressed vowel
Categories: Vowels | Labial consonants
