Consonants

Consonants articulation is described with respect to three basic dimensions:

place, manner, and voice. The place of articulation tells where a sound is formed,
the folds are vibrating in association with the consonant segment. English consonants
can be described by using a modifier or descriptor from each of these three
dimensions, as shown in the following list.
Voicing Place Manner
Voiced Bilabial Stop
voiceless Labiodental Nasal
Interdental Fricative
Alveolar Affricate
Palatal Liquid
Palatal-velar (a)Lateral
Glottal (b)Rhotic
glide
Using all these possible combinations of voicing, place, and manner, we
would have a total of almost 100 consonants. However, the English language uses
only about one fourth of this number. The number of possible consonants sounds is
far larger than 100, because other languages have voicing, place, and manner
capabilities in addition to those listed above. For example, some languages
incorporate whistles, clicks, and sounds formed at other places in the vocal tract. But
is also should be noted that not all combinations of the descriptors given above are
possible sounds, for some combinations are not pronounceable.

Consonants phonemes in English, then, can be described by specifying the

voicing, place, and manner. For instance, the sound b, as in bee, above, and rub, is
described as a voiced, bilabial, stop consonant. This description tells us that the sound
is produced with vibrating vocal folds (voiced), with a constriction at the lips (bi
meaning two and labia meaning lips), and with a complete closure (stopping) at the
place of articulation. Given our earlier definition of phonemes with respect to
minimal pairs of words, it should be possible to change the voicing, place, and
manner features and thereby create other consonants, for example, if we alter only the
voicing term, changing it to voiceless instead of voiced, we have the sound p,as in
pea, apple, and rip. Notice that b and p are alike in place of articulation (both
involving the lips) and manner of articulation (both involving a complete closure or
stopping), but that they