Speech Organs and How They Produced Sounds

Articulators can be divided into two types : passive articulators and active articulators. Passive articulators are organs that do not move during sound articulation such as the upper lip, upper teeth and alveolum. The active artiulators moves into the passive articulators to produce sounds. Main artiulators are tongue, uvula and lower jaw (lower teeth and lower lip).

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The following are the organs of speech and how they produce sounds.

Lips

They serve for creating different sounds mainly the labial, bilabial and labio dental. Bilabials are produced trough upper and lower lip such as /p/,/b/,/m/ and /w/. Labio dental sounds are produced through the upper teeth and lower lip such as /f/ and /v/.

Teeth

They are responsible for creating sounds mainly the labio dental and lingua dental. Lingua dental sounds are produced by placing tongue tip between upper and lower lip such as // and //.

Tongue

Usually, it is divided into different parts : tip, blade, front, back and root. Tongue plays important part in production of almost every speech sounds.

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Alveolar Ridge

Alveolar sounds are produced through th front part of the tongue placed on alveolar ridge. Sounds made with tongue touching alveolar ridge such as /t/,/z/,/l/,/d/ and /n/. For the sound /s/, air from th lungs passes continously through the mouth, but the tongue is raised sufficiently close to the alveolar ridge.

Hard Palate

Like the alveolar ridge, the tongue touches and taps the palate when articulating speech such as /j/.

Velum

The production of velar sounds is done by placing the back of the tongue against the velum such as /k/,/g/ and //.

Uvula

The uvula is used to make guttural sounds. It helps to make nasal consonants by stopping air from moving through the nose.

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Glottis

As the vocal folds vibrate, the resulting vibration produces as buzzing quality to the speech. Sound production involving only the glottis is called glottal.

Voiced consonants include /v/,/z/,//,//,/b/,/d/,/g/ and /w/.

Voiceless consonants include /f/,/s/,//,//,//,/p/,/t/,/k/, and /h/.