Course notes

I. IPA and broad transcription of English

  1. Phonetic alphabets
  2. IPA symbols for English sounds
    1. Vowels
    2. Consonants
    3. Other: stress, diphthongs
  3. Transcriptions
    1. Broad vs. narrow transcriptions
    2. Suggestions for making better transcriptions
    3. Some common mistakes
    4. Vowels in unstressed syllables
    5. Notes on checking transcriptions in the Gage Canadian Dictionary

II. Articulatory phonetics

  1. Anatomy of the vocal tract
  2. Basic terms for describing English sounds
    1. Consonants
    2. Vowels
  3. Segments and their interactions
    1. The idea of segments
    2. Phases of a segment
    3. Overlapping segments
  4. Sounds of the words languages (and the IPA charts)
    1. Properties of consonants
    2. Reading the IPA consonant chart

III. Acoustic phonetics

  1. Sound waves
  2. Spectrum diagrams
  3. The source-filter model

IV. Narrower transcriptions of English

  1. Tapping, Canadian Raising
  2. Aspiration (and Voice Onset Time)
  3. Unreleased stops