Chapter 3 Consonants

PHONOLOGY

Obstruent vs sonorant

• Obstruents:

• airflow is restricted with articulators either in complete closure or close approximation

• includes (stops, fricatives, & affricates)

• May be voiced or voiceless

• Sonorants:

• there is no such restriction in the oral tract, or the nasal tract is open (air has free passage through the vocal tract)

• includes (nasals, liquids, & glides)

• Only voiced

Stops

• A complete closure at the place of articulation

• Pulmonic egressive oral stops a.k.a (plosives)

• Two types: oral and nasal

• Oral stops

– Velum is raised

– Articulators are close enough (in different points) to build pressure in the oral cavity.

– Airstream is released with a burst of sound

Stops

• English has 3 pairs of voiceless/voiced stops:

1. bilabial [p, b]

2. alveolar [t, d]

3. velar [k, g]

• Glottal stop [ʔ] (- voice)

• There are palatal stops (Malayalam), uvular (Quechua)

Stops

• Ejectives: stops produced with glottalic egressive mechanism (the glottis closed then raised, the air above it pushed upwards, compressed & then released)

• Implosives: involves glottalic airstream, but glottis is lowered

• 10% of the world languages have implosives

• Click: involves velaric ingressive (dual closure in the oral tract)

Production of stops

• Pulmonic egressive oral stops involve 3 stages:

1. Closing stage: when active articulator comes in contact with the passive one

2. Closure stage: when articulators remain in contact & air builds up behind the blockage

3. Release Stage: when active articulator is lowered allowing air to be released with some force

(the closing stage and/or release stage may be missing)

The release stage

• Nasal release: occurs when an oral stop precedes a nasal; e.g. ‘mutton’

• Lateral release: occurs when an oral stop [t, d] precedes the lateral liquid [l]; tongue tip remains in contact with the alveolar ridge for the [l] & air is releases when sides of the tongue lower; e.g. ‘beetle’, ‘badly’

Aspiration

• In ‘pie’, there is a puff of air following the [p] release (aspiration)

• Indicated as [ph]

• For aspirated stops: vocal cord remain open after the release of the plosive; 1st part of the vowel in ‘pie’ is produced without vibrating vocal cords

• In English, aspiration occurs in –v stops at the beginning of stressed syllables

• Words don’t contrast for aspiration in English

Voicing

• Voiceless stops remain voiceless • Voicing is not always constant for voiced stops (fortition

and lenition) • Fully voiced between voiced sounds • Duration of the preceding segment decides whether the

final stop is voiced or voiceless • when +v stops follows liquids, nasals, vowels, cause the

sound to lengthen, e.g (back, bag)

Glottalisation and the glottal stop

• Voiceless stops in final position can be glottalised

• In some kinds of English, intervocalic voiceless stops are glottalised, e.g. ‘super’ [ʔp]

• Voiceless stops may be replaced by a glottal stop (before a nasal ‘a[ʔn]ight’, a homorganic obstruent ‘grea[ʔs]mile’.

• Word final [t] may be [ʔ] as in ‘ra[ʔ]’ (‘rat’)

• Word-initial vowels can be glottals as in ‘it’s [ʔ ]over!’

Variation in stops

• Assimilation: when a sound becomes similar to a neighboring sound; e.g, [t] & [d] assimilate to their context

‘ho[p p]otato’ instead of ‘hot potato’ & ‘ba[b b]oy’ instead of ‘bad boy’

• Bilabials [p] & [b] remain bilabials

• Velars can be fronted; e.g. ‘kick’ & ‘cook’

•

Variation in stops • Assimilation that involve manner:

• Flapping: the distinction between [t] & [d] is neutralized between vowels ‘latter’ & across word boundary ‘get away’

• They are replaced by a voiced alveolar flap transcribed as [ɾ]

• For many Americans, ‘Adam’ & ‘atom’ may be homophones

• When the stop begins a stressed syllable, it’s not flapped, as in ‘attend’

• In some English, ’t’ becomes ‘r’ when occurring after a short vowel & the next sound is a vowel; ‘lo [r] of fun’

Affricates

• An affricate is a stop with an extended and controlled fricative phase following the obstruction

• a combination of stop + fricative):

ʧ = voiceless post-alveolar affricate; ‘chin’

ʤ = voiced post-alveolar affricate; ‘jaguar’

Fricatives

• As the air exits, it’s forced through a narrow passage between the articulators resulting in friction

• Think of friction • Airstream partially obstructed • Other languages have velar, bilabial, uvular &

pharyngeal fricatives •

Distribution

• [f, v, θ, ð, s, z, ʃ, ] occur in all positions

• [ð] word-initial is restricted to a small set of function words (the, that…)

• [ʒ] occurs in a few words, e.g, (treasure) & never word initially

• [h] occurs only word initially or word-medially.

•

Voicing

• Fricatives may be voiceless or voiced.

• + voice fricatives may undergo devoicing word-initially & word-finally

• Voiced fricatives lengthen the duration of any sonorant they follow ‘face’ & ‘phase’

Variation in fricatives

• [f] & [v] don’t show assimilation

• [v] becomes voiceless word-finally preceding a voiceless obstruent as in ‘ha[f] to’

• In faster speech, a sound may be lost in unstressed function words (elision), e.g ‘piece of cake’

• [θ, ð] might be deleted when precede [s, z] as in ‘clothes’ & ‘months’

Variation in fricatives

• In some English, [θ, ð] may be replaced by [f, v]; ‘three’ & ‘free’ sound identical

• in some other varieties, word initial [θ, ð] may be replaced by [s]; e.g. ([s]ousand)

• Word initial [ð] assimilates entirely to a preceding alveolar sound as in; ‘I [z z] ere any food?’

Variation in fricatives

• [s, z] often assimilate to a following palatal glide [j], or palato-alveolar fricative [ʃ] as in; (‘mi [ʃ j]ou’) & ‘it wa [ʒ j] ellow’

• [h] is dropped by all speakers in unstressed pronouns & auxiliaries such as ‘her’, ‘him’

• In words like ‘human’ & ‘huge’, there may be no [h]

Nasals

• Velum is lowered allowing air into the nasal cavity

• Only voiced (sonorants)

• In English:

- Bilabial [m]

- Alveolar [n]

- Velar [ŋ]

Distribution & Variation

• [m] & [n] occur in all positions

• [ŋ] cannot occur word initially in English

• There is alternation between [ŋ] & [n] for the inflection ‘-ing’ which may be [ɪn] or [ɪŋ]

• [m] may be labio-dental before labio-dental fricatives [f] & [v] as in ‘some fun’

• [n] assimilates to the following segment as in ‘i[m p]aris’

Liquids

• refers to ‘l’ & ‘r’ (laterals or rhotics)

• produced with free airflow, but with some obstruction in the oral tract

• Liquids are sonorants (+ voice)

Laterals

• There is contact between the active articulator (central of the tongue) & the passive articulator (roof of the mouth)

• English has ‘l’ in ‘lion’

Distribution & Variation

• [l] occur in all positions

• After voiceless obstruent, [l] is devoiced as in ‘play’

• [l] is velarised in final position, before a consonant & syllabically (dark ‘l’) as in ‘ fill’ & ‘film’& ‘bottle’

• Non-velarised version is known as (clear ‘l’) & occurs word initially

Rhotics

• Rhotics include: 1. The alveolar trill [r]

2. The alveolar tap [ɾ]

3. The alveolar continuant [ɹ]

4. The retroflex [ɻ]

5. The uvular roll [R] or fricative [ʁ]

• They are grouped together in terms of phonology, not

phonetics

Distribution

• Non-rhotic accents: rhotic was lost post-vocalically (i.e. word finally or before a consonant)

• Rhotic accents: have rhotics in all words

• ‘linking ‘r’’: [r] is pronounced before a vowel, across word boundaries, & within words

(‘far away’, ‘soar’ vs. ‘soaring’

• ‘intrusive ‘r’’: the occurrence in non-rhotic accents of a word- final rhotic which is absent in spelling as in ‘tuna [r] alert’

Variation • Rhotics are devoiced following voiceless stops as in

‘pray’ • Following [t] & [d], the rhotic will be fricativised as in

‘tree’ & ‘dream’ • The continuant rhotic may become a tap between

vowels as in ‘very’& after [θ] & [ð] as in ‘three’ • There may be a degree of lip rounding with the

rhotic

Glides

• They are more like vowels in articulation (semi-vowels)

• They don’t form syllabic nuclei like consonants (appear at the edge of a syllable)

• English has 2 glides:

1. Palatal [j] as in ‘yes’

2. Labial-velar [w] as in ‘weigh’

Distribution

• English [j] appears in word-initial position

• In word-initial clusters, [j] is restricted to appear before the vowels [uː] & [ʊə]; e.g. (mute, pure)

• The labial-velar [w] appears word initially

• English doesn’t allow [w] after consonants other than [t], [d], [k], [s], [θ]

• May follow [g] in some loanwords like ‘Gwynneth’

Variation

• [j] varies according to the following vowel; higher before high vowels (‘[j]east’) & lower before low vowels as in (‘[j]ak’)

• [w] & [j] are devoiced after –voice obstruents; e.g (twilight)