LG204 background.pdf
LG204 background.pdf
LG204 background.pdf
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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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