WEBVTT

00:00:05.927 --> 00:00:10.623
Hi, in the previous video, we discussed
the different ways in which languages can

00:00:10.623 --> 00:00:12.704
produce different consonants, and

00:00:12.704 --> 00:00:15.740
the ways in which they can
distinguish between them.

00:00:15.740 --> 00:00:20.690
We have seen our three dimensions
which are relevant here.

00:00:20.690 --> 00:00:24.900
The first is place of articulation,
where in the mouth do I produce the sound?

00:00:25.950 --> 00:00:28.400
The second is manner of articulation,

00:00:28.400 --> 00:00:31.970
how is the air stream modified
when I produce the sound?

00:00:32.970 --> 00:00:36.850
And the third is voicing,
what do I do with my vocal cords?

00:00:37.930 --> 00:00:38.750
I'm going to discuss

00:00:38.750 --> 00:00:43.460
these issues a little bit more
now with my students, Inge and Marten.

00:00:43.460 --> 00:00:46.280
>> Yes I'd like to ask the first
question because I was wondering

00:00:46.280 --> 00:00:49.390
are there consonants that
occur in all languages?

00:00:49.390 --> 00:00:51.940
>> Yeah, right, that,
that's a very interesting question.

00:00:51.940 --> 00:00:55.840
It's actually a question which
has inspired linguists forever or

00:00:55.840 --> 00:01:00.620
at least since the 19th century and
the answer seems to be

00:01:00.620 --> 00:01:05.190
that there at least two good
candidates for such consonants.

00:01:05.190 --> 00:01:09.420
This is the M sound, and the T sound.

00:01:09.420 --> 00:01:13.360
They, linguists don't necessarily agree
on them, there are some linguists who say

00:01:13.360 --> 00:01:17.300
that maybe, one of, or two of these
sounds don't occur in all languages.

00:01:17.300 --> 00:01:19.800
But I think,
it's fair to say that they do.

00:01:19.800 --> 00:01:21.740
>> But why would it be M and T only?

00:01:22.970 --> 00:01:28.450
>> Well, it's probably M and
T because they are simple.

00:01:28.450 --> 00:01:30.590
For instance, they are easy to make.

00:01:30.590 --> 00:01:31.910
It's very easy to make a T.

00:01:31.910 --> 00:01:33.240
I use the tip of my tongue.

00:01:33.240 --> 00:01:35.330
The tip of my tongue is very flexible and

00:01:35.330 --> 00:01:39.450
I put it basically at its natural
place just behind the teeth.

00:01:39.450 --> 00:01:41.670
T, that's a very simple sound to make and

00:01:41.670 --> 00:01:46.090
it's a wonderful consonant, and
M is also very simple to make.

00:01:46.090 --> 00:01:48.298
I just close my lips.

00:01:48.298 --> 00:01:51.035
Furthermore, it's very easy to see.

00:01:51.035 --> 00:01:55.260
It's very easy to,
to see that somebody is making an M sound.

00:01:55.260 --> 00:02:00.170
As a matter of fact, it's sometimes
claimed that all languages, or

00:02:00.170 --> 00:02:03.810
many languages at least
have the same word for

00:02:03.810 --> 00:02:07.330
mother, it's mama, something like that.

00:02:07.330 --> 00:02:12.880
And the reason for that might be that it's
so easy to make for a child, so the child is

00:02:12.880 --> 00:02:18.029
just lying there in its cradle and saying
[mamamama] not meaning anything at all,

00:02:18.029 --> 00:02:24.013
it's just the mother who observes this and
thinks, okay, he must be talking about me.

00:02:24.013 --> 00:02:28.297
>> Okay, so M and T are the easiest
sounds, or the easiest consonants?

00:02:28.297 --> 00:02:31.375
And if you look at all languages
in the world are they certain?

00:02:31.375 --> 00:02:33.429
What, what constants are there?

00:02:33.429 --> 00:02:36.240
What set?

00:02:36.240 --> 00:02:39.015
>> Yeah, there so the, it's a,

00:02:39.015 --> 00:02:43.667
it's a set of very vast size probably
because even this T sound might sound

00:02:43.667 --> 00:02:47.720
quite slightly different in
one language from the next.

00:02:47.720 --> 00:02:52.570
But apart from that I, I think if
we look at the phonetic alphabet we

00:02:52.570 --> 00:02:56.440
see a few hundred different symbols for
consonants.

00:02:56.440 --> 00:02:57.980
So it's quite many.

00:02:57.980 --> 00:03:01.150
>> And is there one language
that has most consonants of all?

00:03:02.360 --> 00:03:06.640
>> Well, yeah, I'm, I'm not sure,
depends a little bit on how you count.

00:03:06.640 --> 00:03:10.450
But if you want to find one such language,
for some reason,

00:03:10.450 --> 00:03:12.640
you have to go to Southern Africa.

00:03:12.640 --> 00:03:17.897
So there's several languages spoken there
which seem to have many, many different

00:03:17.897 --> 00:03:22.796
consonant sounds, something between
100 and 150 different sounds.

00:03:26.477 --> 00:03:29.372
>> Okay, I was, I was also wondering then

00:03:29.372 --> 00:03:33.930
I know that we talk mostly about
consonants, but what about vowels?

00:03:33.930 --> 00:03:37.300
Are, are there also that many vowels?

00:03:37.300 --> 00:03:39.920
>> Well, yeah,
that's another interesting question.

00:03:39.920 --> 00:03:42.100
I think the answer is no.

00:03:42.100 --> 00:03:46.690
So if we look again at the set of symbols
which are used in the phonetic alphabet,

00:03:46.690 --> 00:03:48.820
it's definitely smaller.

00:03:48.820 --> 00:03:51.870
So that's one side of the answer.

00:03:51.870 --> 00:03:56.388
Also, within a language,
if you have many different you

00:03:56.388 --> 00:03:59.311
use more consonants
than vowels within one

00:03:59.311 --> 00:04:00.820
>> Okay.
>> in the same language.

00:04:00.820 --> 00:04:02.460
>> And is there a reason for that?

00:04:02.460 --> 00:04:08.160
I mean, if there are just fewer vowels
in general, doesn't mean that a language

00:04:08.160 --> 00:04:12.660
always also needs to have
fewer vowels than consonants.

00:04:12.660 --> 00:04:13.690
>> Yeah, that's true,

00:04:13.690 --> 00:04:17.899
but I think there are two sides to this,
to the answer to this.

00:04:17.899 --> 00:04:24.260
So on the one hand vowels,
it's more difficult to distinguish

00:04:24.260 --> 00:04:29.170
between vowels, because the difference
between vowels and consonants again is, in

00:04:29.170 --> 00:04:34.230
order to produce consonants, you need
some obstruction somewhere in your mouth.

00:04:34.230 --> 00:04:36.860
In order to produce a vowel,
there's no obstruction,

00:04:36.860 --> 00:04:40.760
you just transform the sound
when it's going out in some way.

00:04:40.760 --> 00:04:45.370
And there's just many more different ways
of making an obstruction in your mouth

00:04:45.370 --> 00:04:48.440
than transforming a sound like that.

00:04:48.440 --> 00:04:52.040
That seems to be an important
part of the answer.

00:04:52.040 --> 00:04:54.550
Now you can also ask, how then come,

00:04:54.550 --> 00:04:58.900
that within a language there are still
more consonants than vowels?

00:04:58.900 --> 00:05:02.774
So some languages have
many different vowels.

00:05:02.774 --> 00:05:05.469
So we are,
all three of us are speakers of Dutch, and

00:05:05.469 --> 00:05:08.186
Dutch actually has quite
a lot of different vowels.

00:05:08.186 --> 00:05:10.948
It has like 13 different vowels.

00:05:10.948 --> 00:05:14.445
Well, there are languages which
have only maybe ten consonants,

00:05:14.445 --> 00:05:17.948
so why are there no languages with
13 vowels and ten consonants?

00:05:17.948 --> 00:05:23.210
The answer to that, I think is also
interesting, and that it seems to be that

00:05:23.210 --> 00:05:28.327
consonants have a slightly different
function in language than vowels.

00:05:28.327 --> 00:05:33.000
So, consonants seem to reveal
more of word meaning.

00:05:33.000 --> 00:05:35.640
We use consonants mostly
to reveal word meaning.

00:05:37.060 --> 00:05:39.810
In Semitic languages, like Hebrew and

00:05:39.810 --> 00:05:44.030
Arabic, people write only
the consonants and not the vowels.

00:05:44.030 --> 00:05:46.950
They apparently don't need
them to still understand it.

00:05:48.130 --> 00:05:51.640
Maybe you even remember from,
on the Internet, there

00:05:51.640 --> 00:05:55.712
are these messages where they just took
out all the vowels from an English text.

00:05:55.712 --> 00:05:56.410
>> Mm-hm.
>> Mm-hm.

00:05:56.410 --> 00:05:59.591
>> And
you can still understand those messages.

00:05:59.591 --> 00:06:01.496
So, that's what we use consonants for,

00:06:01.496 --> 00:06:04.950
mostly to, if you see the consonants
you already know what the word is.

00:06:04.950 --> 00:06:08.030
So, you don't really need the vowels for
that.

00:06:08.030 --> 00:06:13.020
The vowels, we use more for grammar,

00:06:13.020 --> 00:06:16.210
for expressing grammatical structure.

00:06:16.210 --> 00:06:21.100
If I, if I say a sentence and if towards
the end of the sentence my voice goes

00:06:21.100 --> 00:06:25.250
really low, in English,
what do, where do I do that?

00:06:25.250 --> 00:06:27.160
I do that on the vowels.

00:06:27.160 --> 00:06:30.670
So that's what I use the vowels for more.

00:06:30.670 --> 00:06:33.140
So they seem to have slightly
different functions.

00:06:33.140 --> 00:06:38.130
And there's many different words with
many different meanings in human language

00:06:39.310 --> 00:06:39.900
but there's not so

00:06:39.900 --> 00:06:45.490
many different kinds of grammatical
constructions in the same languages.

00:06:45.490 --> 00:06:49.710
>> Okay, and then finally I had
a question which is similar to the one

00:06:49.710 --> 00:06:51.470
earlier about consonants,

00:06:51.470 --> 00:06:56.020
is that, are there also vowels that can
be found in all languages in the world?

00:06:57.530 --> 00:06:59.680
>> The, well, probably yes.

00:06:59.680 --> 00:07:03.550
Again, it depends a little bit and
people are debating about this.

00:07:03.550 --> 00:07:05.571
People just like to debate
about these kinds of things.

00:07:05.571 --> 00:07:09.951
But I think that it's fair
to say that 99% of all

00:07:09.951 --> 00:07:14.439
languages have at least
three different vowels and

00:07:14.439 --> 00:07:19.780
those three different vowels
then are typically A, I and U.

00:07:21.080 --> 00:07:26.120
Again they are sounds which
are relatively easy to make.

00:07:26.120 --> 00:07:30.210
They probably are the three vowel
sounds which are easiest to produce and

00:07:30.210 --> 00:07:32.410
are also maximally different.

00:07:32.410 --> 00:07:35.610
They're very easy to
distinguish from each other.

00:07:41.270 --> 00:07:44.076
In this video, we have seen that
there are certain consonants and

00:07:44.076 --> 00:07:48.830
also certain vowels which seem
to occur in all languages.

00:07:48.830 --> 00:07:54.080
But that beyond that
there's a vast variation.

00:07:54.080 --> 00:07:59.720
We've also seen that there seem to be
more consonants than vowels, typically,

00:07:59.720 --> 00:08:03.080
in a language and you've seen that there
might be various reasons for that.

00:08:04.950 --> 00:08:08.674
In the next video we're going
to look more into language,

00:08:08.674 --> 00:08:13.994
into how all these differences between
consonants are actually used in language,

00:08:13.994 --> 00:08:17.718
in speech errors,
in the way in which we learn languages,

00:08:17.718 --> 00:08:20.920
and in the way in which
languages are structured.