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<strong>LG204</strong>-5-FY ENGLISH PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY Background Liquid approximants The term ‘approximant’ refers to a sound where any oral constriction is less close than that employed in the articulation of fricatives. Therefore, the nasals described above cannot be classified as approximants by virtue of the fact that the oral constriction involved is a stop. Whilst the most obvious secondary channel for the release of air must be the nasal cavity, other sonorant sounds are possible. English, like the majority of the world’s languages, employs the mouth as a secondary channel simultaneously with it acting as a locus for the primary constriction. The most obvious way in which this can be achieved is by forming a constriction at the alveolar ridge with the blade of the tongue whilst simultaneously lowering the sides of the tongue to allow air to escape that way. The sound made in this way is, of course, [l] which is known as a lateral approximant (lateral meaning ‘of the sides’). As we shall see in due course, there is more to the articulation of the lateral approximant than this brief description. As we saw, the term ‘lateral’ refers to the sides of the tongue, the opposite of this is, clearly, the centre of the tongue. Most sounds are ‘central’ in that the air passes over the centre of the tongue at some stage. Clearly, when an obstruent constriction occurs, then the air passes down the centre of the tongue until it encounters that constriction. However, we are talking here about sonorant sounds, where no such constriction occurs. If we reverse the tongue action of the lateral approximant, in other words, press the sides of the tongue against the back teeth and allow the air to pass over the centre of the tongue, whose tip is retracted towards the post-alveolar region (either retroflexed or not), we produce the standard British and American rhotic or central approximant []. Note, however, that some accents of English produce different types of /r/ sound. For example, in Scottish the standard /r/ is an alveolar tap []. Traditionally, the Scottish /r/ has been described as the trill [r], but this is unlikely to occur these days. It is also claimed that in some parts of Northumbria the /r/ is a uvular fricative [] – how common this sound is is not clear. In the so-called ‘rhotic’ dialects of English, there may also be a further variant on the standard /r/. This will also be discussed briefly later. Glides Strictly speaking, the sounds I shall call ‘glides’ are not consonantal articulations. That is to say that the air passes freely and there is no true constriction, even as severe as that involved in the lateral sounds (the status of the central rhotic approximant is also questionable when it comes to the possibility of its being a true consonant). Indeed their alternative names ‘semi-vowels’ is perhaps more truly descriptive. Glides [w] and [j] have more or less identical articulations to the high vowels [u] and [i] which we shall discuss next week. The descriptions of these sounds are: [w] labio-velar approximant. That is to say that the lips are rounded and the back of the tongue is raised towards the velum without contact being made [j] palatal approximant. Here the front part of the tongue is raised towards the hard palate. The reason I have included glides in the inventory of consonants is because of their distribution. They occur in contrast with true consonants – for example watt [wt] 6
<strong>LG204</strong>-5-FY ENGLISH PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY Background rhymes with yacht [jt] which rhymes with cot [kt]. Effectively, we could say that these are non-nucleic vowels, they may occur as syllable onsets (although never as codas in English), but will be in complementary distribution with [u]/[i] which only occur in nuclear position. I present below a tabulated inventory of the consonant phonemes of English. As this is a phonemic inventory, some of the sounds discussed above don’t appear. [p] pan [t] tan [k] can [b] bun [d] done [g] gun [f] fin [θ] thin [s] sin [] shin [v] vie [] thy [z] zoo [] beige [] chin [] gin [m] ram/mat [n] ran/gnat [] rang [l] low [] row [w] watt [j] yacht [h] hot Part II Allophonic variation in Consonants The stops The table above indicates that English has 6 contrastive stop consonants. The phonetic realisation of the stops, however, tells a somewhat different story. The following table, borrowed from Ladefoged (2001) shows various words containing allophones of these stops. 1 2 3 4 5 pie buy spy nap nab tie die sty mat mad kye guy sky knack nag Notice first of all that the stops consonants in columns 1 and 2 represent a minimal set. That is to say that the words differ only in their initial consonant. Horizontally, the pairs share a place of articulation. Let us examine the manifestations of the stops column by column. The sounds exemplified in column 1 are all voiceless and, in this respect, would appear to be the same as those sounds exemplified in columns 3 and 4. We shall see, however, that this isn’t the case. Voiceless stops that are word-initial share an important feature, which is aspiration. The presence of aspiration can be experienced if you put your finger in front of your mouth when you utter pie – you should find that after the opening of the lips to release the stop and before the vocal folds start to vibrate the vowel, a small puff of air is released (the way in which this is achieved is similar to the articulation of [h] which is why the phonetic symbol for aspiration is a tiny h superscript). It is easier to feel this during the articulation of the bilabial the same situation also occurs following [t] and [k], as well as the affricate [], which, of course, contains a stop consonant. 7
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