ENGLISH PHONOLOGY AND PHONETIC

THE CONSONANTS OF ENGLISH

By

Group III

 NUR AISAH IBRAHIM

 MIRDAYANTI
 NURFADILLAH

ENGLISH DEPARTEMENT
EDUCATION AND TEACHING TRANING FACULTY
SEMBILAN BELAS NOVEMBER KOLAKA UNIVERSITY
 2020

What is a Consonant?
 A consonant is most often identified as a letter that is not a vowel.
More specifically,
 a consonant is a sound that when paired with a vowel makes a syllable.
 A consonant is any sound that a letter makes that is not a vowel sound.

What Letters are Consonants?

 English consonant letters: B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, U,
V, W, X, Y (sometimes), Z

1. Stop Consonants

Many consonants are just ways of beginning or ending vowels. This is

particularly true of consonants such as b, d, ɡ, each of which has a rapid movement of
the lips or tongue before or after another sound such as a vowel. They are called stop
consonants because the air in the vocal tract is completely stopped at some point.
When forming a b in a word such as bib, the lips are firmly closed at the beginning
and end of the word. In the case of d as in did it is the tip of the tongue that blocks the
vocal tract by forming a closure just behind the upper front teeth. For g as in gag, the
back of the tongue is raised to make a closure against the roof  of the mouth.
English has another set of stop consonants, the sounds of p, t, k, as in the words pip,
tit, kick.  

In phonetics, a stop consonant is the sound made by completely blocking the

flow of air and then releasing it. Also known as a plosive.

In English, the sounds [p], [t], and [k] are voiceless stops (also called plosives).
The sounds [b], [d], and [g] are voiced stops.

Table illustrating allophones of English stop consonant.

1 2 3 4 5
Pie buy Spy nap nab
Tie die Sty mat mad
Kye guy Sky knack nag
Voiced : /b/, /d/,/g/,/d /, /r/,/l/,/m/,/n/,/j/,/v/,/w/,/z/,/ /,/ /,/ .
Voiceless : /p/,/k/,/t/,/t /,/ /, /0/,/h/,/f/.

1. The different between the words in the first column and the second column .
- The first column is the set voiceless consonant and the second is voiced
consonant. in pie after the the release of the lip closure there is a moment of
aspiration, aperiod of voicelessness after the stop articulation and before the
start of the voicing for the vowel. If you put your hand in front of your lips
while saying “pie” you can fell the burst of air that comes out during the
period of voicelleness after the release of the stop. What is aspiration?
Aspiration may be indicated by a small raised h¿ ¿] according, these word may
be transcribed as [ phat, t hat, k hat]. But you may be able to feel the burst of air
in “tie, kye” because these stop closures are made well inside the mouth cavity
.but listen carefully and notice that you can hear the period of voicelessness
after the release of the stop . it is the interval that indicates the fact that the
stop is aspirated.teh major difference between the words in the first two
columns is not that one has (voiceless) stops and the the other voiced stops. It
is the the first column has partially voived) unaspirated stops.
2. Consider the words in the third column. There is opposition in English between
words beginning sith / sp/and /sb/,or /st/and /sd/, or /sk/and /sg/. English spelling
uses p,t,k, but the stops that occur after /s/ are really somewhere in between
initial /p/, and/b/, /t/ and /d/, /k/ and /g/. usually, like the so-called voiced stops,
they are completely unaspirated. The experiment records words such as “spy, sty,
sky, spill, still, skill. each said as a separated word.now by playing tape very
slowly or by pulling it manually past the playback head, find the beginning and
end each of. Cut this part out and splice the tape together again . when you play
the tape to others and ask them to write down the words that they hear, they will
almost certainly write “buy, die, guy, bill, dill, gill.”
3. The difference between the words in the fourth and fifth columns, the consonants
at the end of “ nap, mat, knack “ are certainly voiceless. but again, if you listen
carefully to the sounds at the end of the words “ nab, mad, nag,” you will find that
the so-called voiced consonants /b, d, g/ are also partially voiceless.
Example:
 Say these words in pairs , nap, nab ; mat, mad; knack, nag; in these words we
would like to choice which has the longer vowel ( the end consonant of /p/,/t/,/k/
is is much shorter than /b, d, g/ .

- ‘Take a cap now’ and ‘take a cab now’

a. Say “cab” and not open the lips for considerable period of time, if it were the
last word of utterance. It is have the length vowel. And “cap” have shorter
vowel
b. Cap now and cab now without a pause before now.

The final [t] in “cat” is nearly always unexploded in phrases like “ the cat
pushed…” in narrow transcription we can symbolize the fact that consonant is
unexploded by adding a small raised circle ¿ ¿] we would therefore transcribe the
phrase as [ è ‘k hæt o ‘ pho t].

The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in

many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or,
more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that
represents this sound is ⟨ʔ⟩.

2. COARTICULATION
What is coarticulation?
Coarticulation is the way the brain organizes sequences of vowels and consonants,
interweaving the individual movements necessary for each into one smooth whole. In
fact, the process applies to all body movement, not just speech, and is part of how
homo sapiens works.
It takes about a fifth of a second to produce a syllable, or about  a fifteenth or
twentieth of a second for each consonant or vowel. Now it turns out it takes a little
 longer than that to move the lips, tongue and jaw for each vowel and consonant. So
what is happening?
The brain coordinates these individual articulator movements in a very ingenious
way, such that movements needed for adjacent vowels and consonants are produced
simultaneously.
 This results in speech being produced very smoothly.
 At the same time it spreads out acoustic information about a vowel or
consonant and helps a listener understand what is being said.
 Speech coarticulation is thus also a very important part of the special code
that enables us to speak at five syllables a second.

In a very simple view, the brain would have the task of deciding what is to be
said, and then assembling something resembling a phonemic transcription of it which
would be stored somewhere in the brain. We know that the brain has a specific area
which has the job of sending commands to the many muscles in the body, including those
of the vocal tract, and it is therefore assumed that the instructions to produce each
phoneme are passed to this area and converted into signals which cause the articulators to
move and produce speech. The most important problem is that of time and timing: when
we speak, our control of the time taken by each sound we make is very accurate. Yet we
know that the task of synchronising the movements of articulators is very complex: one
problem is that the tracts of nerve fibres which carry the commands are of different
lengths and work at different speeds. In the case of a consonant which involves a
movement of the tongue tip and at the same time a movement of the vocal folds in the
larynx to produce voicing, the impulses will reach the articulators in the mouth some time
before they reach the larynx, yet the brain manages to arrange things in such a way that
the commands all take effect at the right time. Another problem for the brain to deal with
is the different mass of the various articulators: some articulators (e.g. the tip of the
tongue; the vocal folds) are light and mobile, while others (the tongue body, the soft
palate) are relatively heavy and difficult to move quickly. Thus the problem of inertia has
an effect on the timing and overlapping found in connected speech.
Coarticulatory effects often extend further than just from one sound to its
neighbour. For example, in the word “screws” /skruùz/, lip-rounding is often found
extending over the whole word; it is actually required for the pronunciation of /uù/ and,
for most English speakers, for the /r/ too, but it seems that the command to round the lips
is sent to the articulators in time for the initial /s/ to be rounded, and this command will
remain in effect after the end of the /uù/ so as to produce lip-rounding in the final /z/. This
is not just an English characteristic: similar sound-sequences in French have been
observed to behave in the same way. The French word “structural” contains two
rounded /y/ voweSls, and the lip-rounding may, again, be seen on the initial /s/ and
through the word up to the beginning of the a vowel. We have already seen how the
vowels in the English word ‘morning’ /mùnIN/ will tend to be nasalized as a result of
the lowering of the soft palate for the nasal consonants. All languages appear to exhibit
some degree of coarticulatory nasalisation of vowels adjacent to nasal consonants.

3. PALATOGRAPHY
Palatography is a technique used to identify which parts of the mouth are used
when making different sounds. This technique is often used by linguists doing field
work on little-known natural languages. A record made through palatography is called
a palatogram. It involves painting a coloring agent, such as a dye or a mixture of
charcoal and olive oil on the tongue or the roof of a person's mouth and having that
person pronounce a specific sound. A photograph is then made of the mouth roof and
tongue in order to determine how the sound was articulated. The technique can also
be performed electronically using a tool called a pseudo-palate, which consists of a
retainer-like plate lined with electrodes that is placed on the roof of the mouth while
the speaker pronounces a sound.

In order to understand how sounds are made, experimental procedures are

often adopted. Palatography is one of the oldest instrumental phonetic techniques
used to record data regarding articulators.[7] In traditional, static palatography, a
speaker's palate is coated with a dark powder. The speaker then produces a word,
usually with a single consonant. The tongue wipes away some of the powder at the
place of articulation. The experimenter can then use a mirror to photograph the entire
upper surface of the speaker's mouth. This photograph, in which the place of
articulation can be seen as the area where the powder has been removed, is called a
palatogram.

Technology has since made possible electropalatography (or EPG). In order to

collect EPG data, the speaker is fitted with a special prosthetic palate, which contains
a number of electrodes. The way in which the electrodes are "contacted" by the
tongue during speech provides phoneticians with important information, such as how
much of the palate is contacted in different speech sounds, or which regions of the
palate are contacted, or what the duration of the contact is.
 4. Fricative

Fricative, in phonetics, a consonant sound, such as English f or v, produced by

bringing the mouth into position to block the passage of the airstream, but not making
complete closure, so that air moving through the mouth generates audible
friction.fricative is pronounced through narrowing of some parts of the vocal tract.

One particular type of fricatives are sibilants in which the tongue moves
longitudinally to cause air to pass over the edge of the teeth and create a hissing sound. 
In English, the sibilants are /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, and /ʒ/. In addition, fricatives can be labiodental,
dental, alveolar, alveolo-palatal, and glottal.
Certain subsets of fricatives are sibilants. When forming sibilants, one is still forcing air
through a narrow channel, but in addition, the tongue is long and curved to direct the air
over the edge of the tooth.
These consonants are divided into two types: voiceless and voiced. To produce
voiceless consonants, you do not use your vocal cords. Voiced consonants do use your
vocal cords. 

 Fricative Pronunciation

Here is a list of the fricatives in modern English, organized by their manner of

pronunciation.

 Labiodental Fricatives

These fricatives are made using the lower lip and the upper teeth.

Voiceless
/f/
Examples: five /faɪv/, four /fɔː(r)/, fine /faɪn/
Voiced
/v/
Examples: vine /vaɪn/, violet /vaɪələt/, vital /’vaɪt(ə)l/
 Dental Fricatives

The tip of the tongue against the teeth creates these fricatives.
Voiceless

 /θ/
Examples: thistle /ˈθɪs(ə)l/, thing /θɪŋ/
Voiced
 /ð/
Examples: this /ðɪs/, that /ðæt/
Alveolar Fricatives
For these fricatives, the tip of the tongue moves up against the gum line behind your
upper teeth.
Voiceless
 /s/
Examples: sue /suː/, sip /sɪp/
Voiced
 /z/
Examples: zoo /zuː/, zip /zɪp/
Alveolo-Palatal Fricatives
These fricatives are made using the tongue and the alveolar ridge at the top of the
mouth, further behind the teeth than the alveolar fricatives.
Voiceless
 /ʃ/
Examples: shore /ʃɔː(r)/, ship /ʃɪp/
Voiced
 /ʒ/
Examples: azure /ˈæʒə(r)/
Glottal Fricatives
For the final category of fricatives, the back of the tongue moves up against the gum
line behind your upper teeth.
 /h/
Examples: hot /hɒt/, heat /hiːt/
5. Affricates
the affricates are a complex consonant that begins with an occlusive phase before
moving on to a fricative phase.
Affricates in English, there are only two affricate consonants: /tʃ/ and /dʒ/. Both of
 these sounds are alveolo-palatal sibilants. 
Affricate Pronunciation
The affricates are a little more complex to pronounce. In fact, their pronunciation is
divided into two phases starting with an interruption in the passage of air followed by
a fricative sound. 

Voiceless
 /tʃ/
Examples: choose /tʃuːz/, beach /biːtʃ/, change /tʃeɪndʒ/, chops /tʃɒps/, China /ˈtʃaɪnə/
Voiced
 /dʒ/
Examples: joy /dʒɔɪ/, siege /siːdʒ/, John /dʒɒn/, orange /ˈɒrɪndʒ/

6. Nasals
Nasals are a form of sound that is produced by stopping the blowing of air from
inside through the mouth with the lips, tongue, and also the base of the tongue so that
the air we form will pass through the nose and produce a buzzing sound.

Nasal or nasal consonants are phonemes that are realized through the aid of the nasal
cavity.

In many languages, the most common nasal phoneme is

7. Approximants 
are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not
narrowly enough[1] nor with enough articulatory precision[2] to create turbulent
airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a
turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no turbulence.[3] This class is
composed of sounds like [ɹ] (as in rest) and semivowels like [j] and [w] (as
in yes and west, respectively), as well as lateral approximants like [l] (as in less).

Some approximants resemble vowels in acoustic and articulatory properties

and the terms semivowel and glide are often used for these non-syllabic vowel-like
segments. The correlation between semivowels and vowels is strong enough that
cross-language differences between semivowels correspond with the differences
between their related vowels.

Because of the articulatory complexities of the American English rhotic, there

is some variation in its phonetic description. A transcription with the IPA character
for an alveolar approximant ([ɹ]) is common, though the sound is more postalveolar.
Actual retroflexion may occur as well and both occur as variations of the same sound.
[12]
 However, Catford (1988:161f) makes a distinction between the vowels of
American English (which he calls "rhotacized") and vowels with "retroflexion" such
as those that appear in Badaga; Trask (1996:310), on the other hand, labels both as r-
colored and notes that both have a lowered third formant.[13]
^** Because the vowels [i ɯ] are articulated with spread lips, spreading is implied for
their approximant analogues, [j ɰ]. However, these sounds generally have little or no
lip-spreading. The fricative letters with a lowering diacritic, ⟨ʝ˕ ɣ˕⟩, may therefore be
justified for a neutral articulation between spread [j ɰ] and rounded [ɥ w].[14]

In articulation and often diachronically, palatal approximants correspond to front

vowels, velar approximants to back vowels, and labialized approximants to rounded
 vowels. In American English, the rhotic approximant corresponds to the rhotic vowel.
This can create alternations (as shown in the above table).

In addition to alternations, glides can be inserted to the left or the right of their
corresponding vowels when they occur next to a hiatus. [15] For example, in Ukrainian,
medial /i/ triggers the formation of an inserted [j] that acts as a syllable onset so that
when the affix /-ist/ is added to футбол ('football') to make футболіст 'football
player', it is pronounced [futbo̞ˈlist], but маоїст ('Maoist'), with the same affix, is
pronounced [mao̞ˈjist] with a glide.[16] Dutch for many speakers has a similar process
that extends to mid vowels

 bioscoop → [bijɔskoːp] ('cinema')
 zee + en → [zeːjə(n)] ('seas')
 fluor → [flyɥɔr] ('fluor')
 reu + en → [røɥə(n)] ('male dogs')
 Rwanda → [ruʋandɐ] ('Rwanda')[18]
 Boaz → [boʋas] ('Boaz