GLOSSARY ABOUT PHONOLOGY

 (1) accent may refer to prominence given to a syllable, usually by the use of pitch. For example, in the word ‘potato’ the middle syllable is the most prominent; if you say the word on its own you will probably produce a fall in pitch on the middle syllable, making that syllable accented. In this sense, accent is distinguished from the more general term stress, which is more often used to refer to all sorts of prominence (including prominence resulting from increased loudness, length or sound quality), or to refer to the effort made by the speaker in producing a stressed syllable.

 (2) Accent also refers to a particular way of pronouncing: for example, you might find a number of English speakers who all share the same grammar and vocabulary, but pronounce what they say with different accents such as Scots or Cockney, or BBC pronunciation. The word accent in this sense is distinguished from dialect, which usually refers to a variety of a language that differs from other varieties in grammar and/or vocabulary. START ~ INDEX acoustic phonetics an important part of phonetics is the study of the physics of the speech signal: when sound travels through the air from the speaker’s mouth to the hearer’s ear it does so in the form of vibrations in the air. It is possible to measure and analyse these vibrations by mathematical techniques, usually by using specially-developed computer software to produce spectrograms. Acoustic phonetics also studies the relationship between activity in the speaker’s vocal tract and the resulting sounds. Analysis of speech by acoustic phonetics is claimed to be more objective and scientific than the traditional auditory method which depends on the reliability of the trained human ear. active articulator See articulator Adam’s Apple START ~ INDEX START ~ INDEX This is an informal term used to refer to the pointed part of the larynx that can be seen at the front of the throat. It is most clearly visible in adult males. Moving the larynx up and down (as in swallowing) causes visible movement of this point, which is in fact the highest point of the thyroid cartilage. START ~ INDEX affricate An affricate is a type of consonant consisting of a plosive followed by a fricative with the same place of articulation: examples are the tʃ and d sounds at the beginning and end of the English words ‘church’ tʃtʃ, ‘judge’ dd (the first of these is voiceless, the second voiced). It is often difficult to decide whether any particular combination of a plosive plus a fricative should be classed as a single affricate sound or as two separate sounds, and the question depends on whether these are to be © Peter Roach 2009 regarded as separate phonemes or not. It is usual to regard tʃ, d as affricate phonemes in English (usually symbolised č, ǰ by American writers); ts, dz, tr, dr also occur in English but are not usually regarded as affricates. The two phrases ‘why choose’wai tʃuzand‘whiteshoes’wait ʃuzaresaidtoshowthedifference between the tʃ affricate (in the first example) and separate t and ʃ (in the second). START ~ INDEX airstream all speech sounds are made by making air move. Usually the air is moved outwards from the body, creating an egressive airstream; more rarely, speech sounds are made by drawing air into the body – an ingressive airstream. The most common way of moving air is by compression of the lungs so that the air is expelled through the vocal tract. This is called a pulmonic airstream (usually an egressive pulmonic one, but occasionally speech is produced while breathing in). Others are the glottalic (produced by the larynx with closed vocal folds; it is moved up and down like the plunger of a bicycle pump) and the velaric (where the back of the tongue is pressed against the soft palate, or velum, making an air-tight seal, and then drawn backwards or forwards to produce an airstream). Ingressive glottalic consonants (often called implosives) and egressive ones (ejectives) are found in many non-European languages; click sounds (ingressive velaric) are much rarer, but occur in a number of southern African languages such as Nàmá, Xhosa and Zulu. Speakers of other languages, including English, use click sounds for non-linguistic communication, as in the case of the “tut-tut” (American “tsk-tsk”) sound of disapproval. START ~ INDEX allophone Central to the concept of the phoneme is the idea that it may be pronounced in many different ways. In English (BBC pronunciation) we take it for granted that the r sounds in ‘ray’ and ‘tray’ are “the same sound” (i.e. the same phoneme), but in reality the two sounds are very different – the r in ‘ray’ is voiced and non-fricative, while the r sound in ‘tray’ is voiceless and fricative. In phonemic transcription we use the same symbol r for both, but we know that the allophones of r include the voiced non- fricative sound ɹ and the voiceless fricative one. In theory a phoneme can have an infinite number of allophones, but in practice for descriptive purposes we tend to concentrate on a small number that occur most regularly. START ~ INDEX © Peter Roach 2009.

Alveolar Behind the upper front teeth there are a hard, bony ridge called the alveolar ridge; the skin covering it is corrugated with transverse wrinkles. The tongue comes into contact with this in some of the consonants of English and many other languages; sounds such as t, d, s, z, n, and l are consonants with alveolar place of articulation. START ~ INDEX alveolo-palatal when we look at the places of articulation used by different languages, we find many differences in the region between the upper teeth and the front part of the palate. It has been proposed that there is difference between alveolo-palatal and palato-alveolar that can be reliably distinguished, though others argue that factors other than place of articulation are usually involved, and there is no longer an alveolo-palatal column on the IPA chart. The former place is further forward in the mouth than the latter: the usual example given for a contrast between alveolo-palatal and palato-alveolar consonants is that of Polish and ʃ as in ‘Kasia’ kaa and ‘kasza’ kaʃa. START ~ INDEX ambisyllabic We face various problems in attempting to decide on the division of English syllables: in a word like ‘better’ betə the division could be (using the . symbol to mark syllable divisions) either be.tə or bet.ə, and we need a principle to base our decision on. Some phonologists have suggested that in such a case we should say that the t consonant belongs to both syllables, and is therefore ambisyllabic; the analysis of ‘better’ betə is then that it consists of the syllables bet and tə. STARTS ~ INDEX anterior In phonology it is sometimes necessary to distinguish the class of sounds that are articulated in the front part of the mouth (anterior sounds) from those articulated towards the back of the mouth. All sounds forward of palato-alveolar are classed as anterior. START ~ INDEX