2. THANK YOU!
Unit 3
The sound
patterns of
language :

3. Before studying the rest of chapter 3:
phonetics
• International phonetic alphabet: An established analytic framework for the study of
speech segments that has been developed & refined for over a hundreds of
years and is known as the IPA.
• Phonetics: The general study of the characteristics of speech sounds is called
phonetics.
• Articulatory phonetics: which is the study of how speech sounds are made or
articulated.
• Acoustic phonetics: deals with the physical properties of speech as sound
waves in the air.
• Auditory phonetics: Also called perceptual phonetics, which deals with the
perception, via the ear of speech sounds.

4. Main areas of phonetics
Phonetics
Articulatory Phonetics Acoustic Phonetics Auditory Phonetics
the study of how speech
sounds are made, or
articulated
deals with the physical
properties of speech as
sound waves in the air
the perception, via the air, of
speech sounds

5. The difference:
A vowel is a speech sound
made with your mouth
fairly open, the nucleus of
a spoken syllable.
A consonant is a sound
made with your mouth
fairly closed.

6. Consonants & Vowels
Sounds
Consonants Vowels
obstruction of airflow free flow of air

7. Vowels and consonants: Articulation
• Be familiar with the terms for place and manner

8. Consonants
• We normally don’t concentrate on the point that how we produce
speech sounds and It takes certain amount of concentration on what
we are doing. We will begin with consonants when we describe the
articulation of a consonant, we focus on 3 features:
• Consonants are classified by answering three questions
I. The voiced / voiceless distinction .
II. The place of articulation .
III. The manner of articulation .
Before studying the rest of chapter 3:

9. Voiced / voiceless
sounds
Producing sound:
To make a consonant
sound, we start with the
air pushed out by the
lungs up through the
trachea(windpipe)to the
larynx.
Inside the larynx are
your vocal cords

10. left: VOICELESS right: VOICED - closed
but should be vibrating

11. Place of Articulation
• Once the air has passed through
larynx, it enters to the vocal tract and
comes up via pharynx (which is an
extended tube shape about five
inches -13 cm- long. It is then pushed
out through mouse (the oral tract )Or
the nose (the nasal tract).
• Most consonant sounds are produced
by using the tongue and other parts of

12. BILABIALS
 Two lips. Bilabial consonants are produced
by creating a closure with both lips.

13. LABIODENTAL
 Lower lip and upper teeth. Labiodental
consonants are produced by raising the lower
lip to the upper teeth. English has only fricative
labiodentals, and no stops.

14. INTERDENTAL
 Tongue between the teeth, or just behind the upper
teeth (also called "dental"). In English, the
interdental consonants are also all fricatives. In the
ASCII phonetic alphabet, these sounds are the voiced
[th] and the voiceless [TH].

15. ALVEOLAR
 Tongue tip at the alveolar ridge, behind the top
teeth. English alveolar consonants are formed by
raising the tip of the tongue to the alveolar ridge,
which lies right behind the teeth. There are both
fricatives and stops.

16. PALATAL
 The front or body of the tongue raised to the palatal
region or the domed area at the roof of your mouth.
In our ASCII phonetic alphabet, these are the
voiceless [S] and the voiced [Z]