Instituto Superior “Josefina Contte”

Carrera: Profesorado en Inglés

Unidad Curricular: Fonética y Fonología III

Curso y División: 3° U / 2° Turno: Mañana / Tarde

Profesora: Lic. Mariana Sottile

The following theoretical framework is built from extracts from:

Davenport, M. and S.J. Hannahs. (1998). Chapter 3. “Consonants”. Introducing Phonetics and
Phonology. London: Arnold.

Consonants

The class of consonants can be divided into a number of subgroupings on the basis of their
manner of articulation. The first division we will consider here is obstruent vs. sonorant. For
obstruents, the airflow is noticeably restricted, with the articulators either in complete closure
or close approximation. For sonorants, either there is no such restriction in the oral tract, or
the nasal tract is open; either way, the air has free passage through the vocal tract. The class of
obstruents can be further subdivided into stops, fricatives and affricates, again on the basis of
stricture type. The class of sonorant consonants can be subdivided into nasals, liquids, and
glides (vowels are also sonorants, but not sonorant consonants).

A further important distinction between obstruents and sonorants is that, while the various
obstruent subtypes listed above may have both voiced and voiceless counterparts in most
languages, sonorant subtypes are typically only voiced. Thus English can distinguish “pad” from
“bad” due to the voicing contrast of the initial bilabial obstruents (stops) /p/ and /b/. With
sonorants no such pairs exist; for the nasals, for example, there is only one bilabial – the
voiced nasal found in “mad” – and no voiceless bilabial nasal.

Stops

Stops are characterized by involving complete closure in the oral tract, preventing the airflow
from exiting through the mouth. They may be oral (velum raised) or nasal (velum, lowered,
allowing air to pass freely out through the nose). Pulmonic egressive oral stops are often
known as plosives and, as expected for obstruents, are either voiced or voiceless. Nasal stops,
being sonorants, are in most languages voiced only.

In common with most other languages, English has three pairs of voiceless/voiced stops:
 Place of articulation Voice Symbol Example

Bilabial - /p/ “pig”

+ /b/ “bear”
Alveolar + /t/ “tiger”
+ /d/ “dog”
Velar - /k/ “cat”
+ /g/ “gorilla”

Note: [+] indicates the presence of voicing; [-] indicates the absence of voicing.

There is also the glottal stop [ʔ], heard for example in many British English varieties (e.g.
London, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, as well as newer varieties of RP) and some varieties
of North American English (e.g. New Jersey, metropolitan and upstate New York) as the final
sound in “rat” [ɹæʔ]. The glottal stop is voiceless; it has no voiced counterpart, since the vocal
cords cannot vibrate when they are in contact.

The production of stops

Produced in isolation, all pulmonic egressive oral stops involve three clearly identifiable stages;
first, there is the closing stage, when the active articulator is raised to come into contact with
the passive articulator – for example, for the initial sound in “dog” the blade of the tongue
must be raised to the alveolar ridge. Second, there is the closure stage, when the articulators
remain in contact and the air builds up behind the blockage. Third, there is the release stage,
when the active articulator is lowered, allowing the air to be released with some force (hence
the term “plosives” for oral stops).

Usually, however, we do not produce stops (or any other speech sound) in isolation. When oral
stops are produced in ordinary connected speech, the closing stage and/or the release stage
may be missing, due to the influence of neighbouring sounds. Only the closure stage is
necessary for all stops in all positions – if there is no period of closure, the sound isn’t a stop.