English Consonants

According to the place of articulation	Labial	Forelingual	Medio­lingual	Back­lingual	Pharyn­gal
According to the manner of articulation	bilabial	labiodental	dental	alveolar	postalveolar	palatal	velar
Occlusive	plosives	p b			t d			k g
nasal resonants	m			n
Constrictive	fricatives		f v		s z			h
resonants	medial	w				r
lateral				l
Occlusive-constrictive	affricates						t d

The oppositions based on the force of articulation:

fortis vs. lenis (two – do, back – bag, etc.)

The oppositions based on the active organ of speech:

bilabial vs. forelingual (pen – ten, mat – sat, wet – let)

bilabial vs. mediolingual (wail – Yale)

bilabial vs.backlingual (bay – gay)

forelingual vs. mediolingual (less – yes)

forelingual vs. backlingual (take – cake)

forelingual vs. pharyngal (they – hay, see – he)

labiodental vs. forelingual (fat – sat, van – than)

The oppositions based on the type of obstruction:

plosive vs. fricative (pen – when, berry – very)

plosive vs. affricate (till – chill, do – Jew)

plosive vs. sonorant (bad – mad, desk – neck)

fricative vs. sonorant (vine – wine)

fricative vs. affricate (share – chair)

constrictive sonorant vs. occlusive sonorant (we – me, low – no)

flat narrowing vs. round narrowing (thing – sing)

unicentral vs. bicentral (see – she, thing – shy)

Problems of phonemic analysis: consonants. There exists an opinion that the affricates /tS/ and /dZ/ are, phonetically, composed of a plosive followed by a fricative. It is possible to treat each of the part /tS/, /dZ/ as a single consonant phoneme (one-phoneme analysis of /tS/, /dZ/ according to which these sounds have distributions similar to other consonants, while other combinations of plosive plus fricative do not. /tS/ and /dZ/ can be found initially, medially, and finally; and no other combination (e.g. /pf, dz, tT/) has such a wide distribution).

It is possible to say that they are composed of two phonemes each – either /t/ plus /S/ or /d/ plus /Z/ – all of which are already established as independent phonemes of English (two-phoneme analysis of /tS/ and /dZ/ according to which there are no separate /tS/ and /dZ/ phonemes). N.Trubezkoy worked out the rules to determine whether a sound of a complex nature is monophonemic. They are as follows: (1) a phoneme is indivisible, since no syllabic division can occur within a phoneme; (2) a phoneme is produced by one articulatory effort; (3) the duration of a phoneme should not exceed that of other phonemes in the language. Thus /tS/ and /dZ/ are monophonemic since they are pronounced by one articulatory effort, their duration does not exceed the duration of /t/ or /d/ and there is no syllabic division within these sounds.

As for /tr/ and /dr/ their phonemic status remains undecided. Prof. D.Jones called them affricates. Still most phoneticians regard /tr/ and /dr/ as biphonemic clusters.

The nasal /N/ also raises a lot of analysis problems: a) /N/ is the allophone of /n/ that occurs when it precedes the phoneme /g/, e.g. meeting. But in the word hungry both sounds /N/ and /g/ are pronounced. It means that the /N/ cannot be the allophone of /n/. Besides this phoneme also appears when it is followed by the phoneme /k/.

The problem with syllabic consonants.

The problem of neutralization. /@/

2. Modifications of consonants and vowels in speech continuum.

Every phoneme displays a vast range of variation sin connected speech. We usually distinguish idiolectal, diaphonic and allophonic variation.

Idiolectal variation embraces the individual peculiarities of articulating sounds, caused by the shape and form of the speaker’s speech organs and by his articulatory habits. Idiolectal variation may cause difficulties in communication, but it enables people to identify the speech.

Diaphonic variation affects the quality and quantity of particular phonemes. It is caused by definite historical tendencies active in certain localities. Diaphonic variants inform the listener about the speaker’s origin and his social standing.

Allophonic variation is conditioned by phonetic position and phonetic environment.

Assimilation – modification in the articulation of a consonant under the influence of a neighbouring consonant. 1) assimilation affecting the place of articulation; 2) assimilation affecting the place of articulation and the active organ of speech; 3) assimilation affecting the manner of poise production; 4) assimilation affecting the work of the vocal cords; 5) assimilation affecting the lip position; 6) assimilation affecting the position of the soft palate.

Assimilation can be of three degrees: 1) complete when the articulation of the assimilated consonant fully coincides with that of the assimilating one; 2) partial when theassimilated consonant retains its main phonemic features and becomes only partly similar in some feature of the articulation to the assimilating sound e.g. the consonant alveolar /n/ is assimilated into dental when followed by the interdental /D, T/ like in in the; 3) intermediate between complete and partialwhen the assimilated consonant changes into a different sound, but does not coincide with the assimilating consonant.

According to its direction assimilation can be of three types: 1) progressive when the assimilated consonant is influenced by the preceding one, e.g. in the word proud the fully voiced variant of the phoneme /r/ is replaced by a partly devoiced variant of the same phoneme; 2) regressive when the preceding consonant is affected by the one following it; 3) reciprocal, or double when two adjacent consonants influence each other.

An assimilation which took place at an earlier stage in the history of the language development is called historical. In contextual assimilation a word comes to have a pronunciation different from that which it has when uttered in isolation.

3. Articulation basis of English. Articulation basis is a set of articulatory habits characteristic of all the native speakers of a language. The peculiarities of the articulation basis of English determine the specific articulatory characteristics of its sound system, the character of sound modifications in connected speech and the physiological mechanism of syllable formation. Articulatory differences in the production of identical segmental phonemes in English and the students’ mother tongue.

1) plosives /p, t, k, b, d, g/;

2) /r/; /w/; /l/;

3) /S, Z, tS, dZ/ etc.

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