Nasals and other consonants

Phonetics and Phonology I

Today we will see:
• Nasal consonants - m, n, N
• four others - l, r, w, j; which are not easy to fit into groups.
• All of these seven consonants are continuants and usually have no
friction noise, but in other ways they are very different from each
other.
Nasals
• BASIC FEATURE: the air escapes through the nose.
• HOW? The soft palate must be lowered
• In nasal consonants air does not pass through the mouth; it is
prevented by a complete closure in the mouth at some point.
• Produce this sequence: /dndndndndn/
• The three types of closure are:
• bilabial (lips) /m/
• alveolar (tongue blade against alveolar ridge) / n /
• and velar (back of tongue against the palate) /N /
Velar /N /
• The place of articulation of /N / is the same as that of k, g. Be careful
not to produce /g/ at the end.
/N / DISTRIBUTION
• i) never in initial position . With the possible exception of Z, this
makes /N / the only English consonant that does not occur initially.
• ii) Medially, /N / occurs quite frequently, but there is in the BBC
accent a rather complex and quite interesting rule concerning the
question of when /N / may be pronounced without a following
plosive /g/
Velar /N /
A – 1 morpheme B - 2 morphemes
• ‘finger’ fINg ‘singer’ sIN
• ‘anger’ Ng ‘hanger’ hN

In the words of column A the N is followed by g, while the words of column B

have no g.
What is the difference between A and B? The important difference is their
morphology. The words of column B can be divided into two grammatical
pieces: ‘sing’ + ‘-er’, ‘hang’ + ‘-er’. These pieces are called morphemes, and
we say that column B words are morphologically different from column A
words, since these cannot be divided into two morphemes.
… summarizing: Velar /N /medial position
• Within a word containing the letters ‘ng’ in the spelling, /N/ occurs
without a following /g/ if it occurs at the end of a morpheme; if it
occurs in the middle of a morpheme it has a following /g/.
Velar /N / - distribution (2) - ends of words
ending orthographically with ‘ng’
• They always end with /N/; this /N/ is never followed by a /g/.
• Sing – long / sIN - loN /
• EXCEPTION: the comparative and superlative suffixes ‘-er’ and ‘-est’.
• Longer /lQNg/ longest /lQNgst/
• As a result of this, the rule must be modified: it must state that
comparative and superlative forms of adjectives are to be treated as
single-morpheme words for the purposes of this rule.
Velar /N / - distribution (3)
• A third way in which the distribution of N is unusual is the small
number of vowels it is found to follow. It rarely occurs after a
diphthong or long vowel, so only the short vowels I, e, , V, Q, U, 
are regularly found preceding this consonant.

• The velar nasal consonant /N/ is, in summary, phonetically simple (it is
no more difficult to produce than m or n) but phonologically complex
(it is, as we have seen, not easy to describe the contexts in which it
occurs).
/l/
• Lateral approximant >>> complete closure between the centre of the
tongueand the part of the roof of the mouth where contact is to be made
and the air escapes through the sides.
• We find /l/ initially, medially and finally, and its distribution is therefore not
particularly limited.
• /l/ found before vowels sounds quite different from that found in other
contexts: /li:/ (clear /l/) - /i:l/ (dark /l/)
• clear /l/ and dark /l/ are allophones of the phoneme /l/ in complementary
distribution
• Another allophone of /l/ is found when it occurs after p, k, at the beginning
of a stressed syllable
/r/
• there is really only one pronunciation that can be recommended to
the foreign learner, and that is what is called a post-alveolar
approximant (the articulators approach each other but do not get
sufficiently close to each other to produce a “complete” consonant
such as a plosive, nasal or fricative)
• the tip of the tongue approaches the alveolar area in approximately
the way it would for a t or d, but never actually makes contact with
any part of the roof of the mouth.
• The tongue is in fact usually slightly curled backwards with the tip
raised; consonants with this tongue shape are usually called retroflex
/r/ (cont.)
• A rather different r sound is found at the beginning of a syllable if it is
preceded by p, t, k; it is then voiceless and fricative. This
pronunciation is found in words such as ‘press’, ‘tress’, ‘cress’.
• it is usual for the lips to be slightly rounded, but do not exaggerate: if
the lip-rounding is too strong the consonant will sound too much like
/w/
• Distribution: this phoneme only occurs before vowels
• Remember BBC English is a non-rhotic accent: car /kA:/. Hard /hA:d/
/j/ & /w/ = semivowels
• they are phonetically like vowels (no stricture) but phonologically like
consonants (distributed as consonants)
• From the phonetic point of view the articulation of /j/ is practically the
same as that of a front close vowel such as /i/, but is very short. In the
same way /w/ is closely similar to /u/.
• If a word beginning with w or j is preceded by the indefinite article, it is the
‘a’ form that is found (as in ‘a way’, ‘a year’).
• When p, t, k are followed by a vowel, they are aspirated. But when p, t, k
are followed not by a vowel but by one of l, r, j, w, these voiced
continuant consonants undergo a similar process, as has been mentioned
earlier in this chapter: they lose their voicing and become fricative.