(Primary) and secondary Cardinal Vowels 1 49
43. Additional vowels 1 55
44. First and second formants of Cardinal Vowels 1 6 1
45. Cardinal Vowels with frequencies of F 1 and F2 (Hz)
superimposed 1 62
46. Cardinal Vowel charts with doh-ray-me
superimposed 167
47. Pitch-schemes of nouns and verbs 1 76
48. Stress differences on uniform pitch 177
49. Stress-groups, or feet 1 8 1
50. The i-a vowel continuum 189
5 1 . The i-a vowel continuum: English and Spanish
divisions 1 9 1
52. The VOT continuum 193
53. Labial stops in Hindi and Sindhi 1 97
1
Introduction
1. THE USES OF PHONETICS
Phonetics is the systematic study of human speech-sounds. It provides means of describing and classifying virtually all the sounds that can be produced by human vocal tracts. How this is done is the principal subject-matter of this book. But before we begin to investigate the sounds of speech it may be useful to say something about why it is interesting and useful to do this: in other words, to review some of the uses of phonetics.
Over a century ago, the great English philologist, linguist, and phonetician, Henry Sweet (who, as Shaw tells us, was in part the prototype of Professor Higgins in Pygmalion -perhaps better known nowadays as the musical, My Fair Lady) described phonetics as '. .. the indispensable foundation of all study of language-whether that study be purely theoretical, or practical as well...' (Sweet (1877), p. v).
This is as true today as it was in the time of Sweet. Any person who works with language would do well to have a basic knowledge of phonetics. The teacher of languages, for example, including the teacher of English as a second language, must be able to diagnose the pronunciation errors made by students, and to devise means of correcting them-this is impossible without both theoretical and practical knowledge of phonetics.
Phonetics is also useful to those concerned with various aspects of the mother tongue: the phonetically trained teacher of reading will have a better understanding of orthographic problems and the relationship of spelling to the spoken language; in the teaching of speech-production phonetics is obviously essential-actors, particularly those who wish to master numerous dialects and foreign accents, certainly ought to have a thorough knowledge of phonetics, which, alas, they usually lack.
Speech pathologists have an obvious need for phonetics, which
2 Introduction
they readily acknowledge, both for a general understanding of how the vocal apparatus works and for the diagnosis and treatment of minor articulatory defects.
Communication and computer engineers and other 'speech-scientists' working on the improvement of speech transmission systems, on speech synthesis, and on automatic speech recognition, also need to have a considerable knowledge of phonetics.
Another important application of phonetics is to what Sweet calls 'scientific philology'-or what we would now call 'comparative-historical linguistics'. In his words: 'Without a knowledge of the laws of sound-change, scientific philology... is impossible, and without phonetics their study degenerates into a mere mechanical enumeration of letter-changes' (p. v).
And of course phonetics is absolutely essential to the student of linguistics. It is virtually impossible to do serious work in linguistics without a thorough knowledge of phonetics. Clearly, without phonetics, field-work, the most important source of linguistic data, is impossible, and phonological rules become (like the sound-laws referred to above) meaningless and unmotivated rules of letter-substitution. Even in the study of syntax and morphology questions of phonetics frequently arise.