2.3 The Speech Organs
Organs of Speech
As slightly mentioned before, prior to the introduction, discussing Phonetic also requires better understanding towards human physiology, especially upon our speech organs (which is known as vocal organs as well). This is due to the fact that identification for speech production, will inevitably leads to the role of each speech organ itself. In general, our speech organs are consisted of three major parts, namely:
1. Lungs
Humans were gifted by lungs not only as a respiratory organ, yet, it also serves as a medium to control airflow, which is an essential requirement for speech production (its mechanism will be discussed in separate segment). Lungs, which is consisted of both right and left hemisphere. It is a spongy organ that expands as well as contracts as we breathe, and is protected by a rib cage. In a shortened mode, lungs were distinguished into left and right
hemisphere. The amount of airflow varies from one human to another.
2. Larynx and Vocal Fords
Voice box is another term coined towards larynx due to its boxy-shaped structure located in front of our throat, which is marked by a peculiar protuberance. This is why aside from voice box, larynx is colloquially known as Adam’s apple. Along with larynx, there are also trachea and vocal cords (later known as folds). An opening called as glottis lies between the two folds. The various phases of glottis opening may resulting in different sounds. When the folds opened wide, they don’t vibrate. The sounds created from this state are named breathed or voiceless sounds.
3. Articulators
A transformation of sound into either an active or passive form of intelligible speech may only be carried by articulators. They includes virtually any organ inside our mouth, starting from pharynx, teeth, alveolar ridge, hard palate, softer velum, lips, tongue, jaws then nose, along with its cavity. Below is a simplified rough sketch of what our articulators look like.
In order to deepen our understanding upon the role for each articulatory organ, we’ll break down every unit and describe it in
a summarized manner, as follow:
a. Pharynx
This intersection of fissure from both nose and mouth, lies just above the larynx.
b. Roof of the mouth
Along with tongue, this part of our mouth is considered as a major speech organ. There are three sections of this organs. These sections are alveolar ridge that produces alveolarsounds, hard palate, as well as velum or soft palate that responsible in producing velar-sounds.
c. Lips
This organ is able to produce both bilabial and labiodental sounds. Lips positioning, or in other term lip-rounding, regarded as major requirement for producing vowel sounds. Our lips are able to form three different shape. There are rounded, spread, and neutral shaped.
d. Teeth
This organ might be as debatable as jaws, yet we can arguably understand that a contact with either lips or tongue will produce a peculiar sounds useful for producing speech.
e. Tongue
Generally, our tongue is divided into four parts. The tip, the blade, the front, and the back. These parts are responsible in producing many sounds, specifically the vowels, assumingour tongue’s flexibility to from many shapes.
f. Jaws
Despite the controversy, several phoneticians regard jaws as one of these articulators. This consideration was made seeing how our mouth movement is also influenced by our jaws muscle.
g. Nose and Nasal Cavity
Nasal sounds are made by the help of nose and nasal cavity. These sounds are /m/, /n/, and /ɳ/. Mechanism of Airstream, Naturally there is practically no sound possible to be produced without the presence of airflow. In this nature, studying the air current operation will serve us all a better chance in properly knowing the speech production. Almost every single speech sound is formed by pushing lung air out of our body through either mouth or our nose. In technical aspect, there are two major kinds of sound, based on the way they are generated through the use of airflows. The first one is
called as egressive sound, whereas the second is ingressive sound. Both has their own classifications respectively. The difference for both term only lies upon where the airflow is directed. Egressive sounds are emerged from a condition where the airstream is created by flowing out air through either mouth or nose. Egressive sounds are split into three types according to their origin. There are pulmonic egressive (lung), glottalic egressive (glottis), and lingual or velaric egressive (tongue or velum). Almost any sounds in spoken languages known by humanity so far, are both pulmonic and egressive. Contrary to the previous type, ingressive sounds are created from an inward flow of airstream through either our nose or mouth. While in term of classification, similarly to egressive sounds, ingressive sounds are also composed from three different type. Unlike egressive sounds, this kind of sounds were found only in several languages. Most linguists even found that most of these ‘few language’ are even considered as paralanguage (component of metacommunication). The example of these few languages are Japanese and Scandinavian.
Aside from the airflow directions, linguist also discern that there are other focuses that might be addressed within this topic. These following points are the possible issues that one ought to pay attention to, in regards with airstream mechanism:
1. Voiced vs. Voiceless
Both of this approaches are one of the identifier for any sounds. In order to differentiate the sound, we ought to analyze the airflow exhaled or respired through the windpipe (or trachea). Voiceless sound will be made when vocal folds were spread apart. Thus forming no frictions during the flow. Another instantons way in differentiating both voiced and voiceless sounds is by touching your own throat (around Adam’s apple)
slightly by one or two fingers. You will faintly feel the reverb.
2. Nasal vs. Oral
When we produce a sound, there will always be a stop. This obvious concept makes phoneticians distinguished kinds of stops human could make. Consequently, we’ve agreed that the only stops are both by nasal and oral means. Nasal stop was made by creating a whole barrier of the airflow in oral cavity, then lowering the velum to allow air pass through our nasal cavity. The opposite mechanism works for oral stop. It was created by
completely blocking the airflow in oral cavity, then swiftly releasing the construction to let the air pass through.
Sounds Identification & Place of Articulation
As we might’ve noticed all along; that consonants and vowels in Phonetic discipline are overwhelmingly diverse. We cannot call or name them by using a standard alphabetical name, as we did with our letter. Therefore, identifying each of the sound in order to designate a name is the only solution. First of all, there is a need to describe the names for each consonant. For instance, [p] is a voiceless bilabial stop, while [m] is a bilabial nasal. In order to understand such identification, we ought to comprehend these units first:
1. Vowel
This kind of sounds generally made with the airflow that encounters no obstruction within our articulatory organs. In aspect of stability, vowels are divided into three different group. These group are monophthong, diphthong, and diphthongoids. Monophthong are vowel that has practically static articulations, they are [i], [e], [æ], [a:], [o], [o:], [U], [ʌ], [ə:], and [ə]. For diphthongs, there’s a shift in speech organs from one vowel position to another within one syllable. The nucleus as starting point is mild and different. The examples are: [ei], [ai],[oi], [au], [əu], [iə], [ɛə] and [uə]. Meanwhile, diphthongoids’ articulation is changing, though the difference between its starting and end point is a bit contradictory. The example of this
vowels are: [i:] and [u:].
2. Consonant
In this regard, along with the previous understanding of consonant, that it is divided into voiced and voiceless in accord with the work of our vocal folds and exhalation force. Meanwhile, based on the position of the active speech organs, then consonants are divided into: labial, lingual, and glottal. Even further, labial and lingual type will be subdivided into several segments. For labial, there are another smaller parts. These parts are bilabial and labiodental. Bilabial is triggered when we produced sounds by utilizing our both upper and lower lips. These sounds are /p/, /b/, /m/, and /w/. Almost similar to the previous type, labiodental involves lower lip and upper teeth. Consonants produced through this approach are /f/ and /v/.
In the meantime, lingual consonants consisted of: forelingual, mediolingual, and backlingual. This segmentation might be a bit complex compared to labial subdivisions. We better pay extra attention to this classification. Forelingual is further classified into two types based on the position of tip tongue. These are apical (tongue tip again upper teeth or alveolar ridge) and cacuminal. While based on the place of airflow impediment, forelingual
may be divided into interdental, alveolar, post-alveolar and palato-alveolar. For mediolingual, the consonants are created with the front part of the tongue, like /j/. Whereas backlingual will relies upon the back of the tongue (which is also called as velum). The example of this type of consonant are /k/ and /g/. Mentioned specifically, glottal consonant is articulated, as the name refers, in our glottis. The example is /h/ sound like In order to deepen our understanding upon the role for each articulatory organ.
3. Word Stress
For most English learners, who also happened to be non-native in general, word stress sometimes become our magic keys in order to master the fluency of speaking. Despite each region has its own dialect or accent, yet the rule of word stress remained the same. In order to fully understand this concept, let’s take a look upon what should be emphasized in stressing. It is none other than syllable itself. Every single word has its own syllable, and each syllable has a key of stressing. Unfortunately, the rule of word stressing is somehow tricky, and quite abstract (for beginner). In English, people naturally don’t heighten all syllables with the same force. To stress means that you have to say one syllable in a strong way and the other syllable
in a faint style. Let’s get into practical example. There are three words with the same roots. These are photograph, photographer, and photographic. People who don’t really pay enough attention towards word stressing may assume that these words sounds and are pronounced the same. However, the fact is that, we have two ironclad rule of word stressing to be considered. First is that one word, one stress. This means that when you heard two stresses, this probably means that either you’ve heard two words, or you just simply misheard something. Second, a stress is always lie on vowel. Thus, prior to the previous example, the appropriate way to pronounce it (like a native) will be: Photograph, Pho-to-graph-er, and Pho-to-graph-ic.
4. Rhythm, Reduction, and Elision
To give a brief summary, rhythm is something that can be found practically everywhere. Yet, rhythm in language is noticed by how a pattern of successive syllables are timed. In some language, most syllables are given the same length, whereas other languages (such Japanese and Arabic) that put a strong emphasize towards rhythm of its syllables in each word. Knowing the ever-evolving nature of language, there will be a historical phase of vowel weakening, shortening, and even worse, disappearance. This phase is called as reduction. It is significantly correlated with how people from a certain community pronounce each of the required syllable in a word that later formed a sentence. Reduction itself is the reflection of grammatical and lexical changes, which will need further discussion another standalone subchapter to discuss its complexity. In term of type, there are three kinds of reduction. These are quantitative (i.e. shortening of a vowel sound in the unstressed position), qualitative (vowels obstruction against ə, ɪ, u), then lastly is vowels elision.
5. The Use of Rising and Falling Tone
Each of spoken language has its own intonation (or by some called as speech melody) that suits with its speakers. Intonation became a peculiar trademark for a particular language since most language’s intonations are so diverse one to another. Bear in mind that intonation is an aspect that partially responsible for the creation of dialect and accent. Take a look to the following picture:
Summary
Mastering the concept of Phonetic means that you are one step closer in understanding the proper utilization of a language, in a spoken mean. Moreover it becomes a crucial key in comprehending the sounds making, which is a physical thing. Though you might regard both Phonetic and Phonology as an interloping study (despite all the explanations), bear in mind that Phonetic is universal, while Phonology is language-specific.
Last modified: Wednesday, 12 March 2025, 9:28 AM