III. Speech Sounds

(one) Definition: The phonemes are sounds of a language which have the property that, if one replaces another in an utterance, then the meaning is changed.

Phonemes are language dependent:

Spanish:	/ny/ sound in "manana"
French:	/in/ sound in "vin"
Japanese:	/r/ and /l/ are not distinct phonemes
Tonal languages:	pitch and changes in pitch are phonetic

Subclass: allophones: pronunciation variations of a given phoneme due to context or dialect

Languages typically have around 40 phonemes

Reference: I. Maddieson, Patterns of Sounds, Cambridge University Press, 1984.

In articulatory phonetics, phonemes can be classified according to

• manner: means of production
• voiced or unvoiced production:
  • voiced: produced by vibration of the vocal cords
  • unvoiced (or voiceless): no vocal cord vibration
• place of production or articulation

Figure: Diagram of slice through the vocal system, used in describing speech sounds.

L=lips, T=teeth, AR=alveolar ridge, HP=hard palate, SP=soft palate, U=uvula, VC=vocal cords, FP=food passage. Tongue: Tp=tip, Bl=blade, F=front, C=center, B=back.

Classification of General American (GA) English speech sounds from an articulatory phonetics point of view

• Figure: Classification of vowels (gif file)
• Figure: Classification of consonants (gif file)

Speech waveforms and spectrograms by class of speech sound:

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