The aim of phonetic transcription is to represent the sounds of speech on paper. This book surveys the history of attempts to represent speech, considering the relationship of transcription to ...written language and includes a thorough analysis of the many different kinds of phonetic transcription addressing what exactly is represented in different kinds and levels of transcription. It reviews contemporary uses of phonetic transcription in a range of situations including dictionaries, language teaching texts, phonetic and phonological studies, dialectology and sociolinguistics, speech pathology and therapy, and forensic phonetics. The author grounds his work in the philosophy of phenomenalism, countering arguments against auditory transcription that have been advanced by experimental phoneticians for reasons of empirical inadequacy, and by linguistic rationalists who say it is irrelevant for understanding the supposedly innate categories that are said to underlie speech.
Key Features
Analyses broad, narrow, auditory, systematic, segmental, suprasegmental and parametric phonetic transcription
Includes a glossary of key terms
Demonstrates the comparison, classification and interpretation of phonetic transcriptions for different purposes through a series of examples
No book has ever been published on tonal change and neutralization, two closely related topics in tonal phonology. This will be the first book to be devoted to both. The articles collected in this ...volume analyze a wide range of data concerning tonal change and neutralization, including post-lexical neutralization which represents a new topic in prosodic research. The volume as a whole covers a wide range of tone and pitch-accent languages in Asia, Africa and Europe, with a main focus on Asian languages/dialects many of which are endangered now. In addition to presenting novel data and analyses about individual languages, it provides typological perspectives on tonal change and neutralization. This volume will serve as an indispensable source of data and analyses for a wide range of linguists interested in phonetics, phonology, prosody, historical linguistics, language typology, endangered languages, Japanese linguistics, and Chinese linguistics.
Le schwa est une voyelle faible ou réduite notée ә alternant avec zéro et restreinte aux syllabes non-accentuées. En français standard, il peut faire surface à l’intérieur ou en fin de mot. Nous ...proposons ici une étude du schwa final de mot exclusivement, en particulier par le prisme de la question du schwa final en tant que « lubrifiant phonétique » (Purse 2019). Le schwa final est-il réellement un lubrifiant ? Joue-t-il seulement un rôle sur le plan exclusivement phonétique ? Pour répondre à ces questions, nous avons utilisé trois très grands corpus du français (plus de 110 heures de discours) pour établir la présence du schwa final selon les contraintes phonotactiques (la loi des trois consonnes, Grammont 1894) et le style de parole, mais aussi son rôle sur les phénomènes d’adjacence de bas niveau que sont le dévoisement final et l’assimilation régressive de voisement en français standard. Nous concluons que le schwa final est en effet corrélé au nombre de consonnes dans la séquence, et au style de parole ; de surcroît, sa présence est significativement corrélée à beaucoup moins d’effets d’adjacence – comme s’il jouait le rôle de bouclier, facilitant l’adéquation entre forme de surface et forme sous-jacente.
Is word-final schwa in Standard French a “phonetic lubricant”?
Schwa is a weak or reduced vowel noted ә, alternating with zero and limited to unstressed syllables. In Standard French, it can appear word-internally or word-finally. In this paper, we present an extended study of word-final schwa, and more precisely about its role as a “phonetic lubricant” (Purse 2019). Is word-final schwa really a lubricant? Does it indeed play a role at a purely phonetic level? To answer these questions, we used three large corpora of French containing more than 110 hours of speech to establish the presence of word-final schwa as a function of the number of consonants in the sequence (Three Consonants Rule by Grammont 1894) and of speech style. We also assess the role of schwa on low-level adjacency effects such as final devoicing and regressive voicing assimilation. We conclude that word-final schwa is correlated with ease of production, with careful speech more than casual speech, and that its presence is highly correlated with less adjacency effects – as if it acts as a shield blocking consonant alterations, thus facilitating the mapping between surface form and underlying form.
Cette étude s’inscrit dans la continuité de nos travaux antérieurs portant sur les disfluences typiques du bégaiement. En effet, les recherches menées sur la nature des sons disfluents en parole ...spontané et en description d’images ont révélé que ce sont essentiellement les voyelles antérieures, les voyelles de grande aperture et les voyelles nasales qui posent le plus de problème aux personnes qui bégaient (désormais PQB) en français. En ce qui concerne les consonnes, les sujets testés présentaient des disfluences significativement plus importantes sur les consonnes non-voisées et les post-alvéolaires. Cette nouvelle étude vient donc compléter cette dernière en abordant l’environnement phonétique des sons disfluents. L’objectif de ce travail est de définir les traits articulatoires des sons qui composent l’environnement phonétique des phonèmes ayant été bégayés. Pour y parvenir nous avons utilisé des enregistrements audios réalisés auprès de locuteurs bègues francophones du Togo pendant une activité de description d’images. Les résultats mettent en évidence que les consonnes qui viennent avant et après une consonne disfluente ne sont pas forcément de même nature. Certaines catégories de sons augmenteraient le risque de bégaiement s’ils se placent avant ou après une consonne. Mots clés : Bégaiement, parole, phonétique
Phonetic characteristics of the environment of the typical disfluencies of stuttering: the case of french speakers.
This study is a continuation of our previous work on the typical disfluencies of stuttering. Indeed, research on the nature of spontaneous speech disfluent sounds has revealed that it is mainly the anterior vowels, large aperture vowels and nasal vowels that pose the most problems to people who stutter (PWS) in French. For consonants, subjects exhibited significantly greater disfluences on unseen unvoiced consonants and post-alveolars. This new study complements the latter and have to analyze the phonetic environment of disfluent sounds. The main of this study is to define the articulatory features of the sounds that make up the phonetic environment of the phonemes that have been stuttered. To achieve this, we used audio recordings made in Togo from French speakers during a picture’s description. The results show that consonant that come before and after a disfluent consonant are not necessarily of the same nature. Some categories of sounds would increase the risk of stuttering if they are placed before or after a consonant. Key words: Stuttering, speech, phonetic
Tone and Intonation are two types of pitch variation, which are used by speakers of all languages in order to give shape to utterances. More specifically, tone encodes segments and morphemes, and ...intonation gives utterances a further discoursal meaning that is independent of the meanings of the words themselves. In this comprehensive survey, Carlos Gussenhoven provides an overview of research into tone and intonation, discussing why speakers vary their pitch, what pitch variations mean, and how they are integrated into our grammars. He also explains why intonation in part appears to be universally understood, while at other times it is language-specific and can lead to misunderstandings. After eight chapters on general topics relating to pitch modulation, the book's central arguments are illustrated with comprehensive phonological descriptions - partly in Optimality Theory - of the tonal and intonational systems of six languages, including Japanese, Dutch, and English.
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