Languages & Linguistics
Click Consonants
Click consonants are speech sounds produced by creating a pocket of air in the mouth and then releasing it in a way that produces a sharp clicking noise. These sounds are found in various languages, particularly in southern Africa and parts of the Americas, and are known for their distinctive and percussive quality. They are produced by using the tongue to create different types of clicks.
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eBook - PDFThe Sounds of Language
An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology
- Elizabeth C. Zsiga(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
While clicks occur as expressions, interjections, and mimetics throughout the world, they occur as regular speech sounds mostly in a cluster of languages in Central and South- ern Africa: the Khoesan languages and their neighbors. Given their versatility and clear auditory distinctiveness, it is not really clear why Click Consonants do not occur more widely. They are “difficult” to make, certainly, requiring a high degree of articulatory coordination, but no more so than other sounds that are much more widely distributed, such as ejectives. 48 A TOUR OF THE CONSONANTS 3.4 positional variation in English As promised at the beginning of this chapter, we have found a number of “exotic” sounds hidden in American English pronunciations, not only the post-alveolar approximant, but species such as bilabial fricatives, glottal stops, voiceless sonorants, labiodental nasals, and even velar laterals. For those with a special interest in the pronunciation of English, for teaching, learning, or speech therapy, we pause to collate these examples into a list of some positional variants of English consonants. In this section, because we are concerned with predictable details of pronunciation, we use narrow transcription rather than broad. In a broad transcription, transcribing the English word “pan” as [pæn] is perfectly correct, since the word does indeed consist of a voiceless bilabial plosive followed by a low front vowel followed by an alveolar nasal stop, and the symbols are sufficient to distinguish this word from all others in the language, including “ban” [bæn], “pad” [pæd], and “pin” . But many details of English positional variation are left out of the broad transcription: for example, initial voiceless stops are aspi- rated, vowels are nasalized before a nasal consonant, vowels are lengthened before a voiced consonant, and (at least in my dialect) the low front vowel has a high front onglide before [n]. A narrow transcription includes all these details: .
eBook - ePub- Bruce M. Rowe, Diane P. Levine(Authors)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
www.phonetics.ucla.edu/index/sounds.html .EXERCISE 1 Consonants I- The following are definitions of sounds in terms of manner and place of articulation, as well as voicing. Give the phonetic symbol for each sound defined and an example of a word in which each sound is used.
Phonetic symbol Example of word a. Voiced bilabial stop b. Voiced bilabial nasal _____________ _____________ c. Voiceless glottal stop _____________ _____________ d. Voiced labiodental fricative _____________ _____________ e. Voiced alveolar stop _____________ _____________ f. Voiceless palatal affricate _____________ _____________ g. Voiced alveolar lateral _____________ _____________ h. Voiced velar stop _____________ _____________ i. Voiceless velar stop _____________ _____________ j. Voiced dental fricative _____________ _____________ - This exercise deals with the relationship of the phonetic alphabet to the English alphabet.
- List the phonetic symbols for consonants that are usually pronounced essentially the same as they are in orthography (spelling).
- What English alphabetic symbols for consonants are used in the phonetic alphabet but are used differently in the English alphabet?
- What symbols used in the phonetic alphabet for consonants are not equivalent to any of the symbols in the English alphabet?
- List the phonetic symbols for consonants that are usually pronounced essentially the same as they are in orthography (spelling).
eBook - ePubPhonetics
The Science of Speech
- Martin J Ball, Joan Rahilly(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
The so-called simple clicks do, in fact, involve a combination between a velar closure (i.e. [k]) and the click place of articulation: although of course the [k] is not heard as it is overlapped by the click sound itself. In other instances, the accompaniment is heard. In transcribing click sounds therefore it is now usual to combine the [k] with the click symbol for a ‘simple click’ (using the tie-bar diacritic to show simultaneous articulation; see Chapter 7), and relevant other symbols for other combinations. Some of these can be seen in Table 4.9. Khoisan languages in particular can show a very large number of possible click combinations, and so to illustrate click use in language, we restrict ourselves to just some examples from !Xóõ as displayed in Table 4.10 (analysed by Traill, reported in Ladefoged and Maddieson, 1996). The account of |Gui given by Nakagawa (1996) also demonstrates how complex click systems can be. Table 4.9 Some click combinations Table 4.10 Clicks in !Xó õ Further reading Again, we recommend phonetics texts such as Abercrombie (1967), Brosnahan and Malmberg (1970), Catford (1977, 1988), Clark and Yallop (1995), Ladefoged (1993) and Laver (1994) for an examination of obstruents, with Laver (1994) providing the most detailed account. Ladefoged and Maddieson (1996) illustrate a wide range of obstruents in different languages. Short questions 1 What consonants count as obstruents? 2 What are the three phases of the stop? Illustrate with diagrams. 3 Describe nasal and lateral release of stops with examples from English. 4 Describe the main ways in which fricatives can be sub-divided. 5 What is aspiration? Comment on stops and phonation. 6 How do trills and taps/flaps differ? 7 Describe the sequence of events needed to produce affricates. 8 How can Click Consonants be combined with other articulatory events? Essay questions 1 Describe the three stages of stop production and the range of modifications that can take place at these stages
eBook - PDF- Jack Berry, Thomas Albert Sebeok, Jack Berry, Thomas Albert Sebeok(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
dental sounds, or retroflex sounds, or implosive sounds, or any other kind of human noise that could be made to function in speech. Clicks were not a universal discovery but were a local and independent discovery in this one area in Africa. The linguistic and geographical isolation of this one area persisted until recent times but has been in the process of being broken down over the last couple of thousand years — early and rapidly in the north in areas where the foodcrops and livestock of invaders could survive, and late and less rapidly in the south, particularly in those areas that were inaccessible and unattractive to peasant settlers invading the area from the north. The theory of 'phonation areas' 1 is a useful historical-linguistic tool — and the click theory is a form of this basically typological theory — but it must not be taken as the only item determining relationship. In Bantu languages we can create a 'phonation area' of dental sounds from the mouth of the Limpopo to the Ngwato area from Serowe to Maun in Botswana. This merges into an area of tonguetip alveolars along the Zam-bezi and Okavango which, in its turn, merges into an interdental area. These three 'phonation areas' whether taken singly or together have no further and immediate significance for descriptive and historical linguistics. The click 'phonation area' which embraces both Bantu and other languages similarly has no further significance from a genetic point of view but the clicks certainly are evidence of a contact situation. Another kind of objection to the term KHOISAN FAMILY affects its second part. There is no unanimity amongst the various writers on the non-Bantu click languages about the nature of linguistic 'families'. Bleek was wary of the term. Certainly she never used the term, and Schapera, who created the description, wrote as a social and cultural anthropologist, and not as a linguist. His term was however accepted by linguists in South Africa including C.
eBook - ePubPhonology in English Language Teaching
An International Approach
- Martha C. Pennington(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
2 ConsonantsCharacteristics of consonantsThe nature of consonants
Consonants are sounds made with closed or nearly closed articulations. As a consequence, they tend to break up the stream up speech, defining a perceptual and articulatory “edge”, or margin, for a unit (word or syllable in a word) that includes one or more vowels. Complex margins are made of two or more consonants. In English, both initial and final margins may include multiple consonants – up to three initially and up to four finally, as in:
The number and complexity of cluster types in English presents an area of difficulty for many non-native speakers./p/ pill /sp/ spill /pr/ pram /spr/ spray /t/ till /st/ still /tr/ tram /str/ stray /k/ kill /sk/ skill /kr/ cram /skr/ scray /p/ sap /lp/ whelp /rp/ harp /p/ sap /lt/ welt /rt/ heart /k/ sack /lk/ whelk /rk/ hark /lps/ whelps /rps/ corpse /lts/ welts /rts/ courts /lks/ whelks /rks/ corks /lpt/ sculpt /rst/ burst /lpts/ sculpts /rsts/ bursts Place of articulation
The vocal tract is divided into different regions which are used to describe the place of articulation of individual consonants and vowels, i.e. segmental sounds. The terms for the vocal organs and regions used for the production of speech sounds are shown in Figure 2.1 . The locations of these organs and regions are shown in Figure 2.2 .
FIGURE 2.1. Names of vocal organs and articulatory regionsVocal organs and articulatory regions (nouns) Adjectives nose nasal mouth oral lips labial teeth dental alveoli (or alveolar ridge or gum ridge) alveolar (hard) palate paltal velum (or soft palate) velar pharynx pharyngeal uvula uvula larynx (or vocal folds) laryngeal glottis glottal Tongue: apex (or tip) apical blade blade side lateral front front (laminai) center central back back root root Speech articulations are made primarily in the oral chamber, or oral tract, that is, in the area between the epiglottis and the lips. The most forward, or front, position in the oral tract is at the lips. The farthest back
eBook - PDFTurbulent Sounds
An Interdisciplinary Guide
- Susanne Fuchs, Martine Toda, Marzena Zygis, Susanne Fuchs, Martine Toda, Marzena Zygis(Authors)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
I propose that differences in tongue body and tongue root shape may be the phonetic bases of the BVC. The airstream involved in click production is described as velaric airstream by earlier researchers. The term velaric airstream is replaced by lingual airstream by Miller, Namaseb and Iskarous (2007) and Miller, Brugman et al. (2009). The majority of consonants found in the world’s languages are produced using a pulmonic egressive airstream , meaning that sound is produced on the air pushed out of the lungs under the control of the respiratory muscles. Click sounds, on the other hand, are produced when air is rarefied between the two constrictions as the tongue dorsum moves backward and downward. The click burst occurs when the anterior constriction is released, allowing air to rush into the vacuum made by the Miller 246 tongue. The release of the posterior constriction is pulmonic egressive, because air is being pushed outward by the lungs. Due to the proximity of the releases of the anterior and posterior constrictions, the posterior release is inaudible in plain clicks, and there is often no visible pulmonic burst. However, I will provide data in this paper on the patterning of a class of clicks that have an audible pulmonic burst, which I refer to as linguo-pulmonic contour segments. The terms complex segments and contour segments refer to the distinction made by Sagey (1990). Complex segments are sounds that have two constrictions that are nearly simultaneous; and contour segments are single sounds that are sequences of articulations (Sagey 1990). In this paper, all clicks are referred to as complex following Sagey (1990) and Miller, Brugman et al. (2009), while affricates and linguo-pulmonic contour segments are referred to as contour segments. I provide a model for Click Consonants that follows Zsiga (1997) and Fujimura (2000) in having both phonetic and phonological components.
eBook - PDF- Martin J. Ball, Nicole Muller(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
Answers to all the exercises are available at the end of the book. 6 Articulation: Consonant Manner lYpes INTRODUCTION Unlike vowels, consonants are articulated with a close or fairly close constriction between he articulators. In fact, the proximity of the articulators to each other is going to provide us ith the classification of consonant classes, or manners of articulation. Before we look at this lassification, however, we have to consider the phonetic parameters we use for describing onsonants. As with vowels, we need to take the vertical (or height) dimension into considera-ion: this deals with the distance between the articulators we have just mentioned. Second, we ave to examine the horizontal dimension: Where are the articulators making their constriction n terms of front to back through the oral cavity and beyond? We will look at this feature in he following chapter. Then we need to examine the lateral dimension: whether the airflow is entral across the tongue body, or directed to flow over the side of the tongue. We also need to ote whether the airflow during the production of the consonant is oral or nasal. We can also i stingui sh between strong (fortis) and weak (lenis) sounds in terms of the muscular effort and esultant amount of airflow. Finally, there is the temporal characteristic of the consonants: are hey prolongable, or instantaneous? Examining the vertical dimension gives us three main categories of consonants: 1. Stops. These are made with the articulators (e.g., the two lips, or the tip of the tongue against the alveolar ridge) brought so closely together that an air-tight seal is caused, and the air is stopped. 2. Fricatives. These are made with the articulators very close together, but a narrow channel remains open through which air can flow. Because the channel is narrow, the resultant air flow is turbulent. We hear this as a noisy quality that is called friction or frication in phonetics.
- Robert K. Herbert(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
The essential point of this present discussion is that although the click sounds may be subject to various modifications, which modifications are also attested with non-Click Consonants when they occur with nasal consonants, their essential characteristic, i.e. velaric ingressive airstream, is preserved in all cases. 8.1.6 Aspirates and aspiration The situation with regard to the development or loss of aspiration of voiceless consonants in close union with nasal consonants is not entirely clear. On the one hand, some languages exhibit clear patterns which demonstrate the loss of aspiration in this environment. However, in other languages, it appears that voiceless consonants develop aspiration when they function within a nasal compound. Thus, there are conflicting tendencies which exist with regard to aspiration. This is a less than felicitous situation, especially since in other cases which we examined it appeared that a general direction of evolution could be discerned. For example, consonants tend to be hardened and voiced after nasals. While changes of the sort NC -*• Νζ, Ν + Stop Nasal + Affricate may occasionally occur, they are rare and we find other factors and processes which can explain these otherwise anomalous developments. 8.1 Processes affecting oral consonants 243 8.1.6.1 Loss of aspiration We have already mentioned that in Zulu aspiration is lost in contact with nasal consonants. Doke (1926) reports the development of ejectives from aspirates in this context, but not all grammars are clear on this point. Doke's Phonetics is the most rigorous instrumental study to date; it may be simply that ejection is weak: It is noticeable that when emphasis is required the ejection becomes very pronounced. In ordinary speech, however, to the untrained ear the ejection of the explosives is scarcely perceptible (1926:47). In the series of click sounds, aspirated clicks are replaced by simple nasal clicks when they are brought under nasal influence in Zulu.
eBook - PDF- Lynne Cahill(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Bloomsbury Academic(Publisher)
If the chords are com-pletely closed together and then released, a consonant called a glottal stop is produced. This is a kind of plosive, because the sound is produced by the release of air, just like a p , but the closure is not in the main part of the vocal tract. The glottal stop is the sound you hear in the middle of words like Gatwick in casual speech of a lot of SSBE speakers. It is sometimes written as an apostrophe to indicate that the t isn’t pronounced like a ‘proper’ t : Ga’wick . The other key sound that is pronounced by the larynx is the h sound in English. This is a glottal fricative and it is produced by holding the chords close enough together to cause friction, but not to make the chords vibrate. Type of Consonant Voiceless Voiced Plosives p it , t it , k it b it , d id , g it Fricatives f at , s at , sh ip , th in v at , z ip , g enre , th i s Affricates ch urch j udge T ABLE 3.2 V OICED AND VOICELESS CONSONANTS CONSONANTS 47 These are the three main parts of the description of consonants. They are called the parameters of description . 3.1.4 Airstream mechanisms Another aspect of speech sound production that involves the larynx is the use of different airstream mechanisms . Earlier I said that speech sounds are produced by air coming out of our lungs, and that’s true for most speech sounds and all sounds in normal English speech. But there are other ways sounds can be produced and some of them are used in other languages as genuine speech sounds. When you make the clicking sound to ‘tut’, or to ‘gee-up’ a horse, you produce sounds using different airstream mechanisms. This means that there are different ways in which the air can flow in order to produce the sounds. Going back to the musical instrument metaphor, when you blow through a harmonica, you make a sound, but you can also make sounds by sucking the air in instead. It is possible to do that by speaking while breathing in.
- Okim Kang, Ron I. Thomson, John M. Murphy, Okim Kang, Ron I. Thomson, John M Murphy, John M. Murphy, Okim Kang, Ron I. Thomson, John M Murphy(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
GB and NAE English have 24 common consonants. We have seen that the most important criteria for the classification of consonants in English are their respective places and manners of articulation, together with presence or absence of voicing.Figure 6.10 presents all of the English consonants, categorized by place of articulation (horizontal axis), manner of articulation (vertical axis) and voicing, i.e. the pairs of phonemes in a single cell represent a voicing contrast (i.e. a minimal pair of voiced/voiceless phonemes). The majority of English consonant phonemes consist of such voiced/voiceless pairs.Figure 6.10 English consonant chartThe consonants /l/ and /r/ are sometimes referred to as ‘liquids’ in other classification systems. Also, /w/ and /j/ are sometimes referred to as ‘semi-vowels’. We will now see how we can use these categories to describe the consonants of English in more detail.Plosives (or stops)
This group of consonants stop the airflow completely at some point in the vocal tract by the temporary physical contact between articulators, usually involving the lips or the tongue. Consonants that stop the airstream in this way are called ‘stops’ or ‘plosives’. Their articulation has three phases:- closure phase – the articulators come together;
- hold phase – air pressure builds up behind the closure;
- release phase – articulators come apart and the compressed air is released either rapidly with plosion or more gradually with friction.
The distinction between plosives and other consonants is sometimes referred to as ‘stops’ versus ‘continuants’. In ‘stop’ sounds the air is completely blocked off at some point and not allowed to continue before it is released in plosion (e.g. /p/, /t/, /k/). In contrast, with ‘continuant’ sounds the air flow can continue until you run out of breath (e.g. /f/, /v/, /s/).There are six plosives in English, in three voiced/voiceless pairs. The point where the airflow is obstructed (place of articulation) is different for the three pairs; the /p/ versus /b/ pair are bilabial plosives with the air stopped by the two lips coming together; /t/ versus /d/ are alveolar plosives with the air stopped by the tongue tip touching the alveolar ridge, and /k/ versus /g/ are velar plosives with the back of the tongue touching the soft palate (i.e. the velum).
eBook - PDFCalvert's Descriptive Phonetics
Introduction and Transcription Workbook
- Pamela G. Garn-Nunn(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Thieme(Publisher)
(For more examples of these terms, see Table 4.1 .) The consonant phonemes of American-English speech are described individually in this chapter. Their symbols, as used in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), key words, and most common spellings are listed for each phoneme. Each conso-nant production is described in simple place and manner terms and also step by step. These descriptions are followed by examples of words (organized by position), and discrimination lists for each consonant. These lists contain minimal pairs, which are two words that differ by only one phoneme. Notes are also added about some phonemes with regard to frequency of occurrence, age of acquisition, and possible dialectic variations. Although these production descriptions may sound absolute or “cut-and-dried,” this is not really the case, particularly in connected speech! Each description is more T ABLE 4.1 E XAMPLES OF CONSONANT SINGLETONS AND SEQUENCES IN RELATIONSHIP TO VOWELS Word Phonemes Singleton/Sequence Position house /h/ Singleton Prevocalic /s/ Singleton Postvocalic telephone /t/ Singleton Prevocalic /l/ Singleton Intervocalic /f/ Singleton Intervocalic /n/ Singleton Postvocalic girl / ɡ / Singleton Prevocalic /l/ Singleton Postvocalic orange / ɹ / Singleton Intervocalic /n ʤ / Sequence Postvocalic stars /s t/ Sequence Prevocalic / ɹ z/ Sequence Postvocalic spoon /s p/ Sequence Prevocalic /n/ Singleton Prevocalic toothbrush /t/ Singleton Prevocalic / θ b ɹ / Sequence Intervocalic / ʃ / Singleton Postvocalic 58 CALVERT ’ S DESCRIPTIVE PHONETICS a generalization of how most people produce speech sounds. We all make accommo-dations for our unique anatomy and for our skill in moving the speech mechanism rapidly about. Most of us did not learn speech through detailed instruction, carefully watching and copying someone else’s tongue or lip movements.
eBook - PDF- Pamela G. Garn-Nunn, James M. Lynn(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Thieme(Publisher)
C H A P T E R 5 C ONSONANTS ANALYSIS OF CONSONANTS REVIEW VOCABULARY EXERCISES ANALYSIS OF CONSONANTS As we noted in Chapter 3, consonants traditionally have been classified accord-ing to three characteristics: place of articulation, manner of articulation, and voic-ing. Place of articulation refers to the location (e.g., labial, alveolar) of airstream modification or to those parts of the speech mechanism used most prominently in consonant production.You learned the terms to describe place of articulation in Chapter 2. For example, /p/ and /b/ share a bilabial place of articulation, whereas /h/ has a glottal place of articulation. Manner of articulation refers to the way the airstream is modified.You will learn the consonants according to their manner of articulation: stop, fricative, affricate, nasal, and approximant/oral res-onant ( liquids and glides ). The third classification category, voicing, refers to vocal fold vibration, as you also learned in Chapter 2. Consonants such as /b/ and /z/, which involve phonation, are voiced, and consonants such as /p/ and /s/, made without phonation, are voiceless. It is also important to understand the terminology that refers to the role of con-sonants in relation to vowels.We can refer to consonants as singletons (one con-sonant with no consonants adjacent to it) or sequences (two or more consonants in succession in the same syllable or word).We can also refer to consonant single-tons or sequences as prevocalic, intervocalic, or postvocalic. Prevocalic refers to consonant(s) occurring before a vowel, at the beginning of a word, and postvocalic is the term applied to consonant(s) that occur after a vowel, at the end of a word. If a consonant is intervocalic, then it occurs between two vowels in a multisyllabic word.Thus, /p/ is a prevocalic consonant singleton in the word [pa ñ ] ( pie ), and /sp/ is a prevocalic consonant sequence in the word [spa ñ ] ( spy ).
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