Experimental Phonetics

An Introduction

Katrina Hayward

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317887713
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Langues et linguistique
• Subtopic: Linguistique

Traditionally, investigations into speech and pronounciation have relied on the unaided skills of the phonetician in recognising and reproducing speech sounds. But many practicioners are now using instruments to gain a greater understanding of speech and to be able to analyse speech patterns in situations when speaking and hearing would otherwise be inaccessible without the use of these instruments. This new book looks at how this form of investigation has developed, and considers the types of data that can be used and which questions can be solved using experimental phonetics.

Chapter 1
Introduction: impressionistic phonetics and experimental phonetics

1.1 What is experimental phonetics?

Phonetics is the study of speech. Traditionally, phoneticians have relied on their ears and eyes, and their awareness of their own vocal organs, to study pronunciation. Increasingly, however, they have been using instruments of various types to supplement the information they derive from their own sensations. Experimental phonetics, as the term is commonly used, includes any investigation of speech by means of instruments. It is understood here that the instruments are used to visualise some aspect of the speech event, and possibly also to provide a basis for measurements. For example, making a tape recording for the purpose of repeated listening does not fall within the scope of experimental phonetics, but if the tape recording is fed into a computer and used to produce an acoustic analysis, the activity would be described as an experimental investigation.

There are four main reasons for studying experimental phonetics. The first of these is that speech is interesting in itself. The ability to produce and understand speech is a fundamental part of our identity, as individuals, as members of larger communities, and as human beings. However, many aspects of speaking and hearing are inaccessible without the aid of instruments.

The second reason for studying experimental phonetics is that it expands the range of contexts in which we can study speech. To give but two examples, speech is a highly skilled motor activity, which can be studied as part of the general study of movement. Speech is also a type of sound which can be compared with other types of sound from the perspective of general acoustics. Each of these contexts has its own theoretical perspective, to which the study of speech can contribute.

A third reason is provided by the numerous practical applications of experimental phonetics. Obvious examples are medical applications such as helping patients with disordered speech, applications in the fields of telecommunications and man–machine communication, and the development of audio-visual aids for improving pronunciation in language teaching.

The fourth reason, and the one which underlies this book, is the relevance of speech for the study of language in general. Theoretical linguistics operates with an inner world of language, in which discrete, inherently timeless elements such as words, sounds and even individual components of sounds are arranged in meaningful patterns in accordance with logical principles. This contrasts markedly with the outer world of speech, where individual sounds are anchored in space and time and merge into one another, where boundaries become obscured, and where answers to questions tend to come from statistical, rather than logical, inference. As speakers and hearers, we constantly move between these two worlds, and the processes by which we do so are still not well-understood. However, the two worlds must necessarily influence each other, and it is doubtful that a full explanation of the abstract properties of language will ever be possible without an understanding of the more concrete properties of speech.

This book aims to provide an introduction to the methods of experimental phonetics, the nature of the data which experimental phoneticians must deal with, and the nature of the questions to which the data may provide answers. At the same time, it aims to avoid too many technical details, which may obscure the main points for readers new to the subject. Its orientation is primarily linguistic, but, because of limitations of space and time, it cannot cover all aspects of experimental phonetics which are relevant to linguists.

Since experimental phonetics is defined primarily by its methodology rather than by its subject matter, it is somewhat misleading to suggest that a clear-cut distinction can be drawn between experimental phonetics with non-experimental phonetics. Nevertheless, we shall assume such a division here. We shall use the term impressionistic phonetics to refer to the more traditional type of phonetic investigation which relies on the unaided skill of the phonetician in recognising and reproducing speech sounds. The purpose of the present chapter is twofold. Firstly, it aims to point out ways in which the availability of instruments has influenced the nature of research into speech. Secondly, it aims to provide an overview of the basic methodology and assumptions of impressionistic phonetics, since it will be necessary to build on these in the chapters which follow.

1.2 Impressionistic phonetics

The term impressionistic is taken from Abercrombie (1954, 1967), where it is applied to a style of phonetic transcription. In Abercrombie’s usage, it is not meant to suggest any neglect of detail, but, rather, the absence of preconceived notions about the structure of the language being transcribed. For example, a linguistic field worker beginning work on a previously unstudied language would make a very detailed impressionistic transcription. In the present context, impressionistic is opposed to instrumental, and is meant to convey the idea of the phonetician relying entirely on his own impressions of sound, unaided by technology.

Impressionistic phonetics involves, first and foremost, acquiring and cultivating a skill in recognising, discriminating between, and performing, a wide range of speech sounds. For some practitioners, this skill is an end in itself. For others, it is an essential part of a larger, more theoretical enterprise of delimiting and classifying the set of possible speech sounds which may occur in human language. To quote Catford (1988: 2), ‘What the competent phonetician must acquire is a deep, internally experienced, awareness of what is going on within the vocal tract – an ability to analyse, and hence describe and ultimately control, the postures and movements of organs that produce the sounds of speech … the acquisition of these practical skills is by far the best way of acquiring a deep understanding of phonetic theory.’

Impressionistic phonetics has a long history, extending back to before the fifth century bc, at least in Ancient India (Allen 1953: 5). At the risk of being overly simplistic, we might say that the basic framework and methodology of the subject as it is taught and practised today were already in place by the early years of this century. In contrast, experimental phonetics is a young field. Convenient benchmark dates are the publication of Principes de phonétique expérimentale by Rousselot (often considered to be the father of the subject) in 1897–98 and, most importantly for the character of the subject today, the invention of the sound spectrograph in the 1940s. Experimental phonetics has built on the foundations of impressionistic phonetics, and has taken over much as regards orientation and basic assumptions. At the same time, the basic classificatory framework of impressionistic phonetics has itself been an object of study for experimental phoneticians. Some knowledge of impressionistic phonetics is therefore essential for the study of experimental phonetics, whereas the opposite is not true. It is possible to become a highly skilled impressionistic phonetician without ever setting foot in a phonetics laboratory.

In this section, I shall give a brief account of some of the basic assumptions which provide the foundation for impressionistic phonetics, and also of its methodology. An overview of the classificatory framework is given in the Appendix.

1.2.1 Assumptions

Impressionistic phonetics focusses on the positions and movements of the speech organs involved in the production of individual speech sounds. It is based on a number of assumptions about the nature of speech. Important among these are:

1. Speech can be represented as a series of segments.
2. Each segment has a target, and can be specified uniquely with reference to its target. Each target corresponds to a unique auditory percept in the mind of a trained observer.
3. Any segmental target can be specified using a limited number of dimensions. These dimensions do not need to be defined for each language individually. Instead, there is a universal set of dimensions which are relevant to all human languages.

For example, the English word fan might be represented as [fæn].¹ This implies that it is made up of a sequence of three segments, as, indeed, is suggested by the spelling. Let us now focus our attention on the first segment, represented by the letter f. It is produced by forcing air through a narrow opening between the lower lip and the upper teeth. The target may be described as: ‘loose contact between lower lip and upper teeth, vocal folds open and not vibrating’, and is conventionally specified as a voiceless labiodental fricative. Each term of this three-term label refers to one articulatory dimension. Voiceless refers to the fact that the vocal folds are not vibrating (the voicing dimension), labiodental to contact between the upper teeth and the lower lip (the place of articulation dimension), and fricative to the fact that the constriction between the lips and the teeth is sufficiently narrow for the rasping sound to be produced when air flows between them, but does not cut off the airstream entirely (the manner of articulation dimension). These three dimensions are crucial for the description of consonants in all known languages.

1.2.2 Methodology

Acquiring skill in impressionistic phonetics is, in many ways, like studying the pronunciation of a new language. For example, a native speaker of English who sets out to learn French must master the vowel sound which occurs in words such as lune ‘moon’ or tu ‘you (familiar)’, and which is pronounced rather like the vowel of English see but with closely rounded lips. There are three aspects to this mastery: (1) learning to pronounce the vowel oneself (2) learning to recognise the vowel when it is pronounced by native speakers of French and to distinguish it from the other French vowels and (3) learning to associate this particular articulatory-auditory package with the letter u, which is never pronounced in this way in English.

In more abstract terms, learning a new speech sound involves learning to get the speech organs to adopt a new position or to move in a new way, and to associate this new activity with a new and distinct auditory percept. In the process, students may be led to a new awareness of their own vocal organs, especially if they have not studied a foreign language before. (How many monolingual English speakers stop to think about the position of their tongue and lips when pronouncing the vowel of see?) The association with the letter u is also important because it helps to give students access to the representation of French words in writing.

Training in impressionistic phonetics aims to increase students’ repertoire of speech sounds beyond what might be found in any particular language. In the ideal case, it would result in mastery of all possible speech sounds of all possible human languages. Students must concentrate on the proprioceptive (tactile and kinaesthetic) sensations associated with producing speech, in order to achieve an increased awareness of, and control over, the movements of their own vocal organs. Training should also result in an increased ability to distinguish between similar sounds and an increased awareness of the relationship between what the speech organs are doing and the auditory percept which results. Thus, the trained impressionistic phonetician, hearing an unfamiliar language for the first time, should be able to make an educated guess as regards what the speaker is doing with his or her vocal organs. This task is made easier if it is possible to look at the speaker. The guess can be refined by repeated listening and by trying to imitate the pronunciation to the satisfaction of a native-speaker informant.

The final elements in impressionistic phonetic training are learning to specify speech sounds in terms of universal articulatory dimensions and to use phonetic notation, most commonly the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Once our trained impressionistic phonetician has worked out what the informant is doing with his or her vocal organs, he or she will want to communicate his or her observations to others. Most commonly, this will involve producing a transcription of the speech, that is, writing the speech down as a string of individual speech sounds (segments), each represented by its own alphabetic letter, as in the example of [fæn] above.

Both proprioceptive percepts of position and movement and auditory percepts of sound are entirely personal matters, and it is necessary to have a simple and convenient means of talking about them. In the example of the sound [f], discussed above, the relevant universal dimensions were voicing, place of articulation and manner of articulation, and the specification was voiceless labiodental fricative. If understood literally, the specification refers to the articulatory target for [f], that is, the position of the speech organs which results from the movement of the lower lip upwards to touch the upper teeth and the opening of the vocal folds (though the term fricative also refers to the rasping sound or audible friction which characterises this sound...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Author’s acknowledgements
• Publisher’s acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: impressionistic phonetics and experimental phonetics
• 2 The nature of sound
• 3 Analysing sound: the spectrograph
• 4 The acoustics of speech production
• 5 Perception and hearing
• 6 The acoustic description of vowels
• 7 The acoustic description of consonants
• 8 Speech production
• Appendix: An overview of impressionistic-phonetic classification
• Bibliography
• Index