Phonetics & Phonology

Mohamed Yeou
Université Chouaib Doukkali
 Phonetics is an interdisciplinary
science
• More than any other area of study encompassed by linguistics,
speech is an interdisciplinary science. We can contrast it, for
example, with the study of syntax. While there are many different
theories of syntax, it is still possible to identify a common thread of
‘syntactic theory’ because the different specific theories are all
formulated from the single perspective of the linguist; when
scientists from other disciplines address questins of syntax, they
adopt the terminology and attendant assumptions of the linguist’s
approach.
• Similarly, everyone who addresses questions in speech shares the
International Phonetic Alphabet or some provincial derivative of it,
a legacy of the time when phonetics was synonymous with
phonology; but this shared representation and its attendant
assumptions about the size and shape of basic speech units no
longer constitute the bulk of ‘phonetic theory’ in the way that they
did in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
 Phonetics is an interdisciplinary
science
• Instead, there are as many different phonetic theories as there are
reasons for studying speech. The engineer studies the speech signal as an
application of a more general theory of signal processing; the psychologist
studies speech perception and organization as part of the search for a
general theory of perception and cognition; the physiologist studies
speech production as a complex example of the general problem of motor
control; and so on.
• The lack of a single dominant perspective makes it impossible to provide
an encyclopedic overview of phonetics that would not make it seem as if
this field of study is too splintered to allow much cumulative progress.
Such an impression would be inaccurate. Often, an issue or a set of results
from one approach to speech has relevance to others. Then, the questions
and debates come to be couched in the terminology of more than one
discipline, which can lead to a hybrid approach to the problem and an
advance toward a more general theory of speech.
 The uses of phonetics
• Over a century ago, the great English philologist, linguist, and phonetician, Henry
Sweet described phonetics as “…the indispensable foundation of all study of
language—whether that study be purely theoretical, or practical as well…” (Sweet
(1877), p. v).
• This is as true today as it was in the time of Sweet. Any person who works with
language would do well to have a basic knowledge of phonetics.
• The teacher of languages, for example, including the teacher of English as a
second language, must be able to diagnose the pronunciation errors made by
students, and to devise means of correcting them—this is impossible without both
theoretical and practical knowledge of phonetics.
• Phonetics is also useful to those concerned with various aspects of the mother
tongue: the phonetically trained teacher of reading will have a better
understanding of orthographic problems and the relationship of spelling to the
spoken language;
• in the teaching of speech-production phonetics is obviously essential—actors,
particularly those who wish to master numerous dialects and foreign accents,
certainly ought to have a thorough knowledge of phonetics, which, alas, they
usually lack.
 The uses of phonetics 2
• Speech pathologists have an obvious need for phonetics, which
they readily acknowledge, both for a general understanding of how
the vocal apparatus works and for the diagnosis and treatment of
minor articulatory defects.
• Communication and computer engineers and other ‘speech
scientists’ working on the improvement of speech transmission
systems, on speech synthesis, and on automatic speech recognition,
also need to have a considerable knowledge of phonetics.
• Another important application of phonetics is to what Sweet calls
‘scientific philology’—or what we would now call ‘comparative-
historical linguistics’. In his words:
– “Without a knowledge of the laws of sound-change, scientific
phiIology... is impossible, and without phonetics their study
degenerates into a mere mechanical enumeration of letter-changes”
(p. v).
 The uses of phonetics 3
• And of course phonetics is absolutely essential to the student of linguistics. It is
virtually impossible to do serious work in linguistics without a thorough knowledge
of phonetics. Clearly, without phonetics, field-work, the most important source of
linguistic data, is impossible, and phonological rules become (like the sound-laws
referred to above) meaningless and unmotivated rules of letter-substitution.
• Now, it is perfectly possible to acquire a good theoretical knowledge of phonetics
by reading, and even more so by working in a phonetics laboratory where aspects
of the physiology and acoustics of speech are investigated instrumentally. But the
kind of superficial, purely intellectual, knowledge of phonetics that is acquired in
this way is quite inadequate as a basis for carrying out many of the activities
referred to above.
• What- the competent phonetician must acquire is a deep, internally experienced,
awareness of what is going on within the vocal tract—an ability to analyze, and
hence describe and ultimately control, the postures and movements of organs that
produce the sounds of speech. It is fairly obvious that this kind of practical ability is
essential for those, like language learners and teachers, or actors, who have to
identify and produce exotic or unaccustomed sounds. What is not so obvious, but
is undoubtedly the case, is that the acquisition of these ‘practical’ skills is by far
the best way of acquiring a deep understanding of phonetic theory—of the
principles underlying the description and classification of the sounds of speech—
and is consequently of the greatest importance also for more ‘theoretical’ uses of
phonetics.
 Phonetics and phonology
• 'Phonetics' is the study of pronunciation. Other
designations for this field of inquiry include 'speech
science' or the 'phonetic sciences' (the plural is
important) and 'phonology.' Some prefer to reserve the
term 'phonology' for the study of the more abstract,
the more functional, or the more psychological aspects
of the underpinnings of speech and apply 'phonetics'
only to the physical, including physiological, aspects of
speech. In fact, the boundaries are blurred and some
would insist that the assignment of labels to different
domains of study is less important than seeking
answers to questions.
 Phonetics and phonology
• Phonetics can be taken as the discipline that studies how speech sounds
are produced and perceived, it is also considers various bio-physical
aspects of speech such respiration and articulatory movements. Going
back to the time of Rousselot, phonetics was defined as : ‘La phonétique
est la science des sons du langage, c’est une branche de l’acoustique, des
sciences naturelles, psychologiques et sociales. Cette complexité n’a pu
qu’en retarder le progrès’. (Rousselot 1923).
• As one can see from his quotation, phonetics is considered as a science or
part of the domain of science, it takes into consideration acoustics and
therefore physical aspects of speech, psychological aspects –the way
speech sounds are perceived-, and the social dimension of speech.
• The two latter aspects of phonetics are now developing rapidly in the
frame of sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic studies . However the two
former aspects have known a continuous growth since the end of the
XIXth century. Rousselot also clearly states that the complexity of the
object (the various disciplines involved to study the phenomena) create a
complication that is not always present in other fields.
 Phonetics and phonology
• Most phonologists would likely accept that phonology studies the logical and
functional and behavior of speech sounds. This implies the categorization of
sounds or features, the mental representation and other cognitive aspects of
speech sounds. The phonological literature of the second end of the XXth century
is quite large and whatever the model considered, a central issue, for all trends,
has been the relation with phonetics.
• From the early days of structuralism there has been a tendency to consider
phonetics aside of the main core of language (and this have wrongly been
attributed to Saussure, who was by training a Neo-grammarian and therefore
aware of phonetic issues).
• Because of this, in linguistics, the domain of speech sounds was mainly processed
by phonology. This separation was stated explicitly by Trubetskoy (1939) who
considered phonetics as rather in the domain of natural sciences and phonology as
in the domain of linguistic studies.
• This was also the viewpoint of generative phonology since the beginning because
it considered that phonology is a kind of program that is implemented into
phonetics.
 Questions that phonetics and phonology have to
answer?
• What characterizes any scientific endeavor or discipline is the
question that scientists are trying to answer. More than likely, and
even if the following list of questions is not exhaustive, most
phoneticians and phonologists would consider the following
questions as part of their research activities.

• How are acoustic features categorized ?

• How do we explain the source of sound change ? How does speech
• perception influences sound change ?
• What can we say about the direction of sound change ?
• How are allophones controled and categorized ?
• Do we account for sounds better in terms of features or in terms of
gestures ?
 Questions that phonetics and phonology have to
answer?
• How can we account for articulatory control ?
• What is the minimal distance between segments for them to be
perceived ?
• How can we can acount for the emergence of sound patterns in
ontogeny and phylogeny ?
• What are the correlates of syllables ?
• Are typologies of any use to explain sound patterns ?
• What are the best primitives ?
• What kind of explantion is required to explain the observed
phenomena?
• What are the constraints acting on phonetics and phonological
processes ?
• How do we explain universals ?
• What are the universals ?
 Integrating phonetics and phonology
• It seems quite obvious that to answer to all, or some, of these
questions we need to integrate what is known in speech
production and speech perception into phonetics and phonology
• However not all linguists have considered the separation between
the two domain of speech so sharply as just evoked. For example,
Rousselot (1904) in the first pages of his ‘Pincipes de phonétique
expérimentale’ write a note to explain the difference between the
terms phonetics and phonology and why the former was chosen:
‘term phonetics was introduced by Bréal and Baudry who were
hesitating between phonetics and phonology because the latter
could mean the science of murder Rousselot (1904: 2). From this
remark (even if anecdotic), and most of Rousselot’s work, it is clear
that the founder of experimental phonetics did not consider
phoneticsand phonology as separated domains. Later, Ohala
emphasized this viewpoint in numerous publications (e.g. Ohala
1990, 1995)
 Experimentation in phonetics and
phonology
• Whatever one can think of this, experimental methods
have been used for a long time to study speech, and the
work of Rousselot still provides a tremendous example of
the benefit of experimentation for the study of speech and
phonology under different aspects including dialectology.
However the results and methods of experimental studies
have not been sufficiently incorporated into the framework
of phonology, maybe because of what Rousselot (1924: 1)
thought almost a century ago :
– ‘…les procédés des sciences expérimentales sont assez
étrangers aux linguistes. Une sorte de terreur supertitieuse
s’empare d’eux dès qu’il s’agit de toucher au mécanisme le plus
simple. Il fallait donc…leur faire entrevoir le champ immense
que l’expérimentation ouvre devant eux’.
 Instrumental techniques used in
experimental phonetics
• Spectrography is an instrument used in acoustic phonetics which provides
a visual representation of the acoustic features that constitute the sounds
in an utterance. The original sound spectrograph produced a three-
dimensional visual record、or spectrogram、of an utterance、in which
time is displayed horizontally、frequently vertically、and intensity by the
relative blackness of the markson a sheet of sensitized paper. Since the
development of acoustic analyses in the late 1940s、the sound
spectrograph has been the single most useful device for the quantitative
analysis of speech.
• The early applications of the spectrograph focused on the parameters of
normal speaking patterns. Until the mid-1980s most of this research used
the electro-mechanical sound spectrograph. The development of digital
signal processing or the ability to convert analogue to digital (A/D) signals
for analysis has produced radical change in spectrography. Today、
spectrographic information can be generated electronically and displayed
on a screen.
spectogram
Static palatography
 Static palatography

Palatogram Linguogram
 Electropalatography
• Electropalatography (EPG or
palatometry) requires the speaker to
wear an artificial palate which is
similar to an orthodontic brace and
fits against the hard palate. This false
palate has 62 silver elctrodes
embedded in it, arrenged in groups to
cover the alveolar ridge and the hard
palate.
• The electrodes are sensitive to the
contact by the speaker's tongue. The
outputs of the electrodes are
continuously monitored by computer
while the speaker is talking. The
resulting analysis is displayed in a
series of figures known as palatogram
 X ray

“e” “i”
 Electromyography
• Electromyography
(EMG) is a technique
which enables the
experimental
phonetician to take a
look at the muscular
contractions
involved in creating
articular vocal tract
configurations to
enable the acoustic
effects to take place.
 Pneumotachography

• Pneumotachograph mask:
The mask is partitioned
into nasal and oral
chambers:
• Oral air pressure
• Airflow
 Electroglottography
Electroglottograph or EGG is a
system which gives an
information on the closure of
vocal folds by measuring the
electrical resistance between
two electrodes placed around
the neck.
 Photoglottography
• non‐invasive
method that
allows us to
record glottal
articulation
Photoglottography of /d̥d̥/ vs /ttʰ/
[i d̥d̥ ə r ] [ i ttʰ ə r ]
 Refernces
• Catford, I. (1977) Fundamental problems in phonetics, Edinburgh
University Press
• Demolin, D. (2005).The integration of phonetics and phonology,
Estudos Lingüísticos XXXIV, p. 95-104, 2005.
• Ohala J.J. (1990) There is no interface between phonology and
phonetics : a personnal view. Journal of Phonetics, 18, 153-171.
• Ohala, J.J. (1974). Experimental historical phonology. In J. Anderson
and C. Jones (editors) Historical linguistics. Vol 2. Amsterdam.
North-Holland. 353-389
• Ohala, J.J. (1995). Experimental Phonology. In J. Goldsmith (editor)
Handbook of phonological theory. Oxford Blackwell.
• Ohala, J.J. and Jaeger, J.J. (editors) (1986) Experimental phonology.
Orlando. Academic press.
• Rousselot, A. (1904). Principes de Phonétique expérimentale, 2 vol.
Paris. Didier.