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<strong>LG204</strong>-5-FY ENGLISH PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY Background<br />
<strong>LG204</strong> Weeks 2-3<br />
The sounds of English Part I<br />
This week I’ll start to introduce the sounds of English, which I covered briefly last<br />
year in LG105 in two short lectures. Let’s go back to some phonetic definitions and<br />
then consider which sounds are used in English.<br />
Consonants: sounds which involve some oral obstruction causing an interruption to<br />
the airstream (this questions the status of [] and [h] – we’ll return to this later). The<br />
obstruction is the result of two articulators coming together in some way.<br />
Obstruents: sounds where the air pressure behind some obstruction is greater than<br />
that outside<br />
Manner of articulation: stops, fricatives, affricates<br />
Definition: stop consonant<br />
Air from lungs (pulmonary egressive); also known as plosive or occlusive (not a very<br />
much used word these days). The term ‘stop’ characterises type of closure that is<br />
involved. That is to say that the passage of air is interrupted totally. The term<br />
‘plosive’ characterises the type of release – an explosion of air and the term<br />
‘occlusive’ has roughly the same meaning as ‘stop’. I will generally use the term<br />
‘stop’. In the context of this topic, the stops I’m referring to are ‘oral stops’, I shall<br />
come to nasal stops in a week or so’s time.<br />
Stops can be made, in theory, at any point in the oral cavity (mouth – show diagram<br />
here) – try a bilabial stop to see how this is made.<br />
Definition: fricative<br />
Again pulmonary egressive airstream mechanism; also known as spirant. This<br />
expression isn’t used too much but the term ‘spirantisation’ is common, expressing<br />
the process of turning a sound into a fricative. The obstruction to the airstream is<br />
partial but sufficiently severe so that when the air particles hit it they are forced<br />
through a narrow gap between the articulators and air turbulence known as ‘frication’<br />
results. If the gap were too wide, then frication would not occur.<br />
Again, fricatives can be made at any point in the oral cavity (try the labio-dental<br />
fricative).<br />
Definition: affricate<br />
We have discussed two ways of creating an obstruction – either the air is totally<br />
stopped for a brief spell or the airflow is partially impeded but not totally stopped.<br />
Both these manners of articulation qualify as obstruents because of the relationship, as<br />
described above, between the air pressure inside the mouth and that in the outside<br />
atmosphere. The third category of sound is known as an affricate. Effectively, these<br />
sounds are not different from the other two, they are a combination of both. An<br />
affricate consists of a stop articulation and a fricative one. Whilst a straightforward<br />
stop is released cleanly, the stop element of the affricate is released partially leaving a<br />
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<strong>LG204</strong>-5-FY ENGLISH PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY Background<br />
narrow gap for the air to escape, resembling a fricative. Crucially, the two elements<br />
of the affricate are articulated at the same point in the mouth.<br />
Try the palato-alveolar affricate [] to see what happens.<br />
Place of articulation<br />
As I’ve said, obstructions can be made between articulators at any point in the oral<br />
cavity. It’s most likely that the contact will be made between two articulators that are<br />
reasonably near to each other. One of these is described as ‘active’ in that it moves<br />
and the other is described as ‘passive’ and remains static. When we are discussing the<br />
phonetic description of an articulation, we tend to describe it by means of both<br />
articulators involved or, if the active articulator is the tongue, in terms of the passive<br />
articulator. When we come to phonological description, we use the active articulator<br />
to characterise place, but that’s for later.<br />
Parts of the tongue: the flexible part that can protrude out of the mouth is known as<br />
the blade and the bit round the end is the tip. These two are indissoluble as we shall<br />
see later. The more fleshy, less flexible bit is the body of the tongue and it is divided<br />
into two sections for descriptive purposes: the front and the back. The part of the<br />
tongue which adjoins the larynx is known as the tongue root. This area isn’t used in<br />
the articulation of English consonants although other languages do have sounds using<br />
this as an active articulator.<br />
Bearing this in mind, we’ll start to see at what point these obstructions are, indeed<br />
made. I shall only discuss those places and combinations of manner and place that are<br />
relevant to English<br />
1. Bilabial: an obstruction made with the two lips.<br />
2. Labio-dental: the upper teeth and the lower lip<br />
3. Dental: the blade of the tongue and the upper teeth. This could also be called<br />
lingua-dental, but since the tongue is responsible for most obstructions, we<br />
tend to omit it from descriptions unless a particular tongue area making<br />
contact with part of the oral structure that isn’t immediately adjacent to it.<br />
4. Alveolar: the tip of the tongue and the alveolar ridge (tooth ridge – so called<br />
because it contains the tooth sockets or alveoli).<br />
5. Palato-alveolar: the blade of the tongue and the area of the palate which is<br />
partially the back part of the alveolar ridge<br />
6. Retroflex: the tip of the tongue and the palato-alveolar area (as above)<br />
7. Palatal: the front of the tongue and the hard palate<br />
8. Velar: the back of the tongue and velum or soft palate<br />
Voicing<br />
A third phonetic parameter required to provide a complete set of the obstruent sounds<br />
of English is ‘voice’. The term ‘voicing’ or ‘voice’ characterises the vibration of the<br />
vocal folds or vocal cords. These are located in the larynx (voice box or Adam’s<br />
apple). The larynx is a cartilage box located at the top of the trachea (or windpipe),<br />
through which the air has to pass on its way to the mouth and to the exterior. In the<br />
middle of this box is a hole, known as the glottis and the glottis is bounded by two<br />
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<strong>LG204</strong>-5-FY ENGLISH PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY Background<br />
bands of muscle – the vocal folds. These bands of muscle can be configured in a<br />
number of ways (some others of which will be discussed later). If voicing is to occur,<br />
they have to be configured in such a way as to allow them to vibrate. This means that<br />
they must close the gap of the glottis but mustn’t be too tightly together – they must<br />
be slack, so that when the air pushes its way through they open, but then are pulled<br />
together again. The effect of this is to cause them to vibrate and the result can be<br />
heard as extra sound over and above that made by the contact of the articulators in the<br />
mouth. Voicing can be heard inside the head if you place your hands over your ears<br />
and can be felt at the larynx if the fingers are placed on either side of it. Try sss/zzz to<br />
experience the effect.<br />
Let’s now see which combinations of place and manner are relevant to a description<br />
of the obstruent phonemes of English (each of these pairings may be either voiceless<br />
or voiced). I’m using the term ‘phoneme’ here, in spite of the fact that it’s<br />
fundamentally a word connected with phonology, because I want to isolate the<br />
distinctive sounds of English and, at this juncture, don’t want to talk about any<br />
contextual variation that might become apparent.<br />
The obstruents of English and the IPA symbols for them<br />
I list below the set of obstruent phonemes of English with minimal pairs of words<br />
illustrating their use and also demonstrating their phonemic status. Just a reminder of<br />
the meaning of ‘minimal pair’. These are a pair of words which have different<br />
meanings but differ in only one sound, or, in the current examples, only one feature of<br />
one sound.<br />
English has 6 phonemic (contrastive) stops, that is voiced and voiceless pairs at three<br />
different places of articulation.<br />
Bilabial: voiceless [p] and voiced [b] (pan, ban)<br />
Alveolar: voiceless [t] and voiced [d] (ton, done)<br />
Velar: voiceless [k] and voiced [g] (cot, got)<br />
There are 8 phonemic fricatives, that is voiceless and voiced pairs at four different<br />
places of articulation.<br />
Labio-dental: voiceless [f] and voiced [v] (fat, vat)<br />
Dental: voiceless [] and voiced [] (thigh, thy)<br />
Alveolar: voiceless [s] and voiced [z] (sip, zip)<br />
Palato-alveolar: voiceless [] and voiced [] (ruche, rouge)<br />
There are two phonemic affricates, voiced and voiceless at 1 place of articulation.<br />
Palato-alveolar: voiceless [] and voiced [] (chin, gin)<br />
Note that, with the exception of the palato-alveolar fricatives, I have produced<br />
examples of words where the phoneme in question is word initial. The reason for the<br />
deviation from this practice in the one particular case is the faulty distribution of the<br />
sound [] in English. This is something we will return to in the second term. It turns<br />
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out that all the other obstruents of English may occur in most positions of the word<br />
(initial, medial and final), although, again, there may be gaps in certain contexts – a<br />
matter I shall also take up in the second term.<br />
Missing ‘obstruents’ and states of the glottis<br />
I remarked at the beginning that the basic definition of ‘consonant’ would seem to<br />
preclude the inclusion of the sounds [h] and [] (glottal stop) from the category. As<br />
we know, the type of sound made with no oral obstruction is known as a vowel. We<br />
shall be looking at these in a few weeks.<br />
The two sounds in question, then, leave us with a characterisation problem. It’s clear<br />
that [h] must be included in the inventory of English consonants, since it occurs in<br />
minimal contrast with other true obstruents (for example hot vs. cot and got). One<br />
wouldn’t normally want to include [] in this inventory, although it is a very common<br />
sound in the language. This is because it never contrasts with any other consonant,<br />
but is generally recognised as a contextual variant of a voiceless stop phoneme, in<br />
particular [t]. The reason for its inclusion in this list is that it helps to exemplify a<br />
certain state of the glottis.<br />
The phoneme [h] is described in much of the literature, including CP and the IPA<br />
chart, as a voiceless glottal fricative. It is possible that some frication does occur at<br />
the glottis, since there appears to be more sound emitting than would occur if this<br />
were merely produced by opening the glottis and letting air pass through. However,<br />
another way of describing this sound is to characterise it as a burst of aspiration<br />
similar to that we shall be discussing with regard to voiceless stops. This involves<br />
what is known as a ‘spread glottis’. It has also been described in the literature as a<br />
‘voiceless vowel’. This is because, [h] is always followed by a vowel and the mouth<br />
will be formed into the shape of the vowel which is to follow it, but a puff of air will<br />
be released, to introduce the vowel. Clearly, [h] is voiceless, since the vocal folds<br />
remain open. It does, however, have a voiced counterpart, which isn’t phonemic,<br />
merely contextual. When /h/ occurs between two vowels, as in behind or ahead, then<br />
vocal fold vibration does take place. This feat is accomplished by allowing vibration<br />
to take place in one part of the glottis whilst the other part remains open (see fig. 1.14<br />
in CP). The phonetic symbol is [].<br />
The glottal stop involves a momentary total closure of the glottis, with the vocal folds<br />
tight rather than slack as for voicing. A term used for this state of affairs is<br />
‘constricted glottis’. This can also refer to the situation where we get creaky voice,<br />
where the total closure would occur at one end and a slacker closure at the other.<br />
Creaky voice isn’t a distinctive feature of English, although it occurs in some<br />
circumstances for certain types of effect. We won’t be discussing this in this course.<br />
Fricatives that don’t usually appear in the basic inventory<br />
In some dialects of English (in particular Scottish and perhaps American), there is a<br />
contrast between the words which and witch. In other dialects, these words are<br />
homophones. The second of these starts with [w], which will be discussed in due<br />
course, but the first has a fricative initially. This sound is a labio-velar fricative. The<br />
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<strong>LG204</strong>-5-FY ENGLISH PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY Background<br />
labial part is a rounding of the lips whilst the velar part is where the frication occurs.<br />
The sound is, of course, voiceless.<br />
Another fricative, with restricted use, is the voiceless velar fricative [x]. For many<br />
speakers this sound, occurring in a few words of non-English origin like Scots loch or<br />
German Bach, is, in any case, replaced by the equivalent stop [k].<br />
Finally, for many speakers, a word like huge is pronounced, not with [h] followed by<br />
the glide [j], but with a voiceless palatal fricative [].<br />
None of the sounds featured in this section is generally considered to be phonemic in<br />
English.<br />
English sonorant consonants<br />
As we saw, obstruents are defined as sounds where the air pressure behind an<br />
obstruction if greater than that outside. This build up of air is achieved by ensuring<br />
that the only point at which air can escape is that of what we call the ‘primary<br />
constriction’. This entails ensuring that the velum is raised to that air cannot escape<br />
through the nasal cavity. In order to articulate a sonorant consonant, a primary<br />
constriction will still be formed at some point in the oral tract (since that’s the<br />
definition of a consonant) but air is allowed to escape elsewhere. This escape of air<br />
ensures that the air pressure behind and beyond the constriction is roughly equal.<br />
Nasals<br />
All the nasal consonants of English involve a primary stop constriction (indeed it is<br />
hard to imagine how a nasal fricative could possibly exist). Vowels may be<br />
inherently nasal (although not in English) or contextually nasalized – we shall discuss<br />
this in a week or so’s time. The basic articulatory difference between oral stops and<br />
nasal stops is the position of the velum. For oral stops there is a velic closure, as<br />
mentioned above, and for nasal stops the velum is lowered so that air can escape into<br />
the nasal cavity. Thus the difference between [b] and [m] is fundamentally the<br />
difference in the position of the velum, whilst the difference between [m] and [n]<br />
comes from the relative places where the primary constriction occurs.<br />
English has three phonemically relevant nasal stops:<br />
Bilabial: [m] as in ram [rm]<br />
Alveolar: [n] as in ran [rn]<br />
Velar: [] as in rang [r] (this does not have the same distribution as the<br />
other two, as we shall see in the second term)<br />
In addition, there is also a phonetic symbol [] which denotes a labio-dental nasal.<br />
This sound does, indeed, occur in English but, as we shall see in a week or so, this can<br />
be viewed as an allophone either of [m] or [n], occurring only before [f] or [v] (e.g.<br />
triumph [taf].<br />
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Liquid approximants<br />
The term ‘approximant’ refers to a sound where any oral constriction is less close than<br />
that employed in the articulation of fricatives. Therefore, the nasals described above<br />
cannot be classified as approximants by virtue of the fact that the oral constriction<br />
involved is a stop. Whilst the most obvious secondary channel for the release of air<br />
must be the nasal cavity, other sonorant sounds are possible. English, like the<br />
majority of the world’s languages, employs the mouth as a secondary channel<br />
simultaneously with it acting as a locus for the primary constriction. The most<br />
obvious way in which this can be achieved is by forming a constriction at the alveolar<br />
ridge with the blade of the tongue whilst simultaneously lowering the sides of the<br />
tongue to allow air to escape that way. The sound made in this way is, of course, [l]<br />
which is known as a lateral approximant (lateral meaning ‘of the sides’). As we<br />
shall see in due course, there is more to the articulation of the lateral approximant than<br />
this brief description.<br />
As we saw, the term ‘lateral’ refers to the sides of the tongue, the opposite of this is,<br />
clearly, the centre of the tongue. Most sounds are ‘central’ in that the air passes over<br />
the centre of the tongue at some stage. Clearly, when an obstruent constriction<br />
occurs, then the air passes down the centre of the tongue until it encounters that<br />
constriction. However, we are talking here about sonorant sounds, where no such<br />
constriction occurs. If we reverse the tongue action of the lateral approximant, in<br />
other words, press the sides of the tongue against the back teeth and allow the air to<br />
pass over the centre of the tongue, whose tip is retracted towards the post-alveolar<br />
region (either retroflexed or not), we produce the standard British and American<br />
rhotic or central approximant []. Note, however, that some accents of English<br />
produce different types of /r/ sound. For example, in Scottish the standard /r/ is an<br />
alveolar tap []. Traditionally, the Scottish /r/ has been described as the trill [r], but<br />
this is unlikely to occur these days. It is also claimed that in some parts of<br />
Northumbria the /r/ is a uvular fricative [] – how common this sound is is not clear.<br />
In the so-called ‘rhotic’ dialects of English, there may also be a further variant on the<br />
standard /r/. This will also be discussed briefly later.<br />
Glides<br />
Strictly speaking, the sounds I shall call ‘glides’ are not consonantal articulations.<br />
That is to say that the air passes freely and there is no true constriction, even as severe<br />
as that involved in the lateral sounds (the status of the central rhotic approximant is<br />
also questionable when it comes to the possibility of its being a true consonant).<br />
Indeed their alternative names ‘semi-vowels’ is perhaps more truly descriptive.<br />
Glides [w] and [j] have more or less identical articulations to the high vowels [u] and<br />
[i] which we shall discuss next week. The descriptions of these sounds are:<br />
[w] labio-velar approximant. That is to say that the lips are rounded and the back<br />
of the tongue is raised towards the velum without contact being made<br />
[j] palatal approximant. Here the front part of the tongue is raised towards the<br />
hard palate.<br />
The reason I have included glides in the inventory of consonants is because of their<br />
distribution. They occur in contrast with true consonants – for example watt [wt]<br />
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<strong>LG204</strong>-5-FY ENGLISH PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY Background<br />
rhymes with yacht [jt] which rhymes with cot [kt]. Effectively, we could say that<br />
these are non-nucleic vowels, they may occur as syllable onsets (although never as<br />
codas in English), but will be in complementary distribution with [u]/[i] which only<br />
occur in nuclear position.<br />
I present below a tabulated inventory of the consonant phonemes of English. As this<br />
is a phonemic inventory, some of the sounds discussed above don’t appear.<br />
[p] pan [t] tan [k] can<br />
[b] bun [d] done [g] gun<br />
[f] fin [θ] thin [s] sin [] shin<br />
[v] vie [] thy [z] zoo [] beige<br />
[] chin<br />
[] gin<br />
[m] ram/mat [n] ran/gnat [] rang<br />
[l] low<br />
[] row<br />
[w] watt [j] yacht [h] hot<br />
Part II Allophonic variation in Consonants<br />
The stops<br />
The table above indicates that English has 6 contrastive stop consonants. The<br />
phonetic realisation of the stops, however, tells a somewhat different story. The<br />
following table, borrowed from Ladefoged (2001) shows various words containing<br />
allophones of these stops.<br />
1 2 3 4 5<br />
pie buy spy nap nab<br />
tie die sty mat mad<br />
kye guy sky knack nag<br />
Notice first of all that the stops consonants in columns 1 and 2 represent a minimal<br />
set. That is to say that the words differ only in their initial consonant. Horizontally,<br />
the pairs share a place of articulation. Let us examine the manifestations of the stops<br />
column by column. The sounds exemplified in column 1 are all voiceless and, in this<br />
respect, would appear to be the same as those sounds exemplified in columns 3 and 4.<br />
We shall see, however, that this isn’t the case.<br />
Voiceless stops that are word-initial share an important feature, which is aspiration.<br />
The presence of aspiration can be experienced if you put your finger in front of your<br />
mouth when you utter pie – you should find that after the opening of the lips to<br />
release the stop and before the vocal folds start to vibrate the vowel, a small puff of<br />
air is released (the way in which this is achieved is similar to the articulation of [h]<br />
which is why the phonetic symbol for aspiration is a tiny h superscript). It is easier to<br />
feel this during the articulation of the bilabial the same situation also occurs following<br />
[t] and [k], as well as the affricate [], which, of course, contains a stop consonant.<br />
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If we now compare the words containing these voiceless stops with those in column 2,<br />
which contains the so-called ‘voiced’ stops, we will find that no such burst of air is<br />
experienced. The reason I refer to these sounds as ‘so-called voiced stops’ is because<br />
no real vocal fold vibration occurs in these sounds in word initial position. In order<br />
for voicing to occur it is essential for air to be passing through the closed glottis and<br />
to push the vocal folds apart. Since there is simultaneously a closure in the mouth<br />
then the air won’t be able to perform this task. When these stops occur between two<br />
vowels, as for example in obey, adore, again, the vocal folds will already be vibrating<br />
and will continue to do so throughout the articulation of the stop. Another distinction<br />
used here could be fortis and lenis. A fortis consonant is one which involves greater<br />
breath force (thus opposite for lenis); is voiceless (lenis may be voiced); initial in a<br />
stressed syllable have strong aspiration (lenis unaspirated); vowels short before final<br />
fortis cons. (full length before final lenis). Final stops often have reinforcing glottal<br />
stop – not so for lenis.<br />
The following wave forms illustrate the difference between the voiceless aspirated<br />
stop of tie and the ‘voiced’ sound at the beginning of die.<br />
Notice that the period between the release of the stop and the onset of the vowel is<br />
considerably longer in tie than in die.<br />
If we turn to the words in column 3, we might assume that these words are identical to<br />
those in column 1 except that they are all preceded by [s]. However, if we perform<br />
the aspiration test on these words, we should find that no aspiration occurs. Indeed, if<br />
we were to record these words and cut the [s] out of the tape, anyone listening to<br />
result would more than likely conclude that they were listening to the words in<br />
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<strong>LG204</strong>-5-FY ENGLISH PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY Background<br />
column 2 rather than column 1. We shall return in much more detail to the situation<br />
involving [s] next term. For the time being we can state that there is no contrast<br />
between voiced and voiceless stops after [s] (no words such as sby, sdy, sgy exists in<br />
English, nor, indeed, could they). Whether we claim [p] to be an allophone of /p/ or<br />
/b/ is purely academic (spelling notwithstanding). The general claim that could be<br />
made is that /p/ has two allophones (at this point) [p h ] and [p]. We call this lack of<br />
contrast ‘neutralisation’. I show the wave form for sty below.<br />
Notice here that the /t/ closure more closely resembles the /d/ closure in die than the<br />
/t/ closure in tie.<br />
We’ll now turn to columns 4 and 5. Again these pairs of words appear to be<br />
distinguished by the voicing or lack of it of the final stop sound. If you were to say<br />
these words in a frame such as Say …again you would indeed find that you could hear<br />
the difference in voicing. Notice, however, that it’s highly unlikely that the voiceless<br />
stop at the end of the words would be aspirated, it would simply be voiceless. The<br />
voiced stops in this situation would involve vocal fold vibration, being intervocalic.<br />
If, however, we were to include these words in the frame say…to me, or at the end of<br />
an utterance then the stops would remain unreleased, making voicing less likely.<br />
How, therefore, can we distinguish them? What we can distinguish is the relative<br />
difference in the length of the vowels that precede the final stop, not the voicing or<br />
lack of it in the stops themselves. This difference in vowel length is very apparent in<br />
the comparative wave forms for mat and mad below.<br />
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Stops which precede other consonants or those which occur pre-pausally are not<br />
released. This is because the articulators are already anticipating the following sound<br />
and are forming into that sound. Release, if we can describe it as such, therefore,<br />
merely spills into the following sound. Examples of words where there are two<br />
adjacent stops include apt fact etc. The diacritic that denotes no release is hence nap<br />
[np].<br />
Lack of release can apply to stops in any dialect of English, however, for many of us<br />
there is a further variant on the final /t/ in particular (sometimes also on /p/ and /k/).<br />
This the glottal stop []. In non-prevocalic position, these stops may either be preglottalised<br />
– that is to say that a glottal stop precedes or accompanies the stop<br />
articulation, as in cap [k p]. Pre-glottalisation may also occur with /t/ but here it is<br />
more likely that the alveolar contact will be totally lost here, leaving the glottal stop as<br />
a substitute, as in cat [k]. The extent to which /t/ is replaced by a glottal stop and in<br />
what position in the word, will vary from speaker to speaker and from dialect to<br />
dialect. Ladefoged, who is primarily writing about American English, says that it’s<br />
very likely to happen before a syllabic nasal in a word like button [bIt is also<br />
very common syllable finally in words such as Scotland [sklnd], Watford [wfd]<br />
and Gatwick [gwk].<br />
Alveolar stops may also be released into a following nasal or lateral consonant. That<br />
is to say that in words like sudden instead of releasing the contact for the [d] it<br />
remains in its position and air is channelled through the nose. Likewise, in a word<br />
such as muddle the sides of the tongue will be lowered whilst the alveolar contact<br />
remains in place. I have discussed these phenomena with regard to voiced [d], but, of<br />
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course, this can also occur with voiceless [t], where it isn’t glottalised. There are<br />
many speakers who would pronounce button as [btn] and bottle as [btl].<br />
Fricatives<br />
There is somewhat less variation in the positional behaviour of fricatives than there is<br />
of stops. The vowel length difference between pre-voiceless and pre-voiced fricatives<br />
is the same as that for stops. Voiced fricatives are prone to devoicing word finally as<br />
well as preceding another consonant particularly if that consonant is voiceless. In<br />
phrases such as five to five the [v] will be voiceless. In try to improve the [v] will not<br />
be fully voiced but in prove it the vocal folds continue to vibrate throughout.<br />
Some fricatives involve additional lip action. Try the words fin, thin, sin, shin [fn]<br />
[n] [sn] [n] and consider the part played by the lips. Clearly, the labiodental<br />
[f]/[v] involve the lips as the primary articulation. Dental []/[] do not involve the<br />
lips at all, but the alveolar [s]/[z] are accompanied by very slight rounding. Palatoalveolar<br />
[]/[] involve a considerable amount of rounding. The term used for this lip<br />
rounding is ‘labialisation’.<br />
Affricates<br />
Because affricates are combinations of stops and fricatives, they share attributes with<br />
both of these. Like voiceless stops, the voiceless affricate [] is aspirated wordinitially.<br />
It may also undergo pre-glottalisation – try a word such as Richard. This<br />
may be pronounced as [rd] or as [r d]. Like voiced fricatives, the voiced<br />
affricate [] will be devoiced in a phrase such edge trimmer. These affricates also<br />
behave like sibilant fricatives in the form of plural marker that attaches to them. As<br />
you will remember from last year, [s, z, , , , ] all have plurals with epenthetic [].<br />
Nasals<br />
Nasals may be either plain consonants or may become more vowel-like in that they<br />
can form syllable nuclei in words such as button, prism etc. Nasals can also replace<br />
words such as and in phrases such as Jack and Kate [kket] you and me [jummi].<br />
Nasals will tend to assume the place of articulation of the following consonant, word<br />
internally and across word boundaries.<br />
/m/ [m] or [] before a labiodental /f v/ some food, some videos<br />
/n/ [m] before labial ten pens etc<br />
[ before labiodental ten feet, ten videos<br />
[n] before dental tenth<br />
[n] before alveolar ten times<br />
[n] before palatoalveolar ten sheep<br />
[] before retroflex ten rules<br />
[] before palatal ten years<br />
[] before velar ten cars<br />
They will also tend to be devoiced when preceded by /s/ in words like snow, smell.<br />
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<strong>LG204</strong>-5-FY ENGLISH PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY Background<br />
Approximants<br />
There are four phonemic approximants in English. Three [ w j] are classified as<br />
‘central’ and the fourth [l] as lateral. If we divide them in a different way, we can say<br />
that [ l] are ‘liquids and [w j] are glides (see above). These approximants share a<br />
number of attributes. They may occur as the second element of word initial<br />
consonant clusters, although, as we shall see, there is some doubt about the status of<br />
[j] in this context. We’ll discuss this next term.<br />
When preceded by voiceless obstruents, approximants will be voiceless (e.g. play,<br />
pry, fry, fly, three, sleep, try, shriek, climb, cry, swim, twin, queen, cute, few, pure).<br />
/l/ has two positional allophones i.e. [l] (clear l) in syllable onsets and [] (dark l) in<br />
syllable rhymes. In many dialects dark l is vocalised (full [fuw]). The extent to which<br />
such vocalisation occurs and the contexts in which it is more likely to appear is a<br />
matter for research.<br />
In non-rhotic dialects, // occurs only in syllable onsets having been replaced by []<br />
particularly following non-low vowels, although in recent years the schwa has also<br />
tended to disappear except where the preceding vowel is high. (fear [f], hour [a]<br />
higher [ha] but dare [d:] door [d:] etc.).<br />
As I mentioned in class, // also has two allophones (although the dark variant lacks a<br />
symbol as far as I can ascertain – this may be because it’s usually attached to a vowel<br />
– Ladefoged discusses rhoticised vowels in AmEng. For example [] for the vowel<br />
in dare in contrast to [] in a non-rhotic dialect.<br />
References<br />
Ladefoged P. (2001) A Course in Phonetics Fort Worth: Harcourt College Publishers<br />
THE VOWELS OF ENGLISH<br />
Over the past two weeks, we have discussed the articulation of English consonants<br />
and have been able to give a pretty accurate description of how and where they are<br />
articulated. This is because there is an interruption to the airstream that it’s possible<br />
to pinpoint. We found out, of course, that the consonants can be influenced by<br />
position in the word or by neighbouring sounds, which will cause them to vary in a<br />
number of ways. However, it’s still possible to describe the variation in terms of<br />
place, manner and voicing etc. When we come to the description of vowels, however,<br />
we have no points like this to guide us. There is no interruption to the airflow.<br />
Vowels involve the vibration of the vocal folds and a free passage of air. If we<br />
practise this we get something like []. So how do we vary vowel quality in order to<br />
give us a greater range than just one vowel? This can be achieved by changing the<br />
shape and size of the resonating chamber – the mouth. When the vibrating air<br />
particles enter this chamber, they will produce different notes according to this shape<br />
and size. This can be compared with the trick some people perform with glasses of<br />
water. They put different amounts of water into glasses and then play a tune by<br />
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<strong>LG204</strong>-5-FY ENGLISH PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY Background<br />
pinging on the side of the glasses. The notes will be produced by the air resonating in<br />
the top of the glass and because the area of air in the glasses varies, so different notes<br />
can be produced. We can alter the shape of our oral cavity by using the tongue which<br />
can be raised, lowered (both from a neutral position – roughly the position of the<br />
vowel []) or can be retracted. In addition, a further dimension of lip-rounding can be<br />
added.<br />
Let’s start by going through the set of English vowels in relation to the relevant<br />
vowels in the set of cardinal vowels. The cardinal vowels are a set of reference<br />
points, idealised vowels which don’t all occur in any language. When we’ve located<br />
these reference points, we can plot in the English vowels. The English vowels show<br />
great variability across different accents, much more than do consonants. I shall stick<br />
to a fairly neutral set of Southern British vowels in the main, but may well make<br />
reference to other accents if it seems appropriate.<br />
There are 2 sets of cardinal vowels – primary and secondary – each containing 8.<br />
English has rough equivalents to all the primary set and to one or possibly two of the<br />
secondary set. In addition, there are a number of vowels which don’t figure even<br />
approximately in either set, and several diphthongs.<br />
The cardinal vowels were the brainchild of phonetician Daniel Jones. Two of them (1<br />
and 5) have articulatory descriptions, the others are located in terms of their acoustic<br />
properties. They are equidistant from each other acoustically. Cardinal 1 requires the<br />
tongue to be placed as high in the oral cavity as it can be without creating frication.<br />
You may find that the sides of the tongue actually touch the back teeth but the air can<br />
still flow freely through the gap in the centre. This vowel is [i]. Cardinal 5 is formed<br />
by lowering the back part of the tongue to such an extent that the mouth is wide open.<br />
This is the vowel the doctor tells you to say in order to look down your throat. The<br />
symbol is []. The other two corners of the vowel trapezium are 4 – a low front<br />
vowel [] (note that this is not the vowel in this position in the IPA chart, where the<br />
symbol [a] is used) and 8 – a high back vowel [u], which involves a considerable<br />
amount of lip-rounding. The other four primary cardinals are 2, a slightly larger<br />
cavity than [i], for which the symbol is [e], as in the French word bée, which, as you<br />
will notice, is very different from the nearest English equivalent in bay. Cardinal 3<br />
[] is closer to the French vowel in bête than that in the English word bet. The<br />
symbol for cardinal 6 is []. This is the symbol we would normally use for the vowel<br />
in caught. However, the cardinal is better exemplified by the sound in the French<br />
word côte (not to be confused with cot). Cardinal 7 is represented by [o], but is not<br />
the same as in bow, it’s more like the French beau. Both 6 and 7 involve lip<br />
rounding. Scottish English has vowels which are closer to the cardinals than does<br />
English English.<br />
The secondary cardinals reverse the lip settings of the primary set. All the front<br />
vowels and the low back [] involve spread or neutral lips, whilst the other back<br />
vowels involve lip rounding to some degree. Therefore the secondary set includes<br />
front rounded and back unrounded vowels. The two examples of secondary cardinals<br />
which can be found in English are 13 (rounded []) and 14 (unrounded []). It goes<br />
without saying that the English vowels are not exactly the same as the cardinal set.<br />
Cardinal 13 is represented by the symbol [] and 14 by the symbol [].<br />
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<strong>LG204</strong>-5-FY ENGLISH PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY Background<br />
We can now start to plot in the English set against these cardinal vowels. I shall start<br />
with the four corners of the chart and then go on to fill in the sides. Finally, we can<br />
go into uncharted territory and consider the vowels that are more centralised than<br />
those in the cardinal sets. The vowel we represent by the symbol [i] in English is<br />
somewhat lower than the cardinal, say [i]. Compare the sound in sea with the French<br />
si (or indeed the Scottish vowel, which is close to the French one). In most dialects of<br />
Southern British English (SBE), the equivalent to cardinal 4, is almost exactly that.<br />
Traditionally, the ash symbol [] was used for the vowel in hat and, if you examine<br />
the IPA chart, you’ll find that it’s a somewhat raised vowel relative to cardinal 4 (for<br />
which they use [a]). True cardinal 4 was found in Northern accents. However, the<br />
raised pronunciation of [] sounds very old-fashioned these days and most speakers<br />
use 4.<br />
The SBE equivalent of cardinal 5 – [] as in heart isn’t quite so far back as 5, it’s a<br />
little more centralised []. The truly back vowel is, however, found in South African<br />
English.<br />
Cardinal 8 [u] is slightly lowered in SBE and other similar dialects, including GA, and<br />
is centralised somewhat to [] in Scotland and Northern Ireland.<br />
Cardinal 2 [e] exists in its pure form in Scottish and close to this, although slightly<br />
lower, in Yorkshire. It’s diphthongised in SBE, as we shall see in due course.<br />
Cardinal 3 [] occurs in words like let in Yorkshire and Scotland but is raised slightly<br />
in SBE, keeping a distance from [] and [e].<br />
Cardinal 7 [o] is roughly this in Scotland and a bit lower (almost a raised []) but still<br />
a monophthong in Yorkshire. Again in SBE it is diphthongised (see later).<br />
Cardinal 6 [] is raised both in both SBE and Scots. It’s more rounded and higher in<br />
SBE – similar to the Spanish vowel in loco but with more rounding and tenser.<br />
The nearest English equivalent to cardinal 13 [] is slightly raised.<br />
The vowel in hit [] doesn’t have an equivalent in the cardinal set. This vowel is<br />
shorter and laxer than [i]. The tenseness of [i] tends to increase the tongue height and<br />
push the vowel further to the front. Thus, [] is lower and more retracted than its<br />
counterpart. In Scots it’s centralised to [], as indeed it is in NZ English.<br />
At the back the vowel [u] has a partner [] which shares the same relationship with it<br />
as [] to [i]. That is to say that it’s more centralised and a bit lower, as well as being<br />
lax. It’s even more centralised in Scotland and Northern Ireland (barred [] – I don’t<br />
have the symbol for this).<br />
The English equivalent to cardinal 14 [] is more central in GA, Irish and Scots [].<br />
In SBE the vowel in hut is considerably further forward []. This vowel doesn’t occur<br />
at all in northern dialects of English where there is no contrast between could and cud<br />
both being pronounced with [].<br />
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<strong>LG204</strong>-5-FY ENGLISH PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY Background<br />
A central vowel, somewhat higher and tenser than [] is []. This is the vowel heard<br />
in bird, heard, word, absurd, herd etc. in non-rhotic dialects. In rhotic dialects like<br />
GA and south-western English this sound is a syllabic [] which may also be<br />
transcribed as [] or []. These last two symbols reflect the fact that the quality of<br />
this sound is similar to the non-rhotic version but with added rhoticity. This sound<br />
doesn’t occur in Scots.<br />
The schwa [] isn’t phonemic in any dialect of English. It’s the archetypal reduced<br />
vowel and can substitute for most other vowels: e.g. atom [tm] vs. atomic<br />
[tmk] telephone [tlfon] vs. telephony [tlfni].<br />
The English pure vowels are shown below:<br />
[i] bead [] bid [] bed [] bad<br />
[] bard [] bod [] board<br />
[u] brood [] hood [] bird [] bud<br />
In addition English has 5 falling diphthongs:<br />
[e] bay [o] bow [a] buy [a] bough [] boy<br />
These can be divided into homogeneous and heterogeneous diphthongs.<br />
Homogeneous diphthongs involve only a small tongue movement. The first of these<br />
is [e]. This starts at a lower point than cardinal 2 (see the Yorkshire vowel above).<br />
The other possible symbol for this diphthong is [ej], reflecting the fact that length is<br />
carried by the [e] element and the rest is an offglide.<br />
The other one is [o], which, again, starts a bit lower than cardinal 7 and drifts up to<br />
[]. This can also be represented as [ow]. It’s claimed in some accounts that in RP<br />
English the start of this diphthong is unrounded at about [] or [] (see Gimson). This<br />
pronunciation sounds rather old-fashioned these days.<br />
The other three mentioned above are heterogeneous, as in buy, bough and boy. The<br />
first of these starts from a low central [a] and rises up to [] (or [j]), giving us [a],<br />
whilst the second starts at the same point but rises to the other side at [] (or [w])<br />
yielding [a]. The diphthong in boy is the only one truly to cross the vowel space<br />
from the back rounded [] to the front unrounded [] (or [j]).<br />
Notice that all the diphthongs listed are what are known as ‘falling diphthongs’, that is<br />
they fall in sonority from the first to the second element (although they are articulated<br />
by raising the tongue in the mouth). The reverse order of sonority in a pair of vowels<br />
would not result (in English) in a diphthong. There are two homogeneous diphthongs<br />
[e] and [o], so called because the two parts of the diphthong remain in the same area<br />
of the vowel space, and three heterogeneous diphthongs [a], [a] and [], which are<br />
the result of the crossing of the vowel space. It could also be suggested that the<br />
sequence [ju] is a diphthong. This will be considered in some detail later.<br />
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<strong>LG204</strong>-5-FY ENGLISH PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY Background<br />
In addition to the above vowels, of course, there is one on the chart which is not listed<br />
as phonemic. This is schwa []. The reason it isn’t listed is that it isn’t phonemic.<br />
More on schwa later in the course.<br />
Listing the vowels in the way we have appears to indicate that the pure vowels behave<br />
in some sense as a set as do the diphthongs. However, notice that some of the pure<br />
vowels will occur minimally paired with the diphthongs in final open syllables<br />
whereas others may not.<br />
Thus:<br />
3.<br />
[e] bay [a] buy [a] bough [o] bow [] boy<br />
[i] bee [u] boo [] bar [] bur [] bore<br />
4.<br />
[] *b [] *b [] *b<br />
[] *b [] *b [] *b<br />
Notice from the above charts that the vowels are now grouped, not as pure and<br />
complex, but as long (3) and short (4). Long vowels may occur freely in open final<br />
syllables or in open monosyllables whereas short ones may not. Another way of<br />
distinguishing between the set of ‘long’ vowels and the set of ‘short’ ones is by<br />
describing the former as ‘tense’ and the latter as ‘lax’. These two labels correlate<br />
roughly with the feature [±ATR] although this correlation is problematic, because<br />
whilst for non-low vowels tenseness roughly corresponds to advanced tongue root,<br />
this is not true of low vowels. It is generally acknowledged that [] is [+ATR] and<br />
[] is [−ATR], the reverse of their settings for tenseness.<br />
(Non-rhotic) English also has what are known as ‘centring diphthongs’. Like the<br />
other English diphthongs, these diphthongs have the syllabic peak as the first element,<br />
however, in spite of the fact that the ‘offglide’ schwa may be more sonorous than the<br />
syllabic peak. ([] as in hear has a sonority profile of 45). In addition of these<br />
centring diphthongs there are also 2 triphthongs. All of these are listed below:<br />
[] hear *[] dare †[] poor †[] door **[a] hire<br />
[a] higher [a] hour<br />
* This diphthong has tended to be monophthongised as [:] (dare = [d:])<br />
† Both the diphthongs [] and [] are very rarely heard, and the contrast between<br />
poor (formerly [p]), pour (formerly [p]) and paw has been neutralised as [p].<br />
** For many speakers this diphthong does not exist and hire and higher are<br />
homophones [ha].<br />
We shall be discussing this form of diphthong in the context of rime structure<br />
constraints and moraic structure later in the course.<br />
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<strong>LG204</strong>-5-FY ENGLISH PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY Background<br />
Phonetic symbols<br />
vowels<br />
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