Applying Phonetics
Description
The dynamic field of phonetics, the science of the structure and function of human speech, has seen exciting technological innovations and new applications in recent years. Applying Phonetics introduces students to the field through a unique exploratory approach that highlights practical applications and focuses on the diverse ways in which the speech sciences influence daily life. Requiring no prior knowledge of linguistics, this accessible, student-friendly textbook introduces the key concepts in phonetics and explains their relevance to contemporary applications. Even students who have completed introductory linguistics courses will discover plenty of new material in this volume.
Rather than immediately delving into complex theoretical information, the text presents a brief overview of basic concepts and then uses applications--speech synthesis, forensic speech science, language teaching--to explain the details. This unique approach increases student interest and comprehension, clearly demonstrating how speech science is beneficial to society. Engaging, easily-relatable topics include speech anatomy and physiology, the nature of normal and disordered speech development, the origins of speech, and speech applications in forensics, music, drama, film, and business. Written by a respected expert with over 25 years' experience teaching linguistics and phonetics, this textbook
* Explores the wide-ranging applications of phonetics areas such as accessibility, computer speech, education, the fine arts, and business
* Demonstrates how practical problems have been addressed through phonetics, such as the use of speech analysis for forensic purposes
* Presents real-life case studies that illustrate fundamental phonetics concepts
* Includes exercises and activities, discussion questions, an extensive glossary, further readings, and a companion website
Applying Phonetics: Speech Science in Everyday Life is an ideal text for undergraduate students with no prior knowledge of linguistics, as well as those needing to expand their knowledge of phonetic principles. It will appeal to students in education, computer science, cognitive science, biology, psychology, business, and music.
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MURRAY J. MUNRO is Professor in the Department of Linguistics at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, where he has taught linguistics and phonetics for the past 25 years. His published books include Pronunciation (co-edited with J. Levis, 2017) and Pronunciation Fundamentals: Evidence-based perspectives for L2 Teaching and Research (co-authored with T. Derwing, 2015). His research centers on the ways in which linguistics can be used to address practical problems and has appeared in a wide range of journals covering the speech sciences and applied linguistics.
Content
Foreword xii
Acknowledgments xiii
About the Companion Website xiv
Part I What Is Speech? 1
1 Introducing Phonetics: The Science of Speech 3
1.1 speech, language, and communication 4
1.2 the sound structure of speech 8
1.3 phonetics as a field of study 9
2 The Human Vocal Tract 14
2.1 the vocal apparatus 14
2.2 making speech 15
for further reading 24
3 Sound, Spelling, and Phonetic Transcription 25
3.1 why do speech specialists need a phonetic alphabet? 25
3.2 phonetic transcription 28
for further reading 31
4 The Sounds of Language 32
4.1 consonants 32
4.2 vowels 36
4.3 speech sounds in other languages 39
for further reading 41
5 Beyond Segments 42
5.1 syllables 42
5.2 stress 43
5.3 rhythm 46
5.4 intonation 48
for further reading 50
Part II Speech as a Human Phenomenon 51
6 The Origins of Speech 53
6.1 our place in evolution 53
6.2 how special is speech? 58
for further reading 61
7 Speech Across the Lifespan 62
7.1 anatomical development from infancy to the teens 62
7.2 the development of speech perception 65
7.3 childhood speech production 69
7.4 speech in adulthood 73
7.5 aging 75
for further reading 77
8 When Things Go Wrong: Disorders of Speech 78
8.1 cleft lip and cleft palate 78
8.2 stuttering 80
8.3 laryngectomy 81
8.4 aphasias 84
8.5 some additional disorders 85
8.6 the role of speech-language pathologists 85
8.7 transcribing disordered speech 86
for further reading 87
Part III Applying Phonetics 89
9 Machines that Talk 91
9.1 the history of speech synthesis 91
9.2 the nature of synthetic speech 99
9.3 the secret life of text-to-speech systems 101
9.4 how good is your speech synthesizer? 107
9.5 the future of synthetic speech 109
for further reading 110
10 Forensic Speech Science 111
10.1 earwitness identification 111
10.2 expert speaker identification: whose speech is on that threatening voicemail? 119
10.3 speaker profiling: what does the sound of a voice tell us about its owner? 126
10.4 disputed utterance analysis: was that really a confession? 128
10.5 other applications 131
10.6 some closing thoughts 131
for further reading 132
11 Pronunciation Teaching 133
11.1 second-language learning and accented speech 135
11.2 the nature of L2 accents 136
11.3 analyzing L2 speech 138
11.4 L2 accents and communication 141
11.5 pronunciation in second-language instruction 143
for further reading 151
12 Phonetics for Stage, Screen, and Concert Hall 152
12.1 accents for actors 152
12.2 some applications in vocal music 161
for further reading 167
13 More Applications in Arts and Entertainment 168
13.1 speech and animation 168
13.2 invisible speech: the paradox of ventriloquism 172
13.3 the sounds of constructed languages 173
for further reading 176
14 Phonetics in the Business World (and Beyond) 177
14.1 automatic speech recognition 177
14.2 the surprising story of the vocoder 180
14.3 speech in branding and marketing 182
for further reading 187
15 Ethical Issues 188
15.1 talking about speech 188
15.2 speech science versus speech science fiction 190
15.3 other ethical concerns 192
for further reading 195
Epilogue 196
Appendix 197
Glossary 199
List of Sources 207
Index 217
1
Introducing Phonetics : The Science of Speech
Speech is the most fundamental means of human communication. Nearly all of us-with the exception of the profoundly deaf and people with severe cognitive dysfunction-begin learning to speak during the early stages of childhood and continue to use spoken language as a mode of interaction. It is mainly through speech that we establish and develop our most important personal attachments, acquire the cultural competence that allows us to function as members of society, and pass on our wisdom to our offspring.
An especially fascinating aspect of speech is that it appears to be a uniquely human capability. Other social animals engage with their communities in a variety of ways, and we humans often talk affectionately to our canine and feline companions. But non-human animals don't use anything quite like speech with one another; nor do they carry on spoken interactions with us. The importance of speech as a social tool and its status as a defining characteristic of humanness have made phonetics a dynamic and fruitful area of study since ancient times. In fact, the phonetician John Ohala (2006) suggests that phonetics may be the oldest of the behavioral sciences and, in many respects, one of the most successful. Its value is evident in the wide range of useful things we can do because of speech-related research and technological innovations. You might not think of the telephone, for instance, as a product of phonetics, but its invention has revolutionized our lives because Alexander Graham Bell devoted his life to the study of speech. Even more impressive are today's artificial talking agents, which can read web pages aloud for people with visual disabilities and provide a voice to those who, like the late Stephen Hawking, have lost the ability to speak. The reverse situation is also becoming a practical reality in the form of computer applications that accept speech input and follow instructions to help us complete daily tasks. It is less well known to the public that criminal investigations sometimes employ forensic phonetics during the collection of evidence leading to the conviction of offenders. On the medical front, advances in the study of speech anatomy and physiology have led to effective remediation for many types of vocal tract injuries, language delays, and speech disorders. And with respect to language preservation and revitalization, linguists are able to apply phonetic principles along with speech technology to systematically document the sound patterns of endangered languages.
1.1 speech, language, and communication
1.1.1 classifying communication types
When phoneticians talk about speech, they mean the component of language conveyed by sound. Speech is rooted in human biology in that it is produced through the centrally mediated (i.e., managed by the brain) activity of the vocal tract. Of course, many animals can make non-speech sounds, so to understand what makes speech special, we need to consider its relation to other communication types. Figure 1.1 shows some of the ways that different types of communication may be classified. Broadly, communication refers to an exchange of information between organisms. The first thing to notice is that some communicative behaviors count as linguistic and some do not. This distinction is shown on the horizontal dimension of the figure. Language is an elaborate symbolic system that can be used to convey all sorts of information from one person to another. But many kinds of information can certainly be conveyed without it. Animals often send messages, for example, using body postures and movements, cries and roars, and even odors. Linguists would generally agree that none of these forms of expression counts as language. Humans, too, can convey a great deal of useful information without language. Babies express emotional states like discomfort, frustration, and pleasure through cries, giggles, and other vocalizations, and through facial expressions that are not linguistic either. Most of the time, classifying something as language or not is straightforward, yet a fully satisfactory technical definition of language has proved surprisingly elusive. We will return to this issue shortly.
Figure 1.1 Classification of communication types
A second dimension of communication-shown on the vertical dimension of Figure 1.1-concerns whether or not a vocal tract is involved. Across animal species, many forms of non-vocal communication are possible. Some of these appear to be simple, as when a dog leaves its signature by urinating on a fire hydrant or a cat rubs the side of its head against a piece of furniture, leaving a scent marking. These signs are primitive in that they transmit relatively little information ("I've been here!") and are not directed at any particular receiver. Other examples of non-vocal communication, however, are information-rich and geared to a specific, interested audience. Bees perform an elaborate "dance" in view of the other members of their hive, using a sophisticated non-vocal system that informs the community of both the location and the quality of a food source, and does so with a high degree of precision.
Human non-vocal communication varies in its complexity as well. A gentle touch with a hand can be understood as an affectionate act, and facial expressions can reveal a wide range of emotional states. More impressively, human non-vocal behavior is sometimes linguistic. This is because human language has more than one means of transmission or MODALITY. The vocal modality is the one we call speech, but the written modality is used for books, computer documents, emails, and text messages. While the written and vocal modalities have a great deal in common, they also differ in important respects. For instance, when we talk, we usually don't use the same level of formality and the same vocabulary as we do when writing a business memorandum. And when we write, we are not able to take advantage of certain aspects of spoken language that affect how our ideas are conveyed, such as changes in tempo, loudness, or pitch.
In addition to the vocal and written forms of language, another modality is gesture, a means by which well over 100 distinct languages, including American Sign Language (ASL ), Japanese Sign Language (Nihon Suhwa), and Spanish Sign Language (Lengua de Signos Española), are transmitted. Sign systems are exceptional among human languages in that they do not use sound at all; however, they are every bit as complex and nuanced as spoken languages.
Tetrapods are creatures that evolved from four-footed ancestors. Note that tetrapods themselves do not necessarily have four feet. In fact, snakes and birds are tetrapods because their evolutionary predecessors were four-footed reptiles. And all mammals, including humans, are tetrapods as well.
Vocal communication, shown in the middle row of Figure 1.1, entails the production of sound using parts of the body that are also used for breathing and eating. While many animals, including humans, can vocalize, not all their sounds fall into this category. Crickets chirp or stridulate by rubbing parts of their wings against each other, and humming birds hum because of rapid movements of their wings. But virtually all tetrapods have a LARYNX, a structure in the upper part of the body that serves a variety of purposes and happens to make vocalization possible. The meow of a cat, the bleating of a goat, and even the hissing of a snake are all the result of exploiting laryngeal structures, together with other parts of the VOCAL TRACT, to create non-linguistic sounds. When a baby screams out in frustration because it is hungry, it is communicating vocally but non-linguistically; so too are adults when they sigh, gasp, or clear their throats to attract attention.
Speech, however, is more complicated than these non-linguistic sounds because it is an expression of what we consider true language. But how do we define language? Doing so in a succinct way has turned out to be extremely difficult, so linguists have sometimes preferred to focus on certain properties, termed design features by Charles F. Hockett, which, taken together, might capture the difference between language and other communicative systems (Hockett & Hockett, 1960). While we won't go into all of his original 13 features here, four of them that are especially relevant to speech are ARBITRARINESS, DISCRETENESS, PRODUCTIVITY, and DUALITY OF PATTERNING. Human speech is arbitrary in the sense that there is generally no connection between the things that are referred to and the spoken symbols used to represent them, as is true for the words tree (/t?i/), moon (/mun/), and love (/l?v/). A non-English-speaker hearing these words for the first time would not be able to guess their meanings from the way they sound. In fact, two different languages sometimes assign the same sequence of sounds to entirely different meanings. For instance, the Japanese word for tree happens to be /ki/, pronounced like the English word key.
Discreteness...
