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Digvijay Pandya, LPU Unit 5: Classification of Speech Sounds: Vowels, Consonants-General Introduction

Unit 5: Classification of Speech Sounds: Vowels, Notes
Consonants-General Introduction

CONTENTS
Objectives
Introduction
5.1 Description of Speech Sounds
5.2 Vowels
5.3 Diphthongs
5.4 Phonetic Transcription
5.5 Summary
5.6 Key-Words
5.7 Review Questions
5.8 Further Readings

Objectives

After studying this Unit students will be able to:
• Understand Classification of Speech Sounds.
• Discuss Vowels and Consonants.

Introduction
An ideal description of speech sounds should include information concerning the production,
transmission, and reception stages of sounds, i.e., it should describe a sound in terms of the
movements of the organs of speech, the nature of the sound which is produced and the features
perceived by a listener. But such a description would be lengthy, complex and cumbersome, and
may provide information much of which may be irrelevant to particular purpose. In an introductory
unit like this, no acoustic information about speech sounds is included. The approach here is
based on the articulatory or auditory criteria, or combination of both. Whereas sounds known as
‘consonants’ are described mainly in terms of their articulation, but in the description of ‘vowel’-
sounds the auditory impressions will dominate. Furthermore, in our phonetic analysis the syllable
has been considered the basic unit, the theory being that each movement of the respiratory muscles,
called a chest-pulse, produces a syllable, and “nothing less than a syllable can be produced.”
5.1 Vowel and Consonant

The words vowel and consonant are very familiar ones, but when we study the sounds of speech
scientifically we find that it is not easy to define exactly what they mean. The most common view
is that vowels are sounds in which there is no obstruction to the flow of air as it passes from the
larynx to the lips. A doctor who wants to look at the back of a patient’s mouth often asks them to
say “ah”; making this vowel sound is the best way of presenting an unobstructed view. But if we
make a sound like s, d it can be clearly felt that we are making it difficult or impossible for the air
to pass through the mouth. Most people would have no doubt that sounds like s, d should be
called consonants. However, there are many cases where the decision is not so easy to make. One
problem is that some English sounds that we think of as consonants, such as the sounds at the
beginning of the words ‘hay’ and ‘way’, do not really obstruct the flow of air more than some

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