LG204 background.pdf

LG204-5-FY ENGLISH PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY Background
narrow gap for the air to escape, resembling a fricative. Crucially, the two elements
of the affricate are articulated at the same point in the mouth.
Try the palato-alveolar affricate [] to see what happens.
Place of articulation
As I’ve said, obstructions can be made between articulators at any point in the oral
cavity. It’s most likely that the contact will be made between two articulators that are
reasonably near to each other. One of these is described as ‘active’ in that it moves
and the other is described as ‘passive’ and remains static. When we are discussing the
phonetic description of an articulation, we tend to describe it by means of both
articulators involved or, if the active articulator is the tongue, in terms of the passive
articulator. When we come to phonological description, we use the active articulator
to characterise place, but that’s for later.
Parts of the tongue: the flexible part that can protrude out of the mouth is known as
the blade and the bit round the end is the tip. These two are indissoluble as we shall
see later. The more fleshy, less flexible bit is the body of the tongue and it is divided
into two sections for descriptive purposes: the front and the back. The part of the
tongue which adjoins the larynx is known as the tongue root. This area isn’t used in
the articulation of English consonants although other languages do have sounds using
this as an active articulator.
Bearing this in mind, we’ll start to see at what point these obstructions are, indeed
made. I shall only discuss those places and combinations of manner and place that are
relevant to English
1. Bilabial: an obstruction made with the two lips.
2. Labio-dental: the upper teeth and the lower lip
3. Dental: the blade of the tongue and the upper teeth. This could also be called
lingua-dental, but since the tongue is responsible for most obstructions, we
tend to omit it from descriptions unless a particular tongue area making
contact with part of the oral structure that isn’t immediately adjacent to it.
4. Alveolar: the tip of the tongue and the alveolar ridge (tooth ridge – so called
because it contains the tooth sockets or alveoli).
5. Palato-alveolar: the blade of the tongue and the area of the palate which is
partially the back part of the alveolar ridge
6. Retroflex: the tip of the tongue and the palato-alveolar area (as above)
7. Palatal: the front of the tongue and the hard palate
8. Velar: the back of the tongue and velum or soft palate
Voicing
A third phonetic parameter required to provide a complete set of the obstruent sounds
of English is ‘voice’. The term ‘voicing’ or ‘voice’ characterises the vibration of the
vocal folds or vocal cords. These are located in the larynx (voice box or Adam’s
apple). The larynx is a cartilage box located at the top of the trachea (or windpipe),
through which the air has to pass on its way to the mouth and to the exterior. In the
middle of this box is a hole, known as the glottis and the glottis is bounded by two
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