Consonants
Consonants are speech sounds produced by obstructing the airflow in the vocal tract. They are characterized by the constriction or closure of the articulators, such as the lips, tongue, or teeth. In the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), consonants are classified based on their manner of articulation, place of articulation, and voicing.
8 Key excerpts on "Consonants"
eBook - ePubPhonetics
Transcription, Production, Acoustics, and Perception
- Henning Reetz, Allard Jongman(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
...For the articulation of vowels, the oral cavity is relatively open – in other words, the airflow is quite unobstructed. In addition, the vocal folds are usually vibrating. For Consonants, on the other hand, the airstream is affected in a number of ways; it can either be: 1 blocked, resulting in an (oral) stop consonant; 2 impeded, resulting in either a fricative with a major constriction or an approximant with a minor constriction; 3 diverted through the nasal cavity, resulting in a nasal consonant. In addition, the vocal folds may or may not be vibrating, resulting in voiced or voiceless (= unvoiced) sounds. From now on, speech sounds will be classified as either Consonants or vowels. We will start with the Consonants. In order to produce a consonant, the airstream through the vocal tract must be obstructed in some way. Consonants can therefore be classified according to the location and extent of this obstruction, or, in linguistic terms, the place and manner of articulation. We start by describing the Consonants of English in terms of their place and manner of articulation. In Chapter 4 we expand this description to sounds found in other languages of the world. 2.3.1 Place of articulation Going from front to back in the vocal tract, the following places of articulation can be distinguished in English: 1 Bilabial. Bilabials are produced with both lips. Examples in English are the initial sounds in the words p eak, b eak, and m eek. 2 Labiodental. The lower lip makes contact with the upper front teeth. Examples are the initial sounds in the words f ine and v ine. 3 Dental. Dental Consonants involve the tip or blade of the tongue and the upper front teeth. Examples are the initial sounds in th igh and th y. 4 Alveolar. These sounds involve the tip or blade of the tongue and alveolar ridge as in t ip, d ip, s ip, z ip, l ip, r ip, and n ip. (For a discussion of the retroflex variant of “r,” see Section 3.1.5.) 5 Postalveolar...
eBook - ePubPronunciation for English as an International Language
From research to practice
- Ee-Ling Low(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...5 Consonants DOI: 10.4324/9781315814131-5 Chapter 2 has given a detailed coverage of what is involved in a full description of the articulation of Consonants, namely voicing, place and manner of articulation. Crystal (2008, p. 103) considers describing the voicing, place and manner to be part of the phonetic description of Consonants but it is also important to point out that Consonants, unlike vowels, do have a constriction in the airflow caused by the contact with the articulators and, for this reason, we are able to be very specific about their place and manner of articulation. This also makes it easy, if required, to point others to specific places and manner of articulation for producing specific Consonants when learning a new language. This chapter will first talk about some phonological aspects of describing Consonants in English, then go on to point out what recent research has shown about Consonants in different varieties of English in the Outer and Expanding Circles, first starting with the overview offered by Mesthrie (2004) and then moving on to more recent acoustic studies on Consonants in varieties spoken in these two circles. Finally, a discussion of the implications of the research findings for pronunciation practice for EIL will be elucidated. Phonological description of Consonants As mentioned in Chapter 4, unlike vowels, Consonants do not form the syllable nuclei. Instead, in English, initial and final consonant clusters do not constitute the obligatory component of the syllable and are optional...
- David Hornsby(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Teach Yourself(Publisher)
...In the larynx or ‘voice box’, situated at the top of the windpipe, are the vocal cords, the gap between which is called the glottis. When these cords are kept close enough together and made to vibrate as air passes through the glottis, the sound produced is voiced ; where there is no vibration the sound is voiceless. All vowels in English are voiced; Consonants may be voiceless or voiced. Speech sounds may also be oral or nasal, depending on whether or not the velum (or soft palate) is lowered to allow air to pass through the nose as well as the mouth. English has only oral vowels, but nasal and oral Consonants; French, Portuguese and Polish have nasal vowels as well as nasal Consonants. Consonants are produced by full or partial obstruction of the airstream, while vowels are produced by positioning the tongue in different configurations which do not impede the flow of air. The distinction, however, is not a clear-cut one and some sounds classified as Consonants have vowel-like qualities. You might find it helpful to think in terms of a continuum or sonority hierarchy with highly vocalic or ‘vowel-like’ sounds like [ a ] (as in British English r a t) at the top and strongly consonantal sounds like [ p ] in p i p at the bottom. Stressed syllables in English must have a vowel as their head or nucleus (see Chapter 5), while Slovak, for example, allows sounds further down the sonority hierarchy, such as [ r ] in the place name B r no, to occupy this position. In general, consonantal sounds show greater constriction of the vocal tract than vocalic sounds and have less prominence. (Clark and Yallop 1995: 36) Spotlight: The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) First published in 1888, and revised several times since (most recently in 2005) in the light of new discoveries, the International Phonetic Alphabet provides a notational standard for the phonetic representation of all languages...
eBook - ePubExperimental Phonetics
An Introduction
- Katrina Hayward(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Outside the interval, for all Consonants the starting points and trajectories of the formant transitions (both preceding and following) play a major role as cues for place of articulation. All three of the main acoustic dimensions just mentioned (presence vs. absence of aperiodic energy, timing, spectral structure) are necessary to define the impressionistic-phonetic categories of place of articulation, manner of articulation and voicing in acoustic terms. 7.2.3 Acoustic boundaries and Consonants Another way of approaching the description of Consonants, at least when they occur before vowels, is to compare the spectrum of the interval sound with the spectrum of the onset of the following vowel. For example, to compare /ʃ/ with /ɑ/ in Figure 7.1, we should note that the lower edge of the band of noise in /ʃ/ (just below 2000 Hz) is at roughly the same height at the onset of F 3 for /ɑ/ The darkest part of the band (just below 3000 Hz) is between F 3 and F 4. The general hypothesis behind this approach is that the acoustic boundary between consonant and vowel is of particular importance for the listener. It is at acoustic boundaries that abrupt changes occur in the spectrum to which the auditory system may be particularly sensitive (Section 5.3.4). To quote Stevens (1985b: 253), ‘Either the acoustic correlates of phonetic features consist of specification of how the spectrum is changing in this region, or the region provides a landmark that indicates where nearby spectral or temporal information is to be sampled.’ I shall now give an overview of the acoustic characteristics of various types of Consonants, organised according to manner of articulation. 7.3 Stop Consonants 2 7.3.1 General characteristics of stop Consonants During the production of stop Consonants, there is a complete closure somewhere in the vocal tract, cutting off the airstream from the lungs. The soft palate is raised, so that air cannot escape through the nasal cavity...
- Walter Dunson(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...There is not, however, enough obstruction to cause any real constriction or friction. These include: O lingua-alveolar liquid: /l/ O neutral position: / r / glides: sounds produced by moving the tongue rapidly in a gliding fashion either toward or away from a neighboring vowel. They are always preceded or followed by a vowel and include: O lingua-palatal glide: / y / O bilabial glide: / w / nasals: sounds produced as air is emitted through the nasal cavity, such as: O bilabial nasal: / m / O lingua-alveolar nasal: /n/ O lingua-velar nasal: / ng / Understanding Consonants The 21 Consonants in the English language take on various sounds and pronunciations. Table 3 provides a breakdown of each consonant, its pronunciation, and a key word for each consonant. The table also shares some notes for when the pronunciations of Consonants differ. Hie specific articulation of Consonants takes place using different parts of the articulatory tract. Knowledge of the oral mechanics required to generate consonant sounds provides students with an additional tactile tool as manipulation of the tract of articulation allows students struggling with auditory discrimination issues to better isolate individual sounds. For example, if students feel the back of the tongue rise to the velum (hard palate) and move forward, scraping gently, there are only two sounds that may be generated using this sequence of oral movements: the “k” or the “g.” The Consonants are articulated in the following manner: / p /,./ b /, and / m /: Hie bilabials (/ p /, / b /, and /m/) are articulated by pressing both lips together. For the unvoiced / p /, the lips are closed. Slight air pressure is built up. A light puff of air is exploded through the oral cavity by the sudden parting of the lips. Voice is added for / b /. For / m /, the voiced breath stream is emitted through the nasal cavity. / f / and / v / : The labio-dentals (/f / and / v /) are articulated by touching the bottom lip to the upper teeth...
eBook - ePub- Mike Davenport, S.J. Hannahs(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chapter 3 Consonants As we saw in Chapter 2, 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 versus 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 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) represented orthographically by ‘p’ and ‘b’. With sonorants no such pairs exist; for the nasals, for example, there is only one bilabial – the (voiced) nasal found in ‘ m ad’ – and no voiceless bilabial nasal. This chapter looks in some detail at consonantal articulation types, starting with those having the narrowest stricture, the stops and affricates, moving through more open strictures to the fricatives and then to nasals and liquids, ending with the class with the widest stricture setting, the glides...
eBook - ePub- Peter Ladefoged, Sandra Ferrari Disner(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
...If you squeeze it tightly so that no water can flow, it will be like a stop. Producing a nasal would be like attaching a side tube to the stopped hose. Squeezing the hose so that only a small jet of water comes through corresponds to a fricative. A more gentle squeeze allowing water to flow fairly freely corresponds to an approximant. If you can manage to press the middle of the tube and allow water to escape around the sides, that will correspond to a lateral. 11.4 Describing Consonants Consonants are nearly always movements at the beginning or end of a vowel. As we have noted, they are best thought of as gestures of the tongue and lips, like the gestures one makes with one’s hand when writing, fluid movements that produce particular shapes. Gestures are difficult to describe and it is easier to associate a consonant with what one might think of as the target of the gesture – the positions of the vocal organs that characterize the sound. These positions can be described fairly well by considering only three questions: first, what are the vocal folds doing? As we saw in Chapter 2, the air from the lungs can set the vocal folds vibrating, in which case the sound is said to be voiced, or it can pass freely between the vocal folds so that the sound is voiceless. Sounds such as b and n are voiced, and sounds such as p and s are voiceless...
- Carole Paradis(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Among other things, it lays the foundations for the analysis of consonant sequences presented in Chapter 5 and indirectly contributes to the analysis of the marker system itself. The analysis of the consonant system, by contrast with that of the vowel system, is not cast within charm and government theory, due to the lack of research advances in this domain. Thus phonological features, rather than elements, will constitute the building blocks of our analysis of Consonants. 3.2 The Phonetic Consonant System The phonetic consonant system of Pulaar is composed of 24 Consonants and the four glides [w], [y], [ɥ] and [h], 1 as shown in the following table: (1) The phonetic consonant system of Pulaar Places of articulations: A: labial, B: dental, C: palatal, D: velar, E: glottal 3.3 The Glottal Stop According to Ladefoged (1975), the glottal stop may be defined as an absence of sound: (2) “A glottal stop is the sound (or, to be more exact, the lack of sound that occurs when the vocal cords are held tightly together.” [ p.46 ] The glottal stop in Pulaar occurs in two word positions: initially and finally. However, I argue that it has no phonological status because it is never distinctive at the lexical or grammatical level. It will nonetheless be discussed since, according to most scholars, it is at the origin of the word-initial V/gV alternation. The problem regarding the status of? in Fula arises mostly for those authors who studied the Western dialects of Fula as reported by Noye (1971): (3) The case of the glottal stop /ʔ/ which, word-initially, is also referred to as vocalic onset or hard onset, is special. While it poses no problem for the Eastern dialects where, like all other stops, it lies outside the permutation process, it appears to pose problems for the authors who studied the Western dialects. [ “Le cas de l’occlusive glottale /ʔ/, où coup de glotte, qui à l’initiale est appelée aussi attaque vocalique ou attaque dure, est particulier...
