Chapter 3

The Consonants of English

STOP CONSONANTS

Most people have very

little voicing going on while the lips are closed during either pie or buy. Both stop consonants are essentially voiceless. But in pie, after the release of the lip closure, there is a moment of aspiration, a period of voicelessness after the stop articulation and before the start of the voicing for the vowel. If you put your hand in front of your lips while saying pie, you can feel the burst of air that comes out during the period of voicelessness after the release of the stop. The major difference between the words in the first two columns is not that one has voiceless

stops and the other voiced stops. 

aspirated stops and the second column has (perhaps voiced) unaspirated stops. One of the main objects of this book is to teach you to become a phonetician by learning to listen very carefully. You should be able to hear these differences, but you can also see them in acoustic waveforms. Figure 3.1 is a record of the

words tie and die. It is quite easy to see the different segments in the sound wave. In the first word, tie, there is a spike indicating the burst of noise that occurs when the stop closure is released, followed by a period of very small semi-random variations during the aspiration, and then a regular, repeating wave

as the vocal folds begin to vibrate for the vowel. English spelling is misleading, and the sounds are in fact

more like those in the second column. There is no opposition in English between

words beginning with / sp / and / sb /, or / st / and / sd /, or / sk / and / sg /.

English spelling has words beginning with sp, st, sc, or sk, and none that begin with sb, sd, or sg, but the stops that occur after / s / are really somewhere between initial / p / and / b /, / t / and / d /, / k / and / g /, and usually more like the so-called voiced stops / b, d, g / in that they are completely unaspirated. Figure

3.2 shows the acoustic waveform in sty. The consonants at the end of nap, mat, knack are certainly voiceless. But if you listen carefully to the sounds at the end of the words nab, mad, nag, you may find that the so-called voiced consonants / b, d, g / have very little voicing and might also be called voiceless. The sounds [ p, t, k ] are not the only voiceless stops that occur in English.

Many people also pronounce a glottal stop in some words. A glottal stop is the sound (or, to be more exact, the lack of sound) that occurs when the vocal folds are held tightly together. As we have seen, the symbol for a glottal stop is [ / ],

resembling a question mark without the dot. British speakers have a glottal stop followed by a syllabic nasal in words such as beaten, kitten, fatten [ "bi/n` , "kI/n` , "foe/n` ]. London Cockney and

many forms of Estuary English also have a glottal stop between vowels, as in butter,

kitty, fatter [ "bO/E, "kI/I, "foe/E ].

FRICATIVES

when a vowel occurs before one of the voiceless stops / p, t, k /, it

is shorter than it would be before one of the voiced stops / b, d, g /. The same kind

of difference in vowel length occurs before voiceless and voiced fricatives. The

vowel is shorter in the first word of each of the pairs strife, strive [-straIf, straIv-];

teeth, teethe [-tiT, tiD-]; rice, rise [-raIs, raIz-]; mission, vision [ "mISn`, "vIZn ]. Stops and fricatives are the only English consonants that can be either voiced

or voiceless. the voiceless fricatives are longer than their voiced counterparts in each of the pairs safe, save

[ seIf, seIv ], lace, laze [ leIs, leIz ], and all the other pairs of words we have been

discussing in this section. Again, because fricatives behave like stops, a linguistically

significant generalization would have been missed if we had regarded

each class of consonants completely separately. voiced fricatives at the end of a word, as in prove, smooth,

choose, rouge [ pruv, smuD, tSuz, ruZ ], are voiced throughout their articulation

only when they are followed by another voiced sound. In a phrase such as prove

it, the [ v ] is fully voiced because it is followed by a vowel. But in prove two

times two is four or try to improve, where the [ v ] is followed by a voiceless

sound [ t ] or by a pause at the end of the phrase, it is not fully voiced.

AFFRICATES

An affricate

is simply a sequence of a stop followed by a homorganic fricative. Some such sequences,

for example the dental affricate [ tT ] as in eighth or the alveolar affricate

[ ts ] as in cats, have been given no special status in English phonology. the palato-alveolar affricates are plainly single units, but [ ts ] as in cats is simply a sequence of two consonants. One way to convince

yourself that the affricates [ tS ] and [ dZ ] are phonetic sequences of stop followed

by fricative is to record yourself saying itch and badge and then play them

backwards (use the WaveSurfer “reverse” function to do this). The fricative stop

sequence is usually pretty easy to hear in the backwards versions.

NASALS

Nasals, together

with [ r, l ], can be syllabic when they occur at the end of words. As we

have seen, the mark [ ` ] under a consonant indicates that it is syllabic. (Vowels,

of course, are always syllabic and therefore need no special mark.) In a narrow

transcription, we may transcribe the words sadden, table as [ "soedn`, "teIbl ` ].

In most pronunciations, prism, prison can be transcribed [ "prIzm ` , "prIzn ` ], as these

words do not usually have a vowel between the last two consonants. Syllabic

consonants can also occur in phrases such as Jack and Kate [ "dZoek N` "keIt ].

APPROXIMANTS

The voiced approximants are / w, r, j, l / as in whack, rack, yak, lack. The

first three of these sounds are central approximants, and the last is a lateral

approximant. The articulation of each of them varies slightly depending on the

articulation of the following vowel. You can feel that the tongue is in a different

position in the first sounds of we and water. The same is true for reap and

raw, lee and law, and ye and yaw.

The approximants / r, w, l / combine with stops in

words such as pray, bray, tray, dray, Cray, gray, twin, dwell, quell, Gwen, play,

blade, clay, glaze. The approximants are largely voiceless when they follow one

of the voiceless stops / p, t, k / as in play, twice, clay. This voicelessness is a

manifestation of the aspiration that occurs after voiceless stops, in both British and American English, the center of

the tongue is pulled down and the back is arched upward as in a back vowel. If

there is contact on the alveolar ridge, it is the primary articulation. The arching

upward of the back of the tongue forms a secondary articulation, which we will call velarization. In most forms of American English, all examples of / l /

are comparatively velarized, except, perhaps, those that are syllable initial and

between high front vowels, as in freely. In British English, / l / is usually not

velarized when it is before a vowel, as in lamb or swelling, but it is velarized

when word final or before a consonant, as in ball or filled. Also, compare the

velarized / l / in Don’t kill dogs with the one in Don’t kill it. One symbol for velarization is the mark [ -o] through the middle of the symbol.

OVERLAPPING GESTURES

This makes it easier to understand the

overlapping of consonant and vowel gestures in words such as bib, did, gig, mentioned

earlier in this chapter. As we noted, in the first word, bib, the tongue tip is

behind the lower front teeth throughout the word. In the second word, did, the tip

of the tongue goes up for the first / d / and remains close to the alveolar ridge during

the vowel so that it is ready for the second / d /. Coarticulation between sounds will always result in the positions of some

parts of the vocal tract being influenced quite a lot, whereas others will not be so

much affected by neighboring targets. The extent to which anticipatory coarticulation

occurs depends on the extent to which the position of that part of the vocal

tract is specified in the two gestures. The degree of coarticulation also depends on

the interval between them. For example, a considerable amount of lip rounding

occurs during [ k ] when the next sound is rounded, as in coo [ ku ]. Slightly less lip

rounding occurs if the [ k ] and the [ u ] are separated by another sound, as in clue

[ klu ], and even less occurs if there is also a word boundary between the two

sounds, as in the phrase sack Lou [ soeklu ]. Nevertheless, some rounding may

occur, and sometimes anticipatory coarticulations can be observed over even

longer sequences. In the phrase tackle Lou [ toekl l` u ], the lip rounding for the

[ u ] may start in the [ k ], which is separated from it by two segments and a word

boundary.

There is no simple relationship between the description of a language in

terms of phonemes and the description of utterances in terms of gestural targets. A phoneme is an abstract unit that may be realized in several different ways.

Sometimes, the differences between the different allophones of a phoneme can

be explained in terms of targets and overlapping gestures. The difference between

the [ k ] in key and the [ k ] in caw may be simply due to their overlapping

with different vowels.

RULES FOR ENGLISH CONSONANT ALLOPHONES

Given the discussion of consonant allophones in this chapter, we can give a

number of descriptive rules. One of these deals with consonant length.

(1) Consonants are longer when at the end of a phrase.

You can see the application of this statement by comparing the consonants

in words such as bib, did, don, nod.

Most of the allophonic rules apply to only selected groups of consonants.

(2) Voiceless stops (i.e., / p, t, k /) are aspirated when they are syllable initial,

as in words such as pip, test, kick [-pOIp, tO”st, kOIk-].

(3) Obstruents—stops and fricatives—classified as voiced (that is, / b, d, g,

v, D, z, Z-/ ) are voiced through only a small part of the articulation when

they occur at the end of an utterance or before a voiceless sound. Listen to

the / v / when you say try to improve, and the / d / when you say add two.

(4) So-called voiced stops and affricates / b, d, g, dZ / are voiceless when syllable

initial, except when immediately preceded by a voiced sound (as in

a day as compared with this day). Use WaveSurfer to listen to the sday

part of this day. Does it sound like stay?

(5) Voiceless stops / p, t, k / are unaspirated after / s / in words such as spew,

stew, skew.

(6) Voiceless obstruents / p, t, k, tS, f, T, s, S / are longer than the corresponding

voiced obstruents / b, d, g, dZ, v, D, z, Z / when at the end of a

syllable

Words exemplifying this rule are cap as opposed to cab and back as opposed

to bag. Try contrasting these words in sentences, and you may be able to hear

the differences more clearly.

(7) The approximants / w, r, j, l / are at least partially voiceless when they occur

after initial / p, t, k /, as in play, twin, cue [ pl 9eI, tw9In, kj9 u ].

This is due to the overlapping of the gesture required for aspiration with the

voicing gesture required for the approximants. (Note that the formal statement

says at least partially voiceless, but the transcription marks the approximants as

being completely voiceless. Conflicts between statements and transcriptions of

this kind will be discussed further below.)

(8) The gestures for consecutive stops overlap, so that stops are unexploded

when they occur before another stop in words such as apt [ oep}t ] and

rubbed [ rOb}d ].

(9) In many accents of English, syllable final / p, t, k / are accompanied by

an overlapping glottal stop gesture, as in pronunciations of tip, pit, kick

as [ tI/°p, pI/°t, kI/°k ]. (This is another case where transcription cannot fully

describe what is going on.)

(10) In many accents of English, / t / is replaced by a glottal stop when it

occurs before an alveolar nasal in the same word, as in beaten [ "bi/n` ].

(11) Nasals are syllabic at the end of a word when immediately after an obstruent,

as in leaden, chasm [ "l”dn`, "koezm ` ].

(12) The lateral / l / is syllabic at the end of a word when immediately after a

consonant.

(13) Alveolar stops become voiced taps when they occur between two

vowels the second of which is unstressed.

(14) Alveolar consonants become dentals before dental consonants, as in

eighth, tenth, wealth [ eIt 1T, t”n1T, w”l 1T ]. Note that this statement applies

to all alveolar consonants, not just stops, and often applies across

word boundaries, as in at this [-oet 1 DIs-]. This is a statement in which, in

English, the gestures for these two consonants overlap so much that the

place of articulation for the first consonant is changed.

(15) Alveolar stops are reduced or omitted when between two consonants.

(16) A homorganic voiceless stop may occur after a nasal before a voiceless

fricative followed by an unstressed vowel in the same word.

(17) A consonant is shortened when it is before an identical consonant.

We can describe the overlapping gestures that result in more advanced artic

ulations of / k / in cap, kept, kit, key [ kOoep, kO”pt, kOIt, kOi- ] and of / g / in

gap, get, give, geese [-goep, g”t, gIv, gis].

(18) Velar stops become more front before more front vowels.

Finally, we need to note the difference in the quality of / l / in life [laIf-] and

file [faI:-], or clap [-kloep] and talc [toe:k-], or feeling [filIN] and feel [-fi:].

(19) The lateral / l / is velarized when after a vowel or before a consonant at

the end of a word.

DIACRITICS

the nasalization diacritic is a

small wavy line above a symbol (the “tilde” symbol), and the velarization diacritic

is a tilde through the middle of a symbol. Nasalization is more common

among vowels,