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  Peter Roach

Articulatory settings

9/3/2016

19 Comments

 
There’s a neglected little article in Wikipedia’s phonetics area called Basis of Articulation. It gives a very sketchy outline (referring only to a couple of articles written in German) of a topic that’s always struck me as interesting but elusive. For an old-school phonetician like me, the classic article is the one by Beatrice Honikman entitled ‘Articulatory Settings’ in In Honour of Daniel Jones, ed. David Abercrombie et al, 1964. (Honikman was for a long time a member of the Phonetics Department at the University of Leeds). The general idea is one which has a lot to offer the teacher of pronunciation, but is explained in rather difficult terms. The learner must acquire not only the vowels, consonants, stresses and pitches of the target language, but also acquire something much more complex (the articulatory setting) that relates to all the typical positions of lips, tongue, jaw etc that native speakers use. Evidence for the existence of such settings can be seen if you look at video of someone speaking a language that is foreign to you, with the sound turned off. Many English speakers reckon they can spot a French speaker through vision alone. Honikman suggests thinking of it in terms of having a “gear” for English, another for French, and so on depending on which language you are learning; in the classroom, when working on pronunciation, the first thing the learner must do is to think themselves into the right gear before starting on pronunciation exercises. For me, this seems intuitively right, but it’s almost impossible to think of a way in which we could study articulatory settings scientifically, and I feel it will for ever have to remain part of the traditional articulatory-auditory imitation-label phonetics repertoire.

Other people have written on or near this topic. For example, John Laver, in Principles of Phonetics (1994) postulates a neutral articulatory setting (pp 402-3) and goes on to set up a very detailed framework for describing all non-neutral articulatory settings, and on p. 424 acknowledges the relevance of Honikman’s work. Celce-Murcia et al (1996) Teaching Pronunciation have a section (pp 27-8) on Voice Quality which is clearly related, especially in respect of the supralaryngeal settings. In Cruttenden’s Gimson’s Pronunciation of English (2014) there is a short mention: “The articulatory setting of a language or dialect may differ from GB [General British]. So some languages like Spanish may have a tendency to hold the tongue more forward in the mouth, while others like Russian may have a tendency to hold it further back in the mouth. Nasalization may be characteristic of many speakers of American English, while denasal voice … is frequently said to occur in Liverpool" (p. 302). I remember that in the phonetic framework of Chomsky and Halle’s Sound Pattern of English (1968) some features are defined in terms of deviation from a hypothesized neutral position (unfortunately I can’t go into detail on this, as many years ago I lent my copy of this bizarre book to someone who never returned it). A similar account is seen in D. Odden’s Introducing Phonology (2005) “…some features are characterized in terms of the ‘neutral position’ which is a configuration that the vocal tract is assumed to have immediately prior to speaking. The neutral position, approximately that of the vowel [ɛ], defines relative movement of the tongue” (p 136). (Presumably we are to take this, as with Chomsky and Halle, as referring to English rather than to the world’s languages in general).

I would really like to breathe some life into this skeletal WP article, but I would like first to appeal for additional references or quotations that I could use, since I feel I may well be missing some interesting material in the literature. Please help!
19 Comments
Emilio Márquez
12/3/2016 01:32:57 am

Here is a rushed translation I have made of the section “Base de articulación” from the Spanish book “Elementos de fonética general”, by Samuel Gili Gaya, 1966, 5th ed. I hope it doesn’t contain too many mistakes!

BASIS OF ARTICULATION

One of the circumstances which generally affects the whole phonetic system, and which constantly contributes to the synchronic physiognomy of languages and to the direction in which their diachronic alterations take place, is the articulatory basis. This is the denomination for the set of expression habits which do not affect one or various sounds but the whole articulatory mechanism, and which establishes a primary basic condition within which the whole system is shaped. If we compare different languages, we will immediately observe that the sounds within each one of them will be acoustically related to each other beyond the features that differentiate them. In French, for example, labial activity is rather intense and manifests itself in the frequent ocurrence of varying degrees and types of lip rounding and lip spreading; the tongue usually adopts a convex shape and tends to move towards the front part of the oral cavity. The articulatory tendencies of English are characterized by their limited labial activity; the tongue adopts relatively flat positions or, conversely, by raising its tip or blade towards the high zones of the mouth (alveolar ridge or palate), it adopts a concave shape. This latter tendency determines the fact that various dental sounds from the French system (s, d, t) are represented, in the English system, by alveolar or palatal articulations.

In addition to these qualities arising from collective tendencies in the articulatory movements, we can find others which are not less important, such as the greater or lesser muscular tension in the pronunciation of each language or dialect, the relative value of the differences in intensity, the higher or lower normal pitch. For instance, the relatively high muscular tension and the shortness of the Spanish vowels contribute to the steadiness and uniformity of timbre in the Spanish vocalic system, not very inclined to contain middle, semi-diphthongized and relaxed vowels, which are so characteristic of the English language. It is more than likely that the considerable height of the normal pitch with which French is spoken, as compared to the relative low pitch of average Spanish, is balanced by the fact that the differences in intensity accent in French are less conspicuous than in Spanish.

The Spanish articulatory basis, especially in its Castilian variety, is characterized, according to Navarro Tomás, by the fact that the organs of speech move in the middle line of their normal position, without leaning towards the front or the back part of the mouth. Lip and jaw movements are rather noticeable, although less so than in French. The total amount of air exhaled in pronouncing something is relatively low, in contrast to what happens in the Germanic languages: however, the articulatory muscular tension is greater in Spanish than in English and German. There seems to exist a balancing relationship between the volume of exhaled air and muscular tension, in the sense that an increase in one of these qualities is accompanied by a decrease in the other.

The Andalusian pronunciation is, on the whole, less tense than the Castilian type, and therefore it is more likely to contain relaxed articulations; its articulatory movements tend to point towards the front part of the mouth, and the lips tend towards the horizontal dilation of their aperture. The ordinary articulatory basis in Galicia explains the idiomatic preference for close timbred sounds in this area, especially as regards its vowels. In the Catalan pronunciation we often find a lip rounding which, together with the opening of the jaw, gives vowels an open and, at the same time, concave hollow tinge.

However hard we try to imitate the place and manner of articulation of each and every one of the sounds of a foreign language, we are unable to achieve a good pronunciation except if we get rid of the articulatory basis of our mother tongue, substituting it with that of the new language. Roudet wisely observed that, even amongst people who speak two languages perfectly, it is very difficult to insert a quotation in a language into a speech pronounced in a different language, that is, to replace the articulatory basis suddenly. Shifting from one language to another involves a mental transition affecting the neuromuscular images which form a coherent systematic whole for each linguistic community.

Reply
Peter Roach link
16/3/2016 11:39:10 am

Thank you very much for this interesting extract, and thanks also for going to the trouble of translating it. I'm sure I can make use of it.

Reply
Peter
3/4/2016 05:16:20 pm

I would like to make your translation available for Wikipedia readers. Is that OK with you? I can put it on a web page with a pointer to it on the WP page. Readers of the 'Basis of articulation' article could then click on that link.

Reply
Emilio Márquez
5/4/2016 07:26:18 pm

Certainly, please do.

Emilio Márquez
8/4/2016 12:52:36 pm

I’ve spotted a double mistake on the first line: the verbs “affects” and “contributes” should be in the plural!

Reply
Jose A. Mompean
15/3/2016 08:37:16 am

Dear Peter,

There is actually an increasing body of literature on articulatory settings/voice quality, including empirical research with ultrasound (see e.g. the work by Ian Wilson from the University of Aizu, Japan). For more pedagogical studies, you could have a look at a paper of mine:

Mompean, J. A. (2003). Pedagogical tools for teaching articulatory setting. In M. J. Solé & D. Recansens (eds.), Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. 1603–1606. Adelaide: Causal Productions.

I also have a presentation titled 'Voice and Linguistic Background' on my ResearchGate site that summarises many ideas and research on articulatory settings.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jose_A_Mompean/publications?pubType=presentation

I hope this helps.

With best wishes,

Jose A. Mompean



Reply
Peter Roach link
16/3/2016 11:42:08 am

Many thanks for this. As I suspected, the subject has not been forgotten, but has become a topic of research interest. This is a good thing, but difficult for me to follow up since I have been retired for many years.

Reply
Barry Cusack
15/3/2016 09:45:05 pm

"Interesting material in the literature": this article by Piers Messum may also assist -
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6XTUqFHZzVWMGE1ZmU0ZjAtYjNmYi00NWMwLThkMjQtYjhmMDY0N2E0NTY4/view?ddrp=1&hl=en&pli=1

Reply
Peter Roach link
16/3/2016 11:43:20 am

Many thanks for the reference, which I will study carefully.I have lot of catching up to do.

Reply
Piers Messum link
23/6/2016 09:48:37 pm

Constantine Borissoff has written an exhaustive account of how two related but different concepts, the Articulatory Setting and the Basis of Articulation, were developed in continental Europe and Russia. There is a summary of this and further links here: https://borissoff.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/english-basis-of-articulation-2/

Roslyn Young and I have worked a lot on how to turn the classic descriptions of English and French articulatory settings into teachable and practical concepts in the language classroom. We should really write up where we've got with this, but in the meantime some of it is summarised in a presentation I did at the British Council that can be seen here: http://www.pronunciationscience.com/videos/ One of the key ideas is that the tongue is a muscular hydrostat, so teaching the English setting as a spreading activity at the back is an alternative, and more tactile, approach than asking students to retract the tip. It is also a gesture that can more easily run through their speech than instructions about a tip which is, of course, active in many other ways.

The part that deals specifically with articulatory settings starts at around 30'50".

I'm happy to hear that you'll be elaborating the Wikipedia article. In our experience teaching English, French and Japanese pronunciation, students find work on the articulatory setting of the language so helpful that it's almost criminal that the idea isn't more widely understood and exploited.

Reply
Piers Messum link
3/2/2018 03:23:33 pm

Since that last post, Roslyn Young and I have published another article on the Basis of Articulation, bringing our ideas up to date and describing how we teach this: https://www.pronunciationscience.com/app/download/6934777062/Messum+and+Young+2017%2C+Bringing+the+English+Articulatory+Setting+into+the+classroom+full.pdf?t=1506926809

Reply
Piers Messum
10/3/2019 05:08:23 pm

Very strangely that link now points to a different article. This is the one it should point to:
https://www.pronunciationscience.com/app/download/7509226462/Messum+and+Young+2017%2C+Bringing+the+English+Articulatory+Setting+into+the+classroom+full.pdf?t=1544435007
And this is the older one which Barry mentioned above, I think, and which has some ideas about the connection between the style of speech breathing that English-speaking children develop and the articulatory setting they develop at the same time:
https://www.pronunciationscience.com/app/download/5516009862/Messum+%282010%29+SO+43.pdf?t=1544435007

Constantine Borissoff link
24/6/2016 03:11:00 pm

I am glad that somebody has taken the task to update the Wiki article - something I wanted to do one day. Piers Messum has already mentioned our recent article with Dr Kedrova (http://www.philol.msu.ru/~kedr/) published in Historiographia Linguistica.

The introductory section gives a detailed summary of the history of the concept. Perhaps you would also like to read my dissertation https://www.academia.edu/1005692/Basis_of_Articulation_and_Articulatory_Setting_in_pronunciation_teaching.

It is as student work so some parts of it may appear a bit naive but I have really gone through all major publication on this topic, including the history of practical application in pronunciation teaching. The conclusion of my research is that "Basis of Articulation" and "Articulatory setting" are two distinct although interrelated ideas.

Reply
MA Ruihua
24/9/2016 04:37:38 am

A paper not to miss:

Bryan Jenner: Genealogies of Articulatory Settings: Genealogies of an idea
http://www.academia.edu/10257961/Genealogies_of_Articulatory_Settings_Genealogies_of_an_idea

Honikman's paper is odd in that it does not contain a single reference. And implicitly she admitted that the idea was not original.

Reply
Peter Roach link
24/9/2016 03:03:12 pm

Many thanks for alerting me to this very important article.

Reply
Janeth
3/2/2018 02:31:34 pm

cool, Peter Roach here the author of English phonetics and phonology, I only want to ask you something, do you have any advice of how to use your book? jejej. It´s very interesting your book.

Reply
Gunter Lorenz
10/3/2019 03:27:08 pm

Dear Peter (if I may),

Only just came across your blog and noticed that you, as well as others, have indeed breathed some life into the "skeletal WP article" -- which I confess to having set up in the first place. ;-)
You were right to say that it was a "neglected" entry; I apologise for not finishing the task properly myself, but I am pleased to bits that the notion of a general setting/basis has begun to receive the attention which it, in my view as a phonetics teacher, justly deserves.

After a bit of a break due to mainly administrative tasks, I am only beginning to catch up with what Jenner, Borissoff, Messum and others have written on articulatory settings. Personally, I have -- aside from the Wiki entry in English and German, as well as a few lectures in the Cambridge pre-sessional and other places -- not published on the matter, but would be very happy to be included in the discussion, if I may.

Very best wishes,
Gunter.

Reply
Peter
10/3/2019 07:46:38 pm

Hello Gunter, thanks for your comment. I hope I was not rude in what I said about the article, which was a very useful first step. I don't think I can add more to the material (retired for too long), but I hope more active phoneticians and pron teachers will contribute to the WP article.

Reply
Gunter Lorenz
10/3/2019 08:54:57 pm

Absolutely no offence taken, Peter!
On the contrary, as I said, I am pleased that you did enlarge on what was a very sketchy entry, and that others did, as well...

Enjoy your retirement! :)

Reply



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    A blog that discusses problems in Wikipedia's coverage of Phonetics

    Peter Roach

    Emeritus Professor of Phonetics,
    ​University of Reading, UK

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