Received: from web40903.mail.yahoo.com (web40903.mail.yahoo.com [66.218.78.200]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id h232WJP03528 for <nifl-esl@nifl.gov>; Sun, 2 Mar 2003 21:32:19 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <20030303023215.55544.qmail@web40903.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [133.7.7.20] by web40903.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP; Sun, 02 Mar 2003 18:32:15 PST Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2003 18:32:15 -0800 (PST) From: Charles Jannuzi <b_rieux@yahoo.com> Reply-To: b_rieux@yahoo.com Subject: [NIFL-ESL:8698] Re: schematic of vowel sounds To: nifl-esl@nifl.gov Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Status: O Content-Length: 3525 Lines: 101 Re: schematic of vowel sounds > Hi. Do any of you know where I can find a schematic of sorts "showing" > tongue placement and mouth shape for vowel and/or consonant sound > production? It'd be great if it were on the web somewhere, but a book > would still be a fine resource. > Thank you. > > Lisa Pierce Phonetically speaking, vowel sounds are not typically associated with specific points of articulation in the way consonants are. Rather, they have traditionally been represented as generalizations about tongue height and lip rounding in the production of relatively unobstructed movements of air through the vocal tract. Still, even the simplest of vowel sounds involves rather complex configurations and uses of the vocal tract. Traditonal linguistic generalizations of vowels are often presented in the form of a trapezium or quadrilateral superimposed on a sideview of a schematic of the human vocal tract (with the face looking forward toward the left--so the left side of the diagram is the front of the mouth, the top of the diagram is the high part of the mouth). These diagrams fall short because vowels that require more complex movements of the vocal tract, such as diphthongs and triphthongs, can't show up as one area of the diagram. And the diagrams aren't adequate for showing other important qualities, like nasalization, uvularization, laryngealiation, pharyngealization etc. Nor do such depictions show the frontal, highly visual aspect of the vocal tract in vowel production--the face and lips--and the degree of liprounding. English shows itself to be still very much a Germanic language in that it has a lot of vowel sounds compared to languages like Japanese. English spelling has a lot of confusing complexity and inconsistency in how the vowels are represented in written form. I have a powerpoint that a colleague and I have made to show the vowels and vowel neutralization in English and Japanese using an adaptation of the traditional quadrilateral presentation (with the caveat that English typically has more liprounding than Japanese). I'll try to work this into an exported graphic like a jpg and post info. about it to the list later. Some links which show such diagrams and discuss in much greater detail include: http://feminafelis.tripod.com/Lessons/1b.html http://www.umanitoba.ca/linguistics/russell/138/2001/artic/describing-vowels.html http://www-personal.umich.edu/~dbeck/lin211/Lecture11.html http://www.nes.coventry.ac.uk/research/cmbe/digraph.htm http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/units/ling210-901/phonetics/vowelgraphs/AusE_Monophthongs.html Consonants are graphically depicted as specific points of articulation using the same sideview of the vocal tract, but you have to remember that humans are not really used to thinking in specific, explicit ways about how they use the internal aspects of their vocal tract. Also, a diagram cluttered up with IPA symbols can just confuse students. A view of the face and lips is often key for EFL and ESL students. In fact, static, two-dimensional shots aren't as good as just watching someone speak. I think for EFL students this is why they improve so much in their pronunciation when they go overseas to an English-speaking country. They get robust acoustic and visual feedback in the act of speaking and communicating in the FL. Charles Jannuzi Fukui University, Japan __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more http://taxes.yahoo.com/
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