The sounds of Language and the Sound Patterns of Human Speech Mary Carmen Rodriguez Del Cid 5176-05-4587
The Sounds of Language It is often said that languages differ by sound or melody. What does this mean? Only when one begins consciously the process of learning a foreign language, does one notice that the language in question possesses sounds far removed from those in one’s own, and not even produced in the same manner. Sometimes, there are also sounds which sound similar, yet prove to be different by a minute, but essential, detail. Those sounds cannot simply be replaced by sounds one knows from their own language. Such a replacement could change the meaning of a word or phrase, or even cause the sentence to become incomprehensible. Correct articulation can prove to be of great difficulty and may require arduous and repetitive practice.Â
Several different sounds may sound the same to a non-native speaker, and at the same time, deceptively similar to a sound from their own mother tongue. Although awareness of such phenomena increases with every new foreign language learnt, only a few realise just how much variety of sound exists in the languages of the world.
DIFFERENT SOUNDS, DIFFERENT MANNER OF ARTICULATION There are only a few elements whose position can be controlled by conscious will nonetheless, it still allows a great variety of sounds to be pronounced. Apart from speech, this can also be observed, perhaps with greater ease, in singing. Each natural language uses but a small part of the great phonetic potential. As such, languages usually consist of only several dozen such sound units, which are then used to build words and utterances.
It is mainly the vocal folds which are responsible for voicing and pitch. The process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds is called ‘phonation’. It is possible to feel them vibrating by placing fingers on one’s Adam’s apple. Women’s vocal folds are of a smaller size than those of men. The rest of the vocal tract, its exact shape differs from person to person, decides on what sound is to be initiated. The changes, be they conscious or automatic, during the articulation process also influence the produced sound.
When speaking of rare sounds, clicks are often mentioned. They occur mainly in the languages of Southern Africa, but not exclusively since they are also known to be present in a ceremonial language called Damin, which used to be spoken in Australia.
Try producing these sounds! It may be easy in isolation, but it will prove far more difficult in continued or uninterrupted speech. Undoubtedly, native speakers will not have any difficulty in articulating the clicks, even when singing.
The clicking song:
SOUND CLASSES: PHONEMES As is apparent, every language can possess a different set of sounds which, in turn, are differentiated by various features. Traditionally, researching the phonetic inventory of a natural language relies on observing the context where the particular sounds appear and also their influence on the meaning of a given phrase. Thus, the so-called minimal pairs are being sought after.
Minimal pairs are pairs of words which differ from each other only by one single sound, such as in polish: dama ‘lady’ and tama ‘dam’.
The features that normally make phones sound different are related to the place and manner of articulation or to the features of the sound, if viewed from the acoustic perspective. Voicing is a distinct feature in many languages of the world. In Polish, for example, the words dama and tama begin with phonemes that differ only by the fact that the former is voiced, and the latter voiceless. It is phonation that decides the meaning of the word.
In some languages, the length (duration) of the sound is of high importance. Most often, there are long and short vowels .Two words may mean something different because of one vowel’s length: German: raten ‘to advise’ and Ratten ‘rats’ English beat vs. bit; If you listen to these pairs closely, you may note that there is also a change to the voice quality.
What is a Phoneme A phoneme is a unit that can differentiate meaning even though it does not have a meaning on its own. Phonemes do not carry a meaning, unlike words or sentences. The number of phonemes in languages is astonishingly varied, from a dozen or so in Rotokas, Piraha, or Ainu to more than a hundred in Taa(also known as !Xóõ or !Xuun – the exclamation mark representing one of the clicks), one of the Khoisan languages spoken in South Africa. Irish also possesses a formidable phonetic inventory of 69 phonemes. The usual number, however, is between 20 and 60.
Traditionally, phonemes are grouped into consonant phonemes and vowel phonemes. Nevertheless, there are those that lie somewhere in-between (approximants). Most often, there are many more consonant phonemes than vowel phonemes (such as in Polish or German), though exceptions do exist. One such exception is the Marquesan language (a cluster of East-Central Polynesian dialects) in which the number of consonants and vowels is comparable. The language that holds the title of the one possessing the largest number of vowels is Taa, whose one dialect distinguishes between thirty one vowels.
Linguists believe in a complicated system, residing in the mind, which stores all the information about units of a language. It is called the ‘mental lexicon’, but its functions and structure differ markedly from an ordinary dictionary. One may assume that every known word is stored in the mental lexicon as a phonemic transcription – a sequence of phonemes. By pronouncing it, all the particular phonemes are being realised. They are transformed from being abstract ideas into concrete, physical and perceptible sounds; they become phones.
TONE AND INTONATION Apart from the abovementioned features of the sound system of language, there are also other elements that may influence the meaning. In tonal languages, every syllable is pronounced with a certain melody to it – its tone. Change of a tone on a given syllable may change the meaning of the word, be it a mono- or polysyllabic word. If indeed a syllable’s tone can modify the meaning of the word, it is called ‘lexical tone’. The example below from Mandarin Chinese is often cited to illustrate the idea of tonal languages. The sound sequence /ma/ has a variety of distinct meanings, depending on the tone chosen. mā má mǎ mà
媽 mother (level tone) 麻 hemp (high-rising tone ) 馬 horse (high-falling tone) 罵 scold (low tone)
Many of the European languages are based on intonation. In those languages, variation of pitch does not change the basic, lexical meaning of the word. It can be used to express the speaker’s attitude or emotions. Intonation can be used to discern the grammatical category of the utterance. A ‘hybrid’ language, in which intonation co-exists with lexical tonality is a rare oddity. Example: Cherokee
ACCENT AND RHYTHM Syllabication does not present a problem for most people, even if at times their intuitive syllabification does not match the officially recommended rules for a given language. For a linguist however, a syllable remains a very difficult unit to define. Likewise, a native speaker can easily recognise that some syllables are more sonorous or prominent than others in their immediate vicinity. Still, a precise definition of this sonority remains difficult to pinpoint. The particular syllable where the lexical stress falls can be described as a ‘potential position of accentuation’. Consequently, it is possible to pronounce a given word while placing stress on a different syllable, even if at times it may be difficult to do so. Most often it also leads to an erroneous pronunciation or problems with comprehension. The position of stress may be a result of the word’s morphological structure, or it may be fixed.
For example, the stress falls on the first syllable of a word in Czech, on the final syllable in French, and on the penultimate syllable in Polish. There are also languages, such as Korean, that do not use lexical stress. Instead it only appears within phrases or sentences used to perform certain functions. Some languages are said to have variable stress, such as in the case of Russian. In certain languages a change in position of the stress changes their meaning. In English, research with stress on the first syllable is a noun, while on the second it is a verb.
ARCHIVING AND RECONSTRUCTING SOUND SYSTEMS One of the main contemporary methods of documenting a language relies on the recording spoken texts. Sound systems of languages long dead can be replayed and analysed anew owing to such a database of recordings. The first mobile recording devices were invented in the 1960’s, but it was not until the following decade that relatively cheap and light cassette deck recorders became available to the general public. Although there exist recordings of dying languages which date back to the previous century they remain very rare. How, then, is it possible to reproduce the sounds of a language which has ceased to be spoken? If the language in question was written in an alphabetic script, it might be possible, if still very difficult. The questions to ask are: What other, betterknown languages or cultures imposed their influence on it? Do any presentlyspoken languages originate from it? Are there any similarities in sound due to the same linguistic origin?
VISIBLE SOUND
The term may be understood in at least two different ways. Firstly, the simple fact of seeing the speaker’s face greatly enhances the ability to identify and decipher their utterances. This has been proved by, amongst other things, the McGurk effect: seeing the form of the mouth of a speaker influences one’s perception of the sound they produce.
LESS-WIDELY USED LANGUAGES AND TECHNOLOGY
Language technology is beginning to play an ever increasing role in the documentation of lesser-used languages. Thanks to its developments, one can create systems to synthesise, recognise and interpret speech, expert and dialogue systems as well as software enhancing language learning or computer-assisted translation. For less-widely used languages availability of such programmes is limited since investing into such small, and often economically poor, markets does not bring much profit to large companies.