Azu’s Notes

The transcriptions we considered yesterday were phonemic transcriptions, (also used synonymously with broad transcriptions) which contain the minimum amount of phonetic detail needed in order to be able to distinguish between words.

A narrow transcription contains phonetic detail which can often be predicted by ‘rules’.

Today, we will discuss some of the main “rules” for converting a broad transcription to a narrow transcription.

Remember that any narrow, ie. phonetic, transcription must be enclosed in [ ] brackets.

“Rules” for Narrow Transcription

You need to understand clearly that the guidelines to narrow transcription provided below are not really “rules” but more of predictions.

That is, the uncritical application of these guidelines will not always result in a perfect narrow transcription.

Speakers are at liberty to modify their pronunciations in various ways.

Speakers differ from each other in their precise pronunciation and the same speaker may vary the pronunciation of the same word in different contexts.

Guidelines for transcription are therefore probabilistic in nature in that they suggest the most likely pronunciations.

It is up to you to carefully listen to the actual recordings when doing your transcriptions and to record each speaker’s actual pronunciation (especially in the assignment).

Narrow Transcription of /r/

It has been a long convention in English phonetics and phonology for the phoneme /r/ to be represented by the symbol “r”.

This has simplified the symbolic representation of this phoneme which can be realized in a number of different ways in various English dialects (alveolar, post-alveolar and retroflex approximants are the most common, but alveolar trills and taps as well as uvular trills also occur in some dialects).

In General English this phoneme is usually realized as an alveolar or a post-alveolar approximant.

Therefore, the first thing that you should do when converting a broad transcription of general English to a narrow transcription, is to convert all instances of /r/ to
Aspiration and release of oral stops

(i) Aspiration

Voiceless oral stops are aspirated before stressed vowels/diphthongs in the same syllable.

e.g.

The aspiration rule does not apply when voiceless oral stops follow /s/ (in the same syllable).

e.g.

(ii) Syllable and word-final (VC) oral stops

What we have discussed so far, are on oral stop aspiration and release, concentrating on initial or CV stops.

Word and syllable-final oral stops or VC stops show somewhat different patterns of release to those shown by CV stops.

When carrying out a narrow transcription of VC stops we are particularly interested in whether the release of the stop is audible or inaudible.

This applies to both voiced and voiceless stops.

It is customary, when transcribing English to leave audibly released stops unmarked (ie. [p], [b], [t], [d], [k], [g]) and to indicate stops without audible release as:
Here are some examples of pairs of words with and without audible release:

Devoicing

(i) Devoicing Voiced Oral Stops and Fricatives

Voiced oral stops and voiced fricatives are usually devoiced in the following contexts:
a) Before a pause (eg. at the end of a sentence or utterance):

b) Before a voiceless or devoiced obstruent (ie. before oral stops, affricates or fricatives)

(ii) Devoicing Approximants Following Voiceless Fricatives

When approximants immediately follow voiceless fricatives they are often, but not always, devoiced.

Note that this devoicing doesn’t always happen.

It usually happens when the fricative and approximant are in the same syllable.

It also seems to be more likely to happen when the syllable is stressed.

Clear and Dark realizations of /l/

i) Before pure vowels, diphthongs and /j/, /l/ is realized as [l] (clear ‘l’).

ii) Before consonants (except /j/) or a pause (eg. the end of a sentence or utterance), the allophone is dark (velarized)

Dark l is also usually found at the end of a word even when the following word starts with a vowel.

This articulation clearly marks the /l/ as belonging to the end of the first word rather than the beginning of the second word.

Assimilation of alveolars

The following assimilations should be noted.

Alveolar assimilation is extremely common, but exceptions to these rules do occur, even in casual connected speech.

Assimilations are much less likely to occur in careful speech and particularly when articulating isolated words carefully.

i) Labiodental nasals before labiodentals

ii) Dental nasal and oral stops before dentals

Syllabic consonants

All syllabic consonants must be marked with a diacritic (as shown in the examples below) in narrow transcription.

Nasalization

Nasalization is particularly likely to occur when a low vowel such as occurs next to a nasal consonant.

Nasalization can occur for any vowel adjacent to a nasal consonant but it tends to be stronger and more audible for low vowels.

Phonemic Transcription

Phonemic transcription uses a restricted set of symbols to capture the meaningful sound contrasts of a language.

e.g.

The first sound in these words are usually aspirated, but as English does not contrast aspirated vs unaspirated plosives (phonemically) the difference is not annotated in a phonemic transcription.

Phonetic Transcription

Phonetic transcription uses a larger set of symbols to capture more phonetic detail relating to the actual production of the utterance.

There are two types of phonetic transcription:
- broad phonetic transcription
- narrow phonetic transcription

Broad Phonetic Transcription

Broad phonetic transcription of speech does not attempt to record the extremely large number of idiosyncratic or contextual variations in pronunciation that occur in normal speech nor does it attempt to describe the individual variations that occur between speakers of a language or dialect.

The goal of a broad transcription is to record the phonemes that a speaker uses rather than the actual spoken variants of those phonemes that are produced when a speaker utters a word.

Strictly speaking:
a “broad phonetic” transcription classifies speech sounds into broad classes of actually spoken sounds
and
a “phonemic” transcription classifies speech sounds in terms of the phonemes that a speaker intends to communicate.

In practice, however, the terms “broad phonetic” and “phonemic” transcription are often used interchangeably and mean the transcription of phonemes.

Symbols for phonemic transcription

The most widely accepted system of symbols is the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

This alphabet is used to represent both phonemes and allophones in normal practice even though it is defined in terms of actual speech sounds.

When linguists are developing a phonemic description of a language or dialect they most often select the most common or widely distributed allophone of each phoneme as the typical allophone of that phoneme and use its phonetic symbol to represent the phoneme as a whole.

When a symbol is used to represent an actual sound (allophone) it has an entirely different meaning to the same symbol when used to represent a phoneme. For this reason we always enclose transcriptions in /…/ when we are indicating phonemes and in […] when we are indicating the actually produced sounds.

Phonemes of English (pdf document)
Word Stress

Primary Stress

In English, the syllables of words differ in prominence.

In polysyllabic words (words of more than one syllable), one of the syllables always has a greater degree of prominence than any other syllable.

The syllable of greatest prominence is known as the primary stressed syllable, or the syllable that carries primary stress.

The primary stressed syllable can be marked by placing a diacritic in the following way:

In monosyllabic words (words of one syllable), the outcome is unambiguous: the syllable, i.e. word, has primary stress (e.g. heat, look, greet) and does not need to be marked.

Secondary stress

Many words have two stresses, one primary and one secondary. The secondary stress can be marked by placing the diacritic before the syllable which has secondary stress:

Further comments

i. words that have secondary stress are very often morphologically related to simpler forms
ii. secondary stress (mostly) precedes the primary stress
iii. at least one syllable (usually) intervenes between the secondary and primary stress

Exceptions to (ii) and (iii):

Compounds

A compound is a word which is composed of two separate words.
e.g.

roadblock
sunglasses
loudspeaker
These have two stresses, one of them primary, the other secondary.
The secondary stress can precede or follow the primary stress, and there need not be an intervening syllable:

Unreduced syllables

There are some words in which the secondary stress can follow the primary stress.
In such cases, it is conventional to refer to the secondary stressed syllable as an unreduced syllable.
The same diacritic can be used to indicate an unreduced syllable.

In some cases, the occurrence of an unreduced syllable is predictable (eg. words ending in -ate or -ise), in others it is not.

Unstressed syllables

In almost all cases, syllables other than primary stressed, secondary stressed or unreduced syllables are unstressed.
Generally in English, the large majority of the vowels of unstressed syllables can be transcribed as schwa:

There are also some cases when unstressed vowels have a quality other than schwa

It is not possible to list them all, but some of these include words that end in unstressed -ish, -ic, -ism and -ing

e.g.

Vowels are sonorous, syllabic sounds made with the vocal tract more open than it is for consonant and glide articulation.

Different vowel sounds (also called vowel qualities) are produced by varying the placement of the body of the tongue and shaping the lips.

Vowel articulations are not as easy to feel as consonant articulations at first, since the vocal tract is not narrowed as much.

To begin with, we will assume that all vowels are voiced and articulated with a constriction of open approximation.

We will also assume (for the moment) that all vowels are oral sounds.

The range of positions which the tongue can occupy within the oral cavity while remaining in a constriction of open approximation is quite large.

The entire available space for such articulation is called the vowel space.

The vowel sounds are represented on an idealized chart of this space

In this diagram, the vowel space is represented along two dimensions:
- high / low dimension (vertical axis):
depicting the height of body of the tongue during articulation of a vowel - i.e. depicting vowel height

(This is also referred to as the close/open dimension - depicting the openness of the oral cavity during articulation)

Four arbitrary points may be identified along this dimension - high, high-mid, low-mid and low

- front / back dimension (horizontal axis):
depicting the extent to which the body of the tongue lies towards the front of the vowel space

Three arbitrary points may be identified along this dimension - front, central and back

Thus, using these two dimensions, we can say, for any given vowel, how high in the vowel space it is articulated, and whether it is a front, central or back vowel.

CARDINAL VOWELS

In addition to these two descriptive parameters, a third is added, which refers to lip position - for a given vowel, it should be said whether, during articulation, the lips are rounded or not.

8 arbitrary points plotted along the perimeter of the vowel space represent the articulation of the cardinal vowels

These cardinal vowels are known both by the number and symbol.

This vowel quadrilateral and the cardinal vowel system were developed in 1956 by Daniel Jones - a British phonetician.

Cardinal vowels are an arbitrary set of reference vowels - arbitrary in the sense that there is no apparent reason why there should be 8 rather than 10 or 12 or any other number.

They are peripheral vowels - they define the boundary of the space within which vowels can be produced.

Therefore cardinal vowels are not exemplified with words from English, or any other language, since, typically, speakers do not utter vowel sounds which are quite as peripheral in the vowel space as the cardinal vowels.

THE 8 CARDINAL VOWELS

Cardinal vowel number: 1
Articulation: Lips are unrounded, tongue located as high and as front as possible, without causing friction, in the vowel space
IPA symbol:
Description: high front unrounded vowel

Cardinal vowel number: 2
Articulation: Lips unrounded, tongue as far front as possible, in the vowel space, tongue at high-mid position
IPA symbol:
Description: high-mid front unrounded vowel

Cardinal vowel number: 3
Articulation: Lips unrounded, tongue as far front as possible, in the vowel space, tongue at low-mid position
IPA symbol:
Description: low-mid Front unrounded vowel

Cardinal vowel number: 4
Articulation: Lips unrounded, tongue as far front as possible, in the vowel space, tongue as low as possible in the vowel space
IPA symbol:
Description: Low front unrounded vowel

Cardinal vowel number: 5
Articulation: Lips unrounded, tongue as far back as possible, in the vowel space, tongue as low as possible in the vowel space
IPA symbol:
Description: Low back unrounded vowel

Cardinal vowel number: 6
Articulation: Lips rounded, tongue as far back as possible, in the vowel space, tongue at low-mid position
IPA symbol:
Description: low-mid rounded back vowel

Cardinal vowel number: 7
Articulation: Lips rounded, tongue as far back as possible, in the vowel space, tongue at high-mid position
IPA symbol:
Description: high-mid rounded back vowel

Cardinal vowel number: 8
Articulation: Lips rounded, tongue as far back and as high as possible, in the vowel space, without causing friction
IPA symbol:
Description: High back rounded vowel

English Vowels

Simple / Pure Vowels

English vowels are divided into two major types – simple vowels (also know as pure vowels or monophthongs) and diphthongs.

Simple vowels do not show a noticeable change in quality.

Diphthongs

Diphthongs are vowels that exhibit a change in quality within a single syllable.

English diphthongs show changes in quality that are due to tongue movement away from the initial articulation towards another vowel position.

This change in vowel quality is clearly perceptible.

Triphthongs

Triphthongs are monosyllabic vowel combinations usually involving a quick, but smooth movement from one vowel to another that passes over a third one.

Tense and Lax vowels

Tense vowels are produced with a placement of the tongue that results in greater vocal tract constriction and are, in general, longer.

Lax vowels may be made with roughly the same tongue position as their tense counterparts but with less constricted articulation.

Not all the vowels come in tense/lax pairs.

ENGLSIH VOWELS

Plosives & Stops
A stop or plosive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. The term plosive is reserved for oral (non-nasal) stops.

Nasals
A nasals are produced when the velum is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose.

Trills
In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation.

Flaps & Taps
In phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator is thrown against another. The main difference between a flap and a stop consonant is that in a flap, there is no buildup of air pressure behind the place of articulation, and consequently no release burst.

Fricatives
Fricatives are produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together.

Approximants
Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. In the articulation of approximants, articulatory organs produce a narrowing of the vocal tract, but leave enough space for air to flow without much audible turbulence.

Affricates
Affricates are produced with a constriction of complete closure followed by a release phase in which friction occurs.
There are two affricates in English:
voiceless palato-alveolar affricate
voiced palato-alveolar affricate

Lateral Consonants
Laterals are “L”-like consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue, while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both sides of the tongue.

Fricatives

Fricatives are articulated with a less extreme degree of constriction than stops and plosives: close approximation.

Fricatives are produced by bringing together two articulators to the point where the airflow is not quite fully blocked – leaving enough of a gap for air to escape, but as the articulators are so close together that audible friction is created as the air passes through.
There are nine fricative consonants in English:

i. voiceless labio-dental fricative  [f]
created by bringing the lower lip close to the upper teeth in a constriction of close approximation, without vibration of the vocal cords
e.g. [f] in fin
ii. voiced labio-dental fricative  [v]
created by bringing the lower lip close to the upper teeth in a constriction of close approximation, with vibration of the vocal cords
e.g. [v] in van

iii. voiceless dental fricative
created by bringing the tip of the tongue into a constriction of close approximation with the upper teeth, without vibration of the vocal cords
e.g. in thin

iv. voiced dental fricative
created by bringing the tip of the tongue into a constriction of close approximation with the upper teeth, with vibration of the vocal cords
e.g. in this

v. voiceless alveolar fricative  [s]
created by bringing the tip or blade of the tongue into a constriction of close approximation with the alveolar ridge, without vibration of the vocal cords
e.g. [s] in sin

vi. voiceless alveolar fricative  [z]
created by bringing the tip or blade of the tongue into a constriction of close approximation with the alveolar ridge, with vibration of the vocal cords
e.g. [z] in zip

vii. voiceless palato-alveolar fricative 
created by bringing the blade of the tongue into a constriction of close approximation with the palato-alveolar region, without vibration of the vocal cords
e.g. in shp

viii. voiced palato-alveolar fricative 
created by bringing the blade of the tongue into a constriction of close approximation with the palato-alveolar region, with vibration of the vocal cords
e.g. in vision

ix. voiceless glottal fricative   [h]
created by bringing the vocal cords into a constriction of close approximation, so that friction is produced without vibration.
e.g. [h] in hit

Approximants

The least radical degree of constriction occur when the articulators come fairly close together, but not sufficiently close together to create friction

This kind of stricture is called open approximation and consonants produced in this way are called approximants

The first sound in yes - transcribed as [j] (e.g. /jes/) is an approximant

[j] is produced by bringing the front of the tongue close to the hard palate.

Although the sides of the tongue are in constriction of complete closure with the upper gums, the air escapes along a central groove in which the front of the tongue is not close enough to the hard palate to create friction

Approximants are normally voiced, and [j] is described as a voiced palatal approximant

The first sound in many English speakers’ pronunciation of rip, rope, rat …
- transcribed as is an approximant

It is produced by bringing the blade of the tongue into a constriction of open approximation with the alveolar ridge

This approximant - is referred to as an alveolar approximant

As with [j], the sides of the tongue form a constriction of complete closure with the gums at the sides of the mouth, but the air escapes along a central groove without creating friction

For most speakers (and in varying degrees, depending on the accent), the tongue body is somewhat retracted when is uttered; and is therefore often described as a post-alveolar approximant, but ‘alveolar approximant’ will suffice for our purposes

The first sound in wet - transcribed as [w] (e.g. /wet/) is also an approximant

In producing this sound, the lips form a constriction of open approximation; there is no friction produced

But, the articulation of [w] is more complicated than that of [j], since [w] also involves another articulation, between the back of the tongue and the velum (i.e. a velar articulation)

Therefore [w] is referred to as a labio-velar approximant

Central Vs Lateral

In discussing the alveolar approximant alveolar approximant , we said that the air escapes along a central groove (of the tongue in this case, the same kind of groove can be formed by the lips)

This is true of all the fricatives and approximants discussed so far

However, it is possible to produce fricatives and approximants in which this is not the case

e.g. the first sound in lift

in producing this sound, the centre or the blade of the tongue forms a stricture of complete closure with part of the alveolar ridge, but the articulation which ‘counts’ is that between the sides of the tongue and the alveolar ridge

Since the sides of the tongue form a constriction of open articulation with the alveolar ridge, and vocal cords vibrate but no friction is created this sound transcribed as , is referred to as a voiced alveolar lateral approximant

Since English fricatives and approximants are typically central, the term ‘laterals’ are used to refer to lateral approximants and the term ‘central’ is omitted in describing central fricatives and approximants

The sounds and are quite similar: both are approximants, both are voiced, both are alveolar

The principal difference is that is lateral and is central

Taps and Trills

We have noted that, for a great many speakers of English, the sound at the beginning of words such as rat, rope, reap - is a post-alveolar approximant -

The same is true of the sound which occurs after stops in words such as prude, true, creep …

However, some speakers utter, not an approximant, but a sound which is very similar to a stop of very short duration
During the articulation of this sound, the blade of the tongue comes into a momentary constriction of complete closure with the alveolar ridge

This sound transcribed as , is referred to as a voiced alveolar tap (or flap)

This also the sound that many American speakers have instead of [t] and [d] in words such as Betty, witty, rider, heady …

Speakers of certain accents of English may utter neither nor in words like rat, rope, reap, prude, true, creep … but a sound referred to as a voiced alveolar trill

Trills are produced by holding one articulator (e.g. blade of the tongue) next to the other (e.g. alveolar ridge) in a constriction of complete closure, but without the same muscular pressure as in a stop

The result is that air pressure builds up behind the closure and forces it open; the air pressure then reduces, and the muscular pressure again creates a constriction of complete closure

This sequence may be repeated in quick succession, producing, in this case an alveolar trill - [r]; but this is relatively rare in most English accents

Secondary Articulation

We have said that the lateral approximant is alveolar
However, laterals may also be produced with an additional articulation, such as one formed between the back of the tongue and the velar (i.e. velar articulation)

When this happens, the alveolar articulation is distinguished as the primary articulation and the velar articulation as the secondary articulation

Where a secondary articulation is velar, this process is referred to as velarization: it is said that the lateral is velarized

The velarized lateral approximant is transcribed using the velarization diacritic -

This sound is often referred to as ‘dark l’

Where a secondary articulation is palatal, this process is referred to as palatalization: it is said that the lateral is palatalized

The palatalized lateral approximant is transcribed using the palatalization diacritic -

The term ‘clear l’ is often used to refer to or

Affricates
Affricates are produced with a constriction of complete closure followed by a release phase in which friction occurs.
There are two affricates in English and

- voiceless palato-alveolar affricate
- voiced palato-alveolar affricate