LESSON 3: ENGLISH CONSONANTS

LESSON 3: ENGLISH CONSONANTS

Glossary:

affricate : (âm) tắc xát airflow (air-stream) : luồng hơi, luồng không khí approximant : (âm) tiếp cận articulation : sự cấu âm articulator : bộ phận cấu  âm bilabial : (âm) hai môi consonant : phụ âm constriction : sự co khít distribution : sự phân bố explosive : (âm) nổ ra final position : vị trí cuối fricative : (âm) xát glottal : (âm) hầu identical : giống nhau interdental : (âm) giữa răng interrupted : bị gián đoạn lateral : (âm) biên manner of articulation : phương thức cấu  âm neutral position : vị trí trung dung place of articulation : vị trí cấu  âm plosive : (âm) bật; (âm) nổ postalveolar : (âm) sau lợi precede : đi trước, đứng trước pronunciation : sự phát âm, cách phát âm retroflex : (âm) cong, (âm) uốn/quặc lưỡi simultaneously : đồng thời stop : (âm) tắt, (âm) cản tension : sự căng, độ căng turbulent : thay đổi bất thường vibrate / vibration : rung/ sự rung vocal apparatus : bộ máy phát  âm vocal folds : thanh đới vocal tract : đường phát âm voiced : (âm) hữu thanh voiceless : (âm) vô thanh voicing : phát thành âm kêu; sự  vang âm

  

     Producing a consonant involves making the vocal tract narrower at some location than it usually is. We call this narrowing a constriction. Which consonant you're pronouncing depends on where in the vocal tract the constriction is and how narrow it is. It also depends on a few other things, such as whether the vocal folds are vibrating and whether air is flowing through the nose.
We classify consonants along three major dimensions:

• place of articulation
• manner of articulation
• voicing

For example, for the sound d:

• Place of articulation = alveolar. (The narrowing of the vocal tract involves the tongue tip and the alveolar ridge.)
• Manner of articulation = oral stop. (The narrowing is complete -- the tongue is completely blocking off airflow through the mouth. There is also no airflow through the nose.)
• Voicing = voiced. (The vocal folds are vibrating.)

Places of articulation

The place of articulation (or POA) of a consonant specifies where in the vocal tract the narrowing occurs. From front to back, the POAs that English uses are:

Bilabial
     In a bilabial consonant, the lower and upper lips approach or touch each other. English p, b, and m are bilabial stops.     
The diagram to the right shows the state of the vocal tract during a typical p or b. (An m would look the same, but with the velum lowered to let out through the nasal passages.)    
The sound w involves two constrictions of the vocal tract made simultaneously. One of them is lip rounding, which you can think of as a bilabial approximant.

Labiodental
     In a labiodental consonant, the lower lip approaches or touches the upper teeth. English f and v are bilabial fricatives.       
The diagram to the right shows the state of the vocal tract during a typical f or v.  

Dental
     In a dental consonant, the tip or blade of the tongue approaches or touches the upper teeth. English θ and ð are dental fricatives. There are actually a couple of different ways of forming these sounds:

• The tongue tip can approach the back of the upper teeth, but not press against them so hard that the airflow is completely blocked.
• The blade of the tongue can touch the bottom of the upper teeth, with the tongue tip protruding between the teeth -- still leaving enough space for a turbulent air-stream to escape. This kind of θ and ð is often called interdental.

 

     The diagram to the right shows a typical interdental θ or ð.

Alveolar
     In an alveolar consonant, the tongue tip (or less often the tongue blade) approaches or touches the alveolar ridge, the ridge immediately behind the upper teeth. The English stops t, d, and n are formed by completely blocking the airflow at this place of articulation. The fricatives s and z are also at this place of articulation, as is the lateral approximant l.    
The diagram to the right shows the state of the vocal tract during plosive t or d.

Postalveolar
     In a postalveolar consonant, the constriction is made immediately behind the alveolar ridge. The constriction can be made with either the tip or the blade of the tongue. The English fricatives ∫and ʒ are made at this POA, as are the corresponding affricates t∫and dʒ.    
The diagram to the right shows the state of the vocal tract during the first half (the stop half) of an affricate t∫or dʒ.

Retroflex
     In a retroflex consonant, the tongue tip is curled backward in the mouth. English ɹ is a retroflex approximant -- the tongue tip is curled up toward the postalveolar region (the area immediately behind the alveolar ridge).   
The diagram to the right shows a typical English retroflex ɹ.    
Both the sounds we've called "postalveolar" and the sounds we've called "retroflex" involve the region behind the alveolar ridge. In fact, at least for English, you can think of retroflexes as being a sub-type of postalveolars, specifically, the type of postalveolars that you make by curling your tongue tip backward.

Palatal     
In a palatal consonant, the body of the tongue approaches or touches the hard palate. English j is a palatal approximant -- the tongue body approaches the hard palate, but closely enough to create turbulence in the air-stream.

Velar
     In a velar consonant, the body of the tongue approaches or touches the soft palate, or velum. English k, g, and ŋ are stops made at this POA.     
The diagram to the right shows a typical k or g -- though where exactly on the velum the tongue body hits will vary a lot depending on the surrounding vowels.    
As we have seen, one of the two constrictions that form a w is a bilabial approximant. The other is a velar approximant: the tongue body approaches the soft palate.

Glottal     
The glottis is the opening between the vocal folds. In an /h/, this opening is narrow enough to create some turbulence in the air-stream flowing past the vocal folds. For this reason, /h/ is often classified as a glottal fricative.

Manners of articulation

 

     The manner of articulation dimension is essentially everything else: how narrow the constriction is, whether air is flowing through the nose, and whether the tongue is dropped down on one side.

Stops     
Stops are consonants formed by completely stopping the flow of air somewhere in the vocal apparatus, and then releasing the air. Since the sudden release of the pent-up air creates a small explosive sound, stops are also called plosives. Stops may be voiced (vocal cords vibrating during the articulation of the stop) or voiceless (vocal cords not vibrating during the articulation of the stop). Here is a list of the stops in English t, d, k, g, p and b.

Fricatives     
In the stop t, the tongue tip touches the alveolar ridge and cuts off the airflow. In s, the tongue tip approaches the alveolar ridge but doesn't quite touch it. There is still enough of an opening for airflow to continue, but the opening is narrow enough that it causes the escaping air to become turbulent (hence the hissing sound of the s). In a fricative consonant, the articulators involved in the constriction approach get close enough to each other to create a turbulent air-stream. The fricatives of English are f, v, θ, ð, s, z, ∫ and ʒ.

Approximants     
In an approximant, the articulators involved in the constriction are further apart still than they are for a fricative. The articulators are still closer to each other than when the vocal tract is in its neutral position, but they are not even close enough to cause the air passing between them to become turbulent. The approximants of English are w, j, ɹ, and l.

Affricates     
An affricate is a single sound composed of a stop portion and a fricative portion. In English t∫, the airflow is first interrupted by a stop which is very similar to t (though made a bit further back). But instead of finishing the articulation quickly and moving directly into the next sound, the tongue pulls away from the stop slowly, so that there is a period of time immediately after the stop where the constriction is narrow enough to cause a turbulent airstream.    
In t∫, the period of turbulent air-stream following the stop portion is the same as the fricative ∫. English dʒ is an affricate like t∫, but voiced.

Laterals     
Pay attention to what you are doing with your tongue when you say the first consonant of /li:f/ leaf. Your tongue tip is touching your alveolar ridge (or perhaps your upper teeth), but this doesn't make /l/ a stop. Air is still flowing during an /l/ because the side of your tongue has dropped down and left an opening. (Some people drop down the right side of their tongue during an /l/; others drop down the left; a few drop down both sides.) Sounds which involve airflow around the side of the tongue are called laterals. Sounds which are not lateral are called central.    
/l/ is the only lateral in English. The other sounds of English, like most of the sounds of the world's languages, are central.    
More specifically, /l/ is a lateral approximant. The opening left at the side of the tongue is wide enough that the air flowing through does not become turbulent.

Voicing

 

     The voicing parameter specifies whether the vocal folds are vibrating. The vocal folds may be held against each other at just the right tension so that the air flowing past them from the lungs will cause them to vibrate against each other. We call this process voicing. Sounds which are made with vocal fold vibration are said to be voiced. Sounds made without vocal fold vibration are said to be voiceless.    
There are several pairs of sounds in English which differ only in voicing -- that is, the two sounds have identical places and manners of articulation, but one has vocal fold vibration and the other doesn't. The θ of thigh and the ð of thy are one such pair. The others are:

Voiceless p t k f θ s ∫ t∫ Voiced b d g v ð z ʒ dʒ

 

     The other sounds of English do not come in voiced/voiceless pairs. h is voiceless, and has no voiced counterpart. The other English consonants are all voiced: ɹ, l, w, j, m, n, and ŋ. 

Brief descriptions of English consonants

 

  

Voicing Place of Articulation Place of Articulation Spelling /p/ voiceless bilabial stop / plosive It is spelt p: plane or pp: opposite and only exceptionally gh in hiccough. The letter p is silent when followed by another obstruent or a nasal in word-initial position: psalm, pterodactyl, pneumatic. /b/ voiced bilabial stop/plosive It is spelt b: bar or bb: ribbon  The letter is silent in final position after m: limb, crumb, dumb and in front of t in words of Latin origin where the sound has long been lost: debt, doubt, subtle. /t/    voiceless alveolar stop/plosive It is spelt with t: toe, with tt: cutter or with th: Thomas, Thames /d/    voiced alveolar stop/plosive It is spelt d: read or dd: adder /k/ voiceless velar stop/plosive The sound can be represented by the letter c: comb or by cc: accuse, by k: kill, by ck: pick, by ch: architect, by qu: queen. In words like muscle and knave the letters c an k are silent. /g/ voiced velar stop/plosive The consonant can be rendered by g: get by gg: begged, or by g followed by h, as in ghastly, by ua, ue or ui, as in guarantee, guess or linguist, respectively. The voiced counterpart of /ks/, /gz/ can also be rendered by x in words like example. /t∫/ voiceless postalveolar affricate The phoneme is represented graphically by ch: charm, chinchilla, rich or tch: kitchen, bitch or by t followed by u: creature, culture when the plosive is palatalized. In words like habitual, sanctuary the pronunciation with an affricate is a variant of /tj/. Exceptionally, we can have ce or cz as graphic representations of the sound in (violin) cello or Czech. /dʒ/ voiced postalveolar affricate It can be rendered graphically by j: justice, John, rejoice, pyjamas, by ge: gesture, agent, sage, by gi: giraffe, rigid; and gy: gymnastics. In certain words it can be spelt d followed by u: gradual, individual, procedure/al. In all these cases, however, there is an alternative pronunciation /dj/. In a number of proper names or common nouns originating in proper names ch is read /dʒ/: Norwich, Greenwich, S/sandwich. Another spelling can be dg in words like ridge or edge. /m/ voiced bilabial nasal It can be spelt with m or mm: come, common /n/ voiced alveolar nasal It is spelt n or nn: dean, annual. /ŋ/ voiced velar nasal This phoneme has a limited distribution: it always precedes the voiceless velar plosive or occurs in syllable-final position in front of an elided /g/: tank, ankle, sing, long. /f/ voiceless labiodental fricative The sound can be spelt f: fine, fringe, feud, loaf, stifle, ff: effort, snuff, ph: physics, graph, or even gh: enough, tough. The word lieutenant /lef’tenənt/ is a particular case. /v/ voiced labiodental fricative It is spelt with the letter v: vein, live, voice. (Exceptionally, by ph in Stephen, nephew and f in of). /θ/ voiceless dental fricative The sound is rendered graphically by th: thin, method, path. The sound often occurs in clusters difficult to pronounce: eighths,, depths, lengths.. /ð/ voiced dental fricative The sound is always spelt th, like its voiceless counterpart: within, then, they.. /s/ voiceless alveolar fricative It is spelt s, ss or c in front of e, i or y: sour, say, hiss, assign, ceiling, cellar, cigarette, precise, cypress, bicycle. Sometimes the spelling can be sce, sci or scy: science, scent, scene, scythe; s is silent in words like corps, island, viscount. /z/ voiced alveolar fricative The sound is spelt z. It is often spelt s when the sound does not occur in initial positon: nose, easy, desire, and, exceptionally, tz in tzar. Similarly, when it marks the plural of nouns ending in a voiced sound (e.g. boys, balls, ribs) or when it is the voiced allomorph of the 3rd person singular present indicative of verbs ending in a voiced sound (e.g. plays, calls, adds) the spelling is s. Exceptionally, the sound can be spelt double ss in words like dissolve, possess. /∫/ voiceless postalveolar fricative It is often spelt sh in words like shoe, cushion or push. It can also be spelt s: sure, sugar or ss: pressure, mission or ci: ancient, delicious, sci: conscious, ce: ocean, si: pension, mansion, ti: tuition, retribution. It is a variant of /sj/ in words like issue, tissue. In words of French origin the sound is spelt ch: champagne, charade, chargé, moustache, attaché. The same spelling is used in proper names like Charlotte, Chicago, Chicoutimi, Michigan. /ʒ/ voiced postalveolar fricative It can be spelt either s when followed by u: visual or i: decision, or z if followed by u: seizure or ge: massage, espionage. In words like casual the alternative pronunciation /zj/ is possible, while in other cases the fricative is replaced by the affricate /dʒ/ (e.g. garage). /ɹ/ voiced retroflex approximant The sound is spelt r: rain, ring or rr: carry, marry /j/ voiced palatal approximant The sound may be spelt y (as in year) while in words spelt with u, ue, ui, ew, eu and eau read as the long vowel /u:/ the palatal sound is often inserted. /w/ voiced labial + velar approximant It can be rendered graphically either by the letter w (the most common case) (e.g. sweet) or by u (e.g. quite). /l/ voiced alveolar lateral approximant The phoneme is spelt either l or ll in words like link or call, for instance. In many words, however, before plosive sounds like /k/ or /d/ – cf. chalk, could; or before nasals like /m/ or /n/ – cf. calm, Lincoln; the labio-dental fricatives /f/ and /v/ – cf. calf, calves; the lateral sound is not pronounced. /h/ voiceless glottal fricative The conservative spelling of English has preserved the letter h after r in words of Greek origin where no h sound or aspiration is heard nowadays: rhapsody, rhetoric, rheumatism, rhinal, rhinoceros, rhombus, rhyme, rhythm.