Here are two instruments. How does each one make sound? Which one is more similar to the way humans make language sounds, and why?

Just like the clarinet (單簧管) in the previous question, the human speech system is a tube (review the pictures from the reading). When people play a clarinet or similar instrument, they can make different sounds by closing the tube in different places or different ways. Human speech works the same way: we make sound by blowing air through our tube (from the lungs, up the throat, and out the mouth and/or nose), and we change sounds by changing the way the air flows and/or closing the tube in different places or in different ways.

To slightly simplify from the reading, there are three basic ways we can change a sound, and they correspond to three basic phonetic "features". (The way I am categorizing features here may be different than what's presented in some readings; there are lots of different theories about how to organize phonetic features.) They are as follows:

• We can change the place that we close the tube -- for example, putting our two lips together creates a "closure" further up the tube than touching our tongue to the top of our mouth does. This aspect of how we make sound is called place of articulation ("articulation" means movement, and we close our tube by moving something—moving the lips to touch each other, moving the tip of the tongue to touch the top of the mouth, etc.—, so "place of articulation" means "the place that you move to close your mouth).
• We can change the way that we close the tube—for example, completely closing the tube will create a one kind of sound, whereas than just narrowing it a little to make the air hiss will create a different kind of sound. This aspect of how we make sound is called manner of articulation.
• We can change the way the air comes out of our lungs in the first place, by letting our vocal folds vibrate or not vibrate. This is called voicing. (Voicing is also closely related to aspiration, although they are realized in different ways. The complex relationship between voicing and aspiration is beyond the scope of this subject; for our purposes, you can just treat them as the same thing, and you can use the terms "voiced" and "unaspirated" interchangeably, and use the terms "voiceless" and "aspirated" interchangeably.)

Below, I will give three examples of different syllables. For each example, state which feature is different between two Cantonese syllables, or which feature is different between the two Mandarin syllables, or which feature is different between the two English syllables (you only need to look at one language; I am just providing different options for students who aren't proficient in one or more of these languages). Answers are provided at the end of this page.

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Example 1

Cantonese: 他 vs. 沙
Mandarin: 他 vs. 撒谎的撒
English: ton vs. sun

The difference between the two sounds is _____.

Example 2

Cantonese: 爆炸的爆 vs. 教堂的教
Mandarin: 爆炸的爆 vs. 告诉的告
English: bot vs. got

The difference between the two sounds is ____.

Example 3

Cantonese: 家 vs. 卡
Mandarin: 差劲的差 vs. 爆炸的炸
English: cheese vs. jeez

The difference between the two sounds is ____.

Thinking back to the previous section of the module, I demonstrated two different pronunciations of 人 in Mandarin. How could you describe these different pronunciations phonetically? (You can listen to the recording again below.)

Phonetically describe the initial consonant of each of these syllables (mention whether you are using Mandarin or Cantonese or some other Chinese language). You don't actually need to know Chinese to do this exercise; if you don't know any Chinese language, you could ask a friend who knows Chinese to pronounce them, or you could listen to a recording in an online dictionary. As long as you understand the phonetic features you should be able to figure out what these sounds are, even if you don't know the language.

• 平
• 開
• 梁
• 吵

For each description, think of a syllable/character whose initial consonant has that pronunciation (mention whether you are using Mandarin or Cantonese). It's possible that some of these sounds might not occur in Mandarin or might not occur in Cantonese; if so, you can just say this sound does not occur. If you aren't proficient in both Mandarin and Cantonese, you might need to search online, or find a friend who speaks those languages and make that sound for them and ask them for a word that has the sound. (The purpose of this exercise is not to test your vocabulary knowledge, but to test how well you can understand these phonetic descriptions. Thus, you can succeed on this exercise even if you don't speak Chinese. As long as you know how to make, e.g., a bilabial nasal sound, you can make that sound to a Chinese speaker and ask them to give you an example word that starts with that sound.)

• Bilabial nasal
• Unaspirated alveolar stop
• Velar nasal
• Unaspirated alveolar (or alveo-palatal) affricate