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The organs of speech and their functions

To understand how speech sounds are produced students of English must have some knowledge of the organs of speech and their functions.

The human speaking apparatus consists of the following main parts which participate in the formation of the speech sounds.

The air exhaled from the lungs passes through the bronchi, then through the windpipe /trachea/ and gets into the upper part of the windpipe which is called the larynx. Inside the larynx there are two elastic folds called the vocal cords which may be kept apart or brought together. The opening between them is called the glottis. This is the usual state of the vocal cords, when we breathe out. If the tense vocal cords are brought together, the air stream forcing an opening makes them vibrate and produce voice. When the vocal cords are wide apart, the air stream passes between them freely, they do not vibrate and no voice is produced.

There is one more state of the vocal cords which results in the glottal stop. When the vocal cords are brought close together and then opened suddenly by the air stream there comes a sort coughing noise, a kind of the “click” of the vocal cords. This sound is called the glottal stop.

Coming out of the larynx the air stream passes through the pharynx (the cavity).

The following organs of speech take part in the formation of speech sounds: the tongue; the hard and the soft palate; the upper and the lower lips, the upper and the lower teeth.

The roof of the mouth is divided into the alveoli (the teeth bridge) situated immediately behind the upper teeth, the hard palate and the soft palate ending in the uvula.

The tongue may be conventionally divided into three parts corresponding to the parts of the roof of the mouth. They are: the blade with the tip, the front and the back.

The organs of speech are divided into movable and fixed.

The movable organs of speech take active part in the articulation of speech sounds and are called active organs of speech.

The active organs of speech are: the vocal cords, the tongue, the soft palate with the uvula, the lips and the lower jaw.

The fixed speech organs with which the active organs form obstruction are called passive organs of speech. The passive organs of speech serve as points of articulation. They are: the upper jaw, the alveoli, the hard palate, the teeth.

The mouth and the nasal cavities as well as larynx, serve as resonance chambers.

Sounds may be oral or nasal depending on the cavity through which the air passes. In English, Russian, as well as in Ukrainian, there are no nasalized vowels.

The volume and the shape of the mouth resonance chamber depend on the position of the tongue, the lips, the soft palate with the uvula and the size of the mouth opening.

The work of the speech organs necessary for making speech sounds is called articulation.

The sounds of speech

SOUNDS AND PHONEMES

Speech sounds are grouped into language units called phonemes. A phoneme is the smallest language unit existing as such a speech sound which is capable of distinguishing one word from another or one grammatical form of a word from another form of the same word. Thus the phoneme is a functional unit. It should be mentioned that speech sounds can perform this distinctive function only when they are opposed to each other in one and the same position (phonetic context), e.g.

mad – mæd bead – bi:d man - mæn

mat – mæt bid – bid men – men

map – mæt bed – bed asks – a:sks

mass – mæs bud – bΛd asked – a:skt

The underlined speech sounds that bring about a change of meaning of the words, and the grammatical forms of the words "man" and "ask" represent different phonemes.

The phoneme is realized in speech in the material form of speech sounds of different type. Various speech realizations of the phoneme are called its variants or allophones . For example, in the words " eight " , " eighth " , " try " the /t/ consonants are similar , but at the same time they are slightly different: the /t/ in

" eight " is alveolar , whereas the /t/ in " eighth " is dental , the ;/t/ in " try " is post-alveolar and they all are considered to be the allophones of one and the same phoneme /t/. The difference between the allophones of the same phoneme is due to their position in various phonetic contexts. Each of these speech sounds occurs in a definite position in which no other of these sounds can ever occur. They cannot differentiate the meaning of words or their grammatical forms since there is no mutual opposition possible in this case.