Episode 6 sees Eric and Phil dissecting the final pair of stop/plosive sounds in English: /k/ and /ɡ/. As always, we work our way around the task of describing the sounds, their history, and usage in the course of about an hour and 10 minutes.

Show Notes:

Correction: Phil referred to "Findlay" as derived from Finn's Lea, but it turns out that it's from Gaelic, and that means Fionnlagh – "fair warrior." Bradley would have been a much better example: Brad=broad and Lea=meadow.

voiceless/voiced velar plosive: co-articulation, double action of closing the mouth with the back of the tongue at the soft palate, and closing off the nasal passage by lifting the soft palate at the velo-pharyngeal port.

Let’s take a tour of the anatomy. This will help us to deal with the idea that /t/ is apico alveolar but /k/ is dorsovelar

The Roof of the Mouth

Tectal: an adjective derived from the anatomical term "tectum," a roof-like structure.

Labia/labial: the lips; bilabial with both lips, labio-dental with lower lip and upper teeth, as in /f/ and /v/. (For people with an extreme overbite, one might make a dento-labial sound (upper lip and lower teeth.)

Dental: the teeth (as heard in the “th” sounds, /θ/ & /ð/ )

Alveolar ridge/alveolar: the gum ridge, behind the upper front teeth

Palate/palatal: the hard palate, rising up behind the alveolar ridge. Phil describes a small hole in his palate; Eric, in searching the net for information on this, could only find stuff about "Jacobsen's Organ" aka Vomeronasal organ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vomeronasal_organ, an auxiliary olfactory sense organ; it's thoroughly debatable whether it exists in humans at all. Who knows what Phil has? (apparently, he hasn't had any of this since college days...)

Velum/velar: the soft palate, behind the hard palate

Uvula/uvular: the "small grape"-like structure that hangs down from the arch of the soft palate

Pharynx/pharyngeal: the column or space behind the tongue, the "chimney" that goes from the larynx up to the nose

Epiglottis/epiglottal: the flap-like value that protects the larynx during swallowing

Glottis/glottal: the vocal folds (technically the SPACE between the vocal folds, which disappears every time the vocal folds vibrate

Ari-Epiglottal/ False Vocal Folds: [there was some debate between Phil and Eric how Dudley Do-Right sounded, and whether it was ari-epiglottal tension or velar tension...

The Parts of the Tongue

Tip or Apex/apical: front edge of the tongue, the 'rim' of the tongue

Blade or Lamina/laminal: the front part of the tongue, the top surface

Back or Dorsum/dorsal: the back of the tongue, which is subdivided into:

Front, Middle, Back, or, Front and Back —antero-dorsal or postero-dorsal

Root or Radix/radical: the root of the tongue

/k/ and /ɡ/ are different from other plosives because it is made on the back of the tongue, which works in a more gross manner

can be made further forward /ki/ or further back /kɑ/.

Challenge of learning /k/ and /ɡ/ for children because they are made further back in the mouth

The McGurk Effect

Experiment: Can you identify Phil's 3 sounds?

World Atlas of Language Structures: http://wals.info/

WALS shows 2,650 languages and notes 32 missing / ɡ /

Languages that are missing /ɡ/ but not /k/

From Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_velar_plosive ] "Of the six plosives that would be expected from the most common pattern world-wide—that is, three places of articulation plus voicing ([p b, t d, k ɡ])—[p] and [ɡ] are the most frequently missing, being absent in about 10% of languages that oth