Chapter 3: The Sounds of English. Consonants and Vowels.

An Articu-latory
Classification and Description. Acoustic Correlates
3.1. Consonants and Vowels. Traditional distinctions. Chomsky and
Halle’s SPE definition
3.2. Criteria for consonant classification. Vocal cord vibration. Sonority
3.3. Manner of articulation. Plosives. Fricatives. Affricates
3.4. Sonorants. The Approximants: glides and liquids
3.5. Oral and nasal articulation
3.6. Force of articulation
3.7. Place of articulation
3.8. The Description of English consonants
A. The Approximants
B. The English Stops
C. The English Fricatives
D. The English Affricates

CHAPTER 3

THE SOUNDS OF ENGLISH. CONSONANTS

AND VOWELS. AN ARTICULATORY CLASSIFICATION AND
DESCRIPTION
OF CONSONANTS.
DISTRIBUTION.ACOUSTIC CORRELATES

3.1. Consonants and Vowels. Traditional distinctions. Chomsky

and Halle’s SPE definition

The previous chapter has provided a brief description of the human phonatory
system insisting on the main articulatory organs and differentiating between passive and
active articulators. Articulatory phonetics has been defined as that branch of phonetics
that studies the sounds of a language from the point of view of their articulation, of the
manner in which they come to be produced, uttered by the speaker. The next chapters of
this book will give the description and attempt a classification of the sounds of English in
articulatory terms, presenting also some acoustic correlates of the major classes of
sounds.
When trying to describe the sounds of English – or of any language for that matter
– one should start with the traditional distinction between two major classes of sounds:
vowels and consonants, respectively. There is, of course, no universally accepted
definition for either class – is there any subject upon which grammarians will agree, after
all? – but we can resort, at last for the beginning, to etymology, to explain what people –
in an intuitive rather than scholarly manner – have always understood by the two
concepts. The word vowel comes from the Latin word vocalis, which in its turn derives
from vox, vocis, meaning word, voice, (cf. also Rom. vocală) In other words, we always
perceive vowels as sound intimately related to the feature of voicedness: a vowel is a
sound that must be produced with vocal cord vibration. That this is a feature that
characterizes some non-vocalic sounds is something that will be discussed a little bit
later. On the other hand, the word consonant suggests – again, on a strictly etymological
basis – that the respective sound doesn’t have an articulatory autonomy, or, to put it
differently, that it has to sound together (Lat. consonans, present parrticiple of consonare
cf. also Lat. consona, Rom. consoană) or be pronounced in association with other sounds.
This is again something that we are somehow intuitively aware of, or at least we were
taught that this was the case as early as during our first language classes in primary
school. That this is a definition that causes some serious problems is again something that
will be soon discussed.
As pointed out before, these etymological references are not very helpful in
understanding the true nature of the differences between the two classes of sounds.
Though always voiced, vowels are by no means the only voiced sounds in a language. On
the other hand, sounds that don’t have consonantal features, may very well be
pronounced together with other sounds. Further difficulties are created by the ambiguous
nature of certain sounds that have both vocalic and consonantal features.
The somewhat intuitive criteria (seldom explicitly expressed, however)1 had to be
replaced by systematic and consistent attempts at defining the true nature of the
differences between the two classes.
According to Ferdinand de Saussure, what distinguishes vowels from consonants
is the higher degree of aperture of the oral cavity. From an articulatory point of view, the
two classes are not, however, essentially different. It is only from an acoustic point of
view that distinctions are relevant; the laryngeal sound being amplified by the oral cavity
that functions primarily as a resonator in the case of vowels, while in the case of
consonants it reduces the resonance of the laryngeal sounds, a noise-like effect being
produced by the intercession of oral articulators.2
Leonard Bloomfield defines vowels as ”modifications of
voice-sound that involve no closure, friction, or contact of the tongue or lips” while
consonants (that include stops, trills, spirants, nasals and laterals) are “the other” sounds.
Bloomfield deplores the way in which the two labels, vowels and consonants respectively,
are used and argues that in the description of individual languages it is convenient to use
the terms in a different way and to supplement this distinction made in articulatory terms.
1
Kenneth Pike notes that “frequently for description of single languages the division is assumed,
with no attempt to define it. The distinction is often presented as if it were clear-cut, with every sound
belonging to one or the other of the groups” (1943: 66)
2
La formule d’une voyelle est exactement comparable à celle de n’importe quelle consonne
sonore. Au point de vue de l’articulation buccale, il n’y a pas de distinction à faire. Seul l’effet accoustique
est différent. Passé un certain degré d’aperture, la bouche fonctionne principalement comme résonateur. Le
timbre du son laryngé apparaît pleinement et le bruit buccal s’efface. Plus la bouche se ferme, plus le son
laryngé est intercepté. (1965: 75)
He suggests that the distinction should be refined by adding two more classes: sonants and
semivowels. (1935:102)
Arguing in favour of a strict delimitation between the phonetic (articulatory and
acoustic) descriptions of sounds and their phonemic, contrastive value in a given context,
Pike3 distinguishes between contoid and vocoid sounds, a division exclusively based on
phonetic characteristics that parallels the distinction consonants/vowels that are
“categories of sounds, not as determined by their own phonetic nature, but according to
their grouping in specific syllable contextual functions”. According to this interpratation
we can talk about universal, purely phonetic features of contoids and vocoids
respectively, while each particular language (phonological system) will delineate its own
classes of consonants and vowels.
Many contemporary linguistic studies follow Chomsky and Halle (The Sound
Pattern of English, 1968) in postulating the fact that the main distinction between vowels
and consonants consists in the fact that while we utter a vowel the outgoing airstream
does not meet any major obstacle or constriction in its way from the lungs out of the
mouth, and the articulation of the sound allows spontaneous voicing, whereas the
articulation of a consonant always involves some kind of blocking of the airstream.4
Once we have decided that consonants are sounds that involve a stricture
(narrowing, which can sometimes lead to a complete obstruction) of the vocal tract, we
will easily notice that what we have just decided to call consonants are far from being a
homogeneous class. On the other hand, it is obvious that consonants will be more readily
described in articulatory terms than vowels since it will be definitely easier to point to the
precise organs involved in the process of articulation and to the place where the above
mentioned constriction takes place.

3
“A phonetic system should be able, within the limits of the accuracy and finesse of its
articulatory, acoustic, or imitation-label procedures, to describe any sound in isolation, or in nonsense
syllables, or as cut from the continuum of speech, without the necessity of referring to other sounds in the
context to find criteria for its classification. A phonetic science should be able to define and describe its
own units by its own data… If the phonetician first delimits supposed articulatory classes by phonemic
features, how can he then describe the phonemes with articulatory methods? Any such attempt presents a
vicious circle of phonemics to phonetics to phonemics, with the phonetician starting at phonemics.” (1943:
78)
4
Vocalic sounds are defined as sounds “produced with an oral cavity in which the most radical
constriction does not exceed that found in the high vowels [i] and [u] and with vocal cords that are
positioned so as to allow spontaneous voicing; in producing nonvocalic sounds one or both of these
conditions are not satisfied.” Consonantal sounds are defined as sounds “produced with a radical
obstruction in the midsagittal region of the vocal tract; nonconsonantal sounds are produced without such
an obstruction” (1968: 302)