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Consonants and Vowels 2020 PDF
Consonants and Vowels 2020 PDF
(a) whether there is vibration of the vocal folds (voiced vs. voiceless).
(b) whether there is obstruction of the airstream at any point above the
glottis (consonant vs. vowel).
(c) whether the airstream passes through the nasal cavity in addition to
the oral cavity (nasal vs. oral).
(d) whether the airstream passes through the middle of the oral cavity or
along the side(s) (non-lateral vs. lateral).
Within consonants, several articulatory types are recognised,
based on the type of closure made by the vocal organs.
A sonorant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the
manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages.
Vowels are sonorants, as are: approximants, laterals, nasals, taps, and trills. In the sonority hierarchy, all sounds higher
than fricatives are sonorants.
Plosives
[pbtdkg]
(oral occlusives)
Stops
Nasals
[mnN]
(nasal occlusives)
Occlusives
Affricates
(partially [ tS dZ ]
occlusive)
Sibilants [szSZ]
Fricatives
(continuants)
Manner of Non-sibilants [fvTDh]
Articulation
Lateral
(approximant)
[l]
Liquids
Rhotic
(non-lateral []
approximant)
Approximant
Glides (frictionless [jw]
continuants)
Occlusives can be categorised into two major types: stops and plosives. The two
categories are in inclusional distribution. That is, all plosives are stops but all stops are
not necessarily plosive.
Plosive sounds are made by forming a complete obstruction to the flow of air through
the mouth and nose. The first stage is that a closure occurs. Then the flow of air builds
up and finally the closure is released, making an explosion of air that causes a sharp
noise. The plosive sounds in RP are: /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/.
Plosive sounds belong to a more general class of sounds called stops. A stop sound is
one in which the flow of air is completely blocked only in the oral cavity. Stops also
include such sounds as /m/, /n/, /ŋ/.
Plosive
In many ways it is possible to regard plosives as the most
basic type of consonant.
Plosives are among the first sounds that are used by children
when they start to speak (though nasals are likely to be the
very first consonants).
The quality and intensity of fricative sounds varies greatly, but all are acoustically
composed of energy at relatively high frequency - an indication of this is that much of
the fricative sound is too high to be transmitted over a phone (which usually cuts out the
highest and lowest frequencies in order to reduce the cost), giving rise to the confusions
that often arise over sets of words like English 'fin', 'thin', 'sin' and 'shin'.
In order for the sound quality to be produced accurately the size and direction of the jet
of air has to be very precisely controlled; while this is normally something we do without
thinking about it, it is noticeable that fricatives are what cause most difficulty to speakers
who are getting used to wearing false teeth.
The two phrases 'why choose' /waɪ ʧuːz/ and 'white shoes'
/waɪt ʃuːz/ are said to show the difference between the /ʧ/
affricate (in the first example) and separate /t/ and /ʃ/
(in the second).
Nasal
A nasal consonant is one in which the air escapes only through the
nose. For this to happen, two articulatory actions are necessary:
firstly, the soft palate (velum) must be lowered to allow air to escape
past it.
In English the / l / phoneme is lateral both in its ‘clear’ and its ‘dark’
allophones: the blade of the tongue is in contact with the alveolar ridge as for a
/t/, / d / or / n / but the sides of the tongue are lowered to allow the passage
of air.
Most laterals are produced with the air passage to both sides of the
obstruction (bilateral), but sometimes we find air passing to one side only
(unilateral). Other lateral consonants are found in other languages: the Welsh
‘ll’ sound is a voiceless lateral fricative [ ]. e.g. ‘llan’ [an] (enclosed piece of
land)
Approximant
This is a phonetic term of comparatively recent origin. It is used to denote a
consonant which makes very little obstruction to the airflow.
semivowels such as the /w/ in English 'wet' and /j/ in English 'yet', which are
very similar to close vowels such as [u] and [i] but are produced as a rapid
glide.
liquids, sounds which have an identifiable constriction of the airflow but not
one that is sufficiently obstructive to produce fricative noise, compression or
the diversion of airflow through another part of the vocal tract as in nasals.
This category includes laterals such as English /l/ in 'lead' and non-fricative /r/
(phonetically []) in 'read'. Approximants therefore are never fricative and
never contain interruptions to the flow of air.
Other terms
Glides: A term used in phonetics to refer to a transitional sound as the vocal
organs move towards or away from an articulation (ON-GLIDE and OFF-GLIDE
respectively). An obvious case is that of diphthongs: in their case the glide is
comparatively slow. Some sounds which are usually classed as consonants also
involve glides: these include ‘semivowels’.
This tap sound (for which the phonetic symbol is [] ) is noticeable in
Scottish accents as the realisation of / r /, and in American English it
is often heard as a (voiced) realisation of / t / when it occurs after a
stressed vowel and before an unstressed one (e.g. the phrase 'getting
better' is pronounced [ geN be ]). Also present in Spanish, ‘pero’.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~krussll/phonetics/articulation/describing-
consonants.html
http://clas.mq.edu.au/phonetics/phonetics/consonants/manner.html