EDU403 Quiz 2 Set 2 by Afaq Malik

Lesson-10

THE CONSONANTS OF ENGLISH-I

1. There are 24 consonants in the RP accent of English.
2. These consonants are described in terms of (1) voicing, (2) manners and (3) places of articulation.

bilabial labiodentals dental alveolar Postalveolar Palatealveolar palatal velar glottal

Plosive p b t d k g Fricative f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ h Affricate ʧ ʤ Nasal m n ŋ Lateral l Frictionless continuant w r j

3. Stop’ is often used as if synonymous with plosive.
4. In English, there are nine stops (six oral and three nasal)
5. Apart from the above stops, in some varieties of English, the glottal stop /ʔ/ is found as in beaten [ˈbɪʔn ̩].
6. Fricatives refer to a sound made with two articulators coming so close to each other that the air moving between them produces audible friction (or frication).
7. Remember that there is no complete closure between the articulators and there is a very simple stricture (or narrowing of the air passage).
8. In BBC English, we have several fricatives (both voiced and voiceless), as in fin [f], van [v], thin [θ], this [ð], sin [s], zoo [z], ship [ʃ], measure [ʒ], hoop [h].
9. Other fricatives may be heard in some forms of English (or in restricted contexts or speech styles, such as the palatal fricative [ç]),
10. A voiceless velar fricative [x] in Urdu, Pashto and Sindhi, a voiceless pharyngeal fricative [ħ] in Arabic, a voiced bilabial fricative [β] in Spanish.
11. Very common fricative sounds are /f, v, s, z, θ, ʃ, ð, h/ whereas [ʒ] is a less common fricative sound.
12. English fricatives are also divided into two categories (this distinction is made on the basis of energy made in their production);
13. fortis: /f, s, θ, ʃ, h/
14. lenis: /v, z, ð, ʒ/.
15. Stops and fricatives are together called ‘obstruents’ and they are similar in three ways:
16. They influence vowel length (vowels are shorter before voiceless obstruents),
17. voiceless obstruents at final position are longer than their voiced counterparts (e.g., race vs. rays),
18. obstruents are voiced only if the adjacent segments are also voiced (e.g., dogs).
19. An affricate sound is a type of consonant which is made of a plosive followed by a fricative with the same place of articulation (so, it is a mixture of two steps or gestures).
20. For example, /tʃ/ (the voiceless affricate) has /t/ and /ʃ/ as a sound at the beginning and end of the English words church /tʃɜ:tʃ/.
21. Remember that although it is very strange to call the combination of a plosive and a fricative a single sound (an affricate) (as it has been deliberated for quite some time) yet experts argue that an affricate is a single segment and accordingly it should be treated as a single unit.
22. There are two affricates in English: /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ (the first of these is voiceless, the second voiced) sounds as at the beginning and end of the English words church and judge. Both of them are post alveolar sounds by their place of articulation.
23. Nasals are the consonantal sounds in which the air escapes through the nose (the soft palate i.e., velum is lowered).
24. For nasal sounds, two articulatory actions are necessary; (1) the soft palate (or velum) must be lowered to allow air to escape through nose, and (2) a closure must be made in the oral tract (in order to prevent air from escaping through it).
25. This closure may be created at any place in the oral cavity (such as at lips position, for bilabial /m/ sound; at alveolar, for /n/ or at soft palate (velum) for /ŋ/ sound.
26. English has these three nasal sounds (m, n and ŋ) which are very commonly found. All of them are nasal stops and they are voiced sounds.
27. The consonants which make very little obstruction to the airflow are called approximants.
28. These have traditionally been divided into two main groups: semivowels (such as /w/ in ‘wet’ and /j/ in ‘yet’) which are very similar to close vowels ([u] and [i]) but are produced as a rapid glide; and liquid sounds which have an identifiable constriction of the airflow (but they do not obstruct sufficiently to produce fricative noise, compression or the diversion of airflow)
29. this category includes lateral sound i.e., /l/ as in ‘lead’ and /r/ sound as in ‘read’.
30. Approximant sounds; therefore, are not fricative and never contain interruptions to the flow of air.
31. The BBC accent of English has four approximant sounds:
32. Bilabial: /w/ as in whack
33. Alveolar: /l/ and /r/ as in lack and rack
34. Palatal: /j/ as in yak
35. Sometimes, experts need to differentiate among various kinds of /r/ approximant (tap, flap and trill).

Lesson-11

The Consonants of English-II

1. Speech sounds are produced with the movements of the articulators and sounds are often described in terms of their articulatory gestures.
2. Remember that sounds are not static; they are movements.
3. This idea makes it easier to understand the overlapping of sounds in terms of their articulatory gestures.
4. Try saying words twice, dwindle, quick and analyze the rounding of your lips for sound /w/.
5. In each of these three words, the first stop sounds are slightly rounded (when they are clustered with /w/ - /tw/, /dw/ and /kw/ respectively).
6. In these words, there is a tendency for gestures to overlap with those for adjacent sounds (stops with bilabial /w/ in this case).
7. This kind of gestural overlapping, in which a second gesture starts during the first gesture, is sometimes also called anticipatory co-articulation.
8. The articulatory gesture for the approximant sound is anticipated during the articulatory gesture for the stop.
9. The same kind of anticipatory overlapping takes place in words like tree and dream (compare them with tea and deem).
10. In phonology, overlapping refers to the possibility when a phone may be assigned to more than one phoneme (phonemic overlapping).
11. As a notion, overlapping was introduced by American structural linguists in the 1940s.
12. Overlapping is a common feature of connected speech.
13. In a rapid (connected) speech, overlapping between sounds results in the positions of some parts of the vocal tract being influenced quite a lot by neighboring targets thus creating various forms (allophones) for one phoneme.
14. Keeping in mind this possibility of overlapping, a phoneme is an abstract unit that may be realized in several different ways (forms - allophones).
15. Similarly, the differences between various allophones of a phoneme can be explained in terms of targets and overlapping gestures.
16. The difference between two different forms of /k/ sound (as the [k] in key and the [k] in caw) may be simply due to their overlapping with different vowels in context.
17. Similarly, the alveolar [n] in ten is different than the dental [n̪] in tenth. Both are the result of aiming at the same target,
18. But in tenth, the realization of the phoneme /n/ is influenced by the dental target required for the following sound.
19. An articulation is an articulatory phenomenon which involves a simultaneous overlapping of more than one point in the vocal tract as in the co-ordinate stops (/pk/, /bg/, /pt/ and /bd/) often heard in some languages from West Africa.
20. Co-articulation, at times, leads to create a difference between two allophones (which is actually the result of aiming at different targets).
21. In experimental phonetics, coarticulation is a way of finding out how the brain controls the production of speech sounds.
22. When we speak, many muscles are active at the same time and sometimes the brain tries to make them do things at a time that they are not capable of. For example, in the word mum /mʌm/, the vowel phoneme is one that is normally pronounced with the soft palate (velum) raised to prevent the escape of air through the nose, while the two m phonemes must have the soft palate lowered.
23. Thus, the soft palate cannot be possibly raised so quickly, and, as a result, the vowel is most likely to be pronounced with the soft palate (velum) still lowered – making the vowel a nasalised one.
24. Thus, in this case, the nasalization is a co-articulation effect which is caused by the nasal consonants in context (environment).
25. Another example of co-articulation is the liprounding.
26. Remember that it is just a list of a set of formal statements simply describing the behavior of a language. These are not the kind of prescriptive grammar rules that people are expected to abide by.
27. Consonants are longer when at the end of a phrase (e.g., bib, did, don and nod).
28. Voiceless stops (e.g., p, t, k) are aspirated when they are syllable initial (pip, test, kick).
29. Voiced obstruents (b, d, g, v, ð, z, ʒ) are voiced only when they occur at the end of an utterance or before a voiceless sound.
30. Voiced stops (b, d, g) and affricate (dʒ) are voiceless when they are syllable initial (except when immediately preceded by a voiced sound – compare a day with this day).
31. Voiceless stops (p, t, k) are unaspirated after /s/ in words such as spew, stew and skew.
32. Voiceless obstruents (p, t, k, tʃ, f, θ, s, ʃ) are longer than their voiced counterparts (b, d, g, dʒ, v, ð, z, ʒ) at the end of a syllable (e.g., cap - cab and back – bag).
33. Approximants (w, r, j, l) are at least partially voiceless when they occur after initial voiceless stop sounds (e.g., play, twin, cue).
34. The gestures for consecutive stops overlap, so that stops are unexploded when they occur before another stop (e.g., apt and rubbed).
35. In many accents of English, syllable final voiceless stops /p, t, k/ are accompanied by an overlapping glottal stop gesture (e.g., tip, pit, kick).
36. /t/ is replaced by a glottal stop when it occurs before an alveolar nasal (e.g., beaten).
37. Nasals are syllabic at the end of a word - after an obstruent (e.g., leaden, chasm).
38. The lateral /l/ is syllabic at the end of a word - a consonant (e.g., paddle, whistle).
39. An alveolar stop becomes a voiced tap when it occurs between two vowels the second of which is unstressed (winter – winner)
40. An alveolar consonant becomes dental before dental consonant (eighth, tenth, wealth).
41. Alveolar stops are reduced or omitted when between two consonants (/moʊst pIpl/ - /moʊs pIpl/).