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Hey everybody. Welcome. Thanks for joining us.
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So today we will be talking about articulatory phonetics.
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This is the study of how speech sounds are produced in the vocal tract.
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All of our articulators in our vocal tracts must work in concert to produce just one speech sound.
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This is to say nothing of the complexity of these motor routines in casual speech.
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So just a note, we will be focusing on the phonetics of spoken languages,
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and more specifically consonant sounds in North American English in this video.
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So what's the difference between consonants and vowels you might ask.
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Well basically consonants involves some construction of airflow, whereas vowels do not.
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When linguists described consonant sounds,
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we use three criteria: voicing, place of articulation and manner of articulation.
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Let's talk about each of these in turn.
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Voicing or state of the glottis refers to what the vocal folds are doing.
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When air passes through open vocal folds,
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we call these voiceless sounds.
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When air passes through vibrating vocal folds,
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we call these voiced sounds.
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You can feel the difference between voiced and voiceless sounds
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by putting your hand right here on your adam's apple if you're male
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or where your adam's apple would be if you're a female.
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So produce these two sounds in succession
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[s]
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[z]
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[s]
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[z]
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Which one produces the vibration?
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You should feel that [z] produces a vibration. So it's a voiced sound.
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whereas [s] does not produce the vibration. So it's a voiceless sound.
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Place of articulation refers to where in the vocal track
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the construction of airflow takes place.
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Bilabial sounds are produced with both lips like [p], [b], [m].
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Labiodental sounds are produced with the upper teeth and the low lips such as [f] [v].
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Interdental sounds are produced with the tongue in between the upper and lower teeth such as [θ] [ð].
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such as [θ] [ð].
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Alveolar sounds are produced with the tongue at or near the ridge right behind upper front teeth
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such as [t] [d] [s].
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Palatal sounds are produced at the hard palate or the roof of the mouth
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such as [ʃ] [ʒ] [j].
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Velar sounds are produced at the velum or soft palate
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such as [k] [g].
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Glottal sounds are produced at the glottis or the space between the vocal folds
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such as [h] or the catch in the throat as in Batman
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Manner of articulation refers to how the airflow is constricted in the vocal tract.
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Stop sounds result from a complete constriction of airflow followed by a release of that air
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such as [p] [t] [k] [b] [d] [g].
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Fricatives are sounds produced when the tongue approaches
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but does not make contact with a place of articulation causing a bottleneck of the airflow.
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This gives the sound a friction like quality
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such as [v] [θ] [z] [ʃ].
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Affricate results from the sequence of stop plus fricative in rapid succession.
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So the affricate [ʧ] represents [t] plus [ʃ]
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just as the affricate [ʤ] results from [d] plus [ʒ].
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Nasal sounds are produced when the velum is lowered
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allowing air to pass through the nasal cavity
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such as [m] [n] [ŋ].
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Liquid sounds are produced by allowing air to pass by one or both sides at the tongue
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and the tongue itself can move a lot to shape the sound
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such as [l] [ɹ].
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Glide sounds are produced with very little constriction of air flow
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so little in fact that they are often referred to as semi-vowels
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such as [w] [j].
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And finally we have tap sounds.
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Tap sounds are involving rapid flick of the tongue to some place of articulation.
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In North American English we only really have one tap, and that's at the alveolar ridge.
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You can hear the tap sound in the word butter butter.
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Notice where we write it with two "t"s in English that your tongue is producing a tap sound there
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rather than a full stop.
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So in North American English you say [bʌɾɹ],
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now as compared to in received pronunciation
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where you say [bʌtɹ] that involves a full [t] stop.
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Okay we discussed these three criteria for describing consonant sounds:
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voicing, place of articulation and manner of articulation.
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and when linguists talk about a consonant sounds they do so in that order
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so for example the sound [b] is considered a voiced bilabial stop.
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[s] is a voiceless alveolar fricative.
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That's it for this video. Thanks so much for watching. Hope you enjoyed it.
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So please check out our other videos including articulatory phonetics and vowels
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and also how to navigate the international phonetic alphabet.
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See later.