Chapter 3 The consonants of English

Chapter 3

THE CONSONANTS OF ENGLISH

1. STOP CONSONANTS

After the release of the lip closure, there is a moment of aspiration, a period of voicelessness after the stop articulation and before the start of the voicing for the vowel.

          1                                      2                                          3                                      4                                         5                                             6

        Pie                                    buy                                    A buy                               Spy                                      nap                                        Nab
        tie                                     Dye                                    A dye                               Sty                                       Mat                                        Mad
        kye                                   Guy                                    A sky                               sky                                       knack                                     Nag

 
According to the table 3.1 actualy in this parts tells about the differences between first column and the second, j and q , and also s and b coloumn. Each coloumn mauding the words of english stop consonants.
The phrases take a cap now and take a cab now also illustrate a further point about english stop consonants at the end of a word (or, in fact, at the end of a stressed syllable).
 
Stops
Released                                 unreleased
Oral                                          nasal
Central                                    lateral
           
We can summarize the discussion of  stop consonants by thinking of the possibilities there are in the form of a branching diagram, as shown in figure 3.5 the first question to consider is whethere the gesture for the stop released (exploded) or not . if it is released, then is it oral plosion, or is the release due to the lowering of the velum, with air escaping through the nose, making it nasal plosion, if it is oral plasion, then is the closure in the mouth entirely removed, or is the articulation in the midline retained and one or both sides of the tongue lowered so that air escapes laterally.

2. FRICATIVES

The fricatives of english vary less than the stop consonants, yet the major allophonic variations that do occur are in many ways similar to those of the stops
Stops and fricatives are the only english consonants that can be either voiced or voiceless.
We also saw that a voiceless stop at the end of a syllable (as in hit) is longer than the corresponding voiced stop (As in hid). Similarly, the voiceless fricativies are longer than their voiced counterparts in each of the pairs safe, save,lace, laze.
We refer to fricatives and stops together as a natural class of sounds called obstruents.
A lesser  degree of closure by two articulators not involved in the primary articulations is called a secondary articulation.
This particular one, in which the actions of the lips is added to another articulation,is called labialization.

3. AFFRICATES

An affricate is  simply a sequence of a stop followed by homorganic fricatives. From the point of view of a phonologist considering the sound pattern of english, the plato-alveolar affricates are plainly single units, but as in cats is simply a sequence of two consonants. The fricative stop sequence is usually pretty easy to hear in the backwards versions.

4. NASALS
The nasal consonants of english vary even less than the fricatives.

5. APPROXIMANTS

The voiced approximants are w, r, j, I as in whack, rack, yak, lack. The approximants are largely voiceless when they follow one of the voiceless stops p, t, k as in play, twice, clay.
But in both british and american english, the tongue is pulled down and the back is arched upward as in a back vowel. If there is contact on the alveolar ridge, it is primary articulation. The arching upward of the back of the tongue forms a secondary articulation, which we will call velarization.

6. OVERLAPPING GESTURES

All the sounds we have been considering involve movements of the articulators. They are often described in terms of the articulatory positions that characterize these movements. Rather than thinking in terms of static positions, we should really consider each sound as a movement.
We can often think of the gestures for different articulations as movements towards certain targets. A target is someting that one aims at but does not necessarily hit, perhaps because one drawn off by having to aim at a second target.
Coarticulation between sounds will always result in the positions of some parts of the vocal tract being influenced quite a lot, whereas others will not be so much affected by neighboring targets. The extent to which anticipatory coarticulation occurs depends on the extent to which the position of that part of the vocal track is sepecified in the two gestures. The degree of coarticulation also depends on the interval between them.
Thera is no simple relationship between the description of a language in terms of phonemes and the description of utterances in terms of gestural targets.
A phoneme is an abstrack unit that may be realized in serval different ways. Sometimes, the differences between the different allophones of a phoneme can be explained in terms of targets and overlapping gestures.
However, the differences between some allophones are actually the result of aiming at different targets.
Sometimes, the differences between alphones are the result of overlapping gestures, producing what have been called intrinsic allophones,sometimes,they involve different gestures, which may be called extrinsic allophones. Because phonemes are composed of these two types of allophones, they cannot be equated with gestures.
 
7. RULES FOR ENGLISH CONSONANT ALLOPHONES

A good way of summarizing (and slightly extending)all that we have said about english consonants so far is to list a set of formal statements or rules describing the allophones. These rules are simply descriptiond of language begavior.
Given the discussion of consonant allophones in this chapter, we can give a number of descriptive rules. One of these deals with consonant length.

8. DIACRITICS

In this and the previous chapter, we have seen how the transcription of english can be made more detailed by the use of diacritics we have introduced so far are shown in table 3.2. you should learn the use of these diacritics before you attempt any further detailed transcription exercises. Note that nasalization diacritic is a small wavy line above a symbol (the”tilde”symbol), and the velarization diacritic is a tilde through the middle of a symbol. Nasalization is more common among vowels, which will be discussed in the next chapter.