Stops, Vowels

Broad transcription = we capture only phonemes

Narrow transcription = captures actual realization of words with positional allophones

STOPS

• Complete contact of the active and passive articulators

• Complete obstruction of the vocal tract

• Momentary stopping of airflow

Three phases of a stop

• Closing, closure, release (small burst of an air)

• Universally, voiceless obstruents are preferred

• Voiceless stops & fricatives – fortis (stronger)

• Voiced stops & fricatives – lenis (lower – you can’t do it long, because voicing and stops is hard)

• In English, the releasing phase is sometimes missing, Stops with no audible release are transcribed with this diacritic

• Czech stops are always released

Aspirated voiceless stop

• Voiceless stops /p, t, k/ are aspirated when they occur at the beginning of a syllable, i.e. at the beginning of a word (pay, play) or before a stressed vowel (repay)

Pre-fortis clipping

• process in which length of a vowel is determined by the voicing of the consonant that comes after it. when a stressed vowel is followed by a voiceless consonant within the same syllable, the length of that vowel is considerably reduced. This is especially noticeable in the case of long vowels, which are shortened up to half their length.

Four types of stops

• Unreleased stops, nasal release, lateral release, affricated release

Nasal release

• when the air pressure builds up behind the stop closure – it is released through the nose by lowering the soft palate (sadden, sudden, leaden ('saedn)

• Homorganic = two sounds with the same place of articulation are said to be homorganic

Lateral release

• during the alveolar stop, the air pressure built up during the stop can be released by lowering the sides of the tongue

• little, ladle, middle

Affricated release

• A release accompanied by a period of prolonged fricative noise.

Unreleased stop

• A stop is unreleased when it occurs before another stop (act)

• Unreleased stops also at the end of a word before a pause

Flap

• Quick brush of the tongue tip against the alveolar ridge

• Difference between a flap and an alveolar stop is in a length of a touch, flap is shorter than a stop (the place of articulation is the same)

• Any coronal stop (t, d, n) can be “flapped”

Fricative

• The same as with the voiceless stops: the vowel is shorter in the first word of each of these pairs:

• strife, strive; teeth, teethe; rice, rise

• stops and fricatives are the only consonants that can be voiced or voiceless

• Because they have an articulatory feature in common and because they act together in phonological patterns, we refer to fricatives and stops together as a natural class of sounds called obstruents

• However, fricatives do differ from stops in that they sometimes involve actions of the lips that are not immediately obvious.

• Secondary articulation – lip rounding

Glottalization

• Airflow is interrupted at the glottis

• Glottal stop functions as an allophone, it has no contrastive value.

• Glottal reinforcement

• Glottal replacement